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 Underdoggs (Prime Video)
Want to know what happens if you take Little Giants, Mighty Ducks, and Snoop Dogg and whir them up into a cute little paste? Well, you get The Underdoggs, which stars Snoop as a former football star who gets roped into coaching a group of little football misfits to avoid a stretch in prison. You know what you’re getting here. There won’t be any big surprises. But it has a chance to be a sweet little movie, which would all really be a heck of a thing to explain to anyone who was frozen back in the mid-90s and was just thawed out this year. Maybe not the first thing we should explain to them, but still. It’s on the list.
19. Foe (Prime Video)
Irish national treasures Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan partner for this thought-provoking sci-fi experiment that’s filled with big themes, unanswered questions, and a strangely large amount of bug shots. Mescal and Ronan play Junior and Hen, a couple stranded in their mundane life, living in a future ravaged by climate change. When one of them is offered a chance to escape with the caveat that their robotic replica will stay behind to keep the other company, hard questions about their marriage, their identities, and their purpose threaten to tear them apart. It’s a lo-fi love story with a twist ending you won’t see coming.
18. Genius: MLK/X (Hulu)
The fourth season of this NatGeo series focuses on Civil Rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and will, as per the promotional materials “explore the formative years, where they were molded by strong fathers and traumatic injustices, and their rich, parallel stories as they shaped their identities and became the change they wished to see in the world.” Which sounds cool and informative and like everything television can be. The trick is making it work. Worth diving in to check it out.
17. Death and Other Details (Hulu)
What do you get if you cross Knives Out with Only Murders in the Building and add Mandy Patinkin and set it all on a boat? Well, this show, apparently, which is described thusly by Hulu: “Imogene Scott finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time and becomes the prime suspect in a locked-room murder mystery; to prove her innocence, she must partner with a man she despises, Rufus Cotesworth, the world’s greatest detective.”
It still feels like maybe we should just do a Knives Out/Only Murders crossover event series on a boat, but this works too.
16. Role Play (Amazon Prime)
Role Play, quickly:
— A new Prime Video series described as folllows: “A young married couple’s life turns upside down after secrets are revealed about each other’s past.”
— Stars Kaley Cuoco, who rules, and David Oyelowo, who also rules and has seen his star rise big time in the last year
— Maybe don’t watch this with the spouse you just married?
Lots to consider here.
15. Saltburn (Prime Vdeo)
A movie that launched a thousand Etsy candles dedicated to nailing the scent of Jacob Elordi’s bathwater, this Emerald Fennel-directed monstrosity masterpiece is a twisted commentary on class, wealth, and obsession. Barry Keoghan is disturbingly good at playing a suburban psycho hoping to f*ck, slurp, and murder his way into the aristocratic ranks while Elordi plays the good-natured rich-boy naïve enough to think he can save him. Rosamund Pike is also here, chewing every bit of scenery as a vapid housewife, and all the stomach-churning twists culminate in a plot reveal that’s as sick as it is satisfying.
14. Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (Hulu)
Tom Hollander (not Tom Holland) stars in Ryan Murphy’s latest FX creation that’s already dubbed itself the tale of the “Original Housewives of New York.” Hollander plays Truman Capote (yes, that Truman Capote) a writer with a standing invitation to the brunch table of New York’s wealthiest women. He trades on his status as their confidante, writing a book about the scandals and secrets harbored within their Upper East Side brownstones which leads to an all-out society war that no one escapes unscathed. Come for the clothes, stay for the drama and the veteran actresses like Demi Moore, Calista Flockhart, and Naomi Watts who make this thing so deliciously messy.
13. In the Know (Peacock)
Okay, Apple is getting into the adult animation game, making cartoons for grown-ups. And if you’re going to do that, you can sure do a lot worse than Beavis & Butthead creator Mike Judge, who teams up for a show with his Silicon Valley breakout Zach Woods that the service describes thusly:
The stop-motion comedy follows the staff of the public radio show, In the Know, hosted by Lauren Caspian (Zach Woods), a well-meaning but hypocritical nimrod. Each episode follows the making of an episode of the radio show, in which Lauren conducts in-depth interviews with real human guests and collaborates with a diverse crew of public radio staff (who are puppets).
Yes. Sure. This can work. All the pieces are right there.
12. Expats (Prime Video)
No one plays a grieving mother on the fringes of a mental breakdown quite like Nicole Kidman and this latest prestige drama from Amazon Prime Video she more than stakes her claim on the character archetype. As a wealthy American housewife living in Hong Kong and desperately searching for her missing child, Kidman anchors this Lulu Wang-created series about womanhood, identity, and loss. The subject matter is a bit heavy – best consumed in small portions instead of a full binge – but the visuals are stunning, as is the immersion into a culture we rarely see on screen. Will Nicole Kidman ever be happy on a TV show? We hope not.
11. The Holdovers (Peacock)
Paul Giamatti is picking up awards left and right for his performance in Alexander Payne’s latest film, which is great. For Paul Giamatti. But also for us. Like, as a society. Look at this: “A curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school remains on campus during Christmas break to babysit a handful of students with nowhere to go. He soon forms an unlikely bond with a brainy but damaged troublemaker, and with the school’s head cook, a woman who just lost a son in the Vietnam War.”
Our official position here is twofold: one, we support anything where Paul Giamatti gets to be curmudgeonly; two, we love to see Paul Giamatti thrive. This checks both boxes.
