Apple TV+ has one of the smallest original libraries in streaming and, counterintuitively, one of the best hit rates. The service launched in November 2019 with a handful of big-budget originals and has since won more than 100 Emmy Awards, including back-to-back Outstanding Comedy Series wins for Ted Lasso. If you're managing multiple subscriptions and trying to decide whether Apple TV+ earns its slot alongside Netflix or Hulu, the answer hinges almost entirely on which shows you watch — because the catalogue is narrow. This guide ranks the genuinely essential series so you know exactly what justifies the subscription. For a broader comparison of where Apple TV+ sits against other platforms — particularly for genre content — see the complete streaming service rankings for 2026.
TL;DR
- Best overall: Severance (Season 2 arrived February 2025 — still the sharpest thing on any streamer)
- Best drama: Slow Horses (four seasons, consistently excellent, criminally under-watched)
- Best comedy: Shrinking (warmer and funnier than Ted Lasso ever got in its third season)
- Best sci-fi: Silo (high-concept world-building that actually pays off)
- Best hidden gem: Black Bird (six episodes, devastating, most people still haven't seen it)
- Best long-runner: For All Mankind (alternate-history space drama, now in its fourth season)
- Skip if impatient: The Morning Show (prestige production, uneven writing, requires tolerance for melodrama)
- Worth tracking: Apple TV+ originals stream in 4K Dolby Vision/Atmos by default — the production quality floor is genuinely higher than most competitors
Why Apple TV+ Shows Hit Differently (When They Hit)
Apple TV+ is not trying to win on volume. Netflix releases hundreds of originals per year; Apple releases dozens. That constraint forces a different editorial calculus — every greenlit show has to justify the spend, and the spend is considerable. Severance reportedly cost over $20 million per episode in its second season. That's HBO money, sometimes more.
The result is a platform where production values are a baseline, not a differentiator. What separates the best Apple TV+ shows from the merely expensive ones is writing. Slow Horses has it. Severance has it. The Morning Show, for all its star power, frequently doesn't — and that gap is obvious when you compare them back to back.
One mild complaint worth registering: Apple's release cadence is frustratingly slow. Severance Season 2 took nearly three years. Silo Season 2 took over a year and a half. If you're a binge-watcher who hates waiting, Apple TV+ will test your patience in ways Netflix simply doesn't. It's the streaming equivalent of a restaurant that makes you book three weeks out — the food is usually worth it, but you have to want it.
The Best Apple TV+ Shows, Ranked and Categorised
Severance — Best Overall Show on Any Streamer Right Now
Severance is the series that made Apple TV+ mandatory. The premise — office workers surgically separate their work memories from their personal ones — is a genuine high-concept hook, but the execution is what makes it extraordinary. Ben Stiller directs the pilot and several subsequent episodes with an architectural precision that turns Lumon Industries' fluorescent hallways into one of the most unsettling environments in recent television. Season 2, which landed in February 2025, deepens the mythology without collapsing under the weight of its own mystery — a failure mode that kills most high-concept shows by their second season.
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.
Rotten Tomatoes has Season 2 at 97% critical approval. More relevantly, it's one of the few shows where critics and general audiences are in near-perfect agreement. If you subscribe to Apple TV+ for one show, it's this one.
Slow Horses — The Best Drama Apple TV+ Has
Slow Horses is a British spy thriller based on Mick Herron's Slough House novels, and it is, without exaggeration, the best sustained drama on the platform. Gary Oldman plays Jackson Lamb — a deliberately grotesque, brilliant intelligence officer running a team of MI5 rejects — with the kind of commitment that makes every scene feel slightly dangerous. Four seasons in as of 2025, and the quality has not declined. That is genuinely rare.
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.
The show earns its place at the top of any Apple TV+ drama list not through spectacle but through craft: tight plotting, morally complex characters, and a refusal to make any single person entirely sympathetic or entirely villainous. If you've been watching the best series on Netflix and want something tonally different — colder, more ironic, less emotionally manipulative — Slow Horses is the answer.
