In 2021, CBS All Access was rebranded as Paramount+. Since then, the streaming service has found a niche with everyone from Star Trek fans to soccer fans with its rights to all Champions League matches. It’s also begun to offer Paramount+ original programming. Its still finding its identity with a slate of thrillers, a romantic comedy and the first TV show starring Sylvester Stallone.
Here are the six newest series from Paramount+.
1. Fatal Attraction
Release Date: April 30, 2023
Creators: Alexandra Cunningham, Kevin J. Hynes
Stars: Joshua Jackson, Lizzy Caplan, Amanda Peet, Toby Huss
Genre: Thriller
Paste Review Rating: 4.5
In an entertainment landscape that’s obsessed with mining existing intellectual property for reboots, remakes, and spinoffs, it’s honestly kind of amazing that no one has attempted to take another run at Fatal Attraction before right now. But as Omar Little once said on The Wire, if you come at the king, you best not miss. And Paramount+’s new eight-part Fatal Attraction is a miss on almost every level: It’s a modern-day update that has shockingly little that’s new to say about its characters, an erotic thriller that’s often painfully unsexy, a bland murder mystery that never feels particularly urgent, and features an all-time clanger of an ending. (Its final twist is, no joke, so wildly dumb that it almost completely undoes any good work the rest of the series manages to do in terms of centering mental health and female agency.) To its credit, this Fatal Attraction at least makes a nominal attempt to expand and complicate the world of the original film, casting Dan Gallagher (Joshua Jackson) and Alex Forrest (Lizzy Caplan) as professional colleagues in the Los Angeles criminal justice system and attempting to tease out their stories across a pair of dual timelines that encompass both the lead up to their affair and the fallout that’s still taking place 15 years later. But in a television landscape that’s full to bursting with other prequels, spinoffs, and reboots of famous and familiar properties, you’ve got to give viewers something better than this tepid take that doesn’t seem to understand what made the original film so memorable in the first place. —Lacy Baugher Milas
2. Grease: Rise of the Pink Lades
Release Date: April 6, 2023
Creator: Annabel Oakes
Stars: Marisa Davila, Cheyenne Isabel Wells, Ari Notartomaso, Tricia Fukuhara, Shanel Bailey
Genre: Musical romantic comedy
Paste Review Rating: 5.1
This musical prequel series takes place four years before the original film, and follows Jane (Marisa Davila) as she attempts to save her reputation after it was besmirched by the rumor mill surrounding her and her boyfriend Buddy’s (Jason Schmidt) after school activities. She eventually links up with other social outcasts like ascot-wearing Olivia (Cheyenne Isabel Wells), fashion-guru Nancy (Tricia Fukuhara), and tomboy Cynthia (Ari Notartomaso) to try to change life at Rydell High School for the better for everyone. Featuring social commentary sometimes missing from the original movie and a few musical numbers per episode, this series from Atypical and Transparent’s Annabel Oakes reimagines the original film, the characters, and storylines within it for the modern day—with little success. Like most attempts at prequels these days, Rise of the Pink Ladies would have been much better off if it had been allowed to just be its own separate thing. Because, just on its own as a ’50-set musical series that chronicles outcasts attempting to change the status quo, it’s not all bad; without the shadow of Grease hanging over it, the music is fine and sometimes even good, the characters are interesting, and the series’ attempt at engagement with the era is admirable. However, it’s just not Grease, and it’s worse for being attached to it —Anna Govert
3. Rabbit Hole
Release Date: March 26, 2023
Creators: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Stars: Kiefer Sutherland, Meta Golding, Enid Graham, Rob Yang, Walt Klink, Charles Dance
Genre: Thriller
Paste Review Rating: 7.5
It’s hard to resist a clever and fast-paced espionage narrative led by Kiefer Sutherland, who ruled this genre for nearly a decade on 24. Here, Sutherland plays John Weir, a highly-skilled middle-aged man in corporate espionage, who runs his own firm with clients that hire him and his team to manipulate people and situations to influence markets for client advantage. He just calls it “consulting,” though. But soon John finds himself framed for murder, with police and FBI agents breathing down his neck. He goes into hiding and begins investigating why his friend would betray him, who’s behind all this, and who so desperately wants him arrested or dead. Rabbit Hole’s efficacy comes down to a mastery of essential components: A sharp script, focused execution, and a well-picked cast led by Sutherland’s commanding and charismatic protagonist. Paramount+ might have a winner on its hands. —Akos Peterbencze
