The best show you're not watching in March is currently on Netflix

Whenever someone claims a specific show they love is "the best show you're not watching," the natural reflex is to roll your eyes. Of course someone would claim a show they adore watching is not only the best show on TV but also that not enough people are watching it, too. So it's with all the self-awareness possible that I say the following: Girls5eva is the best show you're not watching.

Unfortunately, it's rather true that not enough people are watching Girls5eva. Since its debut on Netflix on March 14 with its two Peacock original seasons and new Netflix original season 3, the Tina Fey-executive produced comedy hasn't cracked the daily top 10 in the United States (as of March 22). What is going on here?! Is the show just forever destined to be under-appreciated like its titular girl group?

Netflix saved Girls5eva from Peacock after the NBC streamer quietly canceled it in hopes that the move would reinvigorate the series and bring it to the widest audience possible. Well, introducing the show to the widest audience possible on perhaps the biggest streaming service on the market hasn't appeared to move the needle, and it's unbearably frustrating. Not just for fans but for the show itself.

Girls5eva should be the biggest comedy on TV

Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Paula Pell, and Renée Elise Goldsberry are so good as a comedy foursome that words fail to accurately describe their chemistry, timing, and fearless ability to make the wacky tone of the show work. Between them, they have been nominated for and/or won Emmys, Tonys, Grammys, Critics' Choice Awards, Teen Choice Awards... All the big ones!

Behind the camera, creator Meredith Scardino cut her teeth writing for Letterman and The Colbert Report before becoming a writer for Fey and Robert Carlock's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and Mr. Mayor. The former was a huge, Emmy-nominated hit for Netflix and boasted the same unabashedly surrealistic and wonderfully weird sensibilities as Girls5eva.

What these Fey-produced or co-created shows have in common is sharing DNA with the whip-smart 30 Rock, a shockingly meta and, in many ways, over-the-top comedy series that became influential with its breakneck joke pacing. If you loved watching, and are still to this day rewarching, Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy lovingly trade barbs or Jenna Maroney and Tracy Jordan create pop culture chaos, oh, do I have the show for you!

Girls5eva and 30 Rock are so cut from the same cloth they could create a quilt. It wouldn't be out of the ordinary for the show to randomly decide that NBC revived TGS and Girls5eva shuffles on as a musical guest to perform "4 Stars" or "Momentum" in a season 4 (fingers crossed for season 4) episode of the Netflix comedy. That's how ingrained they are on just a base level in both sense of humor and a boldness to try anything. (Like Tina Fey guest starring as Dolly Parton.)

The jokes are supposed to be multi-layered and satiric, the original songs are supposed to be corny and genuinely catchy, and the characters are supposed to be exisiting within varied levels of reality. I'm not sure we've had a character as instantly iconic as Goldsberry's Wickie Roy, a faded star who's desperately unwilling to admit her star has faded. We should all hope to be as half as confident as Wickie, even if it's a bit misplaced from time to time.

But that's where the heart of Girls5eva comes in. At its core, it's an honest story about four women over 40 rediscovering themselves and taking back a part of their lives that the world pushed aside. In its own larger-than-life way, the show has something real to say in between the unserious dialogue and visual gags.

Somehow in 2024, it's still rare to see a comedy series led by not only four women but four women who aren't in their 20s and dating in a big city. These days, broadcast television hardly has as many comedies on the air as it did in the past, much less comedies about women that were insanely popular years ago like The Golden Girls, Designing Women, and Mom.

It's my hope that even though Girls5eva's 22-episode drop on Netflix didn't appear to make the immediate splash we'd all been hoping for, Netflix will grant the series at least one additional final season to wrap up the story. The show deserves that much before settling into its fate as a hidden gem and cult classic, only to be rediscovered a decade later and mused about online with the question, "Why didn't more people watch this show?"