Updated 11.15
The Ringer'sWeeklyTop 10
There’s a lot of TV out there. The Ringer wants to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV.
Colin Farrell’s wisecracking, makeup-laden performance as Oz Cobb in 2022’s The Batman was such a sight to behold that Warner Bros. decided to give him his own TV show. OK, maybe this is less about the audience’s fascination with the Penguin and more about WB (and thus, HBO) pinning its streaming hopes to one of its biggest pieces of IP. But there is plenty to like about The Penguin as it picks up The Batman’s story: a more in-depth look into Gotham’s underworld, an answer to the question “What if Tony Soprano existed in a comic book?,” the chance to see Farrell pronounce the word “circumstance” as soycumstance, and most notably, a scene-stealing turn from Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, the daughter of Gotham’s recently slain crime boss. Or maybe you know Sofia better as the Hangman? —Andrew Gruttadaro
For any self-professed sci-fi fanatic, the new Apple TV+ series Silo will feel quite familiar. Based on the Silo book series by Hugh Howey, Silo takes place in a dystopian future where the last remnants of humanity live within a massive underground system insulated from the world above, which is lethally toxic—or at least that’s what the powers that be want them to believe. With shades of Snowpiercer—the different levels of the community function like a caste system—and the mystery-box storytelling of Westworld, Silo rests on its genuinely compelling world-building, which should leave viewers just as hungry for answers as its characters are. Suffice to say, there are many twists and turns that would be criminal to spoil, but Silo is one of the most promising sci-fi debuts since The Expanse, and further proof that Apple TV+ is the go-to streaming service for the very best the genre has to offer. —Miles Surrey
Yellowstone is the story of the mighty and doomed Dutton family, with Kevin Costner’s sensibly dressed John Dutton at the helm. The clan has owned a sprawling cattle ranch in Montana’s Paradise Valley called Yellowstone Ranch for generation upon generation, and the Duttons now find themselves in a position that their manifest destiny–spouting ancestors were once on the other side of: trying to prevent others from taking their land. In Yellowstone, there are dead brothers and dead mothers, corrupt politicians and devious fly fishermen, indentured cowboys and feral horses. There are plans for the property that range from a casino to a ski resort, from a land grab to an airport. There are siblings—namely Jamie, Kayce, and Beth Dutton—who alternately jostle over and scoff at their birthright and the dark, deadly forces required to preserve it. —Katie Baker
Coming from the Ted Lasso team of Bill Lawrence and Brett “Roy Kent” Goldstein—as well as Jason Segel, who pulls double duty as the star of the series—Shrinking follows grieving therapist Jimmy Laird (Segel) as he embarks on a radical mission to let his patients know exactly how he feels about their problems. (One example: Jimmy tells a woman that she should leave her emotionally abusive husband, or he’ll stop being her therapist.) Harrison Ford fits into the story as Paul Rhoades, Jimmy’s no-nonsense coworker and mentor figure who believes this sort of boundary breaking will come back to bite him. —Miles Surrey
It was once the most unadaptable piece of IP in Hollywood—now it’s spawning prequel series on HBO. After the blockbuster success of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune and Dune: Part Two, the world is expanding with Dune: Prophecy, a series set about 10,000 years before the events of the films that tracks the origins of the Bene Gesserit, the mysterious coven lurking in the shadows of Paul Atreides’s eventual rise. This is a group of witches—sorry, “Reverend Mothers”—with a master plan and a penchant for triggering the downfalls of entire civilizations; how they started is surely a matter of intrigue for Dune-heads. But even for those less inclined to stick their hand inside the pain box, Prophecy (premiering on November 17) will answer whether Dune is sturdy enough to maintain its own extended universe. —Andrew Gruttadaro
What We Do in the Shadows is adapted from the beloved 2014 feature-length film of the same name, which was written and directed by Flight of the Conchords cocreator Jemaine Clement and fellow New Zealand–based filmmaker and comedian Taika Waititi. The movie version is populated by a different set of vampires, and is set in Wellington rather than Staten Island, but otherwise Clement and Waititi’s televised adaptation is largely the same. Why are vampires being followed by a film crew? Well, why not? Doesn’t everybody get their own documentary these days? The results are a bit like Parks and Recreation by way of Sartre’s No Exit. —Elizabeth Nelson
