A chef under pressure, a CIA operative on the run, and a crew of lovable Canadians sharing their problems in a town of only 5,000. These are just a few of the colorful figures that you can find on Hulu these days. The streaming service has exploded as a source of original programming and the place to watch live TV and library selections. Sometimes we even stream the TV shows on movie-sized screens, because Quinta Brunson and the Abbott Elementary gang are even funnier on a bigger screen.
Aside from heavyweights like Abbott Elementary, the streamer has plenty to pick from, so here are our choices for the best 25 shows on Hulu.
Last updated on January 20.
1. Only Murders in the Building
Year: 2021-present
Cast: Selena Gomez, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Amy Ryan, and Cara Delevingne
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 20 episodes
Created By: Steve Martin, John Hoffman
Trailer: Watch here
Emerging from a pile of ten thousand true crime podcasts, this absolute gem of a show puts three strangers in a posh New York apartment building into a real-time murder investigation. All they have to do is make sure they don’t bump their heads on the boom mic and ruin a take. Charles, Oliver, and Mabel are an odd trio that worship and break as many true crime tropes as they can manage while hunting the hidden corridors of the historic Arconia to find out who murdered Mabel’s childhood best friend. They stumble through twists, cliffhangers, and the occasional pop-in from Tina Fey playing a Sarah Keonig-esque crime podcasting queen. Plus, the show won’t try to sell you a mattress or home security system every five minutes.
2. The Bear
Year: 2022
Cast: Jeremy Allen White, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Ayo Edebiri, Abby Elliott, and Lionel Boyce
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Christopher Storer
Trailer: Watch here
It’s rare to find a fish-out-of-water show about someone returning to their old stomping grounds. Storer’s stress-inducing series pulls wunderkind fine-dining chef Carmy out of the rarified air of Michelin stars back down to earth at a family-run sandwich shop in Chicago following his older brother’s suicide. He brings that elite culture and perfectionism to the ragtag crew slinging Italian meats. Not only did his brother leave behind debt and some shady deals, Carmy’s return to the shop brings a heaping pile of personality clashes, emotional calamity, and a line of demanding customers that wraps around the block. It’s a pressure cooker dark comedy, and you’ll feel like you’ve run a marathon after watching an episode, so stay hydrated.
3. Reservation Dogs
Year: 2021-present
Cast: D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Devery Jacobs, Paulina Jewel Alexis, Lane Factor, and Elva Guerra
Genre: Comedy, Drama, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 18 episodes
Created By: Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi
Trailer: Watch here
In this winning coming-of-age comedy, four best friends are stuck in Oklahoma, wishing for the illusory freedom of the West Coast. Elora, Bear, Cheese, and Willie Jack want to make it off the reservation and out to California to honor their dead best friend (and to escape their monotonous lives) but getting out isn’t so simple. They pull some petty crimes to raise money, clash with the paintball gun-wielding NDN Mafia, and Bear is visited by the spirit of a non-fighting warrior at The Battle of Little Bighorn who keeps giving him “advice.” Harjo, Waititi, and a stellar cast have made idle days into comedic gold.
4. The Handmaid’s Tale
Year: 2017-present
Cast: Elisabeth Moss, Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Samira Wiley, Ann Dowd, and Alexis Bledel
Genre: Drama, Science Fiction
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-5: 56 episodes
Created By: Bruce Miller
Trailer: Watch here
If you haven’t joined the resistance yet, there’s still time before the sixth (and final) season lands in 2023. Based on Margaret Atwood‘s novel, this Emmy powerhouse is set in a near-future United States where fertility rates have plummeted, and a fascist government of religious zealots demands that women not read, handle money, own property, or have any power whatsoever. It focuses on Offred (as in “Of Fred”), a woman assigned to powerful military commander, Fred Waterford, so that he can get her pregnant and continue a lineage along with his pious wife Serena Joy. It is a harrowing, stark vision of female subjugation, so it’s no wonder the iconic red costumes have found a place in real-life protests.
