This week it’s a return to our “a show for every streamer” format, where – yep – we recommend a show to watch for every streaming service. We last did one of these two years ago, and since then the landscape has dramatically shifted. Some streamers have been folded into others (BritBox is now part of ITVX in the UK), some have rebranded (goodbye IMDb TV, hello Amazon Freevee), some have shuttered (RIP Sundance Now), and some, confusingly, have rebranded then shuttered (so long Lionsgate+, formerly Starzplay, we hardly knew thee). And tellingly very few new streaming services have emerged, suggesting that an industry that has had to reckon with the unsustainable levels of growth it had previously encouraged.
Still, even if streaming is in a period of contraction, there’s still an awful lot of services around. Here are our picks for the must watch shows on each of the major streamers, from Apple to ITVX (note to our international readers: this is a guide for UK streaming sites, but hopefully most of the below is available in some form to you too):
Amazon Prime Video | Fallout
Breaking: video game remakes are good now! Like HBO’s impressive The Last of Us series, this adaptation of the gonzo post-apocalyptic actioner (main picture) understands what made its source material really sing. The gleeful ultraviolence brings to mind another Amazon show, The Boys, but Fallout’s real fun is to be had in its lurid subversion of 1950s picket fence tropes.
Amazon Freevee | Primo
More Amazon? Yes, but the e-commerce monster’s free streamer is worth flagging for those not willing to give them their hard-earned money. It has a (very hit and miss) library of old shows and films, but also some surprisingly great originals as well. Jury Duty you know already, but Primo – a charming, low-stakes coming of age comedy from author Shea Serrano and Mike “Parks and Rec” Schur – is well worth your time too.
Apple TV+ | Masters of the Air
The brilliant Severance would be a shoo-in for this spot, but well – it’s been more than two years since its first season aired and there’s still no sign of the second one. Disqualified! Instead let’s go with this air force-focused sequel to Band of Brothers and The Pacific (pictured below), which starts slowly but really gets thrumming with an explosive fifth episode.
BBC iPlayer | 20th Century Snapshots collection
As well as huge number of new shows and films, iPlayer has really beefed up its archive in recent times, re-upping classic series like Clocking Off and Wolf Hall and unearthing some fantastic vintage documentaries. This collection picks out big and small stories that explain the 20th century, including Alan Whicker encountering San Francisco hippies and the Panorama that aired in the wake of the moon landing.
Channel 4 | Defiance: Fighting the Far Right
Channel 4’s streaming service, formerly named 4OD, and All 4, and now just called errm Channel 4, gets a bad rap. Yes the ads are hellish, but it’s free, and there’s an impressive box set collection (ER, The West Wing, Frasier) as well as great homegrown series. This Riz Ahmed-produced three-part documentary is an example of the latter, looking at the British Asians in the late 70s who took on the National Front in their home towns.
Disney+ | Shōgun
Yes you’ve already been told about this one at length, but the Japan-set historical drama worth re-recommending, not least because its most recent episode was probably the best single hour of TV so far this year. Anna Sawai, as the tortured noblewoman translator Mariko, puts in a performance for the ages. Roll on next week’s finale!
Discovery+ | Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV
Discovery has fashioned out its own lane in the streaming superhighway: it’s the place to go for nature and science docs, and intense true-crime series. Quiet on Set is a jaw-dropping example of the latter, a truly troubling exposé of inappropriate behaviour and teen sexualisation at kids channel Nickelodeon that prompted much soul-searching in the US when it was released last month.
ITVX | G’Wed
A surprise ratings hit, this extremely bawdy comedy (pictured above) is set among the horny, sweary teens at a Birkenhead high school, into which a posh boy from down south has been unceremoniously dropped. Not every joke lands but the whole thing so energetic and confident that it hardly matters.
My5 | Coma
Channel 5 isn’t just wall-to-wall documentaries about air fryers, you know. There’s drama too, and drama with some real pedigree at that. This tense and tidily executed series stars the great Jason Watkins as a downtrodden everyman who finds himself deep in the mire after a violent altercation with a neighbourhood ne’er-do-well.
Netflix | Baby Reindeer
Credit to Netflix for taking a punt on the dark, singular comic talents of Richard Gadd, who here adapts his own experiences of being stalked into an engrossing, watch-between-your-fingers comedy-drama-thriller hybrid. Jessica Gunning, as Gadd’s stalker Martha brings pathos and complexity to a role that could easily have been a one-dimensional Kathy Bates in Misery retread.
Now | Curb Your Enthusiasm
The problem with Now’s acquisition deal with HBO is that shows can be yanked off the platform with little warning, just as you were churning through that Sopranos rewatch. But the final season of Larry David’s carnival of misanthropy, including its adoringly received grand finale, is available in full on the platform until 8 May, with the other 11 series also available until the end of May.
Paramount+ | The Curse
Newish streamer Paramount+ has a pretty robust library of TV and films (including the Yellowstone expanded universe and the entire South Park archive) to paw through. It’s biggest selling point though is this uncategorisable series from TV’s premier squirm-inducer, Nathan Fielder. He and Emma Stone star as a celebrity home-flipping couple in a show that reckons with gentrification and white guilt, while managing to be very, very funny.