The O.C., Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill, National Treasure, Into the Blue, Blue Crush, John Hughes movies … Surely there isn’t one show that encompasses all of those, I bet you’re thinking to yourself right now. But you are WRONG. Netflix’s Outer Banks covers them all, telling the tale of a group of teenage friends who live on the poorer side of North Carolina’s barrier islands who also go on a treasure hunt started by the mysterious missing father of the group’s leader, a way-cool rugged heartthrob named John B (always “John B,” never “John”). The show has all the teenage melodrama of those mid-aughts bangers, all of the absurdity (it is hilariously clear that Outer Banks was not filmed on the Outer Banks), and the sort of addictiveness that Netflix is so good at. But it also has an amazing amount of charm, and a host of way-too-good-for-this-show acting performances. —Andrew Gruttadaro
Keri Russell. International affairs. Russia as a malicious presence. People pretending to be something they’re not. Marriage and romance mixed up with geopolitical crises. No, I’m not talking about The Americans—I’m talking about The Diplomat. Executive-produced by Debora Cahn (The West Wing, Homeland), The Diplomat follows Kate Wyler (Russell), the newly appointed ambassador to Britain, who’s married to the guy who used to be doing the gig (Rufus Sewell), which of course leads to considerable friction, spice, and questionable ethics. In case I’m not being clear, this is popcorn fare, in mostly the best way possible. It also gets Russell back on your TV screen, which can’t be a bad thing. —Andrew Gruttadaro
A workplace comedy set in a Philadelphia public school, Abbott Elementary features a slew of charming child actors as its namesake’s rambunctious student body. (One of the show’s many triumphs is how it mines the kids’ behavior for laughs without mocking them.) But its core cast are the teachers, who form a flawlessly balanced ensemble. Quinta Brunson plays Janine, a relative rookie as earnest as she is inexperienced. The part is an effective showcase, but compared to her costars, it’s clear Brunson had the savvy and lack of ego to cast herself as the straight woman. Sheryl Lee Ralph shines as Barbara, a seasoned pro intimidating in her efficacy, while Janelle James is the breakout as Ava, the deliciously incompetent principal. Abbott Elementary is neither saccharine nor cynical in its treatment of systemic issues, an impressive balancing act that’s actually earned the acclaim it deserves. —Alison Herman
Taylor Sheridan doesn’t just make TV shows about the many generations of the Dutton family in Montana—and thank goodness for that, because as Lioness shows, some of his best work occurs when he tries to paint outside the lines. Starring Zoe Saldaña as Joe, a CIA officer who gets recruited into the agency’s women-only program, Lioness is a spy thriller with real claws. (And a real cast: Nicole Kidman, Morgan Freeman, and Michael Kelly are all hard at work here.) In Season 2, the claws are getting even sharper: Lioness is the rare Sheridan show that finds harmony between drama and groundedness, between over-the-top plotting and character-driven pathos. You just need to be willing to go undercover with it. —Andrew Gruttadaro
More top ten lists
StreamingStreamingWarsUpdated 8/22
StreamingStreaming
It’s been about a year and a half since The Ringer launched this Streaming Guide, and already so much has changed. In August of 2022, Netflix was losing ground to its competitors: HBO Max had proved to be a robust home for prestige television; Disney+ had come out of the gates with a bang off the strength of its Marvel and Star Wars properties; Prime Video was on the verge of unveiling a billion-dollar answer to Game of Thrones; Apple TV+ was making surprising inroads despite its relatively humble library. But if that time in the Streaming Wars was defined by rampant expansion, we have now entered a period of consolidation and purse-string tightening. With investors now prioritizing profitability over growth, and following a tumultuous 2023 in which there were multiple monthslong Hollywood work stoppages, the streaming industry has become much more treacherous for corporations to navigate. There are only a couple of haves and plenty of have-nots.
