Inspired by Deborah Feldman's 2012 autobiography, Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, it is the first Netflix series to be primarily in Yiddish.

Esty Shapiro, a 19-year-old Jewish woman, is living unhappily in an arranged marriage among the Satmar sect of the ultra-Orthodox community in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City.

[3] On a Sabbath day, 19-year-old Esty Shapiro, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish married woman, flees her home in the Williamsburg, Brooklyn, section of New York City with only a handful of possessions.

Winger said that the story "has a kind of doubling back on history", portraying a Jewish character who escapes the "confines of her own life" by returning "to the source of her community's trauma".

Filming began in New York, then relocated to Berlin, where the production designer built interior sets at CCC Filmstudios[9] that synced with the Brooklyn exteriors.

The two-day filming of the wedding was a complex undertaking, involving about a hundred extras that had to accurately depict a nuanced cultural celebration.

The production team took two research trips to the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, touring buildings and meeting with the community of Satmar Jews, where part of the story is set.

Cast in Germany, Jeff Wilbusch was unique among the four lead actors in being a native Yiddish speaker from the Satmar community (via the Mea Shearim neighborhood of Jerusalem).

The website's critical consensus reads: "Unorthodox adapts its source material with extreme care, crafting a series that is at once intimate and urgent, all centered around Shira Haas' captivating performance.

[15] Netflix released a 20-minute documentary, Making Unorthodox, that chronicles the creative process and filming of the miniseries, and discussed the differences between the book and the TV show.