Netflix has been putting a lot of emphasis on documentaries lately. But whether or not you are a fan of documentaries, every Netflix subscriber should take the time to watch Penguin Town, which just launched its service last week.

Penguin Town is not your typical David Attenborough-narrated animal documentary series. It is not a popular copycat Kardashian show, but more of a reality show featuring adorable black-and-white birds.

My discovery of Penguin Town was entirely by accident. Usually my girlfriend and I have a very hard time finding things to watch together. I just started re-watching "Star Trek Deep Space Nine" and she is watching "Sailor Moon Eternal". But it's going well.

But after a few awkward minutes spent looking for shows, Penguin Town caught our eye. Penguins are cool, and we had just seen penguins at a nearby aquarium, so we figured we'd see what it was all about.

A day later, eight episodes of Penguin Town just didn't seem like enough, and within 24 hours we had watched the whole thing in one sitting, the only reason we didn't watch all eight in one sitting was because the next morning was so early. There was something truly captivating about a reality show featuring animals in the wild.

Penguin Town is set in Simon's Town on the southwest coast of South Africa, which has been home to a colony of African penguins since the mid-1980s. Simons Town hosts penguins during the summer months when they nest and breed.

The show follows the various penguin families in their summer antics and anthropomorphizes them to the hilt. They are not just animals, but birdlike people, each with their own backgrounds and personalities, making the lives of these feathered people more engaging rather than the brutal uncut footage seen on BBC's "Blue Planet" and elsewhere.

Needless to say, this is not narrated by Attenborough. Instead, Netflix has hired the voice talents of comedian Patton Oswalt, who is best known for voicing Remy the rat in Ratatouille and MODOK in Hulu's MODOK series.

Nature documentaries tend not to shy away from the troubling details about life on Earth. They capture on camera the effects of human activity and pollution, or predators aggressively pursuing and eating other animals. Penguin Town takes a more gentle route, but like any good reality show, it's all about the drama.

Whether the penguins are being stalked by predators, rescued from the brink of death by human conservationists, or caught up in a penguin incest known as the "parking lot gang," they always waddle through interesting chaos.

Nevertheless, "Penguin Town" does not shy away from how frightening nature can be to animal life. It just expresses such things in a way that will not affect even perhaps the most fastidious of people.

And therein lies the appeal of this program. With its mixture of drama, anthropomorphic protagonists, and tension (especially at the end of each episode), "Penguin Town" draws the viewer in. I won't say too much about the main characters to avoid spoiling the show for others, but it goes without saying that a lot can happen in the eight episodes.

While there are always realistic stakes in the natural world, Penguin Town triumphs by treating its stars like humans and making the audience empathize with them as if they were human. However, it is clear that penguins are superior to humans. Penguins are great. Not really.

I'm basically not a big fan of documentaries, and nature shows always remind me of my science classes in school. But Penguin Town taught me that not everything has to be the same. Like "Captain America": a documentary can borrow from other television genres, just as, for example, "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" is a superhero adventure and a Cold War-inspired spy thriller.

The streaming market is fairly saturated right now, and it's not enough to just take a back seat to some basic original programming. Innovation is needed to catch the eye, which is why shows like the bizarre and frightening dating show "Sexy Beasts" have emerged.

The classic Attenborough-inspired documentary series will always have a place on TV and streaming sites. And we couldn't be happier.