The best new TV series on every streaming service

The streaming landscape is vast and hard to keep track of. TV shows pop up (and get canceled) seemingly overnight, and even if you’re in a place where you’re looking for a new show to sink hours into, it can be overwhelming to make the right choice.

That’s what we’re here for. We’re going to keep this post updated with the most recent series on each of the major streaming platforms that we liked, as well as some other options if our pick doesn’t sound like your particular jam.

So, below, find the best new shows on Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Max, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, Apple TV, and Peacock. Our latest update added Unicorn: Warriors Eternal as the best new show on Max.

---

The best new shows on Netflix

The Diplomat

Genre: Political drama
Creator: Debora Cahn
Cast: Keri Russell, Rufus Sewell, Rory Kinnear

There are few better versions of “Netflix series” than light, plot-heavy fare to zoom through one weekend — maybe while playing the latest hot new video game or folding some laundry. And The Diplomat is one of Netflix’s best entries yet in this category.

Keri Russell stars in this political drama as Kate Wyler, a career diplomat who is ready for a demanding assignment as ambassador to Afghanistan. When tragedy strikes a British aircraft carrier, she learns at the last minute she will instead be the new ambassador to the United Kingdom... and also discovers another simmering plot, one best left for you to find out on your own.

From showrunner Debora Cahn (The West Wing, Homeland), The Diplomat delivers on fast-paced political intrigue and is anchored by charismatic performances from Russell and Rufus Sewell, who plays her conniving husband Hal. Russell returns to the role of highly competent political operative in over her head that she mastered in The Americans, while Sewell is charmingly slimy as her supportive but calculating husband, always with a plan up his sleeve.

A second season is on the way, picking up after the shocking cliffhanger the first ended on. —Pete Volk

Also good: The Night Agent, a fun popcorn spy thriller from The Shield’s Shawn Ryan, Physical 100, a brilliant and brutal competition show; Ganglands, a visceral French crime thriller; Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, the anime from CD Projekt Red and studio Trigger; The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House, a food-centric drama from master filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda; Derry Girls, the hilarious comedy set against the backdrop of the Troubles; and The Sandman, the live-action adaptation of the DC Comics fantasy horror series by Neil Gaiman.

The best new show on Hulu

Reservation Dogs

Genre: Teen drama/comedy
Creators: Sterlin Harjo, Taika Waititi
Cast: Devery Jacobs, D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, Lane Factor

Our No. 10 show of 2022 was No. 3 on my personal ballot. Reservation Dogs is a wonderful thing — a show about misfits living on a reservation in Oklahoma who want nothing more than to get far the hell away… until that far-the-hell-away becomes actually tangible. While Taika Waititi produces the show, it is blissfully removed from his particular (and for me, very tiring) brand of humor, instead shining through award-winning filmmaker Sterlin Harjo and a dynamic cast of main characters and featured guests (the second season included a memorable guest appearance by Prey star Amber Midthunder, and the legendary Gary Farmer and Wes Studi have hilarious recurring roles). The third season is airing now, continuing its incredible run of fantastic television. —PV

Also good: Love Island UK, the reality dating show, What We Do in the Shadows, the hilarious TV adaptation of the modern-day vampire mockumentary, and the final season of Atlanta, the “Twin Peaks for rappers” comedy drama starring (and created by) Donald Glover.

The best new TV on Prime Video

A League of Their Own

Genre: Period sports comedy/drama
Creators: Will Graham, Abbi Jacobson
Cast: Abbi Jacobson, Chanté Adams, D’Arcy Carden

A League of Their Own (the movie) is a stone-cold classic for a reason. It’s got good story, a lot of heart, and an ensemble cast that packed a punch in every corner. A League of Their Own (the TV show) works for all those same reasons. But because it’s a show, we get to spend more time in the world, explore women’s baseball for Black women too, dig into the queerness of the era, and go long on just how much work actually goes into pulling together a baseball team from scratch. There’s still no crying in baseball, but it’s nice to explore the classic world of A League of Their Own with a bit more nuance and simply more time. It may not be a classic yet, but a girl can dream. —Zosha Millman

Also good: Paper Girls, a sci-fi coming of age comic adaptation unfortunately canceled after one season, and Reacher, a detective series that asks the important question, “What if Sherlock Holmes was absolutely massive?”

The best new TV on Max

Unicorn: Warriors Eternal

Genre: Fantasy action
Creators: Genndy Tartakovsky, Darrick Bachman
Cast: Hazel Doupe, Demari Hunte, Tom Milligan, Paul Tylak

Genndy Tartakovsky is a name that needs no introduction among animation fans. The creator of such well-known and beloved series as Dexter’s Laboratory, Samurai Jack, Primal, and more, Tartakovsky is known for his imaginative worlds populated with eccentric and memorable characters. Unicorn: Warriors Eternal is the director-animator’s latest masterpiece; a fantasy action series over two decades in the making that follows a group of immortal heroes who are reincarnated across time and space to do battle against an ancient evil. The series combines several of Tartakovsky’s most passionate interests — the science-fiction of Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, the steampunk-adjacent Victorian settings of Hayao Miyazaki’s work, the idiosyncratic character designs of Popeye creator E. C. Segar — to create an experience that feels unlike anything else on television in 2023, animated or otherwise. —Toussaint Egan

Also good: My Adventures with Superman, the slice-of-life action series based on the DC Comics superhero, Full Circle, Stephen Soderbergh’s miniseries loosely based on Akira Kurosawa’s High and Low, Danny McBride’s rapturously funny The Righteous Gemstones, and Harley Quinn, which is currently airing its fourth season.

