The 10 best TV shows streaming on AMC+ to watch right now
The 10 best TV shows streaming on AMC+ to watch right now
‘Mad Men’ still takes the top spot, but ‘Rectify’ finally joins a list packed with some of AMC’s strangest and best TV.
One strange thing about AMC+ is that the show that basically dominates the network’s identity, “The Walking Dead,” isn’t actually on AMC+ right now! That one lives over on Netflix, though it sounds like the two streamers will share the franchise starting in 2027. Once you get over that anomaly, though, there’s some good stuff here. Old-school AMC prestige stuff. Lots of vampires. Frozen men slowly losing their minds. London gangsters beating the absolute hell out of each other. The rule for this top 10 stays simple: the show has to be streaming on AMC+ right now. And I screwed up the last version because somehow I completely missed one of the most acclaimed dramas on the platform. Pretty significant oversight! But better late than never. Here’s where I’d start.
Top 10 all-time best TV shows streaming on AMC+:
No. 10: ‘Preacher’ (2016) | Supernatural adventure
I’m not sure how you pitch “Preacher” without sounding a little deranged. Dominic Cooper plays Jesse Custer, a Texas preacher who suddenly gets the ability to command people with his voice. At the same time, his best friend Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) is an Irish vampire. His ex, Tulip (Ruth Negga), is basically a human wrecking ball. Then the three of them decide to go find God because God has apparently disappeared. Why not!
From there, this thing becomes violence, religion, angels, cowboys, exploding people, very questionable choices, and a sense of humor that occasionally feels like somebody dared the writers to see what AMC would actually let them put on television. Somehow it holds together. Mostly because Jesse, Cassidy, and Tulip are such a great little disaster of a trio. Definitely the strangest show on this list and maybe the strangest show AMC ever made.
Preacher
A preacher sets out on a mission to make the almighty himself confess his sin of abandoning the world. With his best friend Cassidy, an alcoholic Irish vampire, his love Tulip, a red blooded gun towing Texan, and the power of genesis, an unholy child born from an angel and a devil, Jesse gives up everything to set the world straight with its creator.
No. 9: ‘Interview with the Vampire’ (2022) | Gothic horror
The thing I wasn’t expecting from “Interview with the Vampire” is how sad it is. I mean, obviously there are vampires. There’s blood. Everybody looks incredible while doing horrible things in beautifully lit rooms. But underneath all that, Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid) are basically trapped inside this enormous, centuries-long relationship that keeps mutating between romance, obsession, resentment, and friendship-ending fights.
Sam Reid is nuts in this role, by the way. Lestat can walk into a scene smiling, and somehow you’re already nervous. It also feels much more emotionally complicated than the “1994 movie,” which I wasn’t necessarily expecting going in. And now Season 3 becomes “The Vampire Lestat” with Lestat basically going full rock star. Because that’s really what we all want to see.
Interview with the Vampire
A century-old vampire from New Orleans reunites with an ailing journalist to recount his life of bloodlust and his tumultuous relationship with the rakish Frenchman who turned him.
No. 8: ‘The Terror’ (2018) | Horror anthology
Being trapped in Arctic ice in 1846 is not a pleasant way to die. “The Terror” spends an entire season exploring why. Season 1 follows Captain Francis Crozier (Jared Harris), James Fitzjames (Tobias Menzies), and the doomed Franklin Expedition after their ships get frozen solid while searching for the Northwest Passage. Then the food starts running out. Then everybody gets sick. Then people start turning on each other. There may also be something huge wandering around outside killing them… so things don’t get much worse.
The reason this season sticks with me is that honestly the monster almost feels unnecessary because the situation is already horrifying without it. Season 2 completely resets things, following Chester Nakayama (Derek Mio) and a Japanese American community dealing with internment during World War II while something supernatural follows them too. Totally different story, same general feeling that you should maybe turn a light on.
The Terror
A chilling anthology series featuring stories of people in terrifying situations inspired by true historical events.
