AMC as a home for original scripted television is one of Hollywood’s most interesting stories, having been a main player in TV’s most recent golden age with the likes of Emmy-winning series Breaking Bad and Mad Men—two of the most acclaimed dramas of the century—but never quite being able to compete in the numbers game. But while a term like “all time” doesn’t have quite the same meaning for AMC as it might for a premium cable network like HBO, the network’s originals tend to punch above their weight, which means there is still plenty of quality programming to sink your teeth into. From vampires, spies, and lawmen to kingpins, ad men, and tech whizzes, here are the 20 best TV series on AMC—and where to stream them.
20. Hell on Wheels
Like Sundance’s Rectify, Hell on Wheels’ availability on Netflix once upon a time gave it a fighting chance at wider, belated recognition. Not that it’s at Rectify’s level, or even in its time period. But this Western—which dramatized the lives of real and fictional players during the construction of competing, cross-country railroads after the Civil War—was never less than a richly sourced imagining of our nation’s great expansion West, with a few can’t-miss psychopaths and tortured heroes for good measure. Its final season never relented until the final spike was driven into the last slat of Union Pacific track, detouring only to resolve long-standing conflicts and foreshadow the challenges America was then readying to stare down. Anson Mount, as Civil War vet-turned-vengeful gunslinger-turned-unlikely-tycoon Cullen Bohannon, carried the final episodes through their bloody, heat-stroked twists and turns. And there may never be as resilient and nightmarish a mortal villain as Christopher Heyerdahl’s Thor Gundersen. Just don’t call him The Swede. —Kenny Herzog
19. The Walking Dead
I remember excitedly watching the Frank Darabont-directed premiere of The Walking Dead on Halloween in 2010, thinking, “This is so cool, but it’ll never be popular.” An hour-long zombie drama? No one’s going to watch that but me! I couldn’t have been more wrong: Flying in the face of expectations, The Walking Dead became cable’s highest-rated series, even, on occasion, besting Sunday Night Football. Stop for a moment and consider the implications: We live in a country that has become so geeky, on average, that an hour-long zombie drama could sometimes get more viewership than Sunday Night Football. In terms of quality, the quest of the Grimes Gang to survive was up and down, but the production values were always impeccable. And although the story occasionally got bogged down in places, or been stretched too thin, the show often rebounded with a moment of incredible pathos, even for iconic villains such as David Morrissey’s Governor. Whether you like the latter seasons or not, The Walking Dead’s success is massive for the marketability of horror on the small screen. —Jim Vorel
18. Into the Badlands
From production design and costuming to choreography and stunts, Into the Badlands brings its audience a mythology-rich tribute to classic Hong Kong action cinema and wuxia films that is the closest thing we’ve ever seen on TV to a serialized version of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
I’m not here to make a case for the plot or storyline of Into the Badlands. It paints in broad, pulpy strokes, with faction-vs.-faction scheming and power plays that draw clear inspiration from the dueling houses in Game of Thrones. It lifts the tropes of classic Shaolin Temple films, full of students studying secret techniques and harnessing ancient, mystical forces to avenge slain family members. It gives us a cast of characters whose loyalties and rationalizations are in a constant, soap-operatic flux. Its morals are on the simple side. But its visuals? Its costumes? And, my God, its action sequences? I’m not sure there’s ever been a show with better fight scenes on TV. Into the Badlands delivers crackling, hyperkinetic, bloody sequences of flying fists, acrobatics, and swordplay: It’s a gift from the heavens. —Jim Vorel
17. TURN: Washington’s Spies
A rare American period drama, Turn: Washington’s Spies is roughly based on the true story of the Culper Ring, the Revolutionary War-era men who were essentially America’s first spies. It follows the story of Abraham Woodhull (Jamie Bell), a farmer in Setauket, New York, and his group of friends who ultimately help turn the tide of the war. Woodhull is a reluctant patriot who is alternately heroic and deeply unlikeable (the extramarital affair that kicks everything off doesn’t help), but there’s still something appealing about his extended internal struggle to determine where his loyalties ultimately lie. The Mentalist’s Owain Yeoman is a special highlight as turncoat Benedict Arnold, and the series’ depiction of the old-school methods of spycraft—hanging petticoats in windows, that kind of thing—are both interesting and smart. —Lacy Baugher
16. Dispatches from Elsewhere
Jason Segel’s charming series is ostensibly a puzzle box: four strangers band together to try to put together clues relating to two warring secret institutes. And yet, Dispatches from Elsewhere wraps all of that up into an optimistic and charming exploration of selfhood. Like a kind of Amélie-by-way-of-Philadelphia, its central characters (played by Segel, Andre Benjamin, Sally Field, and Eve Lindley) wander the city through warm, candy-colored hidden rooms divining cryptic patterns and uncovering unexpected vistas they never knew existed—both within the visual landscape and inside their very souls. It has quite a bit in common with the late, great Lodge 49 (keep reading for more on that), as our heroes step outside their comfort zones to try and unpack what it all means (and what “it” even is) in sweet, earnest ways. The finale also took huge, meta risks that gave this delightfully unique series a very personal sendoff. —Allison Keene
15. Kevin Can F—k Himself
The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane once wrote, “the most volatile compound known to man is that of decorum and despair.” This proves ever-true in Kevin Can F—k Himself, AMC’s strange, emotionally resonating hybrid series. In it, we follow the travails of Allison (Annie Murphy), a long-suffering wife whose husband’s world is a low-brow sitcom. When Kevin (Eric Petersen) is on screen, their lives are illuminated by stage lights and augmented by a laugh track—almost always at Allison’s expense. The fictional audience guffaws over Kevin’s infantile interests and behaviors, as Allison tries to find anything positive about the marriage she has felt trapped in for 10 years. Humiliated, ignored, and gaslighted throughout, Allison tries to keep up a good face while inwardly falling apart. Then as soon as Kevin leaves the room, the studio goes with him; Allison is left alone in the quiet of a drab house, feeling the full weight of her crippling frustration as the laughter fades away.