5. What We Do In The Shadows
Year: 2019-present
Cast: Matt Berry, Kayvan Novak, Natasia Demetriou, Harvey Guillen, and Mark Proksch
Genre: Comedy, Supernatural
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-4: 40 episodes
Created By: Jemaine Clement
Trailer: Watch here
This is the true story of four vampires and one familiar picked to live in a house, and have their lives taped, to find out what happens when vampires stop being polite and start being hilarious. Okay, so this spin-off from the film of the same name is not a “true story,” but the documentary style and world-class awkwardness send up the immortal blood-suckers by making them all too human. Nandor the Relentless, Laszlo Cravensworth, Nadja of Antipaxos, Guillermo, and Colin Robinson all live an occult lifestyle (deathstyle?) but still have to figure out how to pay parking tickets and and the bureaucracy of vampire orgies. Not only is it one of the funniest shows on television, it’s also the only show in history to cast Mark Hamill as a vampire that demands back-owed rent from another immortal being.
6. Justified
Year: 2010-2015
Cast: Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, Nick Searcy, Jacob Pitts, and Erica Tazel
Genre: Drama, Action, Adventure, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-6: 78 episodes
Created By: Graham Yost Trailer: Watch here
Modern crime dramas have a lot of shows vying for GOAT status, and Justified has justifiably (sorry) earned its place in the conversation. Based on Elmore Leonard’s stories, Raylan Givens is a deputy U.S. Marshall who always plays exactly by the rules! Just kidding. He’s got his own way of handling things. That squares him off against the Crowder crime family, as well as a slew of guest baddies anchored by the Batman-and-Joker-like tango with Boyd Crowder. It evolved and deepened over 6 seasons, often due to stirring performances, a sharp focus on its villains, and the blurry line between doing what’s right and doing what the laws prescribe. If you start now, you can binge all of it before the limited series revival, Justified: City Primeval, drops.
7. Ramy
Year: 2019-present
Cast: Ramy Youssef, Mohammed Amer, Hiam Abbass, Amr Waked, and May Calamawy
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-3: 30 episodes
Created By: Ramy Youssef
Trailer: Watch here
When Ramy Youssef won a Golden Globe for the show in 2019, a lot of people sat up and took notice because they’d never even heard of the series before. Three years later, too many people are still in the dark about this immaculate comedy about a Millennial Muslim guy trying to do his best while being stuck between the traditionalism of his parents’ generation and the nihilism of his friends. Its superpower is relatability — finding the universal human experience in the specifics of Ramy’s comic struggles. It’s also the rare comedic alchemy that produces belly laughs while still wearing its heart on its sleeve, whether Ramy’s Ramadan devoutness is challenged by a lonely widow or drinking Mia Khalifa’s breastmilk to curb his sexual urges. It’s an incredible show, and it’s incredible that few know that it exists.
8. Dopesick
Year: 2021
Cast: Michael Keaton, Rosario Dawson, Peter Sarsgaard, Kaitlyn Dever, and Will Poulter
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Danny Strong
Trailer: Watch here
Based on Beth Macy’s revelatory book Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company that Addicted America, this series starts at the heart of the American opioid crisis and spirals out into billion-dollar lawsuits and a shocking number of destroyed lives. The villains at the top are the Sackler family, the founding owners of Purdue Pharmaceutical, a company sued for its major role in pushing highly addictive painkillers. Impossibly timely, Dopesick premiered just a few weeks after Purdue was dissolved in order to pay out billions in legally-forced restitution to aid recovery programs in multiple states. At 8 episodes, the poignant, Emmy-scoring series is fantastically digestible if you can allow your blood to boil for long periods of time.
