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By Kate Emswiler

In this social media-saturated era, election years are more exciting than ever.  Watching the debates, following blogs, firing off opinionated tweets and Facebook statuses — it’s all part of what has become a media frenzy surrounding the country’s political goings-on.  It’s often highly entertaining, though sometimes it resembles a circus.

For me, the upcoming election has also sparked a greater interest in politically themed TV series.  This includes soapy, unrealistic series such as ABC’s “Scandal”.  I love getting a salacious behind-the-scenes peek into the underpinnings of our political epicenter (outrageously exaggerated as they may be).  Thus, I’m finally checking out the original Hulu series “Battleground”, all about a group of campaign workers in the battleground state of Wisconsin.

I’d wanted to watch “Battleground” for a long time, but frankly I’d been dragging my feet because it’s a web series, only streaming on Hulu.  It’s silly, I know, especially since the series boasts a great cast (Jay Hayden, Ray Wise) and producer Marc Webb is the director of “(500) Days of Summer”, among other things.  So what was my big hang-up?  For one thing, I feel like there are always other series that I’ve been meaning to watch in their entirety (like “Breaking Bad”) or other series that I need to catch up on (like “Weeds”).   Web series that I know very little about are so far down on the priority list, and in very tiny font.

But in this day and age, web series can be just as well done, compelling and star-studded as some TV shows.

I’m glad I finally gave “Battleground” a chance, for example.  Especially mid-October of an election year.