But desperate times lead to desperate measures, and after a particularly stinging bit of news, Allison hatches a plan to take back her life—by taking her husband’s. Kevin Can F—k Himself (which hits its sitcom beats almost too well) is ambitious and experimental, and it’s far more than satire. —Allison Keene
14. The Little Drummer Girl
In The Little Drummer Girl, Florence Pugh plays Charlie, a young actress whose predilection for storytelling and deception makes her the perfect candidate for espionage work. Director Park Chan-wook, the mastermind behind The Handmaiden, Oldboy, and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, is an equally perfect candidate for putting it together: The South Korean filmmaker makes his TV debut by engaging his powerful grip on the viewer’s sympathetic eye across different perspectives, layers, and schemes, both narrative and visual. What kicks off with a bombing, investigated by spy leader Kurtz (Michael Shannon, whose gruff brilliance finds an amplifying admirer in Park), soon becomes a viney erotic thriller between Charlie and an Israeli spy named Becker (Alexander Skarsgård), who is Kurtz’s weapon of choice for pulling the new recruit into their anti-terrorist work. —Jacob Oller
13. Humans
This AMC series is reminiscent of both Ex Machina and Westworld with a story framed around the invention of “synths,” anthropomorphic robots, and the impact they have on the human world. Humans tackles some heavy themes, including memory, personhood, human (and non-human) rights, and the fear of things we may not understand. Some of it is well-mined sci-fi territory, but Humans puts a fresh spin on the themes you might remember from old Twilight Zone re-runs. It also features an impeccable cast, led by Gemma Chan, William Hurt, and a few others, who turn in some of the most human (and sometimes spooky) performances you’ll see anywhere on TV. The show is actually a remake of a Swedish series, and is one of the few remakes that manage to meet (and sometimes exceed) the quality of the original. —Trent Moore
12. Dark Winds
Set within the Navajo Nation, Dark Winds is the story of a bank heist and a double murder viewed through the eyes of Lt. Joe Leaphorn, played by the excellent Zahn McClarnon. He and his junior officer Jim Chee (Kiowa Gordon) set about solving both cases while the FBI lingers and their own people look on with suspicion. The supernatural elements are subtle enough to contribute rather than subtract; they fit the atmosphere and never become so egregious or important that it delegitimizes the actual crime story. In fact, it’s necessary to depict a culture that was almost erased; there is still power here. As the mystery deepens, Leaphorn is the prism through which we see the lingering effects of the conquest that is still resonant for the people who ended up on the wrong side of it; just because a murder takes place in 1971 doesn’t mean it cannot trace its dark lineage back through the painful decades. —Shane Ryan
11. Rubicon
The phrase “ahead of its time” could have been coined specifically for Rubicon. A taut espionage thriller drowning in paranoia, the one-season show debuted in 2010 right as network siblings Breaking Bad and Mad Men were taking off with mainstream audiences. In that regard, the timing couldn’t have been better for Rubicon. But TV viewers weren’t quite ready for the show, which stars James Badge Dale as Will Travers, an analyst for a private intelligence agency, whose investigation into the death of his mentor leads to the well-paced and carefully plotted unspooling of a chilling conspiracy involving the shady movements of America’s wealthy elite. It’s a story that plays differently today than it did during Obama’s first term in office, which might make Rubicon even more compelling now. But even though the show supplemented the central conspiracy with an exploration of workplace dynamics in the intelligence community, it still wasn’t able to capture a large enough audience to earn a second season. It’s possible it never stood a chance once The Walking Dead came charging out of the gate just a few months later, devouring everything in its path. But it’s hard not to wonder what might have been had the show come along just a few years later, once viewers became more accustomed to the type of storytelling Rubicon favored. Unfortunately, we’ll never know. —Kaitlin Thomas
10. Interview with the Vampire
While some fans may have initially been apprehensive about the thought of AMC adapting Anne Rice’s classic novel, it seems fair (and important) to say what a relief it is that the network has knocked this one out of the park. Because Interview with the Vampire is incredibly good. Better-than-my-wildest-expectations good. The kind of good that makes me downright giddy that my initial assumptions about what kind of show this would be were so wildly off. This series is the absolute best kind of adaptation, one that hangs on to the original’s truest elements even as it uses its source material to say something new about this story, these characters, and even the world we live in now. True, there are significant changes from the novel; from reimagining Louis de Pont du Lac as a Black, gay brothel owner in early 20th century New Orleans to fully embracing the queer subtext that’s always been simmering under the surface of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, this is a thoroughly modern adaptation that nevertheless leans into what’s kept us coming back to this series for decades: its thorny moral center and the compelling, if toxic, love story between Louis and his maker Lestat de Lioncourt. The blazing chemistry between stars Jacob Anderson and Sam Reid would be reason enough to watch on its own, but this dark world is more than worth the repeated weekly visit. —Lacy Baugher-Milas
