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 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 June 22nd:
Honorable Mentions:Welcome to Wrexham (Hulu), Revival (Syfy), Stick (Apple TV+), Department Q (Netflix)
5. Art Detectives
Network: AcornTV Last Week: Ineligible This Week: The latest mystery involved a music producer and missing pieces of rock ‘n’ roll history.
Very few things seem certain in this world, outside of death, taxes, and the perennial appeal of British crime dramas. These beloved procedurals and their familiar case of the week formulas are as comforting as a cup of tea after a bad day, offering some much-needed escapism that just so happens to come with a healthy dollop of murder on top. Streamer Acorn TV’s latest offering in this vein is a six-part drama called Art Detectives, another in a popular subgenre of mystery series that revolve around investigators with jobs that don’t seem as though they could possibly be real. (And yet somehow are, in the best possible way.)
A largely case-of-the-week style procedural, Art Detectives follows the newly formed duo of DI Palmer and DS Malik as they investigate murders with a decidedly historical or artistic flair. Some of the cases are more of a stretch than others— Titanic memorabilia, really?—but for the most part, the mysteries are opportunities for Mick (and the show) to nerd out over everything from Vermeers and Viking treasure to rare and ultra-high-end wine. It’s true, nothing about Art Detectives is reinventing the wheel, but the show’s unique art-and-history hook means many of us (read: me) will probably learn something while watching it, and Moyer’s performance is a lovely change of pace from a talented actor who’s been typecast as a result of True Blood for too long. Here’s hoping this investigation gets to continue for some time. —Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]
Network: Apple TV+ Last Week: 3 This Week: This week, the idealism of the PreservationAux team turns out to be a feature not a (SecUnit-killing) bug.
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]
Network: Syfy/USA Network Last Week: 2 This Week: A Harry and D’Arcy adventure is always a good thing.
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]
2. Poker Face
Network: Peacock Last Week: 1 This Week: We got our first tease of Patti Harrison.
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]
1. The Gilded Age
Network: Max Last Week: Not eligible This Week: The Gilded Age comes into its own in a third season that’s learned from its mistakes. Also, Jack’s clock is becoming the star of the show.
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]
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