The 25 Best Hulu Original Series You Should Watch
There’s a good chance you’re already familiar with Hulu’s most popular shows — Only Murders in the Building , The Bear , and The Handmaid’s Tale among them. Those are all good shows — great ones, even! — but there are others that are just as good, and some that are even better.
Like Netflix and Max , Hulu has been developing its own original (and co-produced) shows since 2012, building a library that goes far beyond recycled shows from broadcast networks.
Paradise (2025 – , renewed for a second season)
Paradise reunites This is Us creator Dan Fogelman with one of that ensemble’s stars, Sterling K. Brown, for something very different. This high-concept sci-fi series starts out more like a political thriller: We’re apparently in a wealthy suburban town where everything looks pretty neat — it’s the home of Brown’s Xavier Collins, a widower and Secret Service agent for the president, who we learn has been assassinated (much of the show takes place in flashback). Before the first episode is over, we learn that Collins is a suspect in the murder, and also that this quiet suburb is something much stranger. James Marsden plays the president, and he’s received strong reviews for his role alongside Brown. Fogelman and company bring emotional intensity and range to a concept that gets pretty wild. You can stream Paradise here .
Shogun (2024–, renewed for second and third seasons)
The first season of this miniseries, based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell, was so successful that two more seasons were ordered to continue the story. Set at the end of the Warring States period in Japan, the series finds ambitious English naval aviator John Blackthorn (Cosmo Jarvis) shipwrecked in Japan and at the mercy of powerful warlord Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) – each with something to offer the other. Reluctantly serving as a translator between the two is Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), who is fiercely loyal to Toranaga but has a complicated past. All of the main characters have real-life counterparts, so there’s a believability to this (mostly) Japanese-language drama, along with Game of Thrones -style intrigue and drama. You can stream Shogun here .
Reasonable Doubt (2022–, renewed for a third season)
Emayatzy Corinealdi ( Middle of the Empty , The Invitation ) stars as Jax Stewart, a former public defender now working at a major Los Angeles firm. Alternately a smug do-gooder and deeply sleazy, she’s not always the most likable character, and she often feels more powerful in her cases than in her actual clients. For all the show’s sappy, soapy charms (it was created by Scandal writer Ramla Mohamed), that occasional indifference feels real. One of the show’s major throughlines, particularly in the first season, involves Jax’s separation from her husband and the return into her life of a former client (Michael Ealy), who’s just gotten out of prison and with whom she still has some warmth. You can stream Reasonable Doubt here .
Mid-Century Modern ( 2025– , pending extension)
Touted (if “touted” is the right word for what I’m about to describe) as an all-male update to Golden Girls , Mid-Century Modern stars the brilliant trio of Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Nathan Lee Graham as three middle-aged gay friends who move in together as a kind of found family. It’s created by Will & Grace creators Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, and in many ways feels like a throwback — but we could do worse than enjoy an old-fashioned sitcom with a talented cast (including the latest performances by Linda Lavin, who seems to be having a great time here). You can stream Mid-Century Modern here .
Deli Boys ( 2025– , renewal pending)
Pakistani-American journalist and producer Abdullah Saeed was best known for his investigative journalism and Vice documentaries, many of which focused on the impact of cannabis laws. That experience lends a unique perspective to this comedy series, which follows two brothers — hard-working Mir (Asif Ali) and hard-partying Raj (Saagar Sheikh) — after the death of their wealthy father. In rapid succession, they learn that the bulk of their family’s money comes not from a publicly traded delicatessen, but from an illegal drug trade that runs behind the scenes. It’s fast-paced and often hilarious, and feels like there’s nothing else on TV right now. You can stream Deli Boys here .
Hit-Monkey (2021 – , two seasons)
A breath of fresh air among the millions of hours of Marvel TV and film content, the animated Hit-Monkey eschews formulaic morality tales in favor of…well, monkey violence, mostly. Simply titled Monkey (Fred Tatasciore), the title character is a particularly aggressive macaque exiled from his tribe who is mentored by Bryce (Jason Sudeikis), a murderer who was killed and returned as a helpful ghost. Ally Mackie, Olivia Munn, George Takei, Leslie Jones, and Cristin Milioti are among the talented voice cast. You can stream Hit-Monkey here .
The Bravest Knight (2019 – , two seasons)
A Canadian import that you can probably still watch without a plan, this was Hulu’s first original show for kids, and it’s delightful. TR Knight voices Cedric, a former pumpkin farmer married to Prince Andrew (Wilson Cruz), as he tells stories about his journey to becoming the greatest knight to his daughter Nia. There’s action, but the lessons are that being a hero isn’t so much about fighting as it is about helping others and trying to make friends, rather than jumping to conclusions about people. Season 2 Part 2 drops in June. You can stream The Bravest Knight here .
