Posted by Ross Johnson
https://lifehacker.com/best-hulu-original-series-beyond-the-bear?utm_medium=RSS
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There’s a good chance you’re already familiar with Hulu’s buzziest shows— Only Murders in the Building, The Bear, and The Handmaid’s Tale among them. Those are all good shows—great, 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 well beyond repackaged shows from the 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 quite different. This high-concept science-fiction series looks more like a political thriller at the outset: We're in, apparently, an affluent suburban town in which everything looks fairly tidy—it's the home of Brown's Xavier Collins, a widower and Secret Service agent to a President who, we learn, was murdered (much of the show happens 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 far weirder. James Marsden plays the President, and he's received good reviews for the role alongside Brown. Fogelman and co. bring an emotional intensity and range to a concept that gets pretty wild. You can stream Paradise here.
Shōgun (2024 – , renewed for second and third seasons)
So successful was the first season of this miniseries, based on the 1975 James Clavell novel, that two further seasons were commissioned to continue the story. Set at the tail-end of Japan's Warring States period, the series sees ambitious English maritime pilot John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) finding himself shipwrecked in Japan and in the power of powerful warlord Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada)—each with something to offer the other. Reluctantly serving as translator between the two is Toda Mariko (Anna Sawai), highly loyal to Toranaga but with a complicated past. The main characters all have real-life analogues, so there's a verisimilitude to everything in this (mostly) Japanese-language drama alongside the Game of Thrones-esque intrigue and drama. You can stream Shōgun here.
Reasonable Doubt (2022 – , renewed for a third season)
Emayatzy Corinealdi (Middle of Nowhere, The Invitation) stars here as Jax Stewart, a former public defender now working at a high-power LA firm. By turns she's a self-righteous do-gooder and deeply messy—she's not always the most likable character, and she often feels more strongly about her cases than about her actual clients. For all the show's juicy, soapy charms (it was created by Scandal writer Raamla Mohamed), that occasional indifference feels real. One of the show's major through-lines, particularly in the first season, involves Jax's separation from her husband and the reappearance in her life of a former client (Michael Ealy) who's just recently been released from prison, and with whom she still has heat. You can stream Reasonable Doubt here.
Mid-Century Modern (2025 – , renewal pending)
Hyped (if "hype" is the right word for what I'm about to describe) as an all-male Golden Girls update, Mid-Century Modern stars the great trio of Nathan Lane, Matt Bomer, and Nathan Lee Graham as three gay middle-aged friends who live together as a kind of found family. It comes from Max Mutchnick and David Kohan, creators of Will & Grace, and feels like a throwback in many ways—but we could do worse than to enjoy an old-fashioned sitcom with a talented cast (including the last performances by Linda Lavin, who seems to have been having a blast here). You can stream Mid-Century Modern here.
Deli Boys (2025 – , renewal pending)
Pakistani-American journalist and producer Abdullah Saeed had been best known for his investigative reporting and Vice documentaries, many of them dealing with the impacts of cannabis laws. The experience lends a unique perspective to this comedy series that follows two brothers—hardworking Mir (Asif Ali) and hard partying Raj (Saagar Shaikh)—following the death of their wealthy father. In quick succession they learn that the bulk of their family's money comes not from the public-facing chain of delis, but from the illegal drug operation running behind the scenes. It's fast-paced and frequently very fun, feeling like nothing else on TV right now. You can stream Deli Boys here.
Hit-Monkey (2021 – , two seasons)
A breath of fresh air among Marvel's million+ hours of TV and movie content, the animated Hit-Monkey eschews pat morality in favor of—well, monkey violence, mostly. Named only Monkey (Fred Tatasciore), the lead is a particularly aggressive macaque forced from his tribe who is mentored by Bryce (Jason Sudeikis), an assassin who's been killed and returns as a helpful ghost. Ally Maki, 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 presumably still watch sans tariff, this was Hulu's first original show for kids, and it's delightful. T. R. Knight voices Cedric, a former pumpkin farmer married to Prince Andrew (Wilson Cruz), as he recounts stories of his journey to becoming the greatest knight to his daughter, Nia. There's action, but the lessons are about how being a hero is less about fighting and more about helping others and trying to make friends rather than jumping to conclusions about people. The second part of season two arrives 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 that show's same Paris Opera Ballet School, Spellbound introduces a new cast and, where the earlier series dealt with time travel, Spellbound is, as the title suggests, more about magic. Here, 15-year-old American Cece Parker Jones travels to Paris to join the 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, natural enemies to Cece's type of witch. It's a solid teen drama. You can stream Spellbound here.
