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The best shows on Apple TV+ to watch right now
From comedies like "Ted Lasso" to sci-fi dramas like "Silo," here are the best TV shows streaming on Apple TV+.
Since its launch in 2019, Apple TV+ has consistently punched above its weight among streaming services. While it may lack the seemingly limitless library of Netflix or the licensed studio tie-in of Disney+, the tech company has produced a small but impressive slate of original TV shows starring some of Hollywood’s most talented actors.
Early shows like “Ted Lasso” and “The Morning Show” helped put Apple TV+ on the map, and the company has seen some major awards wins to boot. But with rising competition in the streaming space, the tech company wants to be sure that it is attracting new customers.
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Here are the 15 best shows streaming on Apple TV+, ranging from goofy comedies like “The Afterparty” to dark crime dramas like the Massachusetts-filmed “Defending Jacob.”
“The Afterparty”
Apple had a hit on its hands in early 2022 with “The Afterparty,” which takes a simple concept — a murder mystery whodunnit — and turns it on its head, with each episode told from a different point of view and unfolding as a style parody of a different genre of show or movie. After successfully solving the mystery of who killed pop star Xavier (Dave Franco), Sam Richardson (“Veep”) and Tiffany Haddish (“Girls Trip”) are back in sleuth mode in Season 2, with a new cast of suspects seeking to figure out who killed a crypto wunderkind (Zach Woods, “The Office”) following his wedding.
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Watch “The Afterparty” streaming on Apple TV+
“Bad Monkey”
Bill Lawrence’s (“Ted Lasso”) latest passion project is “Bad Monkey,” a detective comedy starring Vince Vaughn as motormouth detective Andrew Yancy. Vaughn is on suspension, but he is drawn into the mysterious death of Nick Stripling (Marblehead native Rob Delaney). Nick’s younger girlfriend (Meredith Hagner, “Search Party”) seems like the prime suspect, but as Yancy digs deeper with the occasional help of a medical examiner (Natalie Martinez, “Death Race”), he finds there’s more to the mystery. Also featuring John Ortiz (“American Fiction”) as Yancy’s beleaguered partner and Lawrence’s “Scrubs” buddy Zach Braff, “Bad Monkey” is the first chance in a while for Vaughn to fully embrace his caustic wit.
Watch “Bad Monkey” on Apple TV+
“Bad Sisters”
If you only have time for one season of this charming black comedy, stick to Season 1, one of my favorite shows of 2022. That said, enough is going on in the follow-up to make Season 2 a worthwhile watch. Season one, created by Sharon Horgan (“Catastrophe”), was an intricately plotted mystery, jumping back and forth in time to show us which (if any) of the Garvey sisters — Eva (Horgan), Ursula (Eva Birthistle), Bibi (Sarah Greene) or Becka (Eve Hewson) killed JP (Claes Bang), the horrific husband of fifth sister Grace (Anne-Marie Duff). The second season finds Grace marrying a much nicer man (Owen McDonnell’s Ian), but the skeletons in the family’s closet refuse to stay buried.
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Watch “Bad Sisters” on Apple TV+
“Black Bird”
Over the years, Dorchester native Dennis Lehane has had a number of his books adapted for the screen, most notably “Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone,” and “Shutter Island.” For the Apple TV+ crime drama “Black Bird,” it’s Lehane doing the adaptation work, developing the show based on a 2010 autobiographical novel by James Keene. Keene, played by Taron Egerton (“Rocketman”), is serving a 10-year prison sentence when he is given the chance to befriend suspected serial killer Larry Hall (a very creepy Paul Walter Hauser) to elicit a confession before Hall is released.
Watch “Black Bird” on Apple TV+
“Defending Jacob”
Based on a 2012 novel of the same name by local author William Landay, “Defending Jacob” is a limited series set in Newton. Assistant District Attorney Andy Barber’s (Chris Evans, “The Avengers”) whole life changes when his 14-year-old son, Jacob (Jaeden Martell, “It”), is accused of killing a classmate. Initially, Andy and his wife, Laurie (Michelle Dockery, “Downtown Abbey”), dismiss the charges as baseless. But as evidence against Jacob begins to mount, Andy takes matters into his own hands.
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Watch “Defending Jacob” on Apple TV+
“For All Mankind”
When Apple TV+ debuted back in November 2019, it did so with two high-budget new shows: “The Morning Show” and “For All Mankind,” a sci-fi drama that imagined a revisionist history in which the Soviet Union beat America to the moon. While “Morning Show” has grabbed all the headlines, “For All Mankind” has been a consistently better watch. The most recent fourth season, which finds a mix of old new faces continuing to grow the country’s burgeoning Mars colony, is a big step up from Season 3. We won’t delve much into the plot, especially given the shocking Season 3 finale, but rest assured, “For All Mankind” is worth a watch.
Watch “For All Mankind” on Apple TV+
“Lessons in Chemistry”
With “Lessons in Chemistry,” Apple TV+’s adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’ 2022 best-selling novel, Brie Larson finally has a chance to shed the “Ms. Marvel” spandex and play a real character again. The show follows the life and career of Elizabeth Zott (Larson), who leaves her scientist job behind to bring her chemical know-how to the kitchen as the star of her own cooking show. The show occasionally leans too hard on Elizabeth’s trauma as a storytelling device, but given that she’s a woman living in the 1950s, perhaps that’s to be expected. Nevertheless, Larson is delightfully down-to-earth, and her chemistry with Lewis Pullman (“Top Gun: Maverick”) is as strong as any she whips up in the kitchen.
