We receive a ton of tips every day from independent creators, unaffiliated with any major motion picture studios, television networks, new media studios, or other well-funded online video entities. The Indie Spotlight is where we’ll write about and shout out to a select few of them and bring you up to speed on the great (and sometimes not-so-great) attention-grabbing series you probably haven’t heard about until now. Read previous installments here.
Seeking is a romantic comedy web series about a woman who flits from date to date in search of The One. That may sound like a stale premise, but Seeking adds in enough new wrinkles to divert a classic format, making it well worth a watch.
The central figure in Seeking is Ella (played by series creator Ronit Aranoff), a typically dishearted New York City resident who believes she will never find her match. Her roommates disagree, and thus a bet is launched: She must go on weekly dates with men, lest she be forced to embarrassingly purchase lube for her roommate during the busiest time of day.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
Seeking does two things that put it a cut above other web series with similar premises. For one, Ella is not a fictional vessel for Aranoff’s real life frustrations. It is very easy for creators to use indie web series as a type of wish fulfillment, but Aranoff instead drew Ella’s dating stories from people all over the city rather than herself. “The minute we tell people we are doing a show based on real dating experiences, the personal anecdotes start falling out of people’s mouths,” she said in a release. “The beauty of this show is that we have woven together a large cross section of people’s stories to be told through the character of Ella. So this is really everyone’s show. Literally.”
Seeking’s second big advantage is its furious pace, which picks up from the very first minute of the first episode and does not subside. Ella, her friends, and her dates are all fast talkers, and they are tailor made for the Internet. There’s no time to overanalyze the show’s various scenarios. There’s only time to laugh.
OTHER UNDER-THE-RADAR SERIES TO CHECK OUT:
- Wind City. This comedy web series is quite literally branded by the entire city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
- 7p/10e. A long-distance relationship unfolds through a series of daily Skype sessions.
- Just Passing Through. A pair of Canadian hosers from Prince Edward Island decide to travel to Alberta to make it big.
- Bootydoo. A woman going through a breakup lets herself go physically, so her friends signs her up for a fitness class to get her back in shape.
Got a series you’d like to see featured in the Indie Spotlight? Be sure to contact us here. For best coverage, please include a full episode in your e-mail.
