The 33 Best New Shows of 2023

The first big hit show of 2023 was HBO’s The Last of Us, an adaptation of the beloved video game of the same name. Starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey with recurring assists from the likes of Anna Torv, Nick Offerman, and Murray Bartlett, this show about a fungal pandemic isn’t your typical zombie show; it’s concerned less with the scares of monsters (though there are still plenty of those!) and more with how characters grow when a new world must be developed. It’s a pretty instant modern HBO classic. As long as Neil Druckmann (the creator of the game) and Craig Mazin (Chernobyl) remain in charge, The Last of Us is in good hands.

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With Poker Face, Peacock has its first must-see prestige show. Natasha Lyonne leads the festivities as Charlie Cale, a woman with an innate lie detecting ability who finds herself frequently around murders—that she can’t help but solve. Creator Rian Johnson (Knives Out, Glass Onion) wanted badly to bring back shows with the episodic nature and high quality of Columbo, and he’s achieved just that with the wildly-fun Poker Face.

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Could 2023 be the year of Apple TV+? Just as it seems like most of the other streamers on the list are starting to cut back at least a little, Apple remains on our list with easily the most entries (quantity-wise) and the most-exciting entries, in terms of actors and talent involved.

It starts with a pair of names that will certainly get you excited: Jason Segel (!) returns to TV comedies with co-star Harrison Ford (!!!) for this comedy about a shrink who makes a striking life change. Shrinking was created by Segel, along with the Ted Lasso superteam of Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein. It’s a real winner—a show that builds itself around great characters you’ll want to spend time with, but also gets into mature topics like grief and therapy.

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Party Down, the beloved cult-classic comedy series, finally returned for a long, long, long-awaited third season—and it delivered. The comedy hit on all of its hilarious and emotional beats, and despite being off the air for 13 years, felt like it was never gone.

Led by Adam Scott’s Henry Pollard, Ken Marino’s Ron Donald, and the rest of the original cast (with the exception of Lizzy Caplan’s Casey, who unfortunately wasn’t available due to filming Fleishman is in Trouble), this is without question one of 2023’s comedy events to remember.

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A little bit of road rage goes a long way. Ali Wong and Steven Yeun play two people who come from very different backgrounds who completely throw the other’s life off the rails after a completely random incident in a parking lot keeps escalating and escalating. Beef is one of the year’s very best shows: funny, makes you think, and with an absolutely fantastic soundtrack. Showrunner Lee Sung Jin, director Jake Schreier, and Yeun will reunite on next year’s Thunderbolts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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Jury Duty may just be the most unique, engaging, and completely watchable show of 2023—and it all centers on a random dude named Ronald Gladden. Ronald, it turns out, signed up to participate in a documentary being made about the American legal system, and, when he got called for Jury Duty, the cameras began rolling. Except what Ronald doesn’t know is that as soon as he got to Jury Duty, everyone around him—the other jurors, the judge, the bailiff, etc—are all actors. It’s, essentially, a real-life Truman Show, and James Marsden is there, as an utterly hilarious version of himself, for good measure. The show is funny, and the improv comedy skills of the numerous actors in the cast is impressive to watch. And if you find yourself crying during the last episode (sounds crazy, I know)—you are not alone.

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With Lost, The Leftovers, and Watchmen, Mrs. Davis co-creator Damon Lindelof has been behind three of the greatest shows of the last two decades. He clearly knows his stuff when it comes to the small screen. But with Mrs. Davis—a show about a nun (Betty Gilpin) who takes on an massive, world-controlling AI named Mrs. Davis—he may have somehow figured out how to predict the future too. As we try to deal with the rise of Chat GPT and others in the real world, at least we can watch Gilpin’s Sister Simone get to the bottom of a massive, genre-bending conspiracy in one of the year’s most engaging, twisty, and funny shows.

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Prime Video brings the heat with this one. Dead Ringers is an update of the 1988 David Cronenberg psychological horror film that starred Jeremy Irons as twin gynecologists; in this series, the twins are instead be played by the great Rachel Weisz. The update comes at a time when female bodily autonomy is quite the timely subject, and the show—on the strength of its fantastic lead performance—stands up well to both our modern day and the iconic horror director’s original film.

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Look—the True Crime dramatization isn’t particularly new at this point. We get it. That being said, Max’s take on the infamous Candy Montgomery case is absolutely star-studded, led by the always fantastic Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse Plemons, along with supporting players such as Krysten Ritter, Lily Rabe, and Tom Pelphrey. It’s a good watch if you understand what you’re getting yourself into.

