Ted Lasso, starring Jason Sudeikis, is one of the best shows on Apple TV+. But is it our number one?
It’s only been five years since the tech behemoth ventured into telly – but they’ve left lots to sift through. We’re here to light your way
Apple make a mean smartphone, but are they any good at telly? That was the question when, in 2019, the tech giant announced plans to take on Netflix and Prime Video by entering the streaming business. There was scepticism as to whether the company could transfer its experience in consumer technology to the pitfalls of the entertainment industry. In the years since, however, Apple has produced more than its share of winning television – as well as honing a distinctive formula of smart, quirky drama you won’t find anywhere else. Hold on to your smartwatch as we bring you, in reverse order, the 30 best shows on Apple TV+.
Video gaming is such a huge industry, it’s remarkable nobody used it as the basis for a drama before. That’s what’s on offer in an irreverent workplace comedy that lands somewhere between the anarchic It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Nineties classic Office Space. Always Sunny’s Rob McElhenney stars as the David Brent-esque creator of the eponymous Mythic Quest online game, with F Murray Abraham as its sexist lead writer and Charlotte Nicdao as the project’s long-suffering chief software engineer.
Aquaman himself, Jason Momoa, flexes his pecs in a dystopian epic set in a post-apocalyptic future where all of humankind has lost the power of sight. Global vision impairment isn’t enough to stop humanity from engaging in Game of Thrones-level shenanigans, however, and we are treated to the erm, sight of armies running into battle, swinging axes etc., while completely blind. The absurd premise powers a mega-budget caper best enjoyed as a guilty pleasure, but driven by the always-enthusiastic Momoa.
Eager to show there’s more to him than his whippersnapper Spider-Man, Tom Holland plays an unstable young New Yorker whose history of violent crime conceals a darker secret – as his police interrogator (Amanda Seyfried) discovers when she unpacks his troubled life. The twist is obvious from miles off, but Holland is compellingly troubled in the adaptation of non-fiction novel The Minds of Billy Milligan.
Colin Farrell ramping up his Hollywood charm as a dissolute private detective in neon-splashed LA? Sounds great – until noir romp Sugar chucks in the mother of all bombshells halfway through. The pivot has proved hugely divisive, but viewers will just have to go with it to get the most from a stylish and well-acted affair.
The retelling of the pursuit of the killer of Abraham Lincoln isn’t nearly as pacy as it should be. But fans of 19th-century headgear and extravagant mutton chops will get a lot out of the dramatisation of James L Swanson’s non-fiction bestseller Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer. Tobias Menzies gives good top hat as Lincoln understudy Edwin Stanton while Anthony Boyle excels as narcissistic thesp turned Presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
Apple has churned out so much eccentric sci-fi that it’s hard to keep up. But Sunny stands out from the dystopian pack thanks to an evocative Japanese setting and an emphatic performance by Rashida Jones as recently widowed Suzie, who discovers there was more to her late husband than she was led to believe. For starters, rather than designing fridges (as he claimed), he apparently made robots for a living – including Suzie’s chatty new housemate, Sunny.
Brie Larson brings her Hollywood wattage to a glossy adaptation of the Bonnie Garmus bestseller about a pioneering Sixties research chemist sidelined by the patriarchy who reinvents herself as a TV cook. The Mad Men-style period details are laid on generously and Larson appears to be enjoying herself (a novelty after her grouchy years on the Marvel treadmill).
Apple proved it meant business out of the gate with this moreish chronicling of the life of a teenage Emily Dickinson, propelled by a commanding turn by Hailee Steinfeld and stuffed with playful anachronisms (we see Dickinson twerking to a soundtrack that includes A$AP Rocky and Mitski) and a memorable cameo by rapper Wiz Khalifa as Death.
How much tweeness can you take in a single sitting? Hopefully, a lot – because that’s what’s on offer in this gently wacky science fiction dramedy starring Chris O’Dowd as a teacher in a small Texas town whose life is turned upside down when a magical ATM-type machine appears in a local shop, promising to reveal a person’s true potential. When his wife discovers that destiny has more in store for her than marriage to a fuddy-duddy teacher, life takes a turn for the complicated.
As biting as a lemon dipped in acid, this darkly delicious Eighties black comedy features Rose Byrne as a housewife trapped in an empty marriage and struggling with an eating disorder who finds redemption in the Jane Fonda-era aerobics craze.
You might think the heartbreaking struggle to have a baby would be short on comedy potential. Trying proves you wrong – with Esther Smith and Rafe Spall excelling as a loving couple desperate to conceive in contemporary London.
Taron Egerton tries an American accent on for size in Dennis Lehane’s adaptation of the true crime story of a small-time criminal sent to prison with orders to befriend a suspected serial killer (Paul Walter Hauser) and extract vital information from him.
Pulse-quickening fly-on-the-wall medical drama follows the chaotic unravelling of a New Orleans hospital during Hurricane Katrina – rendered all the more horrific by the fact it’s based on a true story. Vera Farmiga plays a senior medic who tries to keep the hospital functioning as power fails and the flood waters rise.
State-of-the-art CGI dinosaurs. David Attenborough narrating. Apple signing the cheques. What more could any fan of fantastical broadcasting beasts want?