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Watch “Lessons in Chemistry” on Apple TV+
“The Morning Show”
“The Morning Show” heightens its soapiness with each episode. If you’re already on board, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. By Season 3, Alex (Jennifer Aniston) and Bradley (Reese Witherspoon) have played the game well, rising to almost untouchable positions of power at the fictional UBA network. But the company’s finances are in peril, and UBA’s CEO (Billy Crudup) has been talking to tech billionaire Paul Marks (Jon Hamm) about an acquisition. So much has happened since the show’s 2019 debut that even the most ludicrous plot twists barely raise an eyebrow in Season 3. But “The Morning Show” remains an addictive guilty pleasure, especially with its propensity to add incredibly talented and charismatic actors like Hamm at will.
Watch “The Morning Show” on Apple TV+
“Pachinko”
Based on Min Jin Lee’s 2017 novel of the same name, “Pachinko” is a sprawling, masterfully drawn drama that jumps between cities, languages, and generations to tell the story of one Korean family’s slow, steady rise as immigrants in Japan. Season 1 hopped between 1938 and 1989, while Season 2 advances the past story to 1945, when Sunja (Minha Kim) must move her family to a remote rice paddy to avoid war’s destruction in the cities. Almost 50 years later, an elderly Sunja (Oscar-winning actress Yuh-jung Youn) watches wistfully as her grandchildren face comparatively trivial hardships that nevertheless have an impact.
“Schmigadoon!”
In season one of the series, Cecily Strong (“Saturday Night Live”) and Keegan-Michael Key (“Key & Peele”) play a couple who unwittingly stumble into Schmigadoon, a mythical land that served as an homage and parody of golden age musicals like “The Music Man,” “Brigadoon,” and “Carousel.” When the couple try to return in Season 2, they instead enter “Schmicago,” a send-up of the grittier musicals of the 1960s and ’70s like “Chicago,” “Hair,” and “Sweeney Todd.” If you’re not a fan of these musicals, the humor may be a bit inaccessible, but a carousel of guest stars like Tituss Burgess (“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”), Jane Krakowski (“30 Rock”), and Ariana DeBose (“West Side Story”) make “Schmigadoon!” worth checking out regardless of your stage acumen.
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Watch “Schmigadoon!” on Apple TV+
“Severance”
Ahead of its return for Season 2 on Jan. 17, catch up on “Severance,” my personal pick for the best TV show of 2022. Dan Erickson’s dystopian drama, about a group of office employees who have their brains “severed” into a work self and a home self, is the total package: From the tone-setting opening credits to the sterile production design, everything about the series is as finely calibrated as the Lumon employee handbook. As middle manager Mark S., Adam Scott leads an ensemble of disaffected workers who slowly awaken to the lab rat quality of their lives.
Watch “Severance” on Apple TV+
“Shrinking”
Jason Segel plays Jimmy, a therapist who is going through a life crisis following the death of his wife. When he begins treating clients with radical candor instead of simply asking, “How does that make you feel?” ad nauseam, it begins to change both Jimmy’s life and those around him, including Harrison Ford, who is brilliant as a fellow psychiatrist dealing with a recent Parkinson’s diagnosis. “Shrinking” finds a nice balance between the comedic and the tragic, pushing more emotional buttons as the characters delve deeper into their own psyche. Helping this process in Season 2 is “Ted Lasso” star Brett Goldstein, a figure from Jimmy’s past who exemplifies the show’s realistic portrayal of forgiveness and reconciliation. There are no Hallmark moments here, which makes it so compelling.
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Watch “Shrinking” on Apple TV+
“Silo”
After numerous attempts, Apple TV+ finally found its first great sci-fi drama with 2023’s “Silo,” an ambitious project about the last 10,000 people on Earth following a post-apocalyptic event living inside a massive underground silo. But not all is what it seems, and many people — including engineer Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) begin to suspect that the silo’s mayor (Tim Robbins) isn’t being completely honest about what’s on the surface. (If you saw 2024’s hit series “Fallout,” you get the general idea.)
“Slow Horses”
Watching Gary Oldman (“The Dark Knight,” “Darkest Hour”) in any role is a treat. So it’s not surprising that Oldman’s turn as a surly intelligence officer in the Apple TV+ series “Slow Horses” has remained an underrated delight, even in its fourth season, which premiered on Apple TV+ in September. Based on the “Slough House” series of novels by Mick Herron, Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, the head and heart of an MI5 department full of rejects and problem agents known as Slough House. The dialogue is darkly funny, the spycraft is thrilling, and Kristin Scott Thomas, who largely disappeared from American cinema around 20 years ago, is a delight as the MI5 higher-up who barely tolerates Slough House’s antics.
Watch “Slow Horses” on Apple TV+
“Ted Lasso”
Of all the shows on this list, “Ted Lasso” is the one you’ve most likely already seen. But with news that Bill Lawrence is already at work on reviving the feel-good comedy as a “self-reboot” for Season 4, now’s a good time to catch up on the fish-out-of-water story of an American football coach (Jason Sudeikis) who relocates across the pond to manage a football (soccer) club.
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Watch “Ted Lasso” on Apple TV+
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