In August of 2025, Apple TV+ raised its subscription price from $9.99/month to $12.99/month (the yearly price of $99.99, which works out to a little over $8/month, remained the same). With so many streaming services out there, it’s understandable if people looked at that and decided to forego their memberships, or maybe never to start one. But Apple TV+ is quietly becoming one of the best streaming services around, slowly replacing HBO as the home of prestige TV. Its growing library of content more than justifies the price.
And I’m not just talking about breakout hits like Ted Lasso, Severance, and Pluribus. There are plenty of under-the-radar shows that will keep you watching for a good long while.
For All Mankind
What if…?
For All Mankind was one of the first original shows to run on Apple TV+, and it’s still one of the best. The show takes place in an alternate reality where the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union never stopped. Each season jumps forward several years in time, starting in the 1960s and ending who-knows-where. With each country striving to beat the other, modern technology develops much faster; for instance, the fourth season takes place in the year 2003, when there’s already a research facility on Mars, and we’re trying to mine asteroids.
In between all that heady speculative sci-fi, we’re introduced to a battery of compelling characters who come in and out of the story as needed. For All Mankind is ambitious, intelligent, and melodramatic. It deserves to be more of a headliner series than it is.
- Release Date
-
November 1, 2019
- Showrunner
-
Ronald D. Moore
- Writers
-
Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi
Sugar
Noir with a twist
Sugar starts out looking like a stylish-if-standard detective series about a hard-boiled gumshoe (Colin Farrell) looking for the missing granddaughter of a powerful movie executive. Film buffs will see lots of references to classic Hollywood, and the rest of us can just enjoy the uncoiling story.
Then, about two-thirds of the way through the first season, there’s a twist so wild I’m shocked Apple let it happen. I won’t spoil it here, but I love that Apple allows producers to take risks like this.
- Release Date
-
April 5, 2024
- Showrunner
-
Mark Protosevich
- Directors
-
Fernando Meirelles
- Writers
-
Mark Protosevich
Murderbot
He’s nicer than he sounds
Although it might not sound like it, Murderbot is a comedy. It’s about a security construct (Alexander Skarsgård) that manages to develop sentience. The only problem is that it’s not sure what to do with its new free will, so it spends a lot of time watching futuristic soap operas and trying to keep its personal development under wraps from the stupid humans around it.
Sci-fi comedy is a pretty rare niche, and Murderbot fills it nicely. It was the most underrated new show of 2025 and is coming back for more soon.
- Release Date
-
May 15, 2025
- Network
-
Apple TV+
- Showrunner
-
Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz
- Directors
-
Aurora Guerrero, Roseanne Liang
- Writers
-
Chris Weitz, Paul Weitz
- Franchise(s)
-
The Murderbot Diaries
-
-
-
David Dastmalchian
Gurathin
-
Mythic Quest
A workplace sitcom for the modern age
Mythic Quest is a pretty straightforward workplace sitcom: you take a bunch of wacky characters, stick ’em in a building together, and see what happens. The modern twist is that everyone works at a large game development studio ruled over by the egomaniacal Ian Grimm (Rob Mac), who is determined that his World of Warcraft-esque MMO become the biggest game in the world, no matter how stupid it is.
Like any good sitcom, Mythic Quest has a strong ensemble with great chemistry. And it’s fun to see a show that pokes fun at the gaming industry, which is a huge business that hasn’t been explored much on TV.
- Release Date
-
February 7, 2020
- Network
-
Apple TV+
- Showrunner
-
Charlie Day
- Directors
-
Todd Biermann, Pete Chatmon, Megan Ganz, Angela Barnes, Steve Welch, Catriona McKenzie, LP, Danny Pudi, Heath Cullens
Black Bird
This true crime miniseries is gripping from start to finish
Black Bird tells the true story of James Keene, who is charged with drug conspiracy and sent to prison. Once inside, he’s offered a deal: his sentence will be commuted if he can get close to a suspected serial killer and get him to admit to his crimes.
