Paste Power Rankings: The 5 Best TV Shows on Right Now (September 3, 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 30:
Honorable Mentions: The Lowdown (FX), Outlander: Blood of My Blood (Starz), The Paper (Peacock), Gen V (Prime Video)
5. The Morning Show
Network: Apple TV+
Last Week: 1
This Week: Cory blackmails his way back into a job and Alex is caught up in a deep fake scandal. Just another week on The Morning Show.
What I definitely remember about the 30 episodes of the show I’ve watched thus far is that everyone seemed to be under the impression they were doing Very Important Television. The cast, the writers, and the directors all believe they are doing the show we were all expecting when, in March of 2017, AppleTV+ first announced the series as its flagship program for its new streaming service. However, that isn’t the show any of us got. Instead, we got a glorified soap opera.
And I’m not mad about it. Every time I think I’m out, this absolutely silly show pulls me back in. What’s missing, however, is that no one involved with the series appears to be in on the joke. Or I should say no one but Billy Crudup, whose network news president Cory Ellison remains the absolute BEST thing about The Morning Show. The second episode of the season ends with a character saying “Jesus Christ!” over Cory’s latest antics, to which he responds, “He is risen,” referring to himself, of course. Crudup knows the show he is on. He understands if you can’t be on the show you thought you were going to be on, love the show you actually are on. — Amy Amantangelo [Full Review]
4. Only Murders In the Building
Network: Hulu
Last Week: 2
This Week: It took half the season, but Meryl Streep is finally back.
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]
3. Alien: Earth
Network: FX
Last Week: Honorable mention
This Week: Alien: Earth wrapped up its first season with a surprising twist.
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]
2. House of Guinness
Network: Netflix
Last Week: N/A
This Week: Steven Knights’ punk rock-infused retelling of the Guinness dynasty has great characters and great needle drops.
House of Guinness certainly shares many similarities with Knight’s Peaky Blinders. A story of complicated family dynamics, ambition, and legacy set in a city that’s a fully formed character in its own right, the drama grounds the struggles of its main characters in the social, economic, and political issues of the era. There’s plenty of violence, a soundtrack full of wildly anachronistic musical choices, and a prodigious amount of excellent outerwear. And though the characters’ social positions could not be more different—at least at the start of their respective series—the Guinness siblings are certainly just as scrappy and immoral as any of the Shelbys, though their enormous wealth allows them to hide that fact more easily.
But while the show feels like a spiritual successor to Knight’s most well-known property, House of Guinness is also very much its own thing. Based on real historical figures and a brand that’s as famous today as it ever was, the show mixes capitalist scheming, political intrigue, and public philanthropy with family rivalries, ill-advised romantic affairs, and public scandal. (The comparisons to HBO’s Succession in the lead-up to the show’s debut have been both frequent and fair.) While none of its characters are quite as dark or tortured as Tommy Shelby, each Guinness carries their own share of secrets, and faces similar struggles to find a place for themselves in a world that sees them as little more than the fact of their birthrights.— Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]
1. Slow Horses
Network: Apple TV+
Last Week: N/A
This Week: Gary Oldman and our favorite of British MI5 misfits at Slough House are back for another round.
Everyone in Slough House is stuck. It’s professional purgatory for the service’s biggest screw-ups, all of whom are trapped in various messes of their own making. But even though their inability to move forward serves a purpose, stagnation also eventually leads to decay. Season 4 was a high point for Slow Horses. It was the show’s most emotionally affecting outing yet as River and his grandfather (Jonathan Pryce) found themselves in the crosshairs of an assassin-siring monster who turned out to be River’s long-lost father (Hugo Weaving). Not every season can (or should) be as personal, but it’s a major narrative development, and it didn’t just affect River and his grandfather; it also indirectly resulted in Marcus’ (Kadiff Kirwan) death. So it’s the type of season that demands action and movement in the aftermath, more so even than previous installments that saw Slough House agents die. And in that regard, it’s initially difficult to be dropped into a new story that mostly hinges on the question “No self-respecting woman would willingly date Roddy, right?” and not wonder if the show is as stuck as its titular slow horses.
The good news is, the series doesn’t totally ignore the bomb dropped on River last season, nor does it gloss over the aftermath of Marcus’ murder. In fact, Slough House is under construction when the show returns, both a subtle reminder of what happened and an apt representation of the current states of those most affected by the prior season’s events. Understandably, Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) isn’t coping well with Marcus’ death, but she throws herself into protecting Roddy since she couldn’t do the same for her friend. Meanwhile, River has compartmentalized his trauma and chosen to prioritize work instead of processing that the health of his grandfather, the man who raised him, has declined significantly in recent months, or that his actual father just tried to kill him. All of this puts a strain on his already complicated relationship with Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), yet another father figure of sorts. It all makes sense in terms of the characters, and yet there are instances when one wishes they could spend just a little bit more time with them in the in-between moments. — Kaitlin Thomas [Full Review]
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