Apple’s streaming service Apple TV+, for better or worse, is a fraction of the size of pretty much all of its rivals and has remained a more or less boutique offering since 2019. That said, size doesn’t really have anything to do with the amount of quality content on the platform available to choose from — quality, fortunately, being where Apple especially shines.
I’ve been an Apple TV+ subscriber from day one, in addition to covering the iPhone maker’s streaming service from its November 2019 launch. In this guide, I’ll take a closer look at more than a dozen Apple shows available to stream that are as good as anything you’ll find on Netflix, HBO Max, Disney Plus, and the like. They range from high-profile standouts to underrated gems. Let’s dive right in, in no particular order.
Tehran
In this Apple spy thriller (which is coming back soon for a third season), Niv Sultan portrays Tamar Rabinyan — an Iranian-born Mossad agent who, in Season 1, sneaks into Iran to try and leave an Iranian nuclear facility vulnerable to an Israeli Air Force bombing run. In Season 2, Glenn Close joined the cast as a new handler of sorts for Tamar inside Iran.
In my opinion, quality spy shows aren’t always easy to come by — making Tehran a rare gem, indeed. Too often, it feels like filmmakers or TV showrunners fall back on tired tropes and lazy assumptions about the cloak-and-dagger world of espionage. In Tehran, however, the protagonists are messy, flawed, and prone to mistakes — but also so compelling as to keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish.
Season 3, by the way, will see the addition of Hugh Laurie to the cast. He’ll play a South African nuclear inspector. Overall, a 10/10 series from Apple.
Acapulco
TV doesn’t get much more feel-good than Apple’s Spanish- and English-language comedy Acapulco, which is awash in bright splashes of color, is set largely in and around a beautiful resort, and focuses on the earnest, lovelorn character of a young man named Maximo.
The co-creators include Eduardo Cisneros, Jason Shuman, and Austin Winsberg, the latter of whom is also the creator of Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist — in other words, a TV veteran who is clearly hardcore about making sure you feel good after spending time with any of his shows. Long story short, we follow two versions of Maximo throughout this series: Both the young man who gets a job at the Las Colinas resort in Acapulco, and the much older and now fabulously wealthy version of Maximo who’s recounting his story to his nephew, How I Met Your Mother-style.
There’s a reason this show still has a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Pretty much all of the characters are so likable that you come to enjoy spending time with them all. They grow, make you laugh, and make you want to go ahead and book a relaxing getaway to Mexico ASAP. And by you, I mean me.
I also love the little touches, like the man and woman at the resort who sing Spanish-language versions of different hit songs from the 80s. I couldn’t be happier that Apple continues to invest in this series, which is a definite must-watch for the Ted Lasso fans among you. Speaking of which …
Ted Lasso
In Ted Lasso, the title character is an aw-shucks, small-time coach from Kansas who gets a job in England coaching a Premier League football team. Like with so many shows from creator Bill Lawrence, however, that setting is just the packaging for something timeless and much more approachable at the core. You don’t have to be a sports fan at all, in other words, to appreciate this series about learning how to find and embrace your better self.
In season two of the show, its irrepressible optimism and feel-good spirit were complemented by a focus on mental health, thanks to the addition of a team therapist. Characters like Coach Lasso, whose marriage has fallen apart, were fleshed out even more — and season three found him confronted by the challenge of leading the team out of their malaise.
From my review of the third and maybe-not-so-final season of the show, which was the most-watched original streaming series across all platforms in 2023:
“At the end of the day, there’s always a little bit of arrogance involved in writing about any kind of art — not that it won’t stop the hot-take machine from weighing in on the highly anticipated new season of the show. Does Ted Lasso stick the landing? You’ll have to figure that out for yourself, of course, but I can only offer — again — that if you’ve enjoyed the ride thus far, I think the thing you’ll be the most disappointed by here is that the show that encouraged us to be a goldfish — and to be curious, not judgmental — is coming to an end.”
Little America
This next Apple TV+ show is an anthology series about the lives of real-life immigrants who all have different experiences in pursuit of the American Dream.
On paper, Little America might sound like a dreary idea for a TV show. It first debuted on Apple’s streamer as part of the launch slate of programming back in 2019 and follows a single protagonist across each of its eight episodes. For many of the immigrants depicted herein, life is hard, fraught, and joy is tough to come by. And yet, the slice-of-life vignettes in each of the episodes put Little America right up there with Ted Lasso as one of the most heartwarming and feel-good shows on Apple’s streamer.
As an aside, Episode 3 of Little America‘s second season (titled The 9th Caller) is one of the best single episodes of TV I’ve seen in a long time — make sure a box of Kleenex is nearby while you watch. Apple has also extended the show beyond TV, via a Little America podcast.