HBO Max doesn’t even exist anymore—its parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, merged its subsidiaries to create Max, a service that showcases The Sopranos alongside Dr. Pimple Popper (and often jettisons popular series at a moment’s notice for tax write-off reasons, but that’s a whole other story). Amazon’s bet on The Rings of Power (and other expensive gambits like Citadel) flopped given its cost. Disney+ is in a free fall as general interest in superhero IP wanes, and a permanent merging with its sister service, Hulu, seems all but inevitable. Paramount+ (With Showtime) has failed to make a true dent in the market, but guess what! Apparently, there may soon come a time when Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount are one and the same. Meanwhile, amid all of this backtracking and hurried corporate maneuvering, there’s Netflix. If the past 18 months have proved anything, it’s that the cracks Netflix was starting to show were temporary, and that it’s the only company built to survive the Streaming Wars. Netflix has such an outsized advantage in subscriber numbers, and in the learned behavior of those subscribers, that it can turn Suits—a show that went off the air in 2019, and that was already streaming on Peacock!—into the show of the summer. It matters less what is on Netflix than that it’s on Netflix, a truth that even Netflix’s competitors have begun to accept: After years of studios snatching back IP for their own services, those same studios are now licensing to Netflix again, since it’s more or less the only platform where a show can find a considerable audience. If there were a white flag in the Streaming Wars, everyone would be waving it right now. And after years of disruption and chaos, we seem primed to return to some form of the cable model that was disrupted in the first place. The future is Netflix—and a whole bunch of bundles.
But until that brave new world materializes, there will still be fluctuations between these competing streaming services. There will still be the all-important question of which services are worth paying for, especially as each one institutes ad tiers and steep price hikes so you can avoid watching commercials. (I told you cable TV was coming back!) And so we at The Ringer will continue to explain what the Streaming Wars mean for you, the viewer. As we’ve done since August 2022, every week, we’ll use a proprietary formula to determine how the biggest players in the Streaming Wars stack up against one another—and more importantly, which ones are worth your hard-earned cash. The Ringer’s Streaming Wars formula takes five different factors into account:
- A streaming service’s quality of TV content (and not just original content)
- A service’s buzz or hype (Did it have a good week?)
- A service’s level of prestige (Does it win awards?)
- A service’s utility as an app (Does it make TV watching better?)
- The average cost of a service
Plugging these metrics into our formula—while giving particular weight to quality of content and buzz—produces a Streaming Wars score. The services with higher Streaming Wars scores are not only prevailing at the moment, but also the ones most worth paying for. Knowing which streaming services are on top can feel downright impossible. And things are only getting messier. Hopefully this guide can make it a little easier and bring you back to the days when watching TV was so much simpler.
#1 Netflix102.60
It's Netflix's world. We're all just living in it.
Remember a few years ago when everyone started writing those “We MUST Appreciate LeBron James While We Still Can” articles because LeBron’s dominance had been so consistent that it had begun to seem casual? Well, you could say that Netflix is now in the LeBron zone. This year has done nothing to dissuade the notion that Netflix is winning the Streaming Wars. The company added 9.33 million subscribers in Q1, a number well above expectations, and also saw a 15 percent jump in revenue year over year—but at the same time, its supremacy is so well-cemented that this all feels like business as usual. Meanwhile, other streamers have made leaps that feel more notable relative to their more paltry market shares. We all know that Netflix is dominating, but it is dominance by inertia more than anything. The streamer can turn a series into a sensation unlike any other, and it’s continued to do so in 2024 with everything from Griselda to Baby Reindeer to The Gentlemen to Season 6 of Love Is Blind—yet on the other hand, the one Netflix series that felt primed to become a sensation in 2024, 3 Body Problem, mostly came and went. Is that strange? Yes. Does it matter? Not really! Netflix can rest easy knowing that it has the command of the most eyeballs—and it clearly couldn’t care less about which shows those eyeballs turn toward. —Andrew Gruttadaro
#2 Hulu100.08
Regardless of where you watch it, Hulu has the hits.
