Every single week, our TV and film experts will list the most important ten streaming selections for you to pop into your queues. We’re not strictly operating upon reviews or accrued streaming clicks (although yes, we’ve scoured the streaming site charts) but, instead, upon those selections that are really worth noticing amid the churning sea of content. There’s a lot out there, after all, and your time is valuable.
10. Dead Boy Detectives (Netflix series)
The Sandman universe receives a much appreciated spin off series while awaiting a second season of the flagship show. Will these BFF ghosts be renewed for more adventures, too? Netflix isn’t revealing its hand yet, but this series begins with a bang-up cameo and continues by launching into the mysteries that human investigators cannot manage to solve. The two title characters were born decades apart but come together for a common cause, and even though Tom Sturridge admitted to being somewhat shook by what he observed, that revelation does bode well for the future.
9. Unfrosted (Netflix film)
Jerry Seinfeld might not have been too confident in his directorial debut, given that Rob McElhenney was able to easily disprove the Seinfeld claim that “P.C. Crap” has made laughs impossible to achieve in 2024. This Netflix “comedy” (and the jury is still fully out, although critics are overall not thrilled) goes back in time to retell the 1963 birth of the Pop-Tart, which somehow came together while rival cereal brands were going at each other. The film includes a sea of celebrity appearances from Hugh Grant, Melissa McCarthy, Amy Schumer, Bill Burr, Maria Bakalova, and Seinfeld himself.
8. The Sympathizer (HBO series streaming on Max)
Robert Downey Jr. isn’t messing around here with a post-Oscar appearance in which he portrays four roles, including film director, professor, congressman, and CIA operative. Maybe that’s what happens after an actor embodies the same billionaire playboy philanthropist for over a decade? (He’s gotta stretch those acting legs.) This satirically rendered show adapts Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, which follows a Vietnam War-era spy (Hoa Xuande) who encounters RDJ’s assorted, pivotal characters along the way.
7. The Veil (Hulu series)
No shortage of espionage-filled stories (including Slow Horses, Jack Ryan, and The Night Agent) have recently been taking streaming by storm. Now, Elisabeth Moss takes her turn in a thriller that brings two women together in an intricate game while they leap across Europe to save thousands of innocents from perishing. Secrets, lies, real-life peril, and ass-kicking moves swirl with international agencies coming together to halt inevitable mayhem.
6. Love Lies Bleeding (A24 film on VOD & Amazon Prime)
Rose Glass (Saint Maud) directed this project, for which Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brian bonded over cat pee before production began. Kristen is Lou, a gym manager, and Katy is Jackie, a ripped-as-hell bodybuilder, and their romance gets sidetracked then they are sucked into the town’s criminal underworld due to Lou’s father (Ed Harris, who has seen far better non-hair days). Expect murder, mayhem, and tons of hair, baby.
5. Under The Bridge (Hulu series)
Lily Gladstone is following up her arresting Killers of the Flower Moon performance in this true-crime series adaptation of the late Rebecca Godfrey’s same-named book that dives tail first into 14-year-old Reena Virk’s murder after it flipped a Canadian town on its head. The story carries some Sharp Objects flavor with True Detective vibes alongside its real-life origins. Riley Keough portrays Godfrey, and Gladstone suits up as a cop as the two women take different approaches to the pursuit of justice.
4. Baby Reindeer (Netflix series)
Comedian, creator, and star Richard Gadd has already moved onto his next project after demolishing viewers with a dramatization of his real-life experiences with different abusers. That’s an oversimplification of the nuanced storytelling, and Gadd lays himself bare to the world in an adaptation of his one-man show that will stick with you, but he’d prefer that people stick to watching his series and resist the temptation to go armchair detective as though this was made as a typical true-crime series (which it was not).
3. Them: The Scare (Amazon series)
Amazon’s polarizing live-action horror anthology series returns (following 1950s-set Them: The Covenant) in the 1990s with Pam Grier in trouble as Athena Reeve. Dawn Reeve (Deborah Ayorinde), however, is an LAPD homicide detective gliding through utter chaos to catch a killer who has attacked a foster home mom. Does this case come too close to home for Dawn? You know how these stories usually work out but not how Dawn works this case.
2. Anyone But You (Sony Pictures Releasing film on Netflix)
Chemistry ruled the day for Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s romcom — a take on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing — which has given studios the confidence to believe in sleeper hits again. Of course, Sweeney’s own savviness had plenty to do with the film’s long-haul appeal at the box office, so let’s hope that she ends up back in the producer’s chair on countless occasions as her career progresses. Chemistry and mutual attractiveness from the leading pair certainly didn’t hurt, however.
1. Fallout (Amazon Prime series)
Walton Goggins cannot be stopped. A second season has already been greenlit for this adaptation of a beloved post-apocalyptic game franchise. Goggins portrays The Ghoul with nose-less abandon but, as always, charisma to spare. Fortunately, this series is one of many successful video-game takes hitting screens over the past few years, and let’s hope that Borderlands continues that trend. Before Fallout does more New Vegas however, Goggins fans can relish his recent cheeky social media postings and also spend too much time thinking (guilty as charged) about that Justified set friction because — let’s face it — humanity is addicted to drama, on and off TV.