Apple TV’s 10 best shows ever, including a brand-new entry
Apple TV’s 10 best shows ever, including a brand-new entry
‘Widow’s Bay’ crashes the all-time top 10 after just one season, joining some of Apple TV’s biggest hits.
When Apple TV first got into streaming, I honestly wasn’t totally sure what the plan was. Netflix, HBO Max, and Hulu already had huge libraries and years of a head start, so Apple had a lot of catching up to do. Turns out, the answer was pretty simple: don’t try to be everybody else. Apple built a smaller library around big swings, weird sci-fi, huge dramas, and comedies that actually have some heart. If you want a deeper look at the full TV library, you can check that out here. For this updated top 10, there’s also a brand-new addition for the first time: “Widow’s Bay,” which is weird, funny, creepy, and good enough to crash the list after just one season. So, if you’re opening Apple TV and wondering where to start, these are still the 10 shows I’d go with.
Top 10 all-time best TV shows streaming on Apple TV:
No. 10: ‘Widow’s Bay’ (2026) | Horror comedy
“Widow’s Bay” is one of those shows that starts kind of slow, but the town is so weird that I honestly didn’t care. Matthew Rhys plays the mayor of this struggling little New England island community that may or may not be cursed, and he’s basically trying to convince everyone that Widow’s Bay is a perfectly normal place to live while everything around him suggests otherwise. There’s also a newspaper exposé hanging over the town, which only makes his job harder. At first, you’re mostly just hanging out with these strange locals and hearing all the ridiculous stories they’ve accepted as part of everyday life. Then the show starts getting genuinely creepy.
And when I say creepy, I mean this one was occasionally a little too scary for me. The clown in Episode 2? Nope. Once he went underground into that crawl space, I basically closed my eyes until the whole thing was over. But that’s also part of why the show works so well. It can be funny and weird for 20 minutes, then suddenly turn into actual horror without feeling like you switched shows. Rhys is great at playing the one relatively normal guy surrounded by people who barely react when something completely insane happens. After just one season, I already think “Widow’s Bay” deserves to be in the conversation for the 10 best shows Apple TV has ever made. It’s funny, scary, strange, and completely its own thing, which is getting harder and harder to find on TV.
Widow’s Bay
The mayor of a New England town resolves to turn it into the next tourist hot spot, despite local warnings that it’s cursed.
No. 9: ‘Silo’ (2023) | Sci-fi mystery
The high-concept set-up for “Silo” is right there in the title: what if everyone living underground has been lied to about what’s actually outside? What’s left of humanity lives inside this giant bunker with a ton of rules, and asking too many questions is a very bad idea. Of course, people start asking questions anyway, and the deeper they dig, the shakier everything starts to feel.
What I love about “Silo” is how quickly you buy into this world. The bunker feels real, the rules make sense, and you totally understand why people are scared to push back. Rebecca Ferguson keeps the whole thing grounded even as the mystery gets bigger and weirder. It’s tense, easy to get sucked into, and with Seasons 3 opening up the world in a major way, this is one of Apple TV’s biggest long-term sci-fi shows.
Silo
In a ruined and toxic future, thousands live in a giant silo deep underground. After its sheriff breaks a cardinal rule and residents die mysteriously, engineer Juliette starts to uncover shocking secrets and the truth about the silo.
No. 8: ‘Slow Horses’ (2020) | Spy drama
Gary Oldman was honestly enough to get me interested in “Slow Horses.” He’s not exactly showing up for random TV shows, so that felt like a pretty good sign. And yep, the show is really good.
Oldman plays Jackson Lamb, a rude, messy, insanely smart MI5 agent running Slough House, basically where spies go after screwing up their careers. This isn’t glossy James Bond stuff. It’s bad decisions, office politics, old secrets, and a bunch of people trying to prove they’re not completely useless. The writing is sharp, the humor is really dry, and Kristin Scott Thomas and Jack Lowden are great too. It’s funny, tense, mean in a fun way, and easily one of the best spy shows on TV.
Slow Horses
Follow a dysfunctional team of MI5 agents—and their obnoxious boss, the notorious Jackson Lamb—as they navigate the espionage world’s smoke and mirrors to defend England from sinister forces.
No. 7: ‘Shrinking’ (2023) | Comedy drama
“Shrinking” pretty much had me as soon as I saw Jason Segel, Brett Goldstein, and Bill Lawrence were making it. That’s a very good comedy team, and the show is exactly what you’d hope for. It’s funny, messy, warm, and emotional in a way only Bill Lawrence can do.
Segel plays a grieving therapist who decides he’s done carefully dancing around what he thinks and starts telling his patients the truth. Obviously, this causes problems. Harrison Ford is probably my favorite part, though. He’s dry, cranky, weirdly sweet, and maybe funnier here than he’s ever been. The show works because the sad stuff and funny stuff are always happening at the same time. It never feels forced. You just really like spending time with these people.
Shrinking
Jimmy is struggling to grieve the loss of his wife while being a dad, friend, and therapist. He decides to try a new approach with everyone in his path: unfiltered, brutal honesty. Will it make things better—or unleash uproarious chaos?
No. 6: ‘Mythic Quest’ (2020) | Workplace comedy
“Mythic Quest” takes place inside the studio making a massive online video game, but most of the real chaos has nothing to do with the game. Ian Grimm is the giant-ego creative guy who thinks every idea he has is genius. Poppy Li is the engineer who actually has to make those ideas work. Then you’ve got executives, writers, testers, monetization people, and basically every annoying workplace personality imaginable.