Hulu may now be fully under the umbrella of Disney, but it very much retains a reputation of its own thanks to yet another subsidiary: FX. The network’s premiere of Shogun received more than 9 million views across Hulu, Disney+, and Star+ in its first six days, making it Disney’s best worldwide debut for a non-Marvel or non–Star Wars show. Whether the majority of those viewers came from Hulu’s native app or the new Disney+ combo hub is mostly irrelevant—Shogun is branded as an “FX on Hulu” production, a feather in the streamer’s cap given the show’s universal acclaim.
In the wake of Shogun’s run, Hulu is holding itself over with well-received series like Under the Bridge, and it has plenty of goodwill left over from recently concluded shows such as Fargo and Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote Vs. the Swans. But the next big moment for the streamer will undoubtedly come in June, when Season 3 of The Bear premieres. Hulu will hope its consistently robust catalog—along with a recently rolled out password-sharing crackdown—will be a boon to its subscriber count. —Aric Jenkins
#3 Max98.41
Reinforcements are coming for Max.
When we last checked in on Max, the discussion was rooted more in the news surrounding the mega sports streaming app from Warner Bros. Discovery, ESPN, and Fox, which is said to be debuting this fall. As we head into the summer of 2024, the conversation is more about the hits that rise above the content clutter. Say what you will about how it ended, but there were at least five weeks in which the timeline tuned in to True Detective: Night Country. Meanwhile, Curb Your Enthusiasm came to a close in April, leaving HBO without another guaranteed eyeball grabber. But reinforcements for the loss of Larry David are on the way: Hacks returns for its third season soon, bringing some critically acclaimed comedy back to the regular rotation, and the summer will see the returns of House of the Dragon and another critical darling, Industry. A dynamic second season from those dragons could put Max in a stellar position for now, but WBD will need more series—such as ID’s Quiet on Set or Max originals such as Tokyo Vice and Conan O’Brien Must Go—to take off so the app doesn’t feel like it’s being held up by whatever HBO banger is currently on, or whatever NBA highlights we missed from the night before. —khal
#4 Apple TV+92.03
Science fiction? Historical drama? Apple TV+ is a master of genre.
It’s been well-established that Apple is a reliable hub for science fiction, what with hits such as Silo, Foundation, For All Mankind, and, of course, Severance (finally returning later this year). Now, the service has captivated history buffs with series like Masters of the Air, Manhunt, and Franklin—not to mention original films such as Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon. Apple doesn’t produce a ton of original content, but when it does, it knows how to find an audience. Subscribers can find samplings of other genres in between—neo-noirs (Sugar), 30-minute comedies (Loot), and prestige period series (Palm Royale). Up next, in June: a legal thriller, Presumed Innocent, starring Jake Gyllenhaal in his first major television role. —Aric Jenkins
#5 Prime88.33
Prime Video can’t miss (right now).
Prime Video has had a knockout year thus far. The streamer kicked off 2024 with a pretty drastic addition to its content strategy: commercials. In order to escape the barrage of advertisements, subscribers must now opt into Prime’s “new” ad-free plan, which rolled out in late January and costs an additional $3 per month. The benefits are already showing: Amazon has earned $11.8 billion in ad revenue during Q1—a 24 percent bump from the same time last year—in part because of the implementation of streaming TV advertising. Morgan Stanley forecasts the move will net Amazon more than $3 billion in revenue this year alone, with the potential to reach upwards of $7 billion come 2026. Despite the price hike, Prime’s audience stuck around and showed up in a big way for its TV slate. Donald Glover’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith set the tone in February when it dropped all eight episodes at once and clocked more than 964 million minutes watched in its first three days. Video game adaptation Fallout followed suit and attracted more than 65 million viewers in a little bit more than two weeks on the service, making it the second-most-watched Prime title ever, behind only The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. And that’s not all! Road House, the Jake Gyllenhaal–led remake of the 1989 classic, became Prime’s most successful streaming film debut ever upon its release.
