The 7 best TV shows streaming on Hulu to watch right now
The 7 best TV shows streaming on Hulu to watch right now
‘Furious’ takes the top spot, but ‘Adults’ and ‘It’s Always Sunny’ make this one of Hulu’s strongest lineups in a while.
Hulu is on a hot streak right now. There are the tried-and-true hits like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” returning for a (deranged, hilarious) Season 18, but there’s also the best new show on streaming in “Furious” from creator Elizabeth Meriwether. One quick glance at her previous work and none of this will come as a surprise. And it’s that kind of diversity and quality that makes Hulu a perma-streamer in our house. No churn, no concern we won’t find something to watch. So, here are my picks for the top seven shows streaming on Hulu right now.
Top 7 TV shows streaming on Hulu right now:
No. 7: ‘Alice and Steve’ (2026) | Comedy drama
There are probably healthier ways to test a 30-year friendship than sleeping with your best friend’s 26-year-old daughter. “Alice and Steve” does not choose one of those ways. Steve (Jemaine Clement) and Izzy get serious, Alice (Nicola Walker) reacts pretty much how you’d expect a mother to react, and suddenly decades of friendship are being ripped open over dinner.
The performances are great. Walker makes Alice funny while still being selfish and furious at times, and Clement has exactly the slightly baffled energy you want from the guy standing in the middle of this particular bomb crater he created. I’m a big Clement fan, and while his comedy is definitely niche, it’s my niche.
Alice and Steve
Alice is devastated when her best friend Steve starts dating her 26-year-old daughter Izzy. She’s going to lose her best friend and her daughter in one fell swoop. Alice tries everything she can to end the relationship. Unfortunately for her, Steve’s more than ready for the attack, and what begins as a perfect friendship, devolves into an all-out feud.
No. 6: ‘The Season’ (2026) | Revenge drama
Boats. Champagne. Hong Kong money. I’m sold. “The Season” drops Cola into the orbit of the very powerful Hext family, and she is clearly not hanging around because she loves marina life. There’s a revenge plan buried in here somewhere, though the show makes you wait for it a bit. Maybe too long?
Then things start to get dark. Old grudges come back. Friendships suddenly feel transactional. I’m a sucker for this kind of rich-people implosion when the location actually has some personality, and Hong Kong gives the whole thing a different pulse from the usual giant-house-by-the-ocean version. Plus yachts are inherently suspicious… too easy to dump a body over the edge.
The Season
A group of friends in Hong Kong’s elite boating scene find their summer getaway descending into betrayal and power plays as hidden agendas surface.
No. 5: ‘The Bear’ (2022) | Kitchen dramedy
“The Bear” makes curdled milk feel like “Succession” level high drama. It’s legit impressive. Carmy came home to Chicago after his brother died, inherited a sandwich shop, tried to make it into something bigger, and accidentally built the world’s most stressful support group.
Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) is now stepping into control, Carmy is planning to leave, Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) remains one scream away from combustion, and Season 5 throws everybody back into one final make-or-break service together. Which is really where I want these people anyway: cramped kitchen, clock running, feelings absolutely NOT scheduled for tonight and yet here they come. The show can wander pretty far into grief and ambition and family damage, then somebody needs a sauce right now and suddenly you’re stressed as all hell again. Welcome back, chef, for the final service.
The Bear
Carmy, a young fine-dining chef, comes home to Chicago to run his family sandwich shop. As he fights to transform the shop and himself, he works alongside a rough-around-the-edges crew that ultimately reveal themselves as his chosen family.
No. 4: ‘Not Suitable for Work’ (2026) | Ensemble comedy
Nobody in “Not Suitable for Work” has any business giving anybody else advice, which is why it’s so fun to watch them do it. Mindy Kaling’s comedy sticks five twenty-somethings across the hall from each other in Murray Hill and gives them ambitious careers in finance, fashion, medicine, and other jobs where people apparently own nicer shoes than I do.
Then adulthood begins attacking from several directions at once. A date bleeds into work. Work bleeds into friendship. The appeal here is less “what happens next?” and more “these people again…,” affectionately. They’re young enough to believe every mistake is catastrophic and old enough to have rent due afterward — the ideal zone for a comedy.
Not Suitable for Work
Follow five work-obsessed twenty-somethings striving for professional success and, if they have time, personal happiness in Manhattan’s most glamorous neighborhood, Murray Hill.
No. 3: ‘Adults’ (2025) | Comedy
“Adults” is exactly the kind of comedy I want more of on Hulu because these people are all technically grown-ups and yet… absolutely nobody should be trusted with anything important. Malik Elassal’s Samir has four friends basically piled into his childhood home in Queens, including Billie (Lucy Freyer), Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), Issa (Amita Rao), and Anton (Owen Thiele), and most episodes are just them taking some fairly normal young-adult problem and making it much, MUCH worse.
Season 2 is where the show really starts cooking. Paul has a secret second group of friends he’s embarrassed by. Billie gets extremely into jury duty. Anton has sperm-donor drama. At one point there’s an acid trip, a raccoon, relationship problems, and then a possum gets involved because apparently the raccoon wasn’t enough. And yet, underneath all the sex jokes and terrible decisions, there’s a really sweet story about friends who love each other. And I love that.
Adults
A group of twenty-somethings in New York trying to be good people, despite being neither “good” nor “people” yet.
No. 2: ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ (2005) | Sitcom
Season 18 of “It’s Always Sunny” doesn’t pull any punches. I’m four episodes in, and each one is wilder than the last. So far, Frank marries a dead bride, Dee and Dennis try to get rich (again), and the gang ends up living at a homeless encampment after their trailer runs out of gas (Dee ends up on fentanyl) and decides that’s really the best way to live.
Charlie also comes up with a million-dollar idea for a kind of human prop-up device for the bent-over homeless people suffering from addiction. So, yes, to answer your unasked question, it’s still funny as hell, deranged as ever, and willing to go where very few shows dare to go. I love this series and will always love this series.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Four egocentric friends run a neighborhood Irish pub in Philadelphia and try to find their way through the adult world of work and relationships. Unfortunately, their warped views and precarious judgments often lead them to trouble, creating a myriad of uncomfortable situations that usually only get worse before they get better.
No. 1: ‘Furious’ (2026) | Crime thriller
For Tara and I, “Furious” was appointment viewing — our Sunday night, 9 p.m. ritual harkening back to the days of “Game of Thrones.” Why? Because this is one of the best shows in years; not just one of the best thrillers or crime dramas, but overall shows, period. I already added it to my list of the top 10 Hulu shows of all time. Okay, you get it, moving on.
Emmy Rossum plays Alice Black, an FBI agent hunting Catherine, a female serial killer played by Lola Petticrew. But the show isn’t really interested in turning this into another basic cops-versus-killer story. You know who Catherine is. The real mystery is why she’s doing what she’s doing, and once you (and Alice) start to find out, it becomes much harder to see this as a simple game of good versus evil. And that moral ambiguity is one of the fun parts of this show. You’ll root for Alice, then Catherine, then Alice again, then Nora, then Danny, then Catherine. A ping-pong ball of identification. It’s tense, emotional, really funny at times, and always pushing you to rethink who you’re rooting for. Now that all episodes of Season 1 are out, there’s no excuse not to binge this show.
Furious
FBI agent Alice Black is on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating female serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur.