The Best TV Shows on Right Now: What to Watch This Week

Paste Power Rankings: The 5 Best TV Shows on Right Now (September 16, 2025)

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 September 16:

Honorable Mentions: Peacemaker (HBO Max), Wednesday (Netflix), The Great British Baking Show (Netflix), The Girlfriend (Prime Video)

5. Outlander: Blood of My Blood

Outlander Blood of My Blood main

Network: Starz
Last Week: 2
This Week: Ellen’s secret romance is discovered, as Julia learns Henry has also traveled back in time.

Prequels (and sequels, come to that) are tricky things. Stories rarely compare all that favorably to the original work, and there’s often a whiff of desperation to the whole thing, as we watch a previously beloved franchise try to find a reason to keep existing past the end of its flagship property. Every so often, though, one of these sorts of series manages to surprise you: Not only justifying its own existence, but reminding you of everything you loved about the original in the first place. And while Outlander: Blood of My Blood may technically be a prequel that explores the familial origins of several characters from the megapopular Starz historical romance, the series more than stands on its own tartan-clad feet, striking a near-perfect balance between the old and the new.

For Outlander fans, the star-crossed romance of Jamie Fraser’s (Sam Heughan) parents was already the stuff of legend, a story that Sassenach Claire Beauchamp (Caitriona Balfe) heard about ad nauseam when she first time-traveled to early 18th-century Scotland and found herself caught up in the interfamily drama of the MacKenzies of Castle Leoch. Viewers knew much less about Claire’s parents, save the fact that they died in a car crash when she was quite young. Blood of My Blood aims not only to tell the story of these two love affairs but also to tie them together in a thrilling new way, rewriting the fates of Claire’s parents to firmly intertwine their lives with the story of Jamie’s in a way no one likely expected.

To be fair, you don’t have to have seen a minute of Outlander to enjoy Blood of My Blood, which is a fully and compellingly immersive story in its own right.. Yes, the series is packed full of Easter eggs and narrative callbacks that will delight longtime fans of the long-running original. (Heck, the show’s entire premise is essentially that the romance between Outlander’s Claire Beauchamp and Jamie Fraser was so fated it impacted multiple generations.) And, those who are familiar with the original series will surely find themselves gasping at the skill of this franchise’s casting department, who have managed to find a quartet of leads who are startingly similar in both appearance and mannerisms to the actors who portrayed their onscreen relations. But if you have never heard of Craigh Na Dun, there’s still plenty to enjoy in this story of forbidden love, Scottish political intrigue, and women fighting for the chance to choose their own fates. —Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]

4. Alien: Earth

Network: FX
Last Week: 3
This Week: Poking at some of the franchise’s thorniest questions about sentience, this hour isn’t afraid to get gross.

The FX series is set in the year 2120, just two years before the events of the original Alien feature film. And for longtime fans, the opening scenes will feel eerily familiar. The USCSS Maginot, a Weyland-Yutani deep space research vessel, is returning to Earth. Its crew has just emerged from cryosleep and gathered around a table for a meal. It’s a setup that closely mirrors the iconic opening of Alien. From the mess hall to the cryochamber to the computer mainframe where “Mother” is accessed, the Maginot could easily be mistaken for the Nostromo. That’s clearly intentional. Production designer Andy Nicholson and his team have done a remarkable job recreating the industrial, lived-in aesthetic of the franchise. Visually, it feels like home for Alien fans. But while the look is similar, Alien: Earth tells a story that’s entirely its own.Alien: Earth features a top-tier cast.

Ceesay gives Morrow a magnetic mix of strength, intellect, and vulnerability. He’s as dangerous as he is compelling. Blenkin is spot-on as Boy Kavalier, a smug trillionaire and prodigy who’s never encountered the word “comeuppance,” let alone considered it might apply to him. He’s the kind of character you admire for his genius and resent for his hubris. Olyphant, always a scene-stealer, is quietly electrifying as the synthetic scientist Kirsch. He’s cold, methodical, and even more watchable than usual. But the series’ true standout is Sydney Chandler. Daughter of Friday Night Lights star Kyle Chandler, the actress brings exceptional emotional depth to Wendy, effortlessly capturing the soul of a child in an adult synthetic body. She is also fiercely devoted to her brother, protective of her fellow Lost Boys, and endlessly inquisitive. The performance feels like a fusion of Sigourney Weaver’s grit as Ripley with Milla Jovovich’s sense of wonder as Leeloo in The Fifth Element. Chandler commands your attention every time she’s on screen.