No. 7: ‘Gangs of London’ (2020) | Crime saga
“Gangs of London” does not believe in a normal fistfight. Someone gets thrown through a wall. A table becomes a weapon, a knife comes out. Meanwhile, a pretty dang good crime story unfolds behind all the violence. Joe Cole plays Sean Wallace, whose father is murdered right at the start, leaving Sean to inherit a criminal empire he may or may not have the temperament to control.
Meanwhile, Elliot Finch (Sope Dirisu) is moving through this whole mess with his own agenda, and basically every criminal organization in London smells weakness at the same time. The Albanians. The Kurds. The Irish. Everybody wants a piece. The action is a huge reason to watch, especially that completely insane pub fight, but the show works because all this violence keeps circling back to family. Sons inheriting their fathers’ damage. People confusing loyalty with love. Grief turning into stupidity. Then somebody gets launched through another window, and we’re back.
Gangs of London
When the head of a criminal organisation, Finn Wallace is assassinated, the sudden power vacuum his death creates threatens the fragile peace between the intricate web of gangs operating on the streets of the city. Now it’s up to the grieving, volatile and impulsive Sean Wallace to restore control and find those responsible for killing his father.
No. 6: ‘A Discovery of Witches’ (2018) | Fantasy romance
Okay, “A Discovery of Witches” has a little “Twilight” in its bloodstream. Witch falls for vampire, forbidden romance, and supernatural people are very concerned about it. But this is the version where everybody has advanced degrees and occasionally disappears into Elizabethan England. Teresa Palmer plays Diana Bishop, a historian and witch who accidentally summons a long-lost magical manuscript that basically causes every vampire, witch, and daemon around to perk up and go, wait… she found WHAT?
Matthew Goode is Matthew Clairmont, the extremely old vampire/geneticist who gets pulled into the mess and then, obviously, into Diana. The romance does a lot of the lifting here. But there’s also enough mythology, family drama, creature politics, and time-travel fun wrapped around it that the show keeps getting bigger instead of just becoming three seasons of attractive supernatural people eying each other. Though, to be fair, I didn’t mind any of that.
A Discovery of Witches
Closet witch Diana Bishop and centuries-old vampire Matthew Clairmont are drawn into a deadly mystery and forbidden romance when a magical book shows up in an Oxford library.
No. 5: ‘Dark Winds’ (2022) | Western thriller
Zahn McClarnon is pretty entertaining to watch, even when he’s not saying anything. And in “Dark Winds” he plays Navajo Tribal Police Lt. Joe Leaphorn alongside Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon), investigating murders and other crimes across the 1970s Southwest. But the cases always seem to scrape against something older. Family, history, spiritual beliefs — stuff people thought they buried.
Even the landscape starts feeling involved because there’s so much empty space around these characters that every little thing feels… louder somehow? It’s a vibe and hard to explain. The show also has zero interest in racing. It’ll let Joe sit with something. It’ll let a silence hang there longer than most crime shows would dare. Then suddenly the mystery tightens and you realize you can’t look away.
Dark Winds
This psychological thriller follows two Navajo police officers, Leaphorn and Chee, in the 1970s Southwest as their search for clues in a grisly double murder case forces them to challenge their own spiritual beliefs and come to terms with the trauma of their pasts.
No. 4: ‘Rectify’ (2013) | Drama
Twenty years is a really, really long time. Long enough that when Daniel Holden (Aden Young) gets released from death row after new DNA evidence blows up his murder conviction, “Rectify” barely even treats freedom like a victory. Daniel comes home to this little Georgia town and… now what? His sister Amantha (Abigail Spencer) has spent basically her entire adult life fighting to get him out. His family learned how to live without him. A whole lot of people in town still think he did it. And Daniel has this almost alien quality because, yeah, the guy went into prison as a teenager and came out pushing 40. Normal life is not normal anymore.
Very little about “Rectify” behaves like regular TV, actually. It’s slow (sometimes aggressively slow). The murder mystery is hanging around, but the show seems almost annoyed when you try to make that the point. It would rather watch Daniel, Amantha, and this whole bruised family figure out whether you can actually give somebody their life back after you’ve already taken most of it. It’s a strange, quiet show, and one of the great dramas on AMC+ I somehow left off the list. Fixed!
