Perhaps appropriately for a show that’s set behind the scenes at a reality series, it’s been a bumpy ride for UnREAL, Marti Noxon and Sarah Gertrude Shapiro’s drama that’s not officially about The Bachelor, but is totally about The Bachelor. Shortly after winning a Peabody award in 2016 for its critically acclaimed first season, the show attracted controversy with an ill-considered #BlackLivesMatter storyline, the low point of a season that our own Gwen Inhat and Joshua Alton considered markedly inferior to the first. Season three wasn’t much of an improvement, and now the show’s fourth and final season has moved from Lifetime—where it was once the network’s crown jewel—to Hulu, where it debuted in its entirety today.
As the streaming service points out in a press, release, though, Hulu is actually a good home for the series, given that viewers were already gravitating towards a streaming-friendly binge-watching pattern for the show. (Viewers watched an average of 3-4 episodes at a time and finished seasons within days, according to Hulu’s own statistics.) We’ll be on board for the first few episodes of this surprise drop, with Gwen returning with an overview of UnREAL season four on The A.V. Club ASAP.