Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
20. The Golden Bachelor (Hulu)
What we have on our hands here is a Bachelor spinoff about an older gentleman looking for love from a group of similarly aged ladies. Which is… honestly kind of adorable. Good for them. And good for us, too, especially if one of the episodes features a date where they eat dinner at a diner at 4:45 and then go watch an episode of Columbo in matching recliners. This was written as a joke but honestly sounds kind of wonderful. That’s true love right there, people.
19. Upload (Amazon Prime)
Welcome to the third season of Upload, a fun little science fiction-y comedy from the creator of The Office, Greg Daniels, that is set in 2033 in a world where humans can — you guessed it — upload themselves into a virtual afterlife when they die. The show follows Nathan, a guy who dies young under potentially mysterious circumstances and tries to sort things through from a very fancy new virtual community. It sounds strange. We promise it’s pretty fun.
18. Invincible (Amazon)
Robert Kirkman’s other most beloved comic book series proved that Amazon really is doing superheroes and supervillains better than anyone else right now. When this round of episodes begins, Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) will need to fully reckon with the implications of that climactic fight in the sky with his dad, Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons). Additionally, his love life will receive new wrinkles, and Walton Goggins will be back, meaning that the man who would be Boyd Crowder again is achieving TV supremacy with every passing year. New characters shall be portrayed by Ben Schwartz and Tatiana Maslany.
17. Boogeyman (Hulu)
This 2023 movie goes back to the 1973 short story by Stephen King as the perfect streaming lead-in to nightmares about Halloween season. This is not a true tale, but perhaps thinking of it that way can increase the terror. The story explores the enduring Boogeyman/Bogeyman folklore that has persisted around the globe for centuries. We’ve got a distracted father not paying enough attention to a pair of sisters, who begin to experience horrors that could trigger any lingering fears you’ve ever had about monsters lurking in your bedroom closet. The cast includes Sophie Thatcher, David Dastmalchian, and Chris Messina.
16. Lessons in Chemistry (Apple TV)
Brie Larson has never shied away from speaking out for feminist causes, and in this series, she stars in the adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’ bestselling novel, Lessons In Chemistry. Garmus became an overnight “a literary rock star” at age 66 for this impressive debut novel that is all the rage in book clubs everywhere. That will give the show a built-in audience as Larson portrays a brilliant chemist who is fired for a sexist double standard. This leads to an unexpected career change as a cooking show host. This high-profile new platform allows her to sandwich in other nuggets of wisdom for housewives as well as demonstrating how to bake yummy cookies.
15. Living for the Dead (Hulu)
Kristen Stewart’s gay ghost hunting show has everything: slayances, spook-kikis, haunted strip clubs, and comedian Roz Hernandez snacking on donuts while she yells at homophobic poltergeists. The group – a hodgepodge of paranormal experts that includes a psychic, a witch, and a tarot card reader – road trips across the country in this docuseries produced by the Queer Eye creators, chatting it up with demonic entities and benevolent spooks to get to the root of some very real, very human problems. If there’s a better way to spend your weekend than watching a group of well-dressed Queer spiritualists commune with the dead while cracking jokes and busting stereotypes, we don’t want to know about it.
14. Quiz Lady (Hulu)
The important stuff here:
— This movie stars Sandra Oh and Awkwafina and Will Ferrell, which is a good start
— This is the official summary: “Anne and her estranged train-wreck of a sister, Jenny, must work together to help cover their mother’s gambling debts. When Anne’s beloved dog is kidnapped, they set out on a wild cross-country trek to get the cash.”
Yes, this will do just fine.
13. Loki (Disney Plus)
When we last left Loki, the title character (Tom Hiddleston) had traveled to an alternate version of the Time Variance Authority where no one remembers him and there are statues of Kang (Jonathan Majors) everywhere. This second season picks up where we left off, only Loki soon discovers he’s being thrust back and forth not to an alternate timeline, but the past and present of his current timeline. Seeking the help of the present-day Mobius (Owen Wilson, the past’s version doesn’t know Loki) the two seek out Ke Huy Quan’ Ouroboros (or OB for short), a fellow who has been around a long time and seems to know how to do everything, to stop Loki from doing these involuntary jumps back and forth through time.
Also, Loki and Mobius are charged with finding one of Kang’s variants, for reasons that are too complicated to explain here. So the pair travel to 19th-century Chicago to find an inventor and con man named Victor Timely. The problem is other people with the ability to jump through time are also after Timely and his fate has repercussions on multiple timelines.
This show is a lot, which is by design, but it’s still a lot. The first season played as good fun, and this second season is also fun, though maybe just a little less so (at least through four episodes), but while watching it’s hard to forget the real world where one of the main cast members is on trial for assault.
12. Rick and Morty (Adult Swim)
Rick and Morty used to take notoriously long breaks between seasons, but not this time. Season seven of the animated sci-fi comedy series returns less than a year after the season six finale. There have been big changes behind the scenes, however: co-creator Justin Roiland, who also voiced the title characters, was fired from the show. Tricky line to straddle going forward, but the show has rarely let us down before.
11. Rap Sh!t (Max)
Rap Sh!t has returned for a second season which means there is a new batch of episodes that follow the consistently entertaining lives of Shawna and Mia as they rise up the ranks in Miami’s rap scene. Season one of the Issa Rae-led series was all about establishing their rap careers, and now in season two, the duo looks to take things beyond South Beach. With new heights come new struggles as Shawna and Mia will have their integrity tested over and over again in exchange for quick success. Through it all, you can expect to laugh and cheer on the duo all while enjoying the show’s stellar soundtrack which features appearances from real-life hip-hop stars and up-and-coming acts who fit the show’s aesthetic.