9. Fleishman Is In Trouble
Year: 2022
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Claire Danes, Lizzy Caplan, Adam Brody, and Meara Mahoney-Gross
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Trailer: Watch here
Jesse Eisenberg has been playing middle-aged characters since he was a teen, so playing Dr. Toby Fleishman in this excellent series is a bit of a return to his old soul roots. Adapting from her own book, Brodesser-Akner has crafted a compelling look at modern masculinity, marriage, and what it means to wade through the hell of dating apps after divorce. Dr. Fleishman has a lot of success on those apps, but then his ex-wife disappears, and he has to juggle his children, a blossoming career, and the mystery of confronting his past failings as a husband in order to find out where his wife has gone. Fair warning: the full season isn’t out until the end of December 2022, so if you get sucked in you might have to, gasp, wait a week before a new episode comes out. Can you even imagine?
10. Snowfall
Year: 2017-present
Cast: Damson Idris, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Carter Hudson, Emily Rios, and Michael Hyatt
Genre: Drama, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-5: 50 episodes
Created By: John Singleton, Eric Amadio, Dave Andron
Trailer: Watch here
Los Angeles. 1983. Cocaine hidden in hot tubs. It turns out dealing kilos of coke may not be worth the trouble that comes with it. Grounded by stirring performances, this series has pushed past its roots as a generic crime escapade and grown into something approaching masterpiece status. Franklin Saint is only 19, but he’s a budding drug kingpin with ambitions beyond slinging weed to white kids. He convinces a notorious dealer to front him a kilo of cocaine, which turns out to be a pretty bad idea. Other shows might stay laser-focused on Franklin, but Snowfall zooms out to show what how the Feds are funding foreign insurgents by selling drugs even as cops are making newsworthy busts for young men like Franklin for doing the same. While Breaking Bad fans have been preoccupied with Better Call Saul, this dynamite show has been waiting in the wings for the nation to turn its lonely eyes and recognize its bouncy brilliance.
11. Under The Banner Of Heaven
Year: 2022
Cast: Andrew Garfield, Gil Birmingham, Sam Worthington, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Denise Gough, and Wyatt Russell
Genre: Drama, Crime
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1: 7 episodes
Created By: Dustin Lance Black
Trailer: Watch here
The spiritual successor to True Detective, this astonishing series pushes one detective’s faith in God and people to the breaking point. Garfield is superb as Latter Day Saint Detective Jeb Pyre, who is tasked alongside his Paiute partner Detective Bill Taba with investigating the horrific murder of a woman and her infant daughter. While the woman’s husband is arrested, it’s possible that the killing goes far beyond a simple, violent truth into something conspiratorial that could rock the small Mormon town. Based on Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction book, Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Milk) wrings every last ounce of drama and terror out of the subject matter, offering a challenging, vital story born from real-life horror.
12. Abbott Elementary
Year: 2021-present
Cast: Quinta Brunson, Tyler James Williams, Janelle James, Chris Perfetti, Sheryl Lee Ralph, and Lisa Ann Walter
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-PG
Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 23 episodes
Created By: Quinta Brunson
Trailer: Watch here
If you’ve watched all the other shows on the list so far (congrats!), it’s time for a much-needed palette cleanser. Thank you, Quinta Brunson, for this amazing little show that can do just about anything (except steal potatoes from the school cafeteria). Brunson also stars in the show as Janine — a teacher at the elementary school where an Office-style documentary crew follows the staff and students. It’s earned high praise for portraying teaching life as it really is, all while finding a metric ton of laughs. And there’s a lot of humor to be found in a noble profession filled with people trying to do their best as the underfunded system crumbles around them (and the kids). If “Just trying to get by” is the big mood for the last few years, Abbott Elementary is a hilarious emblem of our era.