Shrinking — Best Comedy on the Platform
Shrinking debuted in January 2023 and has become one of Apple TV+'s most reliably watchable comedies. Jason Segel plays a grief-stricken therapist who starts ignoring professional ethics and just telling his patients what he actually thinks. It sounds like a setup for broad comedy, but the show is smarter than that — genuinely moving in its second season, which aired in late 2024, without ever becoming maudlin.
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?
Ted Lasso gets more awards attention, but Shrinking is the more consistent show, particularly after Ted Lasso's third season lost the plot somewhat. Harrison Ford, in what amounts to his first major ongoing TV role, is remarkably good — loose, funny, and not trying to be Harrison Ford.
Silo — Best Sci-Fi Series
Silo is the adaptation of Hugh Howey's self-published novel about the last surviving humans living inside a massive underground silo, with no reliable knowledge of what destroyed the outside world. Season 1 (2023) was patient, world-building-focused sci-fi that paid off its setup in the final two episodes. Season 2, which concluded in early 2025, broadened the scope without abandoning the claustrophobic tension that made the first season work.
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.
Silo is the right recommendation for viewers who find For All Mankind's optimism too clean and want something with more dread baked in. Rebecca Ferguson carries both seasons entirely — it's a lead performance that would have won more awards if the show weren't so easy to overlook.
For All Mankind — Best Long-Running Series
For All Mankind is alternate-history science fiction that begins with the premise: what if the Soviet Union won the space race? Each season jumps a decade forward, meaning the show has now covered the 1970s through the 2030s across four seasons. It's ambitious in a way that most streaming shows aren't — genuinely interested in how political systems, technological development, and individual ambition interact over time.
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.
The commitment required is real. Season 1 is the slowest. If you get through it, the show rewards you with one of the most consistent long-form narratives currently running on any platform. Season 4, set on Mars and released in late 2023, is the best since Season 2.
Pachinko — Most Ambitious Storytelling
Pachinko adapts Min Jin Lee's multigenerational novel about a Korean family spanning 1915 to 1989, told in Korean, Japanese, and English across four interconnected timelines. It is the most formally ambitious show Apple TV+ has produced — the directing, production design, and lead performances (particularly Youn Yuh-jung) are all exceptional. Season 2 arrived in 2024 and deepened the historical sweep without simplifying the emotional complexity.
This sweeping saga chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in an indomitable quest to survive and thrive.
If you're accustomed to comparing streaming services purely on volume, Pachinko is useful evidence for why that metric is misleading. Two seasons of Pachinko contain more genuine craft than many platforms' entire original catalogues.
Black Bird — Best Hidden Gem
Black Bird is a six-episode limited series from 2022 that most Apple TV+ subscribers have not watched, which is baffling. Taron Egerton plays a convicted drug dealer offered a deal: get a confession from a suspected serial killer (Paul Walter Hauser) in a maximum-security prison, and earn his freedom. Dennis Lehane wrote it. It is methodical, psychologically precise, and quietly devastating — the kind of show that finishes and leaves you sitting in silence for a few minutes.
As Jimmy Keene begins a 10-year prison sentence, he gets an incredible offer: If he can elicit a confession from suspected killer Larry Hall, Jimmy will be freed. Completing this mission becomes the challenge of a lifetime.
This is also the last performance by Ray Liotta, who died before the series aired. His scenes have a weight that's hard to separate from that knowledge.
The Morning Show — Watch It, But Know What You're Getting
The Morning Show is Apple TV+'s most visible prestige drama — Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon headlining a behind-the-scenes look at a network morning show navigating a #MeToo scandal. The production values are immaculate, the performances are strong, and the writing is genuinely inconsistent. Seasons 1 and 3 are better than Season 2, which lost focus spectacularly.
A behind-the-scenes look at the lives of the people who help America wake up in the morning, exploring the unique challenges faced by the men and women who carry out this daily televised ritual.
It's worth watching, particularly if you've been tracking what's worth streaming on Hulu and want something with a different tonal register — more self-serious, more explicitly political. Just go in knowing the show's relationship with subtlety is complicated.
Apple TV+ Hidden Gems Worth Surfacing
Beyond Black Bird, a few shows consistently fall through the recommendation algorithm:
Presumed Innocent (2024) — Jake Gyllenhaal in a legal thriller that starts as a straightforward courtroom drama and becomes something considerably stranger by the finale. Eight episodes, no filler.