Prime is winning in the arena of live sports as well. This year, Amazon has deepened its ties with the NFL even more by acquiring exclusive rights to stream a playoff game next season, aping a move that worked wonders for Peacock. For those keeping count, Amazon now has the rights to Thursday Night Football and a postseason game, with a high possibility that the NFL also runs back another branded Black Friday game. There are also reports that Amazon reached an early agreement with the NBA to stream basketball games in the near future. Not too shabby, Bezos. —Kai Grady
#6 Disney+83.05
Disney+ needs help. Backup is on its way.
The years of leaning on IP are over. Now it’s time to consolidate power. The streamer built by superheroes and Star Wars saw its status diminish throughout 2023, as Marvel’s stranglehold on pop culture dissipated to reveal that Disney+ didn’t have much else to offer. But Disney and its CEO, Bob Iger—fresh off of winning a proxy battle—are too big to not have a backup plan, and the early months of the Mouse’s year were defined by major moves. The highlights are aplenty: plans to create a “games and entertainment universe” with partner and Fortnite developer Epic Games; the acquisition of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour concert film; a sports-focused streaming bundle featuring offerings from Disney, Warner Bros., and Fox; the launch of a different sports streaming app focused on ESPN; and a plan set for June 2024 to crack down on password sharing. Disney+ has also found its way to some non-Marvel hits this year, from the aforementioned Taylor Swift doc to Percy Jackson and the Olympians to the acclaimed X-Men ’97. But the larger point is that its parent company is beginning to throw its weight around, turning the Streaming Wars into a battle that goes down not on television screens, but in the boardroom. —Andrew Gruttadaro
#7 Peacock70.23
Peacock has a consistency problem.
It’s been an unusual four months for Peacock this year, full of record-breaking highs and extended slumps. The NBCUniversal-owned service kicked off 2024 on an uncharacteristic heater, led by its exclusive “broadcast” of the Dolphins-Chiefs playoff game in mid-January. That game, which averaged 23 million viewers on Peacock, became the most-streamed event in U.S. history, so it’s no surprise that Peacock already decided to go back to the football well and renew its partnership with the NFL for next year. Also in January, the much-maligned streaming service broke through on the television front with the premiere of a (quasi-)original series, Ted. No question benefiting from the massive NFL audience, the Seth MacFarlane–led prequel became Peacock’s most-watched original title ever through its first three days available. In a similar vein, The Traitors (U.S.) returned for its second season, and its premiere quickly became the most-watched reality series season debut in the history of the streamer, rounding out maybe its most competitive stretch in the Streaming Wars since it launched four years ago.
Fast-forward to today, and Peacock is in the midst of yet another lull. However, there is a significant lifeline on the horizon that might save the streamer from itself: the Paris Olympics. And NBC knows this: The media conglomerate recently announced a $2 price hike across all subscription tiers, which will go into effect for new users just in time for the Summer Games. We’ll see if being the streaming home for one of the largest international events in live sports helps springboard the rest of its offerings. —Kai Grady
#8 Paramount+68.18
Paramount+ may be an impossible mission.
During its nine-minute Q1 earnings call at the end of April 2024, Paramount announced that it halved its streaming loss from Q1 of 2023, which brings the amount lost to $286 million. The call, which also announced a shift in Paramount’s CEO, highlighted the success of adding Showtime to the app and the benefits of being the one that was streaming the Super Bowl. But that call also ended with the playing of the theme song to Mission: Impossible, which is quite fitting because, uh, now what? The theory that the CBS Sports division could be the key to keeping Paramount+ afloat sounds promising, but it isn’t in line with how the world is operating (especially considering some of Paramount’s competitors are working on a sports streaming app that could become a serious threat). Being the place where you can view Bob Marley: One Love or A Quiet Place: Day One helps, but once those two hours are over and there’s no game on, will everyone be tapping into Knuckles? What if Twisted Metal, Star Trek, and the bevy of Taylor Sheridan projects aren’t enough either? Paramount+ may be destined to occupy last place until the new CEO (or the next one, or the next one) figures out how to build the app up. —khal
TV episodesof
theCentury
Television is going through yet another revolution, and it feels like the right time to look back at the century so far and determine the 100 best episodes of TV since 2000—the ones that stunned and entertained more than any others, and in turn made television what it is today.