Silo
Sci-fi fans don’t need to be reminded of this, but Apple stormed out of the gate with the first truly great sci-fi series of 2023 in the form of Silo — a 10-episode adaptation of Hugh Howey’s series of novels.
The show, starring Rebecca Ferguson, tells the story of the last 10,000 people left on Earth who live deep underground in a “silo.”
The silo’s existence, we’re led to believe, was the result of some apocalyptic event in the past, an event that resulted in the creation of a mile-deep home being built in order to protect people from the toxic and deadly world aboveground. So much time has passed, however, and information is so tightly controlled that most people don’t know why or when the silo was built — and those who try to find out are met with fatal consequences.
Rebecca Ferguson stars as Juliette, an engineer looking for answers about a loved one’s murder. In the process, she stumbles upon a mystery that goes far deeper than she could have ever imagined.
Severance
From director and executive producer Ben Stiller and creator Dan Erickson, Severance tells the story of office drones at the fictional Lumon Industries, whose employees have undergone a “severance” procedure that surgically divides their memories between their work and personal lives.
I’ll be honest with you: I have no idea how to properly describe this series, because it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Most of the action takes place in a drab, completely unremarkable-looking office complex. The employees have undergone the “severance” process, whereby their work selves are cut off, consciously, from their “outies” (their versions that exist in the outside world).
It’s super creepy, and there’s an air of menace and tension throughout that will keep you hooked and wanting to know what Lumon is up to. Special consideration must also be given to Patricia Arquette, who can send a chill down your spine with her delivery of the most innocuous lines.
There’s a reason this dystopian drama, starring Adam Scott, has a near-perfect critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Strap yourself in for a wild ride.
For All Mankind
One of the OG series on Apple TV+, For All Mankind debuted as part of Apple’s launch slate and offers a fascinating alternative history of the space race.
It comes from Golden Globe nominee and Emmy Award winner Ronald D. Moore, as well as Emmy nominees Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert. Per Apple: “The series presents an aspirational world where NASA astronauts, engineers, and their families find themselves in the center of extraordinary events seen through the prism of an alternate history timeline — a world in which the USSR beats the US to the moon.
“The propulsive third season of the alternate reality series … takes viewers to a new decade, moving into the early ’90s with a high-octane race to a new planetary frontier: Mars. The Red Planet becomes the new front in the Space Race not only for the US and the Soviet Union, but also an unexpected new entrant with a lot to prove and even more at stake.”
Pachinko
A breathtaking artistic achievement, this adaptation of the blockbuster novel from Min Jin Lee interweaves the stories of multiple generations of a Korean-Japanese family into a single narrative tapestry.
From Apple: “Pachinko chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in an indomitable quest to survive and thrive. Starting in South Korea in the early 1900s, the story is told through the eyes of a remarkable matriarch, Sunja, who triumphs against all odds.”
The series was created by Soo Hugh, and its cast includes Academy Award-winning actress Youn Yuh-jung as the older Sunja, Lee Min-ho as Hansu, Jin Ha as Solomon, and Kim Min-ha as the teenage version of Sunja. Apple renewed the show for a second season in 2022. “Words cannot express my joy in being able to continue telling the extraordinary story of this indomitable family,” Hugh said about the renewal.
A personal note: The scene in Episode 4 of Pachinko, in which Solomon dances in the rain to a cover band playing The Cure’s In Between Days, is one of my favorite TV moments of 2022.
Slow Horses
This spy drama led by Gary Oldman offers a refreshing change of pace. The spooks here aren’t beautiful or handsome, nor are they rakish or debonair a la James Bond. Rather, they’re the washed-up, sad-sack intelligence misfits shunted out to MI5’s administrative Siberia called Slough House, from which comes their pejorative moniker — the Slow Horses.
The degree to which the cast is also stacked with top-notch British acting talent — including Oldman, but also Kristen Scott Thomas, Jack Lowden, and Jonathan Pryce, among others — should also provide an indication of the quality on offer here. And we’d be remiss if we didn’t also point out that the series is based on the Slow Horses series of spy novels from writer Mick Herron, who follows in the best tradition of spy novelists like Ian Fleming and John le Carre.
La Maison
From my review and interview with the main cast of this next Apple TV+ drama, which is basically Succession meets the fashion industry meets the City of Light: “Explaining the rules and rituals of fashion to someone like me is about as futile an exercise as trying to pick up anti-matter with a spoon. But give me a soapy TV drama about a high-end French fashion house — led by a family dynasty that’s as dysfunctional as the Roys of Succession — and you have my undivided attention.
