Glitch on Netflix: The Australian Supernatural Drama You've Almost Certainly Overlooked
TL;DR: Glitch is a three-season Australian supernatural drama streaming on Netflix that blends the emotional mystery of Lost with the undead tension of The Walking Dead across 18 episodes. Created by Louise Fox and Tony Ayres, it stars Patrick Brammall as a small-town cop confronting the impossible. If you're hunting for a bingeable supernatural series with a genuinely satisfying ending, this is it.
The Quiet Australian Series That Somehow Nailed What Lost Never Could
Picture this: a small-town police officer, alone in a cemetery at night, watching people claw their way out of their graves — not as rotting, shambling monsters, but as healthy, confused, terrified human beings who have no idea who they are or how long they've been dead. That's the opening premise of Glitch, an Australian supernatural drama that quietly landed on Netflix and has been rewarding patient viewers ever since its original 2015 debut on the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).
Patrick Brammall plays James Hayes, the cop at the centre of this increasingly strange mystery, and what's remarkable is how grounded he keeps the whole thing. The show doesn't announce itself. It doesn't open with a massive set piece or a bombastic score. It just starts — and suddenly you're three episodes in at 1 a.m. wondering how this happened to you.
What Glitch Actually Is: The Verified Facts
Created by: Louise Fox and Tony Ayres Original network: ABC (Australia) Streaming home: Netflix (global) Seasons: 3 | Episodes: 18 | Run dates: 2015–2019 Lead cast: Patrick Brammall, Genevieve O'Reilly
Set in the fictional small town of Yoorana, Victoria, Glitch follows Officer James Hayes after he's called to a local cemetery where seven people have risen from their graves. They're physically healthy — no decomposition, no hunger for brains — but completely amnesiac. They don't know their names, their relationships, or even what decade they're from. Some died recently. Others died generations ago.
The central mystery the show builds around is deceptively simple: why these seven people, and why now?
Key confirmed facts at a glance:
- First episode aired: 2015 on Australian ABC
- Netflix availability: All three seasons globally
- Total runtime: Approximately 18 hours across 18 episodes
- Rating: TV-MA (mature themes, some violence)
- IMDb score: 8.0/10 — which, for a show this underseen, is genuinely impressive
The series was directed across its run by Emma Freeman and Tony Krawitz, with writing credits spread across Louise Fox, Kris Mrksa, Giulia Sandler, Pete McTighe, and Adam Hill. That's a writers' room with genuine range, which explains why the show doesn't feel like a one-trick premise stretched thin.
You can check current regional streaming availability at Movie OTT, which tracks where Glitch is live across Netflix markets worldwide.
Why the Lost and Walking Dead Comparison Actually Holds Up
Here's the thing nobody mentions when people lazily slap "Lost meets The Walking Dead" onto a show: those two series have almost nothing in common structurally. Lost is about the slow revelation of mythology through character trauma. The Walking Dead is fundamentally about moral collapse under pressure — what happens to people when society's rules stop applying.
Glitch takes something from both without being derivative of either.
From The Walking Dead, it borrows the literal undead premise and the existential threat of people who technically shouldn't exist walking among the living. But — and this is crucial — the risen dead in Glitch aren't antagonists. They're protagonists. Everyone is confused. The resurrected and the living are equally disoriented, which creates a genuinely unusual dynamic where the audience isn't waiting for the monsters to show up, because the monsters are the ones asking for help.
From Lost, it takes the layered mystery structure and the willingness to let questions breathe across multiple seasons. Yes, some threads go unanswered by the finale. That will frustrate certain viewers. But unlike Lost's notorious endgame, Glitch does deliver a coherent, emotionally satisfying conclusion — and that alone puts it ahead of half the prestige mysteries of the last decade.
What's striking is how the show uses amnesia not as a cheap plot device but as a genuine philosophical engine. If you don't remember who you were, are you still that person? Do you owe anything to the life you lived before? Those questions get uncomfortable answers as the seasons progress.
The supernatural drama space on streaming has grown crowded — according to data tracked by platforms like IMDB's genre breakdowns — but few shows in this space have managed to sustain three seasons without losing narrative coherence.
