Although it’s packed with plenty of movies, Hulu has built an incredible reputation for showcasing terrific original shows, plus hits you may have missed on FX and other titles you might not have caught elsewhere. Check out this rundown of the best TV shows on Hulu that are currently available for streaming.
This fast, fierce series captures the turmoil found behind the scenes at any busy restaurant kitchen. After leaving his fine-dining chef’s position, a young man (Jeremy Allen White) returns to Chicago to straighten out his family’s ailing sandwich shop.
2. The Great (2020–2023)
Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult star in this period comedy about the trials and tribulations of Catherine the Great in 18th-century Russia.
Jeff Bridges appears here in his first major television role since he was acting opposite father Lloyd Bridges in Sea Hunt (1958–1961). As CIA agent Dan Chase, his quiet retirement is interrupted by the emergence of a rival intent on killing him and a CIA boss (John Lithgow) who wants him back in the fold.
4. The Dropout (2022)
Amanda Seyfried (Mean Girls) captures eccentric tech star Elizabeth Holmes, who took Silicon Valley by storm with her Theranos healthcare product. Holmes promised blood test results from a simple drop; rising suspicion led to her downfall.
Steve Martin and Martin Short bring their considerable charms to this dramedy about an unlikely trio of building tenants (including Selena Gomez) who try to find out who murdered a fellow occupant for their nascent true-crime podcast. Martin is Charles Haden-Savage, a onetime primetime star whose ’90s cop show, Brazzos, isn’t always fondly remembered; Short is Oliver Putnam, a stage director looking to the podcast as a chance to revive his career; and Gomez is Mabel Mora, who may know more about the victim than she lets on. Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep joined the cast in season three.
6. Reservation Dogs (2021–2023)
Taika Waititi co-created this comedy about a group of Indigenous teens in Oklahoma who try to escape their humdrum lifestyle by embracing a life of crime.
This FX series upends television conventions by telling the story of Earnest “Earn” Marks (played by series creator Donald Glover), who navigates the rap music industry with his cousin Alfred (Brian Tyree Henry) in the eponymous city. The journey is a labyrinth for both Earn and viewers, with shifting points of view, genre-switching episodes, and creativity to spare. LaKeith Stanfield and Zazie Beetz co-star.
8. Normal People (2020)
Sally Rooney helped adapt her own novel of the same name for this dramatic series about two classmates whose lives intersect as they grow throughout adolescence and early adulthood. The show, which is just 12 episodes long, examines the backgrounds of Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones), an outspoken young woman, and her popular, athletic, sometime-boyfriend Connell (Paul Mescal) as they succumb to the pressures of academia, their families’ expectations (and limitations), and their attraction to one another. It’s a thoughtful and serious soup-to-nuts look at teenage love and self-discovery that doesn’t shy away from intimacy—physical and otherwise.
Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer co-star in this irreverent sitcom about two best friends who get up to misadventures in New York City. Amy Poehler helped the concept move from a web series to a full-fledged Comedy Central TV series, where it ran for five seasons.
10. Snowfall (2017–2023)
FX’s crime drama takes an unflinching look at the crack cocaine epidemic that radically changed the cultural landscape in 1980s America. Set in Los Angeles, it follows the drug’s path through users, dealers, and law enforcement.
Fresh off two seasons of Big Little Lies, Reese Witherspoon teamed up with Kerry Washington for this critically acclaimed adaptation of the book of the same name by Celeste Ng, about two mothers from different backgrounds whose lives are upended when their paths cross. The series—which explores race, class, privilege, and preconceived notions—dares to ask some important questions about identity, choice, opportunity, and expectation, bolstered by riveting performances by Witherspoon, Washington, and a cast of fellow acting heavyweights.
12. What We Do In The Shadows (2019–present)
If Taika Waititi’s success has completely exploded in the past few years, his earlier work continues to set off reverberations that audiences are discovering now to great delight. After Waititi and Jemaine Clement co-wrote and co-directed the 2014 horror comedy of the same name about cohabitating, centuries-old vampires reckoning hilariously with both changing times and classic relationship foibles, Clement (one half of Flight of the Conchords) went ahead and created this series. Cleverly, it does not revisit the same glories but instead relocates another group of bloodsuckers to Staten Island for more—albeit different—shenanigans as they try to maintain their undead, sexy lifestyle while succumbing to the challenges and indignities of modern social niceties.