“That’s because, for all the Parisian glamor and elegance that pervades a show like the new La Maison on Apple TV+, at the crux of it is a corporate power struggle — one in which the progeny of the super-rich are constantly knifing each other in the back. The battle in La Maison is for control of a fictional haute couture house, and it’s a prospect that sends a lot of bitchy, glamorous people scrambling for an angle. “Does she know our favorite dish is eating each other alive?” one family member asks another in an early episode.”
The show — from the same French production company behind Le Bureau des légendes, one of the greatest spy dramas of all time — dives into the dynamics of high fashion and follows the complex relationships among designers, executives, and creatives. With its sharp storytelling and sleek visuals, La Maison is prestige TV that’s pure Apple programming through and through.
Sugar
Here’s the thing about this next Apple drama, starring Colin Farrell as a hard-bitten private eye in Los Angeles named John Sugar who solves missing persons cases: I am not exaggerating when I say that this show had the wildest twist I think I’ve ever encountered. In, literally, anything.
I wish I could tell you more about it, because it would help sell the show. But you really need to experience what I’m referring to on your own to truly appreciate it (or not!)
On the surface, the show is a cut-and-dried detective drama, and Farrell’s protagonist is ostensibly a classic Hollywood gumshoe type a la Sam Spade. Sugar loves nice suits, classic cars, and old movies — in addition to really loving his work, which finds him doing one thing and one thing only. He’s paid to find people who go missing, whether that’s on behalf of a yakuza client in Japan or a big-time Hollywood producer in LA whose granddaughter has disappeared.
While watching all of this unfold, meanwhile, you’ll eventually start to feel like there’s something really off about this show. That there’s an unsettling vibe throughout it, so much so that you start to feel like there’s something more going on — but you just can’t put your finger on it. You’re feeling the twist I was referring to, which builds slowly and then bursts abruptly out into the open.
Foundation
Adapted from Isaac Asimov’s award-winning stories, Foundation tells the story of a band of exiles on their journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization amid the fall of the Galactic Empire. In addition to the show still holding a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes for its second season, Foundation — which continues to be hailed as the “gold standard” of sci-fi TV — is also officially coming back for a third season.
“We have all been incredibly impressed with the ambitious, action-packed and imaginative adaptation that (showrunner David Goyer) and the rest of this gifted creative team and cast have brought to life with this premium sci-fi series from day one,” Apple TV+ head of programming Matt Cherniss said in a statement about the renewal.
“To watch Foundation become such a global hit has been beyond exciting with audiences around the world continuing to be captivated week after week by this dramatic and compelling journey to save humanity. We can’t wait for everyone to experience what is in store for characters old and new in season three.”
Drops of God
This eight-episode drama from Legendary Entertainment, adapted from the bestselling Japanese manga series of the same name, is the kind of drama that I signed up to Apple TV+ for. Too many streaming services feel like a lot of what they’re doing is just checking boxes when it comes to their slate of content. Cringey reality dating show? Check. Dumb, ridiculously expensive action-thriller that critics will hate and fans will love? You bet. Quirky comedy? The more, the merrier. It takes all kinds to make the streaming world go ’round.
Drops of God, on the other hand, is a show that debuted with a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes precisely because it aspires to be something more fundamental than a checked box. It’s cinematic, gorgeous, bewildering, and the kind of show that stands as proof positive of how, to borrow a line from one of my favorite movies, beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
The story here is set in the rarefied world of gastronomy and fine wines and concerns two potential inheritors of a late wine legend’s extraordinary wine collection, valued at $148 million. One of them is the late man’s daughter in Paris, Camille, who hasn’t seen her father since her parents separated when she was nine. The other is his protege, the brilliant young oenologist Issei Tomine.
The inheritance, including ownership of the man’s empire, will go to the winner of three wine-related challenges. The real winner, though, is you and me — the viewers of this work of art that’s as exquisite as a bottle of Château Lafite.
The Reluctant Traveler
This final Apple TV+ standout is actually a travelogue, hosted by actor Eugene Levy, and it’s basically the antithesis of something like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations.
Where the latter was an urbane, profane, frequently mesmerizing writer with a masterful command of prose who was in love with the world, Levy is an elderly fussbudget who prefers his creature comforts in lieu of traveling the globe — and who especially prefers luxe hotels and fine meals over venturing out to mingle with the locals. So, of course, that’s exactly what Apple gives Levy a show to do, a show that has him visit a series of exotic and far-flung locales, enjoy swanky accommodations, and generally carpe the diem.
This show was a delightful surprise for me, as much for the astonishing visuals as for its reminder that you’re never too old to get a little out of your comfort zone.