Queenie (2024 – , renewal pending)
Based on Candice Carty-Williams' popular novel of the same name, Queenie stars Dionne Brown as a 25-year-old British-Jamaican journalist navigating a rough breakup that sends her into a self-destructive spiral. She's a deliberately and refreshingly messy character, navigating quarter-life at an intersection of multiple overlapping identities while struggling to grow. Carty-Williams serves as the showrunner, while Brown offers up a phenomenal lead performance. 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 a cast of actual 13-ish-year-olds. It’s weird, but Erskine and Konkle are so good, and the show so committed to the bit, that after a while, you forget that 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 cut short after only two seasons, the show’s still very much worth the trip, and ends on a relatively satisfying note. You can stream PEN15 here.
High Fidelity (2020, one season)
It’s easy to compare it to the 2000 John Cusack movie, 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 a burgeoning, generational thing. Maybe idiosyncratic music nerds of the future will get their own version, where everyone, I don’t know, shares a Spotify login? Anyway, here, Zoë Kravitz takes on the gender-flipped lead role of Rob, a biracial, bisexual record-store owner with a checkered romantic history and a compulsive need to make ranked lists, both of music and her past relationships. It can occasionally be tough to buy into effortlessly cool Kravitz’s awkwardness as a character, but otherwise the show successfully updates the beats of the book, film, and musical. The surprise cancellation after one season was a small tragedy. You can stream High Fidelity here.
The Orville (2017 – , three seasons)
A pick-up from Fox, Seth MacFarlane's The Orville began life looking like a slightly scatological Star Trek parody—a show with a reverence for The Next Generation but also jizz jokes. It quickly grew into something more interesting, though, as McFarlane's obvious affection for Trek sent the show off in a more serious direction—certainly by the Hulu-produced third season, it's 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, miniseries)
Though fictionalized, Mrs. America dramatizes the ‘70s-era fight over the Equal Rights Amendment. Cate Blanchett plays evil activist Phyllis Schlafly, who lead the fight against the (once) broadly 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 it’s not a bad time to take a close look at the people who made basic equality sound radical. This is one helluva supporting cast as well, including Blanchett, Rose Byrne, Uzo Aduba, and Elizabeth Banks. You can stream Mrs. America here.
Shrill (2019 – 2021, three seasons)
Based on Lindy West’s memoir Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, this comedy-drama stars SNL’s Aidy Bryant as Annie, the unapologetically fat heroine. Annie (and the show) make no bones about using the f-word, insisting there’s no stigma in being fat. Annie’s not interested in changing her body, though the first couple of episodes make clear that there’s plenty of other stuff the journalist is working on. Annie is an impressively funny and fully realized character, and there’s a lot of joy to be had in watching her overcome people’s perceptions of her over the course of the series. You can stream Shrill here.
Behind the Mask (2013 – 2015, two seasons)
Docs about offbeat characters are often either uniquely fascinating or utterly insufferable. Luckily, Behind the Mask is much more the former. Over the course of two seasons, the series documents the lives of the ubiquitous but unsung heroes of sports: costumed mascots. Starring characters with names like Rooty the Cedar Tree, Bango the Buck, and Tux the Penguin, the show brings a bit of humanity to people who spend much of their careers hidden beneath giant furry heads, and earned Hulu its first-ever Emmy nomination back in 2014. You can stream Behind the Mask here.
Ramy (2019 – 2022)
Just when you feel like we’ve got enough shows about 20-somethings struggling to grow up, Ramy comes along. The comedy/drama brings something unique to the form by leaning into the faith of its lead, played by comedian/creator Ramy Youssef, rather than making it incidental: He’s a progressive Muslim-American from a blended Jersey neighborhood who struggles, genuinely, with where to set the boundary between traditional values and modern life. Season two added two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali to the cast. You can steam Ramy here.
Castle Rock (2018 – 2019, two seasons)
It’s hard to imagine a J.J. Abrams production based on various Stephen King’s books could possibly have escaped anyone’s attention, but the fact that this show was canceled after only two (excellent) seasons suggests it was a victim of Peak TV more than anything else. The promotion leaned too hard, I think, on King Easter eggs without ever making it clear that there were actual stories here, told with real dramatic heft—the first season’s “The Queen,” told from the unstable perspective of a character with worsening dementia, was one of the best things on television that year. The cast across the two seasons (each with a separate storyline) is stellar: André Holland, Bill Skarsgård, Sissy Spacek, Lizzy Caplan, to name but a few. There’s plenty of stuff for King fans to sink their teeth into, but it all works just fine on its own. You can stream Castle Rock here.
