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.
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1. The White Lotus (HBO Max)
HBO’s The White Lotus hails from Mike White, the School of Rock screenwriter who also created one of the network’s most brilliantly underrated shows in Enlightened. This limited series, about the staff and guests of a tropical resort starring Jennifer Coolidge, Connie Britton, Alexandra Daddario, Sydney Sweeney, and Steve Zahn has full-on captured the zeitgeist, and with good reason. The season finale airs this weekend, which gives you a few more days to get caught up on all the awkward, awful delights of the whole thing. Watch it on HBO Max.
2. Ted Lasso (Apple TV+)
There are moments in the early stages of season two that feel like they’re doubling down on the show’s signature positivity and niceness, but there’s no such thing as sweetness overload here as the show grows our affection for characters that are clearly taking a step forward in their arcs. Especially Ted, even though it seems like there may be some challenges ahead. Watch it on Apple TV+.
3. What If…? (Disney+)
We’re in the multiverse after Loki‘s season finale. The MCU promises to show us a wealth of scenarios that stand separate from the existing movie lore. Agent Carter will take the serum and become Captain Carter. There’s a Zombie Captain America, and King T’Challa materializes elsewhere as Star Lord. Notably, Chadwick Boseman did voice work here, so you’ll be able to say a proper goodbye to his Black Panther. Let the good times and the tears roll. Watch it on Disney+.
4. Reservation Dogs (Hulu)
Taika Waititi’s FX on Hulu follow-up to What We Do in the Shadows brings us a comedy series that’s co-written by Native American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo. Yes, the lead quartet in this show rocks suits that look strikingly similar to the characters of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, yet they’re four Indigenous teens who want to commit crime and simply can’t pull it off. The show was shot in and near Okmulgee, Oklahoma, and these teens hope to make it all the way to California. The cast and crew come from indigenous communities, from where Harjo and Waititi are aiming their storytelling styles as well. Watch it on Hulu.
5. Cocaine Cowboys: The Kings of Miami (Netflix)
If you’re missing Narcos, rest assured that there’s so much blow in this docuseries, which gives the documentary treatment to the excess-filled life of two childhood pals who transformed into billionaire drug kingpins. There’s a tiger and bullfighting and speedboats and money flying everywhere, it’s no wonder why “Los Muchachos” were so darn popular. They were also slippery fellows, due to their world-champ powerboat-racing status. Watch it on Netflix.
6. Heels (Starz)
Friday Night Lights was a great show about football that you didn’t have to like football to love. Starz hopes Heels can be a Friday Night Lights but for wrestling. The drama (from Loki showrunner Michael Waldron) stars Stephen Amell and Alexander Ludwig as Jack and Ace Spade, two brothers trying to keep their small-town indie wrestling league afloat. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t WOOOOO.
7. Brooklyn Nine-Nine (NBC/Hulu)
The long-running NBC/Fox cop series zips into its final season this fall, giving viewers one last go-round with Andy Samberg and Melissa Fumero and Andre Braugher and the rest of the precinct. It will be sad to see them go, but it’s also comforting to know there are seven seasons just sitting there on Hulu if you need them. Really cushions the blow. So maybe dive back through the archives this weekend to get ready for the big goodbye that’s on the way. Watch it on Hulu.
8. Outer Banks (Netflix)
Granted, the stills from this show make it look like your typical (beachy) teen drama, but that’s not the case. This is a mystery-based action thriller with a soapy residue, and although the main characters are, in fact teens, beware: once you start watching this show, you’ll want to set aside some time to finish the two seasons. There’s tons of intrigue and a hurricane and buried treasure, and it’s like National Treasure, if the main character was Young McConaughey-lite with dreams of tasty waves dashed by goons chasing him for [spoiler] reasons. There are Kooks and Pogues and dramatic rivalries, all of it ultimately silly yet far too entertaining.
9. FBoy Island (HBO Max)
HBO Max’s latest reality show takes a question womankind has been asking since the dawn of time and turns it into a dating competition that, if you can believe it, lowers our collective opinion of men to shocking depths. Who’s a nice guy and who’s a f*ck boy? That’s up to the single women bamboozled into participating in this courtship farce to figure out as they frolic about a tropical paradise with me who blow-dry their beards and wear one-strap overalls unironically. This is what the Suffragettes died for, people. Watch it on HBO Max.
10. Gossip Girl (HBO Max)
Few shows have influenced the cultural lexicon of an entire generation the way this soapy teen drama did. The original Gossip Girl was a narrative rollercoaster filled with questionable hookups, designer drugs, and Blair Waldorf headbands. It delighted in its ostentatious antics, reveled in its misbehaving brood of well-bred socialites. It made Chuck Bass, an attempted rapist and sex club owner who might have murdered his father and definitely pimped out his girlfriend for a stake in a hotel, a romantic lead. The original Gossip Girl had balls, gilded storytelling balls. Its successor, this HBO Max contemporary shows shades of that same promise. It’s got a cast that’s both believably diverse and unbelievable gorgeous, tons of pop-cultured-skewed wit, a driving rivalry, and Kristen Bell once again narrating those welcome Upper East Side scandals, but it’s a little too self-aware and overly-earnest to be as enjoyable as its predecessor. Then again, it took the O.G. Gossip Girl a few seasons before it sent one of its own to Jesus Camp and brought characters back from the dead, so this new crew has time. Watch it on HBO Max.