MoviesMoviesMoviesMovies
MoviesMoviesMoviesMovies
Rewatchables
The Blair Witch Project’s principal photography cost a mere $35,000, but it went on to gross about $248.6 million at the box office—an indie film record at the time. Stylistically, cocreators Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez conjured a new level of verisimilitude by embracing the equipment and amateur camerawork of the masses, spawning (or at least popularizing) the “found footage” horror subgenre. Promotionally, they extended their storytelling to both web forums and television “documentaries,” upgrading the concept of word of mouth to straight-up virality and laying the groundwork for future internet folklore. Out of nowhere, a troupe of University of Central Florida grads seized the reins of the internet and forged a new path for modern-day moviegoing. —Alyssa Bereznak
New to Streaming
The degree to which popular culture shapes identity is at the heart of I Saw the TV Glow, which takes place in one of those idyllic, suburban enclaves that exist in the collective unconscious: Spielbergian outposts where kids already dealing with the dangers of coming of age end up having close encounters with stranger things. The film is set in 1996, on the eve of Bill Clinton’s reelection, as Owen finds himself on the edges of both his school’s ecosystem and popular culture. He’s infantilized by his parents, who won’t let him stay up on Friday nights to watch the long-running young adult serial The Pink Opaque. When he lobbies his father (Fred Durst) for viewing privileges, the old man sneers that it’s a show for girls—a remark that ends the conversation while somehow opening up a chasm of shame and longing. —Adam Nayman
New to Streaming
The image of a Black man being pursued, detained, and humiliated by white police officers carries a potent charge, and Jeremy Saulnier’s new film, Rebel Ridge—which marks the director’s long-overdue return to feature filmmaking after six years in development hell and the prestige TV wilderness—feels fully plugged into the contemporary zeitgeist. 2018’s psychological horror exercise Hold the Dark was a well-made misfire, but Saulnier is back in strapping form with Rebel Ridge, which laces a pulpy narrative with fine-grained observations about racial profiling. It’s two hours long, but it moves like a shot, functioning efficiently on multiple levels without breaking a sweat. —Adam Nayman
Yes, Chef
Fine dining is ripe for a takedown, which is what The Menu positions itself to be. Decades ago, the chef was a faceless grunt whose artistry went underappreciated; in the years since, our culture has overcorrected, and seems overdue for some dissent. The Menu is an ensemble, featuring strong performances from the likes of Hong Chau and Janet McTeer. But it’s also a binary at heart. On one side, we have Julian Slowik (Ralph Fiennes), Hawthorne’s resident René Redzepi. On the other, we have Margot (Anya Taylor-Joy), a skeptical guest brought along as a last-minute plus-one. Julian instructs his guests to taste and savor, but never eat: “Our menu is too precious for that,” he admonishes. Margot thinks she’s arrived at “base camp of Bullshit Mountain.” —Alison Herman
New to Streaming
Civil War is chock-full of tense, unnerving, and violent moments. Set in the near future and functioning like a road movie, the action-thriller follows a quartet of journalists—photographers Lee (Kirsten Dunst) and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny), along with reporters Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson) and Joel—from New York City to Washington, D.C., where a third-term president has barricaded himself from Western rebel forces who are inching closer to the capital. In the waning days of this vaguely explained conflict, which has reduced America to rubble, the press group races to secure one last interview with the divided nation’s leader, snapping photos of roadside horrors, abandoned public spaces, and unpredictable shoot-outs along the way. —Jake Kring-Schreifels