10. Barbie (Max)
Greta Gerwig’s massive summer blockbuster hits streaming. There’s not much to say that hasn’t been said. It’s wickedly smart and funny and sly. It’s much weirder than people expected, in the best ways possible. Margot Robbie is incredible as Barbie, providing layers of depth to a character who has rarely before had more than one. Ryan Gosling is a delight as the deeply confused Ken who is watching his simple little world crumble around him. There are cameos galore and touching moments and belly laughs. If you haven’t seen it yet, now’s the time. If you have, well, now’s the time to watch it again. This one is worth a rewatch. Or two. Or five. How you spend your time is your business.
9. Echo (Disney Plus)
Disney+’s first street-level entry into the MCU is as kickass as its Netflix predecessors with a magnetic anti-hero in Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) and the kind of gritty, neck-breaking fights that more than earn its TV-MA rating. Picking up after the events of Hawkeye, Maya has cut ties with the Tracksuit Mafia and her adoptive dad, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio), fleeing to Oklahoma to connect with her roots. The show plays up its connection to Netflix’s Daredevil – Fisk is in every episode and Charlie Cox returns as Hell’s Kitchen’s most pious vigilante for a vicious fight sequence that sets the tone for the rest of the season. But the draw here is Cox, and the character-driven storytelling Marvel is committing itself to with these more grounded entries into its universe.
8. Masters of the Air (Apple TV)
Here’s a stellar Band Of Brothers followup from Steven Spielberg (Amblin Television) in conjunction with Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman (Playtone). This new series is based upon Donald L. Miller’s book of the same name about the “Bloody Hundredth,” i.e. the 100th Bomb Group, who risked everything they had to conduct bombing raids upon Nazi Germany. Austin Butler dropped his Elvis voice to portray a U.S. major alongside Callum Turner. There’s a “Buck” and a “Bucky” in the character list, and there’s also the ever-present Barry Keoghan joining in the camaraderie while the U.S. carries out perilous missions to take down Hitler’s Third Reich. It’s an adventure-filled yet harrowing viewing experience but fully worth the ride.
7. Halo (Paramount Plus)
Pablo Schreiber is back as Master Chief, and if he has any say in the matter, there won’t be Sexy Master Chief on display this season. Officially, he will be fretting about the changing tide of his war and how to prepare for what he believes is an imminent attack by the Covenant on the most valuable stronghold known to mankind. Can he finally find the Halo, which will either help humanity survive or kill it off forever? So much pressure! Yeah, please don’t have him wasting time getting down and dirty this season.
6. Orion and the Dark (Netflix)
Charlie Kaufman, the brilliant writer of Being John Malkovich, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and Synecdoche, New York, is back with his first movie in four years. Orion and the Dark is an animated fantasy film about a nervous young boy (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) who’s scared of the dark, but things begin to change when he meets the manifestation of darkness (Paul Walter Hauser). It’s the kind of weird premise that Kaufman excels at.
5. Curb Your Enthusiasm (Max)
24 years, 12 seasons, and countless social assassinations; Curb Your Enthusiasm is set to begin its end, promising a season filled with familiar faces (Ted Danson, Richard Lewis, Cheryl Hines, Vince Vaughn, JB Smoove) and misanthropic delights as Larry David readies to walk off into the sunset so he can strangle more muppets or do whatever else he does when he isn’t kvetching about required niceties and other peccadilloes. Whether this season will be funny is not in question. Whether Larry’s “character” makes it out alive is.
4. True Detective: Night Country (Max)
Can Season 4 recapture the magic of Season 1? At the very least, this new story seems to be hitting some of the same atmospheric and tonal notes as the original story starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, who shall not be seen but are executive producing. There will be plenty of literal and figurative chills while Jodie Foster’s detective teams up with an old colleague portrayed by Evangeline Navarro. Together, they will attempt to unearth frozen truths involving horrors that took place during a Polar Night when an entire research died under mysterious circumstances. Are your teeth chattering already? Same.
3. Griselda (Netflix)
Here comes “the Godmother” of cocaine. Original Narcos co-creator Doug Miro and Narcos: Mexico executive producer Eric Newman team up to tell the story of Colombian drug cartel leader Griselda Blanco, a prolific cocaine trafficker as portrayed by Sofia Vergara. We haven’t seen the Modern Family star get dramatic on TV yet, so this series should attract eyeballs for more reasons than one. Griselda reigned in Miami in the 1970-’80s, and her tour of terror included operating under 20 aliases, moving hundreds of kilos per month, and ordering dozens of murders.
2. Abbott Elementary (Hulu)
School’s back in session at Abbott Elementary and the show has made some big changes after the romantic cliffhanger that ended season two. Janine has a new job (and a new love interest), Gregory’s struggling to move on, Josh Segarra from The Other Two is auditing classrooms, and Ava Coleman is a Harvard (adjacent) graduate. Lord help Mrs. Howard. After a longer-than-expected hiatus it’s nice to see the Emmy-winning comedy reinventing itself instead of resting on its laurels, but don’t worry, there are plenty of Janelle James one-liners and Tyler James Williams pans to camera to keep things comfortably familiar.
1. Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Prime Video)
Did we really need a reimagining of the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie movie? Watch the first few episodes, and you might agree that this effort was not wasted. Donald Glover and Maya Erskine pick up as assassins who happen to be paired together (and “married”), and you aren’t ready for the rollicking, madcap, action-packed set of missions that they must complete (or else?). Even better: John and Jane Smith’s onscreen relationship is as much of daredevil stunt as the action scenes.