Ramy star and co-creator Ramy Youssef won a Golden Globe for his performance in this show, which explores the life of a young American Muslim with an honesty and humor that few other shows (if any) ever have before. Youssef wrestles not only with his faith but cultural perceptions of Muslims, attempting to reconcile his personal and professional ambitions against the backdrop of a culture—not to mention a family and religious community—that has its own expectations of him. Safely juggling sitcom scenarios while digging into these deeper truths, Ramy delivers exactly what you want from a half-hour series while giving plenty you won’t expect.
14. PEN15 (2019–2021)
PEN15 co-creators/stars Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle, who were both 31 when the show premiered, play 13-year-old versions of themselves in this funny, heartbreakingly honest show that exposes all of the wild discoveries of becoming a teenage girl, and the frequent indignities that come with them. Not just touching on coming-of-age staples like competition, peer pressure, and young romance, the show utilizes its actresses’ real ages to examine ideas like budding sexuality, the encroaching realities of adulthood, and the challenges of maintaining meaningful friendships and family relationships as each of these young characters becomes her own person.
Taking Margaret Atwood’s acclaimed novel of the same name as its spine and inspiration, this series starring Elisabeth Moss explores a dystopian alternate reality and one frighteningly recognizable, where some women are enslaved to bear children after fertility rates drop in the wake of STDs and environmental pandemics. The show makes audiences feel the devastating circ*mstances of Moss’s June Osborne week after week as it looks incisively at the circ*mstances that led to this type of control, including a slippery slope of bad legislation, complacency among voters until it’s too late, and oppressive patriarchal values that metastasize into a police state for women without the means to afford, or protect, their choices and their bodies. It’s infuriating, inspiring, and utterly unmissable.
16. The Shield (2002-2008)
There are good cops, bad cops, and Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), a self-described “different kind of cop” who finds himself in increasingly hot water as his schemes to bust criminals (and get a bit of their money) grow increasingly complex—and harder and harder to cover up.
FX’s (and later FXX’s) animated series Archer offers a delightful, raunchy deconstruction of James Bond and spy movies, anchored by the womanizing title character and the dysfunctional fellow agents, family members, and support teammates who revolve around him. The show has already catapulted a series of catchphrases into pop culture (“phrasing!”) but what’s remarkable about its longevity is how the characters have changed and grown in spite of the action-packed, puerile hijinks.
18. Schitt's Creek (2015–2020)
Eugene and Daniel Levy headline and co-created this sitcom about a well-to-do clan who suddenly find themselves financially adrift and living in the tiny town they once bought as a joke. According to Daniel, the idea first took hold when he was watching reality television and began wondering what would happen if a family like the Kardashians lost their wealth. In addition to Eugene and Daniel, Eugene’s daughter Sarah Levy also appears.
In the arena of “shows featuring reprehensible characters we somehow love,” Seinfeld walked so Rob McElhenney’s long-running show could run. Dennis, Sweet Dee, Mac, Charlie, and Frank seemingly exist to take the worst possible lesson from any given situation (Bar gets robbed? Buy a gun!), but the show’s ability to refine and develop these characters (Mac, an overcompensating himbo, discovers and slowly comes to embrace the fact that he is gay) is matched only by the lengths to which the writers will go to degrade and humiliate them for their awfulness, while projecting random meta-textual ideas on the actors (McElhenney gains tons of weight one season, then strips down to rippling muscles, for no particular reason other than it’s what actors do). It’s the best show on TV you will love, featuring characters you will hate.
20. Justified (2010–2015)
Timothy Olyphant gives a career-best performance as Raylan Givens, a U.S. Marshal who takes an Old West approach to justice when he returns to his boyhood home of Kentucky to chase bad guys—including onetime friend-turned-villain Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), who’s gone off the deep end. Olyphant and Goggins have a good time marinating in the characters created by novelist Elmore Leonard, while series creator Graham Yost captures the late author’s trademark dialogue to perfection. A new limited series, Justified: City Primeval, is also on the service.
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A version of this story ran in 2020; it has been updated for 2023.
