Forgotten NBC Show Resurfaces as Tubi Hit

One of the more interesting things about streaming services is how forgotten TV shows can take on a second life and become a massive hit with audiences.

That seems to be the case with the current #2 show on Tubi, which was hated by critics and shunned by NBC audiences when it aired yet has climbed the streaming charts all the same.

The 2021 NBC sci-fi drama La Brea aired for three seasons on the network but never really found too much of an audience.

The series revolves around a gigantic sinkhole in the middle of Los Angeles at the La Brea Tar Pits pulls thousands of people, vehicles, and buildings into the crater. Turns out that sinkhole was actually a portal to the year 10,000 BC, and the survivors have to figure out how to get back to the present.

In the present, the Department of Homeland Security is trying to figure out what’s up with the portal. All the while, a mysterious kid shows up who needs to back to 1988 because he is somehow the father of the main cast. (Oh, and by the way, this is all just in season one.)

Reviews were less than kind to La Brea during its run: it currently sits with a 29% on Rotten Tomatoes, with the consensus being that the series “simply doesn’t commit to its insane premise hard enough to shake out a show worth watching.”

A reviewer from The Globe and Mail said the “series is so wretchedly bad, it is gripping in its awfulness,” while a critic from The Guardian praised the series for being “gloriously, brazenly bad” while giving it one out of five stars.

Maybe Tubi watchers are on the ‘so bad, it’s good’ train, or maybe they’re genuinely enjoying how bizarre the series turns out. Whatever the reason, it’s the streamer’s second most popular show.

All thirty episodes of La Brea are streaming on Tubi now.