Spellbound (2023–, third season in production)
A successor to Find Me in Paris ( also on Hulu ) set at the same Paris Opera Ballet School, Spellbound features a new cast, and while earlier series were about time travel, Spellbound is , as the title suggests, more about magic. Here, 15-year-old American CeCe Parker Jones travels to Paris to enroll in a prestigious dance school, only to discover that she’s an actual witch with a family history of magic. Now she struggles to balance dance, magic, and her desire to be a normal teenager while dealing with the Mystics, the natural enemies of CeCe’s witch-type. It’s a solid teen drama. You can stream Spellbound here .
Queenie (2024–, renewal pending)
Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Candace Carty-Williams, Queenie stars Dionne Brown as a 25-year-old British-Jamaican journalist going through a bad breakup that sends her into a self-destructive spiral. She’s a deliberately and refreshingly messy character, living a quarter-life at the intersection of multiple intersecting identities while struggling to grow. Carty-Williams serves as showrunner, and Brown delivers a phenomenal performance in the title role. You can stream Queenie here .
PEN15 (2019 – 2021, two seasons)
It takes a minute to get used to the show’s conceit/gimmick: Thirty-something creators/comedians Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle play young teenagers among real 13-year-olds. It’s weird, but Erskine and Konkle are so good, and the show is so committed to the moment, that after a while you forget it’s even a thing. What’s left is an effective and funny cringe comedy that accurately recreates the pain of seventh grade with a surprising amount of heart. Though the show was cut after just two seasons, it’s still worth watching, and ends on a relatively satisfying note. You can stream PEN15 here .
High Fidelity (2020, one season)
It’s easy to compare it to John Cusack’s 2000 film, but keep in mind that this is actually the third major adaptation of Nick Hornby’s 1995 novel High Fidelity — so it’s perhaps less of a remake situation than an emerging, generational thing. Maybe the idiosyncratic music nerds of the future will get their own version where everyone, I don’t know, shares a Spotify username? Either way, here Zoë Kravitz takes on the lead, gender-flipped role of Rob, a biracial, bisexual record store owner with a checkered romantic history and an obsessive need to compile ranked lists of both music and her past relationships. It can be hard to buy into the effortless awkwardness of Kravitz’s cool as a character at times, but otherwise the show successfully updates the beats of book, film, and musical. Its abrupt cancellation after one season was a minor tragedy. You can stream High Fidelity here .
The Orville (2017–, three seasons)
Picked up by Fox, Seth MacFarlane’s The Orville began life as a mildly scatological Star Trek parody, a show with homages to The Next Generation but also jokes about sperm. It quickly evolved into something more interesting, however, as MacFarlane’s obvious affinity for Trek took the show in a more serious direction — certainly by its third season, produced by Hulu, it had become one of the most ambitious sci-fi shows on the air. A fourth season is allegedly on the way , though I’ll believe it when I see it. You can stream The Orville here .
Mrs. America (2020, mini-series)
Though fictional, Mrs. America dramatizes the ’70s fight for the Equal Rights Amendment. Cate Blanchett plays the angry activist Phyllis Schlafly, who leads the fight against the (once) widely popular proposed amendment, weaponizing the ERA by tying it to radical and pro-choice feminists, homosexuals, desegregationists, and other maligned groups. She was at the forefront of a broad conservative cultural shift, and now is as good a time as any to take a hard look at the people who made basic equality sound radical. It’s also got a damn good supporting cast, including Blanchett, Rose Byrne, Uzo Aduba, and Elizabeth Banks. You can stream Mrs. America here .
Piercing (2019–2021, three seasons)
Based on Lindy West’s memoir Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman , this comedy-drama series stars SNL ’s Aidy Bryant as Annie, an unspeakably fat character. Annie (and the show) aren’t shy about using the f-word, insisting that there’s no stigma attached to being fat. Annie isn’t interested in changing her body, though the first couple of episodes make it clear that there are plenty of other things the journalist is working on. Annie is an impressively funny and fully realized character, and it’s a joy to watch her overcome people’s perceptions of her as the series progresses. You can stream Shrill here .
Under the Mask (2013–2015, two seasons)
Documentaries about unusual characters are often either uniquely fascinating or downright insufferable. Luckily, Behind the Mask is much more of the former. Over two seasons, the series documents the lives of ubiquitous but unsung sports heroes: costumed mascots. Starring characters like Ruthie Cedar Tree, Bungo Buck, and Tux Penguin, the show brings a little humanity to the people who spend most of their careers hiding under giant furry heads, and earned Hulu its first-ever Emmy nomination in 2014. You can stream Behind the Mask here .
Rami (2019 – 2022)
Just when you feel like we’ve had enough of shows about 20-somethings trying to grow up, along comes Ramy . The comedy/drama brings something unique to the form by leaning into the faith of its lead character, played by comedian/creator Ramy Youssef, rather than making it incidental: He’s a progressive Muslim-American from a mixed-race Jersey neighborhood who genuinely struggles with where to draw the line between traditional values and modern life. Two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali has joined the cast for season two. You can listen to Ramy here .