What makes it great is that underneath all the office nonsense, it’s really about making stuff with other people. Creativity, ego, friendship, ambition, compromise. Anyone who’s ever worked on something creative with a team will recognize at least some of this pain. The updated finale also gives the show an actual ending, which I appreciate. For me, this is Apple TV’s best straight-up workplace comedy.
Mythic Quest
Meet the team behind the biggest multiplayer video game of all time. But in a workplace focused on building worlds, molding heroes, and creating legends, the most hard-fought battles don’t occur in the game—they happen in the office.
No. 5: ‘Foundation’ (2021) | Sci-fi epic
“Foundation” is one of the biggest swings Apple TV has ever taken. Adapting Isaac Asimov’s books is kind of an insane assignment because this story is huge and packed with stuff like math, fate, empire, history, and whether you can actually predict the future. Somehow, they turned all of that into a TV show that feels enormous.
And I mean enormous. You’ve got cloned emperors running a galactic empire, a theory predicting civilization is about to collapse, and storylines spread across planets and timelines. It looks incredible, obviously, but there’s enough character stuff underneath all the spectacle to keep you invested. I’ll admit, you have to give “Foundation” your full attention. This is not a dinner show to leave on in the background. But if you like big, complicated sci-fi worlds, there’s really nothing else like it on Apple TV.
Foundation
Follow a band of exiles on their monumental journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization amid the fall of the Galactic Empire.
No. 4: ‘For All Mankind’ (2019) | Alternate-history sci-fi
I love when shows ask questions about history. Like what if the Soviet Union beat America to the moon? That’s “For All Mankind.” And instead of killing the space race, that loss makes everyone go even harder. From there, the show turns into this huge alternate-history story about NASA, politics, families, technology, and people who just cannot stop trying to go farther into space.
The cool part is that it never feels like some dry history lesson. Yes, there are moon bases, Mars missions, and all kinds of giant space problems, but you’re really watching these characters live their whole lives. Every season jumps forward, so people age, relationships change, people die, and the world keeps moving. It’s big sci-fi, but it’s also really emotional. If “Foundation” is Apple’s giant space epic, “For All Mankind” is the one that hits you in the heart.
For All Mankind
Explore an aspirational world where NASA and the space program remained a priority and a focal point of our hopes and dreams as told through the lives of NASA astronauts, engineers, and their families.
No. 3: ‘The Studio’ (2025) | Comedy
“The Studio” flew up my personal Apple TV ranking basically immediately. It’s a Hollywood comedy from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg about a movie studio trying to survive while everyone wants art, money, awards, power, and attention at the exact same time. So yes, it’s a disaster.
Rogen plays Matt Remick, the new studio head who genuinely loves movies but also has to keep this giant company functioning. That’s what makes it so funny. He’s constantly choosing between selling out and making his own life unnecessarily difficult. There’s an episode where he dates a cancer surgeon that perfectly captures how ridiculous Hollywood can look next to an actual important job. The whole show makes fun of the movie business while clearly loving it too. And with another season coming, this could easily move even higher.
The Studio
Desperate for celebrity approval, the newly appointed head of a movie studio and his executive team at Continental Studios must juggle corporate demands with creative ambitions as they try to keep movies alive and relevant.
No. 2: ‘Severance’ (2022) | Sci-fi thriller
“Severance” is probably the show that made a lot of people go, oh, okay, Apple TV is actually serious about this. The premise is brilliant. Workers split their memories, so the version of them at work knows nothing about their real life, and the version at home has no clue what happens in the office. Sounds convenient for about five seconds… then it gets horrifying.
Season 1 is just an insanely good mystery. The empty hallways, bizarre office rules, weird coworkers, and tiny pieces of information all make you feel like something is very, very wrong. Season 2 somehow makes the world bigger without explaining away all the fun stuff. It’s strange, funny, sad, creepy, and the kind of show where every tiny detail feels important. This is exactly the kind of big conversation show people expect from HBO Max, and Apple absolutely nailed it.
Severance
Mark leads a team of office workers whose memories have been surgically divided between their work and personal lives. When a mysterious colleague appears outside of work, it begins a journey to discover the truth about their jobs.
No. 1: ‘Ted Lasso’ (2020) | Comedy drama
“Ted Lasso” is still the show I think of first when someone says Apple TV. It’s funny, warm, and incredibly sincere without getting cheesy, which is harder to pull off than it sounds. Jason Sudeikis plays an American football coach hired to run an English soccer team even though he barely understands soccer. That sounds like a sitcom joke. Instead, it turned into one of my favorite comedies of the last decade.
The show eventually becomes about way more than soccer. It’s friendship, anxiety, leadership, forgiveness, ego, grief, and people trying to become a little better than they were yesterday. And the whole Richmond crew is a huge reason it works. Hannah Waddingham, Brett Goldstein, Juno Temple, Brendan Hunt, everyone. You just want to hang out with these people. We’re still early in Season 4, but after watching the first few episodes, I can safely say this is still one of the best shows on TV. And I can’t wait to see what else they have in store with a brand new women’s team!
Ted Lasso
Ted Lasso, an American football coach, moves to England when he’s hired to manage a soccer team—despite having no experience. With cynical players and a doubtful town, will he get them to see the Ted Lasso Way?