The life and times of comedian, actor and ukulele evangelist Steve Martin are recounted in an enjoyable two-part documentary. Episode one is a conventional retelling of his adventures in showbusiness; instalment two flips the script by turning off the narration and presenting the comedian’s unfiltered thoughts on his uneven Hollywood career, which arguably only reached its true potential in his 70s, with Only Murders in the Building (pssst, on a different streaming service).
Christopher Miller – one half of Lego Movie-directing duo Lord and Miller – goes it alone with a fun Knives Out-style comedy/murder mystery anthology series. Season one takes place in the bloody aftermath of a high school reunion; the second follows a wedding. In each case, humour and whodunit are blended with flair.
Rebecca Ferguson brings the future-shock star power she wielded so effectively in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune to this stormy sci-fi tale about a society living inside a below-ground mega-complex. The residents are warned by their rulers that the outside world is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but when engineer Julie (Ferguson) investigates the death of a colleague, she stumbles on a secret that calls into question everything she knows about her subterranean home.
A cheerily pulpy spin-off of the Godzilla/Kong “monsterverse” movies that follows the evolution of Monarch, the black ops agency devoted to protecting mankind from destructive beasties. The monsters are great, but the true special effects come from father and son Kurt and Wyatt Russell, who play the same character 50 years apart.
How bonkers do you like your bingeing? If the answer is loads, you’ll get a kooky kick out of Sixth Sense director M Night Shyamalan’s unhinged horror-thriller about a couple (Lauren Ambrose and Toby Kebbell) who hire a nanny (Nell Tiger Free) – only for both parties to discover there’s more to the arrangement than they initially assumed. Stay tuned for a fun cameo by Rupert Grint as the alcoholic younger brother of Ambrose’s character.
Like being beaten about the head with a rolled-up copy of Mojo magazine – but in a good way. Adapted from David Hepworth’s book of the same name by Amy director Asif Kapadia, the rockumentary argues that 1971 was the greatest year ever for music. We can argue the toss on that one – Where’s Me Jumper? by Sultans of Ping FC actually came out in 1992 – but the series seals the deal with copious footage of Bowie, Tina Turner and Kraftwerk.
If England’s slapstick stumble in the Euros shredded your nerves, why not restore the feel-good factor with the cult Jason Sudeikis comedy about an irritatingly cheerful American coach put in charge of a fictional Premier League club? At its heart, it’s football telly for people who don’t know anything about football – but the show’s high-press positivity has made it hugely beloved.
Cross Mad Men with the lucid bits from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and you get Ronald D Moore’s alternative history of the space race. Starting from the premise that the Soviet Union put a man on the moon first, the show unspools as a fantastic parallel universe retelling of humanity’s quest for the stars and of the impact of that obsession on those caught up on it.
Idris Elba stars in this slick tribute to Die Hard in which terrorists hijack a flight from Dubai to London and shenanigans ensue. The events depicted on screen are more stressful than your boarding card failing to scan, but Elba’s cool, everyday hero vibes carry the day.
The gallant spirit of Band of Brothers is resurrected in the Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks-produced account of the US airmen who helped defeat Hitler by leading bombing runs over Germany. American-centric with a vengeance, but the scenes of B-17′s dodging flak cannons are breathtaking while Austin Butler oozes charm as a cocky flyboy.
The intertwined and complicated history of Korea and Japan throughout the 20th century is unpacked in a superior soap that follows the experiences of a family from occupied Korea to modern-day Japan – cutting back and forth across the time-lines to show how the actions of one generation invariably return to haunt the next.
They said Isaac Asimov’s century-spanning Foundation novels were un-filmable – so Apple did the sensible thing by tossing out the source material and inventing, more or less from scratch, a brilliantly bonkers story of intergalactic warfare and mad rulers. Most unhinged of them all is Lee Pace’s Emperor Cleon – an immortal man-baby fuelled by chutzpah and delusion who gives this OTT sci-fi a fever-dream zing.
One of the first projects unveiled by Apple when it announced plans to enter the streaming market, The Morning Show stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon as love/hate hosts on a big US network. After a disappointing first series in which the show tried to play it straight, things went wonderfully deranged in later seasons – with Witherspoon’s character blasted into space at one point and caught up in the Washington Riots at another. It’s completely implausible, but the cast is having fun, and you have to admire The Morning Show for having the courage of its unhinged convictions.
Office comedy meets Orwell, with a hint of William Gibson cyberpunk chucked in. Adam Scott and Zach Cherry star as cubicle drones whose memories are scrubbed after work each day, which causes complications for Scott’s character, who is grieving the death of his wife. Directed with a chilly touch by Ben Stiller, the show is a gripping rumination on how our jobs can define us, with compelling corporate thriller elements woven in.
Sharon Horgan produces and fronts a delirious comedy about sisters in posh coastal Dublin who murder an abusive brother-in-law (Claes Bang) and go to increasingly absurd and hilarious lengths to conceal their crime.
John le Carre is rebooted for Generation Binge in an expertly hilarious espionage drama starring Gary Oldman as a slovenly, sweary MI5 agent caught up in ever more convoluted sleuthing shenanigans (to the exasperation of his boss, played by Kristin Scott Thomas). Adapted from Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, Slow Horses pulls off a perfect balancing act between workplace comedy and pacy thriller.
A sex educator has answers on the ins-and-outs of sexual intercourse.