10. Pain Hustlers (Netflix)
Emily Blunt portrays a down-on-her-luck single mom who launches a new career alongside Chris Evans’ pharmaceutical sales rep. Not a great idea, ultimately, given that she becomes involved in a racketeering scheme. And of course, she begins to realize that this company’s success is coming at a ghastly price for humanity. This is a dramatized version of the rise and fall of Insys Therapeutics, which no longer exists, and yeah, you will definitely find out why.
9. Fingernails (Apple TV)
Apple TV+’s Fingernails turns love into an equation that can only be solved by, you guessed it, AI. Jessie Buckley plays Anna, a woman in a long term, algorithmically-sound relationship with Ryan (The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White) that’s been verified and sterilized by something called The Love Test – a machine that demands a couple’s fingernails in order to qualify their relationship’s percentage of success. When Anna meets her new co-worker Amir (Riz Ahmed), numbers give way to actual chemistry, causing her to doubt everything she thought she knew about love. It’s probably the most interesting soft-fi romance drama you’ll see this year.
8. Lawmen: Bass Reeves (Paramount Plus)
Taylor Sheridan currently has 6666 in the works on the Yellowstone side, but first, he’s taking viewers back to the real Old West. David Oyelowo portrays the legendary Black U.S. Deputy Marshal. This series will harken back to the Post-Reconstruction era, in which Bass Reeves became a notorious frontier hero by capturing thousands of the most frightening criminals in the land. Oyelowo will be accompanied by Dennis Quaid, Garrett Hedlund, and Donald Sutherland.
7. Big Mouth (Netflix)
The seventh season of Big Mouth ties Orange is the New Black and Grace and Frankie as Netflix’s longest-running scripted series (it will break the record in its eighth and final season). Not bad for an animated show about horny teenagers and hormone monsters. Guest stars this season include Megan Thee Stallion, Lupita Nyong’o, and Pulitzer Prize winner Lin-Manuel Miranda as a pubic hair. Good show.
6. No Hard Feelings (Netflix)
No Hard Feelings is more than just the scene of Oscar-winning actress Jennifer Lawrence beating up teenagers while naked. I mean, it’s that, but it’s also a breezy R-rated comedy with some genuine moments of heart. Lawrence and co-star Andrew Barth Feldman have strong chemistry, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Natalie Morales, and Kyle Mooney show up in funny supporting roles. If every movie is going to be based on an existing property, forget comic books — make more Craigslist ad comedies.*
5. The Fall of the House of Usher (Netflix)
Mike Flanagan fans, get ready. The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass showrunner is back along with Carla Gugino, who will spook your soul right out of your bod and deliver a “consequential” evening to “a collection of stunted hearts” that is the Usher family. Yikes. Do not expect a literal adaptation of the Edgar Allen Poe short story. The story focuses here on the hell created by ruthless siblings Roderick and Madeline Usher, who built Fortunato Pharmaceuticals into an empire of wealth, privilege, and power. Horrible secrets shall surface when the heirs to the Usher dynasty start dying at the hands of a mysterious woman, portrayed with glee by Gugino.
4. Five Nights at Freddy’s (Peacock)
Have you ever been convinced that the animatronics at Chuck E. Cheese are freaking evil? Welcome to Five Nights At Freddy’s. In this adaptation of the wildly popular video game, Josh Hutcherson stars as Mike Schmidt, a security guard who’s about to seriously regret his new job. Tasked with keeping an eye on Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza joint, Mike quickly learns that the night shift is a terrifying hell ride as the pizzeria’s animatronic creatures come to life with a task of their own: Kill. Like the game, Mike will have to do everything in his power to survive the night and elude the dead-eyed mechanical monsters hunting him down.
3. For All Mankind (Apple TV)
Somehow, Joel Kinnaman has now been physically transformed to barely look like Joel Kinnaman while still starring in this alternate-history space-race series, and in the year 2003, the Earth’s nations are competing like hell to capture and mine asteroids full of precious minerals. That doesn’t sound ominous at all, and of course, there’s still plenty of beefing between nations after Happy Valley has grown in size on Mars’ surface.
2. The Killer (Netflix)
David Fincher — director of movies like Fight Club and The Social Network — is back with another uplifting tale about a well-adjusted dude. From the official description: “Solitary, cold, methodical and unencumbered by scruples or regrets, a killer waits in the shadows, watching for his next target. Yet, the longer he waits, the more he thinks he’s losing his mind, if not his cool.” Jokes aside, Fincher does these kinds of movies as well as anyone and usually makes them compelling, so give it a go if you want to spend a few hours with a murderous sociopath in the safest possible way.
1. The Curse (Paramount Plus)
There are cringe comedies and then there’s Showtime’s The Curse, a limited series about a married pair of alt-HGTV home flippers gentrifying their New Mexico neighborhood via eco-friendly monstrosities and calling it philanthropy. Created by two masters of squirm – Benny Safdie and Nathan Fielder – the show is a voyeuristic exercise that tests fans’ capacity for second-hand embarrassment as its main characters, the affluent Asher (Felder) and Whitney (a shockingly unlikable Emma Stone) bulldoze the soul of their small, impoverished community with just a few reality TV cameras and a staggering amount of white privilege. It’s the best, most uncomfortable TV show you’ll watch this year.