Ultimately, what makes Alien: Earth work isn’t just the body horror or the corporate backstabbing (though there’s plenty of both), it’s that Noah Hawley treats this show as something more than an exercise in IP management. He uses the franchise’s DNA to explore questions of identity, mortality, and control, all while staging set pieces capable of leaving your stomach in knots. Nearly 50 years after Ridley Scott introduced the xenomorph, Alien has rarely felt this alive. — Terry Terrones [Full Review]

3. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Network: Paramount+
Last Week: 5
This Week: Season 3 wraps up with a bittersweet farewell to Melanie Scrofano’s Captain Batel.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 3 gives us goofy adventures, high-minded treatises, and more than a little earnest charm. If there’s a simple explanation for why this show is frequently viewed as the best of new-age Trek, it’s found in how it pairs the new (glossy, expensive presentation and serial storytelling tendencies) with the old (an episodic structure and a willingness to get a bit silly) and this latest season delivers both modes with ease. For instance, at one point, M’Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) continues to work through his complex trauma over what happened in one of last season’s best outings, “Under the Cloak of War,” while he and Pike land in a well-trodden pop-culture situation so tropey that it has them both a bit incredulous. Meanwhile, Spock also gets plenty of screen time, with his amusing love life developing in the foreground and background of several episodes. Strange New Worlds continues to do right by him, and Ethan Peck nails waffling between stoicism and sometimes not-so-subtly hidden emotions as Spock struggles to become the person we know him as in The Original Series.

But while there are many allusions and tie-ins to the crew’s growth across the story so far, this still remains the kind of show that you can pick up watching at almost any point (even if that’s an increasingly unlikely occurrence in the streaming era). Because while the first episode back suffers a bit from being a direct continuation of a cliffhanger from two years ago, the rest of these missions are siloed in the best way possible, delving into kooky weekly premises. Specifically, in the best episode of this season so far, we get a fan-favorite setup that both pokes fun at The Original Series and pensively reflects on that show’s legacy, all while also developing an unlikely bond. At another point, there’s a grim outing where the gang is dropped into a death trap that has them solving interdimensional puzzles that hint at a tantalizing hidden history. There’s a good variance in lighthearted hangout material and more grave turns, embodying the range that both Strange New Worlds and the series writ large have often excelled at, even if there’s an undeniable emphasis on pulp, and more specifically pulp horror, so far. —Elijah Gonzazlez [Full Review]

2. The Paper

Network: Peacock
Last Week: 1
This Week: This charming The Office spin-off is kinder, warmer, and altogether more aspirational than its predecessor.

Most of the marketing materials you’ll see for Peacock’s new comedy, The Paper, will likely tout its connection to the previous NBC megahit, The Office. After all, the show hails from the same creators (Greg Daniels and Michael Komen), features one of the long-running comedy’s secondary characters, and is told in basically the same mockumentary format that was groundbreaking when The Office did it, but is seemingly everywhere now. But its spin-off status is actually the least interesting thing about this series, which is kinder, warmer, and altogether more aspirational than its predecessor ever managed. And at the end of the day, The Paper doesn’t need its The Office-related bona fides to succeed and generally shines brightest when you manage to forget that the two are connected at all.

A love letter to journalism and local media, the ten-episode first season (all of which were available for review) is one part workplace comedy, one part will they won’t/they romance, and one part celebration of an industry that has taken more than its fair share of lumps in recent years. Yes, it’s problematic that, at least theoretically, half the Truth-Teller’s team is working for the paper free during the gaps in their real day jobs, and the show could more sharply connect the struggles of the steadily collapsing media industry with the larger problems we’re facing in the world. But the show refuses to punch down at its characters or the work they’re doing, even when they’re chasing stories that may seem insignificant in the face of…everything else in the world. Instead, it celebrates them, allowing them to be genuinely joyful and passionate about the opportunity to do work they believe in. It’s hard to argue that we couldn’t use quite a bit more of that kind of thing on our screens these days. — Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]

1. Only Murders In the Building

Network: Hulu
Last Week: N/A
This Week: A murder of one of the Arconia’s own sets our favorite trio of podcasters on the case.

Only Murders in the Building is a show about tenets as much as it is about tenants. Yes, the Emmy-nominated Hulu comedy follows an eccentric group of characters who live in an apartment complex called the Arconia, a building that itself is a monument to old New York. But the show’s tenet is that it is about the importance of community and a chosen family. Premiering in summer 2021 when the divide between masks-on and masks-not was rapidly growing, it’s a story of three neighbors who unite to solve not just any murder, but the murder of someone with specific ties to their lives because they are people who died in their building.

In Murders’ fifth season, it’s pretty shocking that the Arconia has any tenants left, given its uptick in homicides in recent years. But it’s nice to know that the tenets of the series remain. One of the victims this season is Teddy Coluca’s Lester, the building’s doorman who—even if they didn’t always acknowledge him—was a constant presence in the lives of the show’s three leads: Selena Gomez’s suspicious Mabel, Steve Martin’s anxious Charles, and Martin Short’s exuberant Oliver.

Lester, in turn, is an embodiment of this season of Murders and maybe also for society. The season’s best episode of the nine released to the press is, by far, its second. Written by Ben Smith and Ella Robinson Brooks and directed by series showrunner John Hoffman, it’s mostly told in flashbacks and shares the life of the humble old doorman when he thought this gig was going to be a waylay before he made it big as an actor. Smash and The OA actor Emory Cohen gives us a Lester with his own career trajectory and love life outside of just opening doors for rich people and maybe the occasional pig. Everyone deserves a chance to tell their backstories, even if most people won’t notice them. — Whitney Friedlander [Full Review]

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Paste Power Rankings: The 5 Best TV Shows on Right Now (September 16, 2025)