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TV TODAY

Netflix's The Society Scares Up a World Without Parents

ALSO: Jailbirds, Sneaky Pete, Agents of SHIELD, Easy, WuTang Clan, Blue Bloods, and more
  • The young cast of Netflix's new supernatural teen thriller, The Society
    The young cast of Netflix's new supernatural teen thriller, The Society

    If the new Netflix series The Society aims to be correcting one thing, it's that Riverdale isn't a Netflix series. If you think about it, it probably should be. Which is not to say that it would be better as a Netflix series, just that a teen drama as uninhibited, strange, and reliant on constant twists in order to keep the audience on pins and needles for the next episode seems to be very much the kind of thing Netflix has been going for. That's probably why the streamer outbid The CW for The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, and for good reason -- their teen drama offerings are among the buzziest and most-watched on the platform. 13 Reasons Why remains a massive hit, and although Stranger Things operates on more levels than just teen drama, it's hard to argue that the Steve Harrington of it all doesn't have big teen drama implications.

    Whether The Society will soar to the same heights as its predecessors remains to be seen, but Netflix has done a great job of taking genres one by one and conquering them, and in that context The Society would seem to be yet shot across the bow at The CW and its one-time brand as the place for teen-friendly supernatural series .

    SERIES PREMIERE: Netflix's The Society is a Lord of the Flies-y take on the Something Weird Happened in This Small New England Town subgenre. When a group of teens are mysteriously transported to a place that seems very much like their town, yet their parents are nowhere to be found, they experience in-fighting and a struggle for power as they try to figure out what happened. Streaming on Netflix

    SERIES PREMIERE: Kind of a real-life Orange is the New Black, the new Netflix documentary series Jailbirds follows female inmates at the Sacramento County Jail. Their struggles, friendships, fights, and hard-won lessons offer an insight into a word few know. Streaming on Netflix

    NEW SEASON: Season 3 of Amazon's Sneaky Pete sees Giovanni Robisi's Marius (our fraudulent "Pete") feeling drawn to the Bernhart family (under matriarch Audrey, played by Margo Martindale), but conflicted by the myriad of con-man lies he's told. Season 3 also features the late Ricky Jay in a featured role. Streaming on Amazon

    SEASON PREMIERE: It's been almost two years — and, more crucially, two Avengers movies, plus a Captain Marvel — since we last encountered our brave and battered Agents of SHIELD. While you probably shouldn't expect much in the way of fallout from the big screen Avengers movies, season 6 throws one gigantic curveball at both its audience and its main characters: it looks like the big bad is … Phil Coulson? Despite never getting the kind of good buzz that other Marvel TV series have occasionally gotten, research shows that Agents of Shield was more popular on Netflix (where previous seasons are available to stream) than any of Netflix's original Marvel series. Which is to say: maybe it's time to give Quake, May, Simmons, and the rest of the gang some respect. 8:00 PM ET on ABC

    NEW SEASON: Netflix's anthology series Easy returns for a third and final season of sex, love, and relationships in Chicago. Expect to see familiar faces like Dave Franco, Kiersey Clemons, Jake Johnson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Marc Maron, Elizabeth Reaser, as well as season 3 newcomers Melanie Lynskey, Sophia Bush, and John Gallagher, Jr. Streaming on Netflix

    ALSO TONIGHT

    • Last Man Standing ends its 7th season as Mandy (Molly McCook) and Kyle (Christoph Sanders) are hesitant to move out. The Tim Allen sitcom will be back for an 8th season, though the show will reportedly surrender its Friday night time slot to WWE Smackdown. 8:00 PM ET on FOX
    • WuTang Clan: Of Mics and Men, the four-part limited docu-series and career retrospective of the influential hip-hop collective, premieres tonight on Showtime. 9:00 PM ET on Showtime
    • Blue Bloods ends its ninth season on a wedding between Jamie (Will Estes) and Eddie (Vanessa Ray). 10:00 PM ET on CBS

    Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.

    TOPICS: The Society, Easy, Jailbirds, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Sneaky Pete