4. Wolf Pack
Release Date: January 26, 2023
Creators: Jeff Davis
Stars: Chloe Rose Robertson, Bella Shepard, Armani Jackson, Tyler Lawrence Gray, Rodrigo Santoro, Sarah Michelle Gellar
Genre: Teen drama, supernatural
Paste Review Rating: 7.4
Wolf Pack follows high schoolers Everett (Armani Jackson) and Blake (Bella Shepard) after a traffic jam on the highway next to a blazing California wildfire leaves both of them experiencing hallucinations, getting mysterious phone calls, and nursing nasty, supernatural bite marks. Due to their new inexplicable connection, Everett and Blake cross paths with twins Harlan (Tyler Lawrence Gray) and Luna (Chloe Rose Robertson), as they question why the full moon seems to draw them all together. After a stampede and utter devastation from the fire, enter LA Fire Department investigator Kristin Ramsy (Sarah Michelle Gellar), whose joint task force with the police department is investigating the true cause of the wildfire, and her first mission? Question our newly lycanthropic teens. While some elements of the series are more bark than bite (like Gellar’s minimal inclusion, for example), Wolf Pack manages to offer enough thrills and chills to stick around for, especially for fans of Davis’ other werewolf project Teen Wolf (which is completely unrelated to this show). If you are looking for a show to fill the teen drama-sized hole in your heart during this slow season, look no further than Wolf Pack’s suspenseful drama and teenage angst, which rival the teen wolves of olde while managing to be both surprising and mediocre at the same time. —Anna Govert
5. 1923
Release Date: December 18, 2022
Creator: Taylor Sheridan
Stars: Helen Mirren, Harrison Ford, Brandon Sklenar, Julia Schlaepfer, Jerome Flynn, Darren Mann
Genre: Western
Although Taylor Sheridan’s television empire was founded on the contemporary series Yellowstone, the two prequels that the show has spawned thus far are both period pieces: 1883, which chronicles the history of the franchise’s central Dutton family on their journey to settle Montana, and its brand new sequel 1923, which promises to tell the story of the subsequent generation and their struggles to make a success out of the land their forefathers claimed. And if anyone is going to make American period dramas a thing again, it’s Sheridan, who is admittedly much less interested in history as a tool to explore the specific failures of the past or to impart necessary lessons for the future than he is in mining its soapiest and most dramatic elements. This isn’t exactly a new thing—in fact, it’s the same engine that has long made British shows like Downton Abbey so popular, which are more interested in messy relationships than the historical truth of the time period in which it takes place. And, you know what? It mostly works. —Lacy Baugher Milas
6. Tulsa King
Release Date: November 13, 2022
Creator: Taylor Sheridan
Stars: Sylvester Stallone, Max Casella, Domenick Lombardozzi, Vincent Piazza, Andrea Savage, Martin Starr
Genre: Crime drama
Paste Review Rating: 7.1
The premise of a mafia show starring Sylvester Stallone and written/directed by Taylor Sheridan, the man who gave us brilliant films like Sicario, Wind River, and Hell or High Water—and even the eminently watchable and occasionally great Yellowstone—seemed almost too good to be true, and I’m sorry to bear the bad news that, well… it absolutely is. The reality of Paramount+’s Tulsa King doesn’t match up to the promise, and that has to be the headline here. But if you’re in the market for Stallone in a role that can best be described as “Jack Reacher, but old and Italian,” you’re going to have some fun. And in the current TV landscape, you could do a lot worse than a good time. Stallone looks amazing for 76, more muscular and youthful than he has any right to be, but his acting has not necessarily improved with time. He carries himself in Tulsa King with a kind of grinning machismo, and he’s still got that brutish charm you remember, but there’s also a rigidity when he’s playing it serious, and his words don’t flow with the rough poetry of the old days. As the mobster Dwight Manfredi, who kept his mouth shut for 25 years in prison to protect his people, he comes off less like an actual character and more like an out-of-practice actor trying to act. That inevitably lowers the stakes from the start, and creates the immersion problem—it’s hard to actually get into this show, because on some level it all feels a little goofy. —Shane Ryan