The best new TV on Disney Plus

Andor

Genre: Sci-fi/adventure
Creator: Tony Gilroy
Cast: Diego Luna, Kyle Soller, Adria Arjona

Aside from being one of the best Star Wars shows to date, Andor has the enviable distinction of holding the No. 1 spot on our list of the best shows of 2022. Either of those two facts alone warrants the show’s inclusion on this list, but combined, that well-earned place feels all but mandatory. Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) returns to the Star Wars after his turn as co-screenwriter on 2016’s Rogue One, diving into an origin story of the eponymous Rebel captain that also functions as an origin story of the Rebel Alliance itself. The series meticulously moves away from the rote, Easter egg-laden iconography for which many Star Wars fans typically associate the franchise with and substitutes it with down-to-earth aesthetic and tone that treats the stakes of its universe as seriously as the underdogs who occupy it.

Diego Luna, much like his character, Cassian Andor, is the perfect leading man for the job, while Stellan S​​karsgård’s supporting performance as the cunning rebellion ringleader Luthen Rael has quickly asserted itself as one of the best characters to come out of Star Wars since Disney acquired the property in 2012. It takes three or so episodes to shift into full gear, but once it does, it’s a exhilarating journey you’ll want to see through to the end. —Toussaint Egan

Also good: Willow, the TV revival of the 1988 fantasy adventure.

The best new TV on Paramount Plus

The Good Fight

Genre: Legal drama/comedy/fever dream
Creators: Robert and Michelle King
Cast: Christine Baranski, Audra McDonald, a rotating cast of your favorite actors on TV

One of the initial promises of streaming television was that it would bring us the kind of shows that were not possible on more traditional broadcast or cable networks. In practice, this hasn’t actually amounted to much more than bloated episode length and the occasional one-off experiment, like Arrested Development season 4 or Netflix’s choose-your-own heist show Kaleidoscope.

The Good Fight, however, was different. The show opened its first season in 2017 with a very clear mission statement, as Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski), a character from series predecessor The Good Wife, prepares to leave her cushy job as partner at a law firm to become a fashionable expat in Italy after the election of Donald Trump. Unfortunately for her, she loses her nest egg when her money is tied up in a Ponzi scheme, and is forced to go back to work — not at her old, majority-white firm, but at Chicago’s largest Black law firm.

With this setup, The Good Fight endeavored to tell the story of Trump-era America as it was written, and while it had its blind spots, it often did a better job of it than most cable news networks, telling unflinching stories about race in America, right-wing internet trolls, and the outrage economy that drives culture wars. But it was also one of the most inventive shows on television — any given episode could have animated musical segments explaining geopolitics, stories about a secret court that Mandy Patinkin runs like a game show, or a cutaway gag ruminating on whether or not Jeffrey Epstein had his penis frozen for preservation. In this, it was the Star Trek of legal dramas, always different, full of ideas, and gloriously messy. —Joshua Rivera

Also good: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the best of a stellar crop of new Star Trek shows.

The best new TV on Apple TV Plus

Severance

Genre: Sci-fi/psychological thriller
Creator: Dan Erickson
Cast: Adam Scott, Zach Cherry, Britt Lower

Severance’s stark science fiction take on the modern workplace, in which employees of a company known as Lumon undergo the titular “severance” procedure to have their consciousness split in two, is one of the most remarkably unsettling conceits in a show. Under severance, one half of a person’s identity, known as the “innie,” is the person they are at work, doing mundane tasks and punching out at the requisite time. When they step in the elevator to go home, however, they become their “outie” — the person who exists outside of the workplace, perhaps with a family, a lover, or a hobby. Innies and outies do not know anything about each other, by design — an almost benign-seeming way to exploit the people who work for you.

An easy favorite among critics both at Polygon and elsewhere, Severance speaks directly to a vague sense of unrest that’s becoming palpable in workplaces around the world, but it’s also just a damn good thriller. Uneasy, with bleak wit and steady dose of intrigue, Severance has style and substance — a quietly angry show for an increasingly angry time. —Joshua Rivera

Also good: Slow Horses, a British spy drama about a bunch of losers (including Gary Oldman) who would like a win.

The best new TV on Peacock

Grand Crew

Genre: Comedy
Creator: Phil Augusta Jackson
Cast: Echo Kellum, Nicole Byer, Justin Cunningham

Sitcoms about a group of friends hanging out and shooting the shit about life’s problems are a dime a dozen. But great sitcoms in this vein are priceless. It is so difficult to capture the wild, wacky energy of the group chat (digital or in real life) and translate it to the screen. After all, many sitcoms have tried, few have succeeded (and frankly, even fewer have been sustainably successful).

Grand Crew, NBC’s sitcom following a group of Black friends who drink to life’s ups and downs at an LA wine bar, is one that just makes it look easy. From the jump, the crew feels like actual friends, meshing with the perfect roast or toast as they unpack their lives together. Unlike some other hangout sitcoms, Grand Crew isn’t afraid to get a bit zany, and it’s all the better for it. With its second season now airing on NBC (and streaming on Peacock), Grand Crew and its laugh-a-minute jokes aren’t slowing down in the slightest. Whether they’re headed out on a group trip, “defining the relationship,” or trying to rescue a dad from a bad relationship, the show isn’t showing any signs of a sophomore slump. Instead, it’s aging like a fine wine. —ZM

Also good: Poker Face, Rian Johnson’s new inverted detective series starring Natasha Lyonne; Girls5Eva, a hilarious comedy about a girl group getting back together; The Real Housewives of Miami, the seventh installment of the Housewives franchise; The Resort, the dark mystery-comedy starring William Jackson Harper (The Good Place) and Cristin Milioti (Made for Love) as a couple on vacation who stumble across a deadly mystery.