Castle Rock (2018–2019, two seasons)
It’s hard to imagine that J.J. Abrams’s show based on various Stephen King books could have flown under anyone’s radar, but the fact that this show was canceled after just two (excellent) seasons suggests that it was more a victim of Peak TV than anything else. I think the promotion relied too heavily on King Easter eggs, failing to recognize that there were real stories here, told with real dramatic weight — season one’s “Queen,” told from the unstable perspective of a character with worsening dementia, was one of the best things on TV that year. The cast across the two seasons (each with its own story arc) is stellar: André Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Sissy Spacek, Lizzy Caplan, to name a few. There’s plenty for King fans to sink their teeth into, but it all works beautifully on its own. You can stream Castle Rock here .
Dimension 404 (2017, one season)
Perhaps intended as Hulu’s answer to Black Mirror , Dimension 404 never quite achieved the same level of popularity. While this sci-fi anthology also focuses on modern technology, it’s considerably lighter in tone, which actually works considering life in the real world is pretty tough right now, thank you very much. It’s loaded with Twilight Zone -style twists, celebrity guest stars (Patton Oswalt, who appears in the second episode, is middling star power), and it’s voiced by Mark Hamill, which is always a plus. You can stream Dimension 404 here .
Into the Dark (2018–2021, two seasons)
At times it feels more like a collection of short films, but technically it’s an anthology series, I’ll call it – and there are little narrative threads that run through many of the episodes, for the discerning horror fan. There has never been, and probably never will be, a horror anthology that isn’t a bit of a mixed bag, but that’s kind of the beauty of it, in that the different episodes represent different genres. Some are psychological thrillers, some are splatter films, some are social satires, and a couple of them star a giant furry thing called a Pooka. They’re all entertaining and expertly produced, and the standout episodes are genuinely great. Highlights include A Nasty Piece of Work (with the late Julian Sands throwing a nasty holiday party at work), the immigration-themed Culture Shock , the aforementioned Pooka!, and the queer slasher Midnight Kiss . You can stream Into the Dark here .
Welcome to Chippendales (2022–2023, miniseries)
The true story of Indian immigrant Steve Banerjee (played here by Kumail Nanjiani) is wildly dramatic and juicy, but not always in the ways you might expect. Chronicling Banerjee’s rise to wealth as the founder of a soon-to-be cult male strip club, the origins of Chippendales are a story in themselves, but its creator’s fall is even wilder, pushing the miniseries into true crime territory: Less than a decade after founding his empire, Banerjee abandoned it when he decided the only way to grow the business was through murder. Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford, Juliette Lewis, and Dan Stevens also appear. You can stream Welcome to Chippendales here .
MODOK (2021, one season)
The titular character (a Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) made his live-action debut in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania , but this silly (and short-lived) stop-motion animated series from a couple of years ago does a slightly better job of portraying the Marvel villain. Patton Oswalt plays a floating robot head and former leader of a global crime organization who finds himself at a crossroads as he approaches midlife, now struggling to balance his desire to conquer the world with his family life in suburban New Jersey. You can stream MODOK here .
Courtesans (2017 – 2019, three seasons)
Harlots takes the period costume drama in unique directions and deserves more attention than it’s received in three seasons. The women in it wear fancy dresses not because they’re royalty, but because they’re high-class sex workers (in case the title wasn’t clear) in Georgian England. When Margaret Wells moves her brothel to the more upscale Soho, she finds herself in direct competition with her former madam, who runs an upscale establishment in the same area. There’s more sex and a faster pace than more traditional period pieces, and the chess match between the rival houses (as they both battle male-dominated law enforcement) makes for juicy entertainment. You can stream Harlots here .
Difficult People (2015–2017, three seasons)
Three seasons would probably be about right for a show about such undeniably awful people, but it’s all very funny in a Seinfeld -style way to the tenth power. Julie Klausner (also the creator) and Billy Eichner play two aspiring comedians who have absolutely no idea how short-sighted and self-destructive they are. It’s not everyone’s style of comedy, but it’s great if you’re more into laughing at evil. Amy Poehler is one of the producers. You can stream Difficult People here .
Normal People (2020, mini-series)
This Irish import follows the best-selling 2018 novel of the same name from Sally Rooney, who also wrote the screenplay. There’s no real high-concept plot here; the show follows the years-long story of the complicated relationship between Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal), who are a mismatched pair from the start at an Irish high school: his mother works for her mother as her own housekeeper, but he’s the more popular of the two. The series spends much of its time with the two of them, offering an unusually sharp look at a fascinating, compelling relationship. And while it’s not a major selling point, it’s worth noting that the sex scenes are more graphic than much of what’s shown on TV, but also more mature and realistic – an impressive feat in and of itself. You can stream Normal People here .
UnPrisoned (2023–2024, two seasons)
The always brilliant Kerry Washington plays Paige Alexander, a therapist who naturally has her own issues to work through. Her life becomes infinitely more complicated when her father Edwin (Delroy Lindo) moves in with her and her teenage son after a lengthy prison sentence. Her need for order is upended, while her father’s charismatic exterior masks insecurities about his new life. Creator Tracy McMillan based the comedy in part on her own experiences, and the result is a knowing but refreshingly optimistic look at life after prison. You can stream UnPrisoned here .