13. The Patient
Year: 2022
Cast: Steve Carell, Domhnall Gleeson, Linda Emond, Laura Niemi, and Andrew Leeds
Genre: Thriller, Drama, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 10 episodes
Created By: Joe Weisberg, Joel Fields
Trailer: Watch here
Not to condone the behavior, but if you’re a serial killer, taking a psychologist hostage until he cures you of wanting to kill people makes a certain amount of sense. That’s the central concept behind this explosive series, where Carell plays therapist Alan Strauss, dealing with his own grief after his wife’s death and, you know, also dealing with the serial killer keeping him captive. It’s not only smart, but wicked and masterful at cranking up the tension as Strauss navigates a nightmare scenario flavored by the conflicting feeling of wanting to help his captor. Carell embodies sympathy, and Gleeson is almost completely unrecognizable in the role, having melted completely into a deeply twisted mind crying out to be saved.
14. Atlanta
Year: 2016-2022
Cast: Donald Glover, Brian Tyree-Henry, Lakeith Stanfield, and Zazie Beetz
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-4: 41 episodes
Created By: Donald Glover
Trailer: Watch here
Surprising, atypical, and peerless. It’s no exaggeration to say that there isn’t another show like Atlanta, but that also makes it hard to describe. It follows Earn, a Princeton dropout jumping between staying at his parents’ house and staying with his ex-girlfriend/mother of his child while scrounging together a new life. When he gets wind of his rapper cousin Paper Boi gaining popularity, Earn sees a chance to jump on the bandwagon as his manager. While Earn and Paper Boi (alongside their Shower Thought-producing best pal Darius) take a stab at musical success, the show is largely uninterested in sticking to its linear plot, instead delivering a gorgeous series of short stories that revolve around this group of characters and the colorful figures in their orbit.
15. Rick And Morty
Year: 2013-present
Cast: Justin Roiland, Sarah Chalke, Spencer Grammer, Chris Parnell, and Kari Walhgren
Genre: Comedy, Adult Animation, Adventure
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: Seasons 1-6: 61 episodes
Created By: Justin Roiland, Dan Harmon
Trailer: Watch here
Rick is the smartest man in the universe, a perverse riff on Doc from Back to the Future, and his Marty is Morty, a nervous grandson drawn into his grandpa’s mad, wondrous intergalactic adventures. The animated series is a massive love letter and surgical dissection of every genre under the sun, and each episode typically pushes the absurdity to its breaking point. Fortunately, characters rarely learn anything. It was already three seasons deep before Adult Swim ordered 70 new episodes, so it’s also not going anywhere soon. That should allow Roiland and Harmon more opportunities to test whether we can laugh while our jaw is on the floor.
16. The Americans
Year: 2013-2018
Cast: Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys, Noah Emmerich, Margo Martindale, Holly Taylor, and Keidrich Sellati
Genre: Drama, Spy, Crime, Mystery
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-6: 75 episodes
Created By: Joe Weisberg
Trailer: Watch here
The true magic of The Americans is taking a well-worn spy genre, housing it in the completely-worn Cold War period, and pulling off something impossibly fresh. Elizabeth and Philip Jennings are a bland couple raising two kids in a Virginia suburb outside DC and struggling with all the normal middle-class nonsense of the Reagan era. At least, that’s a nice cover story. They’re actually KGB officers deep, deep, deep undercover, and those aren’t the only identities they have to keep straight. The show is an outstanding drama that attaches us to the baddies and adds complexity to the standard game of spy vs spy. Come for the subterfuge, but stick around for Margo Martindale owning every scene she’s in.
17. The Great
Year: 2020-present
Cast: Elle Fanning, Nicholas Hoult, Phoebe Fox, Adam Godley, and Gwilym Lee
Genre: Comedy, Drama, History
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 20 episodes
Created By: Tony McNamara
Trailer: Watch here
If nothing else, know that in this show Emperor Peter III of Russia throws a Pomeranian strapped with a parachute off a balcony into a crowd of people after shouting, “This is science. Enjoy!” The Great is a satirical, madcap sendup of excess, power-for-power’s sake, and it’s all based on true facts of 18th century Russia (with a huge pile of asterisks next to that claim). Hoult is handsome dynamite as the mad leader, but the show’s true focus is on Fanning’s Catherine The Great, who comes to Russia from Prussia as a new bride who balks against the constraints of her place in courtly life. Both she and her husband toy with the idea of assassinating each other, as wry modern sarcasm is applied to an increasingly outlandish series of events. It’s a marvelous comedy, but be careful of seeing spoilers in a world history textbook.
