The Best TV Series to Stream This Week
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If you’re looking for a new show to watch this week, I’ve got your back. I’ve scoured the schedules of Netflix, Prime, Max, Hulu, and other streaming platforms to bring you the best and most notable shows streaming this week. This week’s best new shows include two strange-but-true crime stories: Good American Family, in which a couple’s adopted daughter turns out to be a fully grown woman, and Happy Face, a series that details the fraught relationship between a serial killer and his daughter.
Good American Family
Mark Duplass and Ellen Pompeo star as a Midwestern couple who adopt a child they believe has a rare form of dwarfism, but they start to suspect she’s not actually a child, and wonder what nefarious designs she has on their family. Based on the same true stories that inspired The Orphan, Good American Family aims to go deeper than a potboiler by telling its creepy, bizarre tale from multiple points of view to explore the subtleties of bias, culture, and trauma that are really behind this odd story.
Where to stream: Hulu
Happy Face
It’s so cinematic it’s hard to believe it, but Happy Face, Paramount+’s original, true-crime drama, is based on a true story. Annaleigh Ashford plays Melissa Moore, the daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson, a serial killer better known as “The Happy Face Killer.” After not speaking to his daughter for decades, murderous Jesperson worms his way back into her life by dangling a confession that could free a man accused of a murder. But is he telling the truth, or just trying to build a twisted father-daughter relationship?
Where to stream: Paramount+
The Residence
If you like a good whodunit, check out The Residence. Uzo Aduba plays Cordelia Cupp, a brilliant but eccentric detective tasked with solving a murder that takes place during a state dinner at the White House residence. Everyone is a suspect: the staff, the guests, maybe the president himself. With a killer on the loose in the halls of power, Cupp must navigate a complex web of politics and personalities if she’s going to crack the case.
Where to stream: Netflix
Last week’s picks
Dope Thief
Apple TV+ has found the perfect vehicle for actor Brian Tyree Henry (Causeway, Atlanta). In Dope Thief, Henry plays Ray Driscoll, an outlaw and antihero who remains sympathetic. Ray and his best pal Manny, played by Wagner Moura, are a couple of Philly dudes who hit on a plan to make money: dress up as DEA agents and rob low-level drug dealers. It’s not a good plan, and it gets extra not-good when they inadvertently target the kind of large narcotics operation that will send men to kill everyone you know if you cross them.
Where to stream: Apple TV+
Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney
Netflix is entering the talk show world with Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney, a weekly live show hosted by Mulaney, who also serves as co-showrunner and executive producer. If his first Netflix live show, John Mulaney’s Everybody’s in LA, is the model, expect eclectic celebrity guests, phone calls with the viewing audience, and the spontaneous magic that only working live brings. At a recent press event, Mulaney promised, “We will never be relevant. We will never be your source for news. We will always be reckless. Netflix will always provide us with data that we will ignore.” Sounds promising.
Where to stream: Netflix
The Righteous Gemstones, season 4
The fourth and final season of HBO original comedy The Righteous Gemstones features the titular family of scummy televangelists fighting America’s “war on Christianity” while continuing to grift suckers hilariously. The show’s talented cast—including Danny McBride, Adam DeVine, Edi Patterson, and John Goodman—will be returning, and a couple of new faces will be on hand to keep things fresh. Will & Grace star Megan Mullally plays Lori, an old family friend of the Gemstones, and Sean William Scott from American Pie plays her son.
Where to stream: Max
The Wheel of Time, season 3
If fantasy is your sort of thing, check out Prime’s sprawling sorcery and orcs (sorry, “trollocs”) series The Wheel of Time. The show is returning for a third season, and the White Tower is really in peril now. Right off the bat, Liandrin is revealed as a Black Ajah in front of the Hall of the Sitters. Later, Rand, Moiraine, Lan, Egwene, and Aviendha embark on an epic journey to the Aiel Waste. If you haven’t seen the first two seasons or read Robert Jordan’s 14(!) Wheel of Time novels, there’s no better time than now to dig in.
Where to stream: Prime
Adolescence
The dramatic question at the center of four-part Netflix series Adolescence is, “What would you do if your teenage son was accused of murder?” Stephen Graham plays Eddie Miller, whose 13-year-old son Jamie, played by Owen Cooper, is arrested for the murder of a teenage classmate. To illustrate the provocative premise, each episode of Adolescence is presented as a single, continuous shot, so both film nerds and drama fans should put this on their watch list.
Where to stream: Netflix
Am I Being Unreasonable? season 2
If you’re looking for something unusual to watch, check out Am I Being Unreasonable? Produced by BBC, the first season of this dark comedy/thriller series earned rave reviews for its anarchic, try-everything cinematic style, its sharp writing, and its talented cast headed by Daisy May Cooper. She plays Nic, a woman stuck in an unhappy marriage whose life unravels in hilarious ways when she tells someone her darkest secret.
Where to stream: Hulu