Dimension 404 (2017, one season)
Perhaps meant to be Hulu’s answer to Black Mirror, Dimension 404 never achieved quite the same level of popularity. Though similarly focused on modern technology, this sci-fi anthology is significantly lighter in tone, which actually kinda works given that life in the real world is heavy enough right now, thank you very much. It’s got plenty of Twilight Zone-esque twists, celebrity guest stars (Patton Oswalt, who appears in the second episode, representing the median level of star power). It’s also narrated by Mark Hamill, which is always a plus. You can stream Dimension 404 here.
Into the Dark (2018 – 2021, two seasons)
This is sometimes marketed more like a collection of short-ish movies, but it’s technically an anthology series, so that’s what I'm going to call it—and there are small narrative threads that run through many of the episodes, for the benefit of attentive horror fans. There’s never been, and likely never will be, a horror anthology that isn’t a bit of a mixed bag, but that’s somehow a virtue here, in that different episodes represent different genres. Some are psychological thrillers, some are splatter, some social satire, and a couple of them star a giant furry named Pooka. They’re all entertaining and professionally produced, and the standout episodes are really great. Highlights include A Nasty Piece of Work (with the late Julian Sands hosting a nasty holiday work holiday party), 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 fortune as the founder of the soon-to-be-iconic male strip joint, the origins of Chippendales is a story in itself, but its creator’s fall is even more wild, propelling the miniseries into true crime territory: Less than a decade after the founding of his empire, Banerjee threw it away when he decided that the only way to grow the business involved murder. Murray Bartlett, Annaleigh Ashford, Juliette Lewis, and Dan Stevens also appear. You can stream Welcome to Chippendales here.
M.O.D.O.K. (2021, one season)
The title character (the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) made his live-action debut in Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania, but this goofy (and short-lived) stop-motion animated series from a couple of years ago does a bit better by the Marvel villain. Patton Oswalt stars as the floating robot head and former leader of a global criminal organization who finds himself at a crossroads as he approaches mid-life, now struggling to balance his wish for world conquest with a family life in suburban New Jersey. You can stream M.O.D.O.K. here.
Harlots (2017 – 2019, three seasons)
Harlots takes the historical costume drama in unique directions, and deserved more attention than it got during its three-season run. Its women aren’t dressed in fancy dresses because they’re royalty, but because they’re high-end sex workers (if the title didn’t make clear) in Georgian England. When Margaret Wells moves her brothel to more upscale Soho, she comes into direct competition with her own former madam, who runs a high-end establishment in the same neighborhood. It’s got more sex and moves at a faster pace than more traditional period pieces, and the chess game between rival houses (as they both fight the male-dominated law enforcement establishment) makes for some juicy entertainment. You can stream Harlots here.
Difficult People (2015 – 2017, three seasons)
Three seasons was probably about right for a show about such undeniably terrible people, but it’s all very funny in a Seinfeld-to-the-10th-power kinda way. Julie Klausner (also the creator) and Billy Eichner play two aspiring comedians who have absolutely no idea how myopic and self-destructive they are. That style of comedy isn’t for everyone, but it’s great if you like your laughs more on the evil side. Amy Poehler is one of the producers. You can stream Difficult People here.
Normal People (2020, miniseries)
This Irish import follows the 2018 bestselling 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 a complicated relationship between Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal), who are a mismatched pair from their start in an Irish secondary school: His mother works for her mother as a housekeeper, but he’s the more popular of the two. The series spends most of its time with the two of them, offering an unusually sharp look at a fascinating, engaging relationship. And while it isn’t the main selling point, it’s worth noting that the sex scenes are both more graphic than a lot of what’s on TV, but also more mature and realistic—an impressive feat in itself. You can stream Normal People here.
UnPrisoned (2023 – 2024, two seasons)
The always-great Kerry Washington plays Paige Alexander, a therapist who, naturally, has issues of her own that she needs to work on. Her life gets infinitely more complicated when her father Edwin (Delroy Lindo) moves in with her and her teenaged son following a long prison sentence. Her need for order is upended, while her father’s charismatic exterior conceals uncertainty about his new life. Creator Tracy McMillan based the comedy, in part, on her own experiences, and the result is a knowing but refreshingly upbeat take on life after prison. You can stream UnPrisoned here.
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