From the biggest streaming services to the most reliable broadcast networks, there are so many shows vying for your time and attention every single week. Lucky for you, the Paste Editors and TV writers sort through the deluge of Peak TV “content” to make sure you’re watching the best TV shows the small screen has to offer. Between under-the-radar gems and the biggest, buzziest hits, we keep our finger on TV’s racing pulse so you don’t have to.
The rules for the Power Rankings are simple: any current series on TV qualifies, whether it’s a comedy, drama, news program, animated series, variety show, or sports event. It can be on a network, basic cable, premium channel, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, or whatever you can stream on your smart TV, as long as a new episode was made available within the past week (ending Sunday)—or, in the case of shows released all at once, it has to have been released within the previous four weeks.
Below is what we’re enjoying right now. Happy viewing!
Best TV Shows for the Week of July 15:
Honorable Mentions: Squid Game (Netflix), Resident Alien (Syfy/USA Network), The Gilded Age (HBO Max), The Sandman (Netflix)
5. Such Brave Girls
Network: Hulu Last Week: N/A This Week: The second season of this underrated British comedy is even more delightfully unhinged than its first.
Such Brave Girls is not a series for the faint of heart. The story of a dysfunctional family wrestling with mental health issues, relationship drama, financial woes, and lingering abandonment issues, the series is bleak, biting, and uncomfortably cringe by turns. Its leads are often (possibly even most of the time) deeply unlikeable people. Its humor is frequently uncomfortable, crude, and even downright cruel. Yet, there’s also nothing else like it on either side of the pond: Brutally honest, narratively unhinged, and utterly fearless in every way that counts, it’s a coming-of-age story that skewers everything from feminism and self-help platitudes to sisterhood and mental health services.
The series’ six-episode second season takes everything that was both shocking and profound about its first and turns it up to eleven. Deb, who opens first episode by reminding her daughters that the family motto is “Ignore. Repress. Forget,” is busy trying to stay on top of all the lies she’s told her boyfriend, Dev (Paul Bazely), a widower with an allegedly “massive house” who’s meant to be their meal ticket out of the financial troubles that have befallen the family ever since the girls’ father disappeared. Kidnapped and forced to marry the boyfriend she only marginally tolerates, Josie wrestles with ongoing questions surrounding her sexual identity, becoming fixated on a local student named Charlie (Rebekah Murrell), a move that takes her character to some shockingly dark places throughout the season. —Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]
Network: Peacock Last Week: 3 This Week: A Thelma and Louise-inspired finale with an unexpected twist is a banger of an ending to Season 2
Poker Face arrived in early 2023 as a smart, modern riff on Columbo starring Natasha Lyonne as an effortlessly cool, almost-psychic, entirely unintentional detective, with a stage-setting pilot written and directed by Knives Out creator Rian Johnson. With its twisty mysteries, world-class roster of guest stars, and compelling season-long arc about Lyonne’s character Charlie Cale hiding out from Ron Perlman’s vengeance-seeking casino owner, Poker Face was a buzzy favorite back in ‘23, with an Emmy nomination for Lyonne and a win for guest star Judith Light.Two years is a lot of time, though. Since Poker Face’s first season the broadcast networks have hopped back on the Columbo train, with CBS’s Elsbeth fully embracing the same guest star-heavy “howcatchem” format Poker Face is known for (where viewers see who committed the crime in the opening act).
Poker Face’s second season is less a modern Columbo than a hipster Elsbeth—a fun, enjoyable, cooler version of what you can find on CBS, but not an especially better one—but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. Traditionally, shows like this are breezy entertainment, first and foremost, not award-winning bastions of what this art form can aspire to, even if Peter Falk did rack up the Emmys back in the day. If Season 1 was a full house, Season 2 is three of a kind, to make the most obvious, least imaginative comparison possible, and there’s no bullshit in that at all. —Garrett Martin [Full Review]
Network: Apple TV+ Last Week: Honorable mention This Week: A surprisingly emotional season finale means we’re already counting down to Season 2.
Entertainment has long been used as an escape mechanism from the world around us. But who do we turn to when literally everything is grim and terrible, and there is seemingly no relief in sight? Maybe a central protagonist who’s just really, really over it is precisely what we need in the year of our lord 2025. Enter Murderbot, the Apple TV+ sci-fi comedy about a sentient robot turned extremely reluctant hero who keeps doing the right thing, even when it doesn’t particularly want to (and actively dislikes the very people it’s helping).
