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 8:
Honorable Mentions:Outrageous (BritBox), Murderbot (Apple TV+), Department Q (Netflix), Welcome to Wrexham (FX), The Sandman (Netflix)
5. The Gilded Age
Network: Max Last Week: 3 This Week: Bertha Russell enters her villain era.
The Gilded Age Season 3 is indulgent and entertaining in all the best ways, full of ridiculous plot twists, social scandals, and family spats. As always, there are lavish parties, jaw-dropping costumes, and a few random historical figures thrown in for good measure, but what’s most exciting is the way the series continues to evolve, jettisoning characters and plots that don’t work, doubling down on the things that do. The result is a delightful mix of bonkers excess and character-driven relationship drama with a healthy dollop of much-needed romance on the side, a balance the show’s been chasing since its inception, but has only just finally truly achieved.
The story picks up where last season left off: Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon), victorious after having successfully backed the Metropolitan Opera, has never been more influential in New York society. (Not bad for a woman most people would only begrudgingly talk to back in Season 1.) But she’s not content to rest on her laurels; she’s actively plotting to take things even further by marrying her daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) to the English Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb). Across the street, old money traditionalist Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and her sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon) are attempting to adjust to their own new normal—one in which Agnes no longer rules the proverbial roost. With Ada’s money now paying for everyone’s upkeep, Agnes seems somewhat adrift, reluctant to relinquish her control over the staff and household accounts and continually ordering her sister around. (But don’t worry, Baranski still gets most of the series’ best one-liners.) The Gilded Age has never been better, and it’s a joy to watch it so confidently become the show it was always meant to be: A little darker, a lot more romantic, and so much more enjoyable than it probably has any right to be.. —Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]
Network: Syfy/USA Network Last Week: N/A This Week: A season-best episode proves Alan Tudyk is a national treasure.
Resident Alien not getting the audience it deserved on SYFY for its first two seasons was—to quote displaced alien Harry Vanderspiegel (Alan Tudyk)—some serious bullshit! Gratefully, in early 2024, Netflix streamed the exceptionally funny series and immediately broadened its audience and made it a ratings hit. For the uninitiated, this nutty yet poignant dramedy revolves around an alien who was on a mission to destroy Earth. Instead, it crash landed its spaceship in the Colorado mountains and hid its presence by replicating the guise and identity of rural physician, Dr. Vanderspiegel. In the subsequent three seasons, alien Harry has had to learn how to be human(ish) as the town doctor and has mostly assimilated into this town of misfits through the tutelage of Asta Twelvetrees (Sara Tomko), the clinic’s physician assistant.
Resident Alien remains one of TV’s funniest and heartfelt shows. It feels like Sheridan is moving towards a more definitive wrap up for this world and its characters based on the real-world limits of cable-based television these days. If that happens, Sheridan and his writers have earned my trust in them bringing it in for a landing in ways that I’ll howl with laughter and sob like a baby. Not many shows can do that in equal measure and if this is the last season for Resident Alien, everything in the set up of Season 4 points to it going down as one of those all-timer sleeper shows that found the audience flowers that it deserves. —-Tera Bennett [Full Review]
Network: Peacock Last Week: 4 This Week: Season 2’s penultimate episode is one of its best and features guest star Justin Theroux as a killer and a victim.
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 artform 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]
2. The Bear
Network: FX Last Week: 1 This Week: The Bear is back, but is the all-at-once drop the reason we’re not talking about this season as much?
Since its premiere in 2022, creator Christopher Storer’s The Bear has swept award shows and made household names out of actors who have always been awesome (Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri fans: do not talk to me until you’ve watched all of Shameless and Dickinson). It made us believe that the term “yes, chef” is best said mid-coital and had us salivating over an omelet sprinkled with potato chip crumbs and the softest, porous, most simply decadent chocolate cake. It’s as meme-able as Game of Thrones and its subplots are scrutinized as much as those of Mad Men or Breaking Bad. The Bear is integral to the branding of FX that the sound effects of clicking knobs and hissing burners are the logo music that play when the studio’s title card appears before each episode. (Suck it, Shogun).
Honestly, what else is there left for The Bear to achieve?
Storer, and his fellow showrunner Joanna Calo, want to teach us that the theme for The Bear’s fourth season is family, however you want to define it: blood relatives, extended family, work family … We all need to be there for each other. But The Bear also remains a story of addiction and recovery. Success can be just as addictive as a chemical substance; those endorphins and dopamine lights that sparkle our brain’s ride to the top of that mental roller coaster have fizzled out when we crash into the abyss. The more we achieve—the more we’re told that we’re a genius at our craft or the more pride we feel in accomplishing something great—the bigger the hit we need next time. And burnout can come for anyone. —Whitney Friedlander [Full Review]
1. Squid Game
Network: Netflix Last Week: 2 This Week: Whether it’s the addition of a player who’s a baby or an unexpected ending (that’s maybe…not), Squid Game’s final season has sparked no shortage of big feelings.
After years of absence, Squid Game finally returned last year with a commendable second season that once again paired death games with sharp political commentary, even if it couldn’t match the first season’s surprise haymakers. At its best, it recreated the stomach-churning turns of its predecessor as Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) placed himself in harm’s way to effect lasting change. But if this run had one great flaw, it was that it lacked closure, ending on an unsatisfying cliffhanger that came about because Seasons 2 and 3 were initially planned as a single season before being split into two for logistical reasons.
Luckily, after only a few months of waiting, the third and final season is already here, throwing Gi-hun and friends back into meat-thresher challenges that inevitably lead to tragedy and brutal ethical dilemmas. And underneath these buckets of blood are cutting critiques of the status quo that give the first season a run for its money. Unfortunately, there’s a catch, though: a relatively flat ending.
On the one hand, Squid Game Season 3 delivers the compelling mixture of high-minded political critique and lowbrow bloodshed that made the series a worldwide sensation. It taps into a growing rage over wealth inequality and exploitation, but bundles these concerns in a thrilling, difficult-to-look-away-from package. It’s a heightened allegory that hits too close to home. However, by concluding in such an uninspired way, it undermines what came before, making it all feel like a senseless struggle. Ultimately, the series understands the dismal realities of late-stage capitalism, but doesn’t know what to do with all that angst, resulting in a disappointing end to an otherwise compelling game.. —Elijah Gonzalez [Full Review]
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