The Show's Creators on What Makes It Different
Louise Fox, who created Glitch alongside Tony Ayres, has spoken about the deliberate choice to make the risen dead sympathetic rather than threatening — a decision that fundamentally separates the show from more traditional zombie narratives. The creative team wanted, as Fox described it, a story about identity and second chances rather than survival horror.
The distinction matters. Paraphrasing Fox's stated intent: the resurrection in Glitch isn't framed as supernatural horror but as a kind of impossible gift — except the gift comes with no instructions and no context, and the people around you may not welcome your return.
(Disclosure: Movie OTT reached out for further comment on the show's streaming performance but had not received a response at time of publication.)
It's also worth noting that Glitch is not an adaptation of the French series Les Revenants, which debuted on Canal+ in 2012 and was adapted into the English-language The Returned in 2015. The surface-level similarity — dead people returning to a small town with no memory — is real, but the two shows diverge significantly in tone, structure, and thematic concern. Fox developed Glitch independently, and the amnesia angle takes the premise somewhere Les Revenants never went.
How Glitch Lands for Indian Audiences on Netflix
For Indian viewers, Glitch is available in full on Netflix India — all three seasons, all 18 episodes, accessible right now. The show streams in English with subtitle options, though as of this writing, a full Hindi dub has not been confirmed for the series.
That's worth flagging, because supernatural drama is a genre that's found a strong audience in India through shows like Sacred Games, Ghoul, and international imports like Dark and Stranger Things. Glitch sits comfortably in that same space — it's atmospheric, morally complex, and built around a mystery that rewards binge-watching. Indian audiences who gravitated toward Dark's time-loop mythology or Ghoul's slow-burn dread will find Glitch immediately compelling.
The show's themes — identity, memory, the obligations we carry toward people we've left behind — also carry particular weight in cultures where family and ancestral connection hold deep significance. There's something in the premise of the dead returning with no memory of those who loved them that hits differently when you watch it through that lens.
Movie OTT's where-to-watch tracker currently lists Glitch as active on Netflix India. Availability can shift, so checking before you dive in is always worth the thirty seconds.
The Careers Behind Glitch: Fox, Ayres, and the Australian TV Renaissance
Louise Fox and Tony Ayres are both significant figures in Australian television, though neither is a household name internationally — which partly explains why Glitch hasn't broken through the way its quality deserves.
Ayres is perhaps better known internationally as a co-creator of The Slap (2011), the Australian drama adaptation that earned widespread critical acclaim and was later remade for American television. That background in morally ambiguous, character-driven drama is visible throughout Glitch.
Fox's writing career spans both film and television, with a focus on genre work that takes human stakes seriously. Her approach to Glitch is essentially: the supernatural event is the premise, but the show is really about what it means to be a person — and whether personhood is something you carry in your memory or something deeper.
Patrick Brammall, who plays James Hayes, is one of Australia's most reliable dramatic actors. His work here is understated in the best possible way — he plays a man who has every reason to fall apart and mostly keeps it together, which makes the moments when he doesn't land harder. Genevieve O'Reilly, who plays one of the risen, brings considerable presence to a role that requires her to perform confusion and gradual self-discovery across three seasons without ever becoming repetitive.
Where Things Stand Now, and Whether You Should Watch
Glitch completed its run in 2019. No fourth season is coming. That's not a spoiler — it's a relief. The show tells a complete story in 18 episodes and ends it. In an era of infinite spinoffs and revival seasons, a supernatural drama that knew when to stop is almost worth watching for that reason alone.
Hard to say if Glitch will ever get the mainstream attention it deserves, given that it's now several years old and Australian productions still struggle for visibility on global platforms. But the Netflix algorithm has been surfacing it more consistently in 2025 and into 2026, which suggests the platform recognises it as a retention asset.
For the latest on streaming availability across India, the US, the UK, and Spain, Movie OTT has the current picture — including any regional shifts in Glitch's Netflix status.
Should you watch it? Yes. Especially if you're post-Lost and still chasing that specific feeling of a mystery that actually means something. Glitch delivers it — across 18 episodes, with a real ending.