With each episode clocking in at around 25 minutes or so (you truly love to see it!), the ten-episode first season (all of which were made available for review) is brisk and propulsive, carefully balancing droll humor, action, and a sprinkling of thoughtful emotion. Some viewers who are unfamiliar with the source material will likely find the contradiction between the show’s title and its content jarring. But, much like its central character, Murderbot doesn’t care, gleefully embracing all the weirdness and contradictions inherent within itself and reveling in them. Maybe this isn’t the hero we were expecting, but at the moment, it’s probably the one we need. —Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]
2. Ballard
Network: Prime Video Last Week: N/A This Week: Maggie Q is outstanding in this solid next chapter in the Bosch franchise.
Maggie Q is back in action as the eponymous Renée Ballard in Prime Video’s Ballard, a spin-off of the successful Bosch: Legacy series and based on Michael Connelly’s Bosch novels (which were themselves adapted into a hit show). The series follows Ballard shortly after taking charge of the LAPD’s Cold Case Unit and assembling a team of volunteers to assist with her investigations, primarily of two season-long cases: the execution of a John Doe from five years prior and the decades-long unsolved strangulation of Sarah Pearlman, sister of Councilman Jake Pearlman (Noah Bean). Having watched screeners of the entire season twice, it’s safe to say that Ballard is kick-ass, earnest, and extremely well-written, and may well be one of the best shows of the year.
Maggie Q has never been better (and that’s admittedly a bold statement after her unbelievable work on The CW’s Nikita). She perfectly embodies this character, leading an immensely talented cast that also consistently delivers, regardless of how much or how little time they have in the spotlight. The investigations and mysteries are well-crafted and believable, as are the relationships—both old and new—between the characters. If I were to offer one pointed critique, it’s that the season’s cliffhanger ending is the weakest part of the show, something that is ridiculously overdone in TV. Nonetheless, it still points the story in an intriguing direction should it be renewed for another (much-needed) season, so it’s not a substantial flaw; it’s just not on par with the quality of everything else. —Jay Snow [Full Review]
1. Too Much
Network: Netflix Last Week: N/A This Week: Everybody’s talking about Lena Dunham again, but her love letter to the rom-com genre appears to have won over a lot of former haters.
Clever writing and a palpable, studied affinity for the tried-and-true conventions of the rom-com genre make Too Much easily one of the streaming network’s best offerings of the year so far. But if any of the series’ premise sounds a bit twee, a bit safe for the inadvertent voice of her generation (or at least a voice, of a generation), it’s not an unreasonable judgment. Indeed, Dunham drops her poison-tipped pen here in favor of something softer, less cynical and more measured, and occasionally more mature than anything she’s done on TV before.
This is particularly apparent when it comes to the show’s belief that everything in life—even love—has a cost. Romantic evenings of talking and sex that stretch long into the morning lead to professional reprimands the next day; Jess’s boundless affection for Felix entices him but also threatens his sobriety. While Too Much inevitably trades in observations about the cultural differences between America and its European forefather, Dunham’s heart isn’t really in the fish-out-of-water mischief. Each episode may be named after a punny homage to a British romcom, and the unpacking of certain foreign colloquialisms makes for some amusing misunderstandings. But the emotional weight of Too Much stems from its affection for these specific characters in their specific situation, illuminating something about modern dating dynamics that’s both insightful and as sweet as a Chelsea bun.
Girls offered an unflinching, unromantic view of twentysomething life that paradoxically has made it comfort TV for its new generation of younger fans. (Wasn’t it wonderful when life’s biggest problems consisted of microaggressions and handlebar mustaches, rather than the collapse of democracy and the impending AI apocalypse?) Too Much strives to wring a realistic adult romance from a genre full of its most magnificent and flimsiest portrayals, and while it’s a cut above most, it still winds up leaving something to be desired. Would the now-grownup Dunham have been better served by taking a lesson from those whippersnappers on TikTok obsessed with “romanticizing” their lives? These creators acknowledge that the mindset doesn’t fix the absurdity of their situations, but it does help them recontextualize it aesthetically. Sometimes, too much romance is just the right amount. —–Michael Savio [Full Review]
For all the latest TV news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV.