18. The X-Files
Year: 1993-2002, 2016-2018
Cast: Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, and Mitch Pileggi
Genre: Science Fiction, Drama, Horror, Detective
Rating: TV-14
Runtime: Seasons 1-11: 218 episodes
Created By: Chris Carter
Trailer: Watch here
The one, the only, the original. This sci-fi series is beloved by fans around the globe, and it’s ripe for re-binging or discovering fresh for anyone who missed the 1990s. In the show, FBI agents Fox Mulder (the conspiracist) and Dana Scully (the skeptic) work together to uncover the truth about bizarre phenomena. Is it Bigfoot? Or just a perpetually blurry bear? With a monster-of-the-week structure, the show also managed to build its characters’ mythologies while fighting aliens and cryptids and things that go bump in the night. The Godparent of modern genre TV, The X-Files has inspired countless shows, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Supernatural and far beyond.
19. Welcome To Chippendales
Year: 2022
Cast: Kumail Nanjiani, Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford, Dan Stevens, and Juliette Lewis
Genre: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Robert Seigel
Trailer: Watch here
Continuing the new trend of mining real-life scandals and true crime for artistic prestige, this raucous show peels back the curtain on a male stripping icon of the 1980s and 1990s. Powered by his idolization of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, Somen “Steve” Banerjee opened a club that featured women mudwrestling, but soon pivoted to providing some highly choreographed raunch for a man-hungry audience. Despite turning his concept into a global phenomenon so recognizable that SNL mocked it, Banerjee did not ride into the sunset. Far, far from it. There’s a reason this comes with the true crime label, after all, and the series explores the baser human frailties that push Banerjee to commit some truly heinous acts. The story has been brought to life before — most notably in 2000’s The Chippendales Murder — but this series offer all the gloss and production value of the modern true crime age.
20. Candy
Year: 2022
Cast: Jessica Biel, Timothy Simmons, Melanie Lynskey, Pablo Schreiber, and Raul Esparza
Genre: Crime, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 5 episodes
Created By: Nick Antosca, Robin Veith
Trailer: Watch here
Awash in a sea of true crime, Candy is another standout thanks to Biel’s fearlessly creepy performance as a suburban Texas housewife and church lady who gets accused of killing her neighbor with an ax. This stellar series takes its time developing the familiar faces of the town, inviting us to the baby showers and potlucks before drawing us into Candy’s need for something more in her life. It’s a slippery slope toward infidelity, shame, and a spiral downward leading to shockingly tragic events. Lynskey, as ever, is incredible and should be cast in every single show as long as she wants. But beyond its performances, the show smartly refuses to let its audience drive away after rubbernecking, compelling us into the intimate personal lives of villains and victims so that we feel like we’re living right next door to them.
21. Pam & Tommy
Year: 2022
Cast: Lily James, Sebastian Stan, Seth Rogen, Nick Offerman, and Taylor Schilling
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Robert Siegel
Trailer: Watch here
The illegal release of model Pamela Anderson and Motley Crue rocker Tommy Lee’s sex tape was the tabloid story of 1995. Pam & Tommy explores the tumultuous marriage of the iconic pair through the lens of their private honeymoon recording’s theft, following the fallout of it getting dumped onto the internet as revenge from a contractor who Lee spurned. The comedy of the series comes primarily from Rogen’s character being an oaf who seizes his moment without a clue or plan in the world for its ramifications. The drama stems from everywhere else — powder keg celebrity personalities, expensive whims, and a revenge porn threat in its most nascent days. The series is sharp, and it’s unbelievable how much every inch of James and Stan are made to look like their famous characters.
