12 Most Underrated TV Shows Ever
6. Bakersfield P.D.
A show I remember fondly from the 1993/1994 TV season, Bakersfield P.D. was a single camera comedy on Fox that, true to the network's legendary form, didn't make it to the end of the season before it was cancelled. Which is a crying shame, because it was at least a decade ahead of its time, a precursor to similarly witty single camera shows with a deft absurdist touch like Scrubs, Community, Arrested Development and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Bakersfield P.D. featured ambitious, go-getting Detective Gigante, who finds that the fertility doctor who helped he and his wife conceive had been using his own swimmers to dive the deep end, if you know what I mean and I think you do.
Faced with having his son growing up with a dating pool comprised of possibly hundreds of his biological half-siblings, Gigante moves as far from DC as possible: to Bakersfield, California, where the police are less a department and more a gaggle of idiots and oddballs. His partner Wade, in particular, has very strange ideas about black people and learned most of his police work from watching television. Deadpan and unashamedly clever, Bakersfield P.D. was a bit of a white elephant in 1993, but wouldn't be out of place on any TV network in 2016. Brooklyn Nine-Nine, in particular, might as well be the same show. A gentleman on YouTube appears to have uploaded the first seven episodes, and you'd be remiss in not setting an evening aside to watch them.