The Best TV Shows to Stream Right Now (2026), by Platform
The best TV series streaming right now, ranked by Celluloid Score and sorted by platform — from Breaking Bad and Shōgun to Severance and Arcane. What to watch on Netflix, HBO Max, Apple TV+ and beyond, with critic and audience scores for every pick.
The best television is scattered across a dozen subscriptions — so we ranked it in one place. Every series below carries a Celluloid Score, averaged from critic reviews, audience ratings, Metascore, IMDb and fan ratings, so you can see what’s genuinely worth your time before you commit six hours to it. Browse the full, filterable catalog at the TV Shows hub; the highlights, by platform, are here.
The best of the best
The summit of our catalog is a cluster of all-time greats. Breaking Bad (94%) remains the benchmark — the most rigorously plotted character study the medium has produced. Right behind it sit the two dramas that invented prestige television: The Wire (93%), David Simon’s sociological epic that treats a whole city as its protagonist, and The Sopranos (93%), the mob saga that made the medium an artform. Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (92%) proves the comic register can hit just as hard, while Shōgun (91%) and Arcane (91%) lead the modern class. If you watch nothing else, start here.
Best shows on Netflix
Netflix still commands the deepest bench. Beyond Breaking Bad, The Sopranos and Arcane, there’s Better Call Saul (91%), the rare prequel that equals its predecessor; the one-shot devastation of Adolescence (88%); the ’80s nostalgia machine Stranger Things (86%); the regal melancholy of The Crown (85%); the true-crime phenomenon Baby Reindeer (85%); and the global sensation Squid Game (82%).
Best shows on HBO Max
HBO Max is the prestige powerhouse, home to the two shows that started it all — The Wire (93%) and The Sopranos (93%) — alongside the genre-defining Game of Thrones (88%). It also holds the Emmy-winning medical drama The Pitt (90%), the Shakespearean boardroom tragedy Succession (90%), the shattering game adaptation The Last of Us (88%), the razor-sharp satire The White Lotus (82%), and the Targaryen civil war of House of the Dragon (81%).
Best shows on Apple TV+
Apple TV+ punches above its size. Severance (90%) is the most formally radical vision of the modern workplace on television; Pachinko (87%) is a ravishing diaspora epic told across four generations and three languages; the feel-good juggernaut Ted Lasso (85%) made sincerity a virtue again; and Silo (78%) is a tightly wound dystopian mystery.
Best shows elsewhere
Don’t overlook the smaller libraries. Prime Video is home to Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s near-perfect tragicomedy Fleabag (92%), the savage superhero satire The Boys (83%) and the video-game hit Fallout (84%). Hulu carries Shōgun and the anxiety-engine kitchen drama The Bear (84%). Disney+ has Andor (88%), the most adult thing the Star Wars franchise has produced. And two often-overlooked platforms punch hard: Peacock has Rian Johnson’s delightful mystery Poker Face (83%), and Paramount+ holds the ferocious survival thriller Yellowjackets (77%).
How we rank them
Unlike a single outlet’s take, the Celluloid Score blends five independent sources into one number, so no single bad review — or bit of review-bombing — distorts the picture. Every show above links to its full page with a critic-versus-audience breakdown and an original Kaiser Khan review. Explore the whole catalog, filter by platform or genre, and find your next binge at the TV Shows hub.
