You should be streaming both of these Latinx-led Netflix series this week

This week, check out The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia and Gentefied, two new Netflix series with Latinx leads!

The Latinx community is having a real moment in media with the success of shows like Jane the Virgin, One Day at a Time, and On My Block pushing the door wide open for a new crop of talent to tell a range of stories and experiences that encompasses the diversity of their identities.

This week, Netflix added two new shows with Latinx leads to its roster: The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia and Gentefied. One is a comedy reminiscent of Nickelodeon’s Teen Nick shows but with a strong peppering of humor that’s less kid friendly and more The N at 8pm. The other is a dramedy with the American dream and gentrification at the center of its plot.

Both shows seek to tap into what makes storytelling so powerful, the ability to hold up a mirror and reflect the experiences many people go through and the ability to open a window into experiences others have never seen or lived before.

Fiction, fantasy, or a dose of reality, representation is more than one show. It’s multiple shows covering differing topics, falling into varying genres, and introducing viewers to characters they may love, love to hate, or absolutely can’t stand whilst being entertained or moved the whole way through.

The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia

While nothing will ever replace One Day at a Time, it does seem like Netflix is aiming to fill the hole the comedy left behind — after it was cancelled and then picked up by Pop TV — with its new series The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia.

Check out the trailer for The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia below:

Created by Mario Lopez and Seth Kurland, The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia follows 15-year-old Ashley, the youngest recipient of a PhD, as she moves to Pasadena to live with her uncle, Victor. She’s set to work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) making robots for the agency and is incredibly excited to be living her dream and being far away from her mother.

The series is a coming-of-age story that centers a young Latina, her family, and the growing pains of a teenager eons ahead of her peers intellectually, but miles behind them socially.

Gentefied

The American Dream and what it looks like changes from generation to generation and person to person. For the three Mexican-American cousins of Gentefied, their conceptualizations of that dream may come at the expense of their family’s taco shop, their grandfather, and their neighborhood.

Watch the trailer for Gentefied here:

Gentrification isn’t just meddling with their community, it’s messing with their business. Their landlord doubled their rent, they’re struggling to compete with other restaurants, and their minds are on their own dreams. Chris is a chef, Ana is an artist, and Erik has family of his own on the way.

Still, even with their attention split between their own lives and desires, the cousins band together to help their grandfather. He spent his life building his business, they’re not going to give it up without a fight even if that means going against tradition and trying new things to save it.

Gentefied is a series created by Marvin Lemus and Linda Yvette Chávez.

The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia and Gentefied are both streaming on Netflix now.