Bad Sisters (2022–2024) — an Irish dark comedy about four sisters who plot to kill their abusive brother-in-law. It sounds grim; it's actually one of the funniest shows on the platform, and Sharon Horgan is extraordinary in it.
Bad Sisters is worth a separate mention because it's the clearest proof that Apple TV+ can do genre-blending comedy-drama better than most. Season 2 landed in late 2024 and was, if anything, sharper than the first.
The tight-knit Garvey sisters have always looked out for one another. But when the toxic brother-in-law they all wanted dead actually dies, it turns their lives upside down and tests their bond like nothing before.
Lessons in Chemistry (2023) — Brie Larson as a female chemist in the 1960s who becomes a cooking show host. Sounds like prestige-TV pastiche. It's warmer and stranger than the premise suggests, and it has the best use of a dog as a supporting character in recent television history.
How to Get the Most Out of Apple TV+
Apple TV+ streams everything in 4K Dolby Vision with Dolby Atmos audio by default, assuming your device supports it — no premium tier required. That's not true of Netflix (which charges extra for 4K) or most other platforms. If you're watching on a modern TV with decent audio, the picture and sound quality are noticeably better than equivalents elsewhere.
As of early 2026, Apple TV+ costs $9.99/month in the US, and bundles into Apple One. If you're already paying for iCloud+ or Apple Music, the bundle math often makes Apple TV+ effectively free or near-free. Worth checking before paying standalone.
Managing Apple TV+ alongside Netflix, Max, Hulu, and the rest gets complicated quickly — particularly tracking which shows are mid-season, which are returning, and which you've actually finished. If you're running three or more subscriptions simultaneously, a dedicated tracker makes the difference between actually watching things and just paying for them. The same discipline applies when you're hunting for genre content across platforms: our streaming service guide for horror movies covers how to evaluate whether a niche subscription earns its keep month to month.
For comparison: if you're weighing Apple TV+ against Netflix's original drama output, the best Netflix series guide is the most direct parallel — same methodology, different platform.
FAQ
What is the best Apple TV+ show right now?
Severance is the best Apple TV+ show currently available, with Season 2 landing in February 2025 to near-universal critical acclaim. Slow Horses is the best sustained drama across multiple seasons. Both are worth starting immediately.
Is Apple TV+ worth subscribing to in 2026?
Apple TV+ is worth subscribing to if you intend to watch Severance, Slow Horses, Silo, or Shrinking — any one of which justifies a month's subscription at $9.99. The catalogue is small, so most subscribers rotate: subscribe, binge the backlog, pause, return for new seasons.
Does Apple TV+ have any hidden gems?
Yes. Black Bird (2022) is a six-episode limited series that most subscribers haven't seen, despite being one of the best crime dramas the platform has produced. Bad Sisters and Presumed Innocent are similarly under-watched relative to their quality.
What genre is Apple TV+ best at?
Apple TV+ is strongest in prestige drama and slow-burn thriller. Its sci-fi output (Silo, For All Mankind, Severance) is also consistently above average. It has less depth in horror and action compared to competitors.
How does Apple TV+ compare to Netflix for original series?
Apple TV+ has a smaller catalogue but a higher quality hit rate per title. Netflix produces far more originals annually but with greater variance in quality. For a direct comparison of Netflix's best current output, see the best new series on Netflix right now.
Are Apple TV+ shows available in 4K?
Yes. Apple TV+ streams all originals in 4K Dolby Vision with Dolby Atmos audio at no additional charge, provided your device and internet connection support it. This is different from Netflix, which requires a premium plan tier for 4K access.
How many seasons does Severance have?
Severance has two seasons as of early 2026. Season 1 premiered in February 2022 and Season 2 premiered in January 2025. A third season has been confirmed but no release date has been announced.
What Apple TV+ shows have won Emmy Awards?
Apple TV+ originals have collectively won more than 100 Emmy Awards. Ted Lasso won Outstanding Comedy Series for its first two seasons (2021 and 2022). The Morning Show, Severance, Pachinko, and Black Bird have also received multiple Emmy nominations and wins across various categories.
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