22. The Old Man
Year: 2022
Cast: Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, Alia Shawkat, and E.J. Bonilla
Genre: Thriller, Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 7 episodes
Created By: Jonathan E. Steinberg, Robert Levine
Trailer: Watch here
Based on the novel by mystery master Thomas Perry, this game of cat and also-cat asks what happens when the best federal agents are tasked with tracking down a seasoned espionage veteran. Former CIA operative Dan Chase goes into hiding after killing an intruder, and a former colleague high up at the FBI is given the dirty job of bringing him in. With Bridges facing off against Lithgow, the show has earned an unsurprising amount of critical praise, appealing to the old school noir vibes of a master tracker going on the run while diving into the thorny past of two men who might otherwise be seen as long past their prime. It’s a twisty, taut chase worthy of attention, and the story continues with a second season coming soon.
23. Letterkenny
Year: 2016-present
Cast: Jared Keeso, Nathan Dales, Michelle Mylett, Dylan Playfair, and Andrew Herr
Genre: Comedy, Sitcom
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Seasons 1-11: 74 episodes
Created By: Jared Keeso
Trailer: Watch here
“There are 5000 people in Letterkenny. These are their problems.” Time for another refreshing break from all the misery of prestige dramas (as much as we love them!). It makes no sense that there are 11 seasons of a show that premiered 6 years ago, but that’s how this crew of Canadian comedians rolls. They morphed a YouTube-beloved short series into a streaming show that’s hilarious and goes down easy as a Molson Light. The show is loose and nimble, focusing on a group of friends living in a rural town, killing time and navigating sitcom-worthy shenanigans. Like if Kids in the Hall made Schitt’s Creek, it’s irreverent but heartfelt, and you’d better get bingeing, because another 11 seasons will come before you know it.
24. Woke
Year: 2020-2022
Cast: Lamorne Morris, Blake Anderson, T. Murph, J.B. Smoove, and Aimee Garcia
Genre: Comedy
Rating: TV-MA Runtime: Seasons 1-2: 16 episodes
Created By: Keith Knight, Marshall Todd
Trailer: Watch here
Cancelled too soon, Woke is a blend of silly and serious mostly missing from TV screens. Keef Knight is a Black cartoonist cautious about avoiding controversy because he’s just about to break into the mainstream. All that changes when he’s hassled by racist cops and develops the ability to interact with cartoonified inanimate objects. No longer able to “keep it light,” Keef has to figure out how to balance continuing to make anodyne art for the masses or come out swinging against injustice. It’s a unique, surreal experience propelled by Morris’ penchant for playing it equally cool and awkward. It also achieved instant greatness by casting the Keith David as the voice of The Bible and has give us the chance, finally, to hear Cedric The Entertainer play a trashcan.
25. The Dropout
Year: 2022
Cast: Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews, William H. Macy, Laurie Metcalf, and Elizabeth Marvel
Genre: Drama
Rating: TV-MA
Runtime: Season 1: 8 episodes
Created By: Elizabeth Meriweather
Trailer: Watch here
In 2015, Elizabeth Holmes was the youngest and richest self-made woman billionaire due to her company Theranos’ claimed ability to do a range of health screens with as little as a pinprick of blood. All of that wealth was based on a lie, and in November 2022, she was sentenced to 135 months in prison for her role in a massive fraud. The Dropout takes us inside the pressure cooker of keeping the lie afloat, starting in Holmes’ early years to attempt to sus out a reason she might go to such astronomical lengths to defraud investors. The gilded cast is comprised of dozens and dozens of incredible actors, and Seyfried owns the part so thoroughly that it convinced Jennifer Lawrence to drop out of a project where she would have played Holmes.