3 Paramount+ Shows You Should Binge This Weekend (September 26 – 28)

As a somewhat recent subscriber to Paramount+, I am still exploring the depths of the streaming service’s offerings. So I was delighted to scroll upon the three titles below, each I managed to binge over the course of a weekend.

Spies and geeks and sci-fi—there is no more accurate trifecta of TV show genres to define my personality than this. I’m always on the hunt for new shows to recommend for you all, and I think you’ll enjoy what I’ve dug up as we round out September.

The Agency: Central Intelligence

Michael Fassbender is fantastic in pretty much everything he’s been in. While my favorites include his cocky British officer in Inglorious Basterds, Prometheus‘ android David, and, of course, Magneto, it’s his more recent roles as assassins and intelligence agents that have impressed me lately.

In the Paramount+ spy thriller The Agency: Central Intelligence, Fassbender plays Martian, a CIA agent who’s just been pulled from six years of deep cover in Sudan. As is the duty of a spy, he leaves behind his fabricated life to return to the London office where he’s stationed. But as we soon learn, it’s not so easy to reintegrate into real life (and his high-level CIA post), especially when he’s also left behind Samia (Jodie Turner-Smith) a woman he fell in love with while pretending to be someone else.

Under pressure from his CIA bosses (played by Jeffrey Wright and Richard Gere), the unstable Martian is drawn into several intertwining and sensitive operations. And to complicate things, Samia arrives in London, threatening to unravel Martian’s balancing act between duty and love. I thoroughly enjoyed The Agency‘s complex storytelling and tense military and combat action sequences. Its ensemble cast, which also includes Fantastic Beast‘s excellent Katherine Waterston, delivers superb performances.

Freaks and Geeks

I’ve been a big Seth Rogen fan for so long, yet until recently I’d just never gotten around to checking out the show that launched the careers of him and several other young Hollywood stars, including Linda Cardellini, James Franco, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps, and Martin Starr. Given Rogen’s domination of this year’s Oscars with The Studio, I thought it would be a good time to explore the superstar’s origin story.

Created by Paul Feig and executive produced by Judd Apatow, Freaks and Geeks is set in 1980s suburban Detroit, and follows the lives of two groups of William McKinley High School students and their coming-of-age struggles.

The Freaks, the older group of burnouts and losers, includes rebellious Daniel (Franco), rock star wannabe Nick (Segel), sarcastic grump Ken (Rogen), and Dan’s hot-headed, jealous girlfriend Kim (Philipps). Their story begins when usually straightlaced Lindsay (Cardellini) starts hanging out with them as she finds herself.

Then there’s the Geeks, made up of Lindsay’s younger brother Sam (John Francis Daley), the cocky, magic-loving Neal (Samm Levine), and gangly sci-fi nerd Bill (Starr). All they’re trying to do is make it through freshman year without dying.

With just one, 18-episode season that aired on NBC from 1999 to 2000, Freaks and Geeks managed to achieve cult status for its funny, awkward, and realistic take on the high school experience.

Halo

Let me caveat this writeup first by saying that while I in no way profess to be a gamer, for a brief period in the early 2000s, I played a crap load of Halo. Based on nostalgia alone, I gave this short-lived Showtime / Paramount+ co-production a shot. And, contrary to popular opinion, I found it an entertaining and visually stunning sci-fi action adaptation with gorgeous special effects and beautiful world creation.

For those not familiar with the games, Halo will probably be more enjoyable because you won’t be nitpicking about what they got right and wrong. The live-action adaptation follows the game’s 26th-century world in which humanity is at war with the Covenant, a coalition of alien species who have joined forces to scour the galaxy for ancient, powerful artifacts, central of which are the “Halo Rings” that, once combined, will elevate them to divinity.

Fighting for humanity is the United Nations Space Command, led by the game’s famous hero, Master Chief, aka John-117 (Pablo Schreiber), and his team of elite Spartan warriors. In the games, Chief is a cold, calculated, deadpan character who never takes his helmet off. But luckily, in the show, Schreiber gets to play him with a bit more humanity. See, when Chief discovers one of the artifacts, it triggers visions and memories about his past, including a connection with one of the Covenant’s human collaborators, Makee (Peaky Blinders’ Charlie Murphy). Chief is then torn between his loyalty to the UNSC and the Spartan program’s head, Dr. Catherine Halsey (Natascha McElhone), and finding the truth about his connection to the artifacts.

While it was canceled after just two seasons, Halo can be streamed on Paramount+ and, as of October 1, Netflix, too, according to What’s on Netflix.

Paramount+ may not have the biggest library of all the streaming services out there, but it has it where it counts with some great selections to keep you interested.