Student debt is occupying a prominent spot in the platforms of the Democratic presidential hopefuls and an emerging position in television, too. Docuseries Going From Broke has launched on Crackle, with 10 episodes offering a look at how mounting student debt cripples a large percentage of the millennial population.

Ashton Kutcher is executive producer, as is Michael Winter, senior VP of programming at Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, which acquired a majority stake in Crackle from Sony last year and is making this the first new original program on the ad-supported streaming service. The idea for the series came from Kutcher.

“Ashton is intrinsically involved every step of the way,” Winter said. “He literally hand-wrote the treatment for the show and what it should look like.”

More than 44 million Americans owe a stunning $1.5 trillion in federal student loan debt, according to Crackle, and the number is climbing. Winter noted the tech bubble of the late ’90s and real estate bubble of the late aughts, and said a student loan bubble may be poised to burst.

The series checks in with millennials living in Los Angeles, and a duo of financial experts challenges the young people to rethink their financial habits.

“There’s no financial show for millennials,” Winter said. “They’re not watching CNBC or reading The Wall Street Journal.”

Winter said the financial advisers, Dan Rosensweig, CEO of education firm Chegg, and entrepreneur Danetha Doe, teach the young folks “financial literacy.”

“The student debt crisis in America is devastating to young people and their families,” Rosensweig said. “We need real solutions, in real time, to end the vicious cycle of debt and get hard-working young people on the road to financial freedom.”

Student debt may not automatically play on television, but the producers tell the story from the perspective of the young people forced into hard decisions based on the ills of their college loans.

Over the summer, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) introduced legislation aimed toward wiping out around $640 billion in student debt. “Student loan debt in this nation has reached crisis proportions,” the presidential candidate said.

Elsewhere on the dial, 32 episodes of Paid Off with Michael Torpey have aired on TruTV. A humorous game show, the Paid Off contestants compete to have their student debts wiped out by the show.

The student debt issue has long been a personal one for Torpey, host and executive producer. “We’ve helped push back against the stigma of student debt,” said Torpey. “People avoid the reality of their debt out of shame, but there’s no reason to be ashamed.”

Paid Off will not go on on TruTV. “We’re hoping to find a new home for it,” Torpey said.

The show has given away $1.6 million to its debt-ridden contestants since it debuted in July 2018. “We freed people up and gave them the opportunity to chase their dreams,” said Torpey.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment and Crackle, for their part, are bullish on Going From Broke. The Chicken Soup books tell “first-person, authentic, real-life stories,” said Winter. So does the new series.

Paid Off With Michael Torpey, a game show with humor, sees contestants compete to see who gets their student loans paid off. Three college grads, saddled with serious debt, play the game. It debuts July 10 on truTV.

Student loans are a profound issue for host Torpey. He did not have to take out college loans, which enabled him to study theater, and pursue acting after college, without crippling debt to contend with. “All I had to worry about was rent and eating,” he said.

Torpey landed a major commercial, for Hanes, where he discussed underwear with Michael Jordan. Its windfall enabled him to help pay off his girlfriend’s student debt, which brought tears to her eyes. “That experience stuck with me,” Torpey said.

His acting career moved onto a stint as corrections officer Thomas Humphrey on Orange Is the New Black (“an absolute piece of shit,” Torpey said of his character), before he landed the host role on Paid Off. “I’ve gained a ton of respect for people who host game shows,” he said.

On July 11, season two of Harlots starts on Hulu. Executive producer Moira Buffini said she’s “absolutely thrilled” with how the first season landed. “It being a British costume drama about the sex trade, I had no idea how it would go down at all,” she said. “People totally got it.”

Harlots is set in Georgian London. Harris’s List of Covent Garden Ladies, essentially a guide book about local prostitutes, inspired the series. “We said, let’s tell the stories of society through the eyes of harlots,” Buffini said.

The “outrageous” Georgians almost write their own lines, Buffini said. “They’re fantastically good characters to write because they don’t hold back.”

Liv Tyler comes on board as aristocrat Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam.

The Georgian-era yarns are timely these days. “We tell stories about now,” Buffini said, “through the lens of the 18th century.”

On a lighter note, Fancy Nancy starts on Disney Junior July 13. Six-year-old Nancy Clancy is the show’s centerpiece. “She has a very specific vision of what she wants the world to be,” Krista Tucker, who developed the series, said. “She wants the world to be fancy.”

Fancy Nancy has big names in the cast. George Wendt plays Nancy’s grandfather, Alyson Hannigan voices her mother and Christine Baranski is her neighbor, Mrs. Devine. Mia Sinclair Jenness voices Nancy.

Tucker said the relatable nature of the Fancy Nancy stories appealed to the cast. “They read the scripts and it resonated with them,” she said.

One memorable scene sees Nancy get a vanity from her deceased grandmother. She looks in its mirror — and glimpses her potential. “It’s a very heartfelt moment,” Tucker said.