Rectify
After 19 years on Death Row for the rape and murder of his teenage girlfriend, Daniel Holden is going home. His conviction has been vacated due to new DNA evidence. Now he has to return to a world he no longer knows and his reentry into the outside world may be as unforgiving as prison. Daniel is haunted by the past, dogged by the present, and uncertain of the future. As he struggles to adapt to his new life, his homecoming reignites the fears of a small town and threatens to shatter his family’s fragile peace. Daniel’s alleged crime divided a community. Will his freedom tear it in half?
No. 3: ‘Orphan Black’ (2013) | Sci-fi thriller
At some point while watching “Orphan Black,” your brain just stops noticing that Tatiana Maslany is playing all these people. That’s the trick. Sarah Manning is Sarah. Alison is Alison. Cosima is Cosima. Helena is… Helena, very much so. Then you remember it’s one actor, and the whole thing gets more impressive again.
The story starts with Sarah, a con artist having a fairly terrible day, watching a woman who looks exactly like her step in front of a train. Sarah’s reaction is not “wow, traumatic.” It’s basically: maybe I can steal this woman’s identity — excellent decision! Obviously this opens the door to clones, biotech experiments, conspiracies, cults, and increasingly complicated explanations of who made whom and why. The plot can get wild. But Maslany keeps grounding it because every clone has her own posture, rhythm, humor, whole little internal weather system. Sometimes she’s literally playing one clone pretending to be another clone, and you can tell which one is pretending. Come on…
Orphan Black
A streetwise hustler is pulled into a compelling conspiracy after witnessing the suicide of a girl who looks just like her.
No. 2: ‘Halt and Catch Fire’ (2014) | Tech industry drama
I missed “Halt and Catch Fire” on this list for way too long, too. Whoops. This one starts in 1980s Texas with Joe MacMillan (Lee Pace), Gordon Clark (Scoot McNairy), Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis), Donna Clark (Kerry Bishé), and John Bosworth (Toby Huss) trying to elbow their way into the personal-computer revolution. Then the show keeps moving. PCs become online communities. Online communities become the early web. Everybody wants to invent tomorrow as soon as possible, which sounds exciting until you realize these people are also destroying friendships, marriages, companies, and occasionally themselves while doing it.
And somewhere along the way the tech almost sneaks into the background. Donna and Cameron especially become this messy, frustrating, wonderful center of the show because they understand each other better than almost anyone and can also make each other absolutely miserable. And there are only 40 episodes. That’s it. You can watch the entire rise-and-collapse-and-start-again cycle without signing over six months of your life, and by the end you may care way more about these fake computer companies than is reasonable.
Halt and Catch Fire
During the rise of the PC era in the early 1980s, an unlikely trio - a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy - take personal and professional risks in the race to build a computer that will change the world as they know it.
No. 1: ‘Mad Men’ (2007) | Period drama
There was AMC before “Mad Men” and then there was AMC after “Mad Men.” That’s basically the argument. Jon Hamm plays Don Draper, an advertising guy in 1960s Manhattan who has the hair, the suits, the office, the cigarettes, the beautiful apartment… and roughly a thousand internal problems he would rather die than discuss. Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) walks into Sterling Cooper as a secretary and starts quietly becoming something much bigger. Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) understands how the place works before almost anybody else does. Roger drinks. Everybody drinks, actually… a lot.
And the funny thing is, “Mad Men” can be hilarious. People remember the existential dread, sure, but this show is really funny when it wants to be. Then two minutes later somebody says one tiny thing that completely destroys another person. That whiplash is part of why it still feels so alive. The 1960s are changing outside the office; these people are changing at wildly different speeds inside it, and advertising becomes this weird little laboratory for America figuring out what it wants to pretend it is. Seven seasons sounds like a commitment, and it is. But it’s worth it. If there’s “one show you need to watch on AMC+,” I’m still starting here.
Mad Men
Set in 1960-1970 New York, this sexy, stylized and provocative drama follows the lives of the ruthlessly competitive men and women of Madison Avenue advertising.