TV Eye: The best new show not on TV

Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent

Transparent is funny, uncomfortable, obnoxious, intimate and sad.

The world's best new TV show isn't on TV. Transparent can be viewed on-demand at Lightbox.co.nz; the pilot is also free on Amazon.com.

Picking up the mantle from Girls, writer-director Jill Soloway (who worked on Six Feet Under and United States of Tara) has created a dramedy that's tonally similar, not to mention funny, moving, uncomfortable, obnoxious, intimate and sad.

The characters talk over each other, walk around in the nude, have one-sided love affairs, argue while eating messy food, fantasise about being someone else.

It's not so much a show about a man who wants to live as a woman - which it is, and bravo for telling that story. It's more a vehicle to show how everyone struggles with identity.

There's Mort/Maura, the "transparent" brilliantly played by Arrested Development's Jeffrey Tambor) who wants to come out to his family but doesn't know how.

There are his grown-up kids, Ali (Gaby Hoffmann who played Adam's goofy sister Caroline on Girls), Sarah, a married mother still batting for the other team, and Josh, who's hopelessly into the pretty young singer he's producing.

They feel like a real family. And they have awesome friends. Like Carrie Brownstein from Portlandia. If you haven't seen Transparent, go watch it pronto.

TVNZ Ondemand also has a few new rom-coms of a simpler vein, more boy-meets-girl than boy-wants-to-be-girl.

The sickeningly cuter and more contrived of the two is A to Z, an alphabetic exploration of a relationship. (The pilot was titled A for Acquaintances; at this rate they won't get to X for X-rated until the second season, if there is one.)

Zelda, (Cristin Milioti from How I Met Your Mother) is a lawyer who loves, you guessed it, law and order. Andrew, (Ben Feldman from Mad Men) works for a dating agency and is a hopeless romantic, emphasis on the hopeless.

How many guys proclaim to the girl they've just met that it's "destiny" they be together?

They're early- to mid-20s. But A to Z exudes the kind of OTT enthusiasm and over-explanation you might use to spoon-feed a 2-year-old. Sugar.

It doesn't help that Katey Sagal narrates the whole thing, telling us that the pretty young couple will date for "eight months, three weeks, five days and one hour". (They break up at 1am?)

A less schmaltzy take on the theme is Manhattan Love Story. Yes, it has another doe-eyed lead actress in Analeigh Tipton, as Dana, a meek New York newbie, struggling to win over her redundancy-weary colleagues.

Jake McDorman convincingly plays the street-smart, pervy cynic she's just been on a disastrous blind date with (she cries, he checks out her boobs). And yes, it also feels overcooked, thanks to the constant narration in the form of internal monologues from the odd couple.

"I keep forgetting to water my ficus," he thinks as she frets about herself.

But it nails the fundamental differences between men and women in a way that seems to elude A to Z.

US critics seem to prefer A to Z over MLS but I'd predict the latter is better suited to the smart-arse Kiwi attitude. It feels a little rougher round the edges, with meaner characters and a stronger supporting cast.

- TimeOut