Based on Keene’s autobiography, Black Bird is a well-written, well-acted crime drama that’s over and done in eight tight episodes. It’s the perfect true crime binge.
- Release Date
-
2022 – 2022-00-00
- Showrunner
-
Dennis Lehane
- Directors
-
Dennis Lehane
- Writers
-
Dennis Lehane
Silo
It’s the end of the world as we know it, and we’re down here
Calling Silo a “hidden gem” may be stretching things just a tad, since the series is fairly popular, but it’s still not as big as it deserves. Silo is set in a future where the remainder of humanity lives in underground silos, since the surface is now uninhabitable. We follow an engineer-turned-sheriff (Rebecca Ferguson) as she delves into the mystery.
There are two seasons of Silo out now and two more on the way, which means the show is guaranteed to get to tell the whole story. Apple is great about giving shows room like this, even if they’re not spectacularly popular.
- Release Date
-
May 5, 2023
- Showrunner
-
Graham Yost
- Directors
-
Morten Tyldum, David Semel
-
Rebecca Ferguson
Juliette Nichols
-
-
Tim Robbins
Bernard Holland
-
Harriet Walter
Martha Walker
Bad Sisters
Bad Sisters, Good TV show
Bad Sisters is about a quintet of Irish sisters who come under suspicion after one of their husbands — who was known to be controlling and abusive — dies unexpectedly. The show is a little bit of a drama, a little bit of a black comedy, a little bit of a mystery, and a really good watch.
- Release Date
-
2022 – 2024-00-00
- Network
-
Apple TV
- Directors
-
Rebecca Gatward, Josephine Bornebusch, James Griffiths
-
-
Eva Birthistle
Ursula Flynn
-
-
Foundation
Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi classic comes to the screen
Foundation is based on a series of books by Isaac Asimov that chart the fall of a great galactic empire and the attempts to save civilization from total collapse. The story spans hundreds of years and involves all kinds of heady sci-fi concepts. Apple’s TV adaptation has to make some compromises to squeeze this story onto TV, but the show has gotten better with each new season, and the fact that they’re trying at all is mind-blowing.
- Release Date
-
September 23, 2021
- Network
-
Apple TV+
- Showrunner
-
David S. Goyer
-
-
-
-
Ella-Rae Smith
Queen Sareth I of Cloud Dominion
Dark Matter
You gotta watch out for those alternate universe doppelgangers
Dark Matter is about a Chicago-area physicist who gets sucked into an alternate dimension. He has to fight to get back to his own life and to stop an alternate version of himself from taking it over.
By now, you have surely noticed that Apple has a ravenous appetite for science fiction shows. So long as they keep making this many good ones, I have no problem with it.
- Release Date
-
May 7, 2024
- Network
-
Apple TV+
- Directors
-
Jakob Verbruggen, Alik Sakharov, Roxann Dawson, Logan George
- Writers
-
Blake Crouch
-
Jennifer Connelly
Daniela Dessen
-
Joel Edgerton
Jason Dessen / Jason2
-
Oakes Fegley
Charlie Dessen
-
Jackie Dallas
Hazmat Woman
Pachinko
Apple does history
While For All Mankind is an alternate history series, Pachinko sticks closer to the real thing. It’s an epic tale that covers four generations of a Korean family that emigrates to Japan. We meet a ton of characters over a huge span of time, from 1915 to 1989. Pachinko is obviously very different from a show like Foundation, but both have a lot of ambition, which is common for Apple.
5 sci‑fi thrillers that unravel one episode at a time
Prepare for a thrilling journey through time and space as these expertly crafted sci-fi series build tension with every episode, leading to jaw-dropping revelations.
Viva Apple
You’ll notice that there aren’t many big IP plays here; the only franchise show in Apple’s roster is Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which is about giant kaiju monsters like Godzilla. Apple mostly gives us completely original programming, and a lot of it is fantastic. And while the price went up a bit, there are no pricing tiers and no ads.
If things keep going at this rate, I expect Apple TV+ to become one of the best streaming services, if not the best, in a few years’ time, so why not get on board now?