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This series—loosely based on Pete Davidson’s own life—sees itself as something of a take on Curb Your Enthusiasm, where Davidson plays a fictionalized version of himself with Edie Falco (as his mom) and, drum roll please, Joe Pesci (as his grandpa). The supporting/guest cast is super impressive, including Charlie Day, Bobby Cannavale, John Mulaney, and Kenan Thompson among others. A fun time!

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Rebecca Ferguson is already helping to anchor two major blockbuster series—Dune and Mission Impossible—in 2023, so why not add a potentially massive sci-fi TV show to her list as well? Silo, based on Hugh Howey’s series of novels, is about a dystopian future where society exists underground with a strict set of rules. Ferguson is joined in the cast by Rashida Jones, David Oyelowo, Tim Robbins, and Common, while Justified‘s Graham Yost is the show’s creator.

And if you’re looking for an epic of scale and world-building with stakes and a mystery that just feel big? Well, this is it. You’re going to be hooked.

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Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne, and the whole Neighbors team is back together for Platonic, an Apple TV+ series about two friends who reconnect at pivotal points (one post-divorce, the other married and with a family) in mid-adulthood. And it is a blast!

There’s lots of fun to be had in just about every episode, but one particularly enjoyable episode comes when Will (Rogen) spends a little extra time with Charlie (Luke MacFarlane), Sylvia’s (Byrne) husband. There’s a baseball game, there’s a lot of drinking, and there are some really surprising special skills put on display. This show is a blast, and yet another reason why we really tend to think that Apple TV+ has this whole comedy thing figured out.

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The last time Kaley Cuoco tried a murder mystery crime drama type of situation it worked out, with The Flight Attendant (Season 1 did, at least), and Based on a True Story proves similarly successful. When a couple discover a serial killer right in the midst of their small (but upper-middle class) social circle, they decide to channel the nation’s true crime obsession for their own benefit, rather than alerting the authorities. It’s a fun, dark, unique, and quick comedy that makes great use of the star power and charisma that Cuoco and her co-lead Chris Messina share. Tom Bateman, as a plumber with a bit of a secret, is another major standout.

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Boots Riley is back for his first project since the incredible sci-fi satire Sorry To Bother You, with I’m A Virgo. And we’re pleased to report that anyone who liked the bizarre and super-smart magical realism of Sorry To Bother You will be right back on board with I’m A Virgo. The showstars Jharrel Jerome (Emmy winner for When They See Us) as a 13-foot-tall 19-year-0ld living in Oakland; he’s been coddled his whole life, when suddenly he gets out into the world and becomes famous. At this point, he meets some new friends, and also falls into the crosshairs of his former hero, a Robocop/Iron Man hybrid named The Hero (Walton Goggins)–who is also a massively overreaching fascist megalomaniac. Fun stuff!

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Another superhero cartoon? Yes! You may think you’ve had your fill, but My Adventures With Superman (featuring The Boys and Scream star Jack Quaid as the voice of Clark Kent/Superman) is a fun and earnest show that retells Superman’s origin and early years with great care. While we wait patiently for James Gunn’s new Superman: Legacy movie, this series will be a great way to fill our craving for the Man of Steel.

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Watch out, Hard Knocks—you’ve finally g0t some competition. Netflix’s Quarterback (produced by Peyton Manning) takes you inside a year of NFL quarterbacks, including Patrick Mahomes, Kirk Cousins, and Marcus Mariota. It’s unprecedented access into a world that fans of the sport are always eager to see more of.

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Steven Soderbergh is without question one of the best directors in the industry. He’s also without question one of the most prolific, and for Full Circle he directed every episode, while retreaming with his No Sudden Move screenwriter Ed Solomon.

This limited series about a botched kidnapping finds Sodey with a stacked cast (including Zazie Beetz, Timothy Olyphant, Jharel Jerome, Dennis Quaid, Claire Danes, and more) in his best lane: stylish crime drama. You’ll be hooked on this one from the first episode, and be happy you kept watching by the very end.

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He’s baaaaaack! Timothy Olyphant made his triumphant return as Raylan Givens for a brand new case in City Primeval, which finds the star returning to the character he played for 78 episodes on Justified. The series is once again based on Elmore Leonard source material, and while Raylan is the only character returning from the original series, it’s just as much of a twisty, thrilling crime story. Boyd Holbrook, as he has so many times before, makes for a fantastic villain.

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After teases in both The Mandalorian Season 2 and The Book of Boba Fett, we finally are in the midst of Ahsoka, the Star Wars spinoff centered on Rosario Dawson’s live-action Ahsoka Tano. The show is not quite as mature as Andor, but it features easily some of the most interesting characters—and most in-depth lightsabers fights—since the sequel trilogy of films concluded in 2019. It’s a bit of a difficult nut to crack for anyone who hasn’t seen the animated Star Wars series, but it fills the galaxy far, far, away hole in our lives. What more can we ask for?

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