Published Jun 7, 2026, 8:02 PM EDT
Anja Djuricic was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1992. Her first interest in film started very early, as she learned to speak English by watching Disney animated movies (and many, many reruns). Anja soon became inspired to learn more foreign languages to understand more movies, so she entered the Japanese language and literature Bachelor Studies at the University of Belgrade.
Anja is also one of the founders of the DJ duo Vazda Garant, specializing in underground electronic music influenced by various electronic genres.
Anja loves to do puzzles in her spare time, pet cats wherever she meets them, and play The Sims. Anja’s Letterboxd four includes Memories of Murder, Parasite, Nope, and The Road to El Dorado.
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Apple TV doesn’t have the same type of endless back catalog like most of its streaming competitors, but what this streamer lacks in volume, it makes up for with an almost annoying level of quality. It’s one of the production companies that has very few shows with Rotten ratings on Rotten Tomatoes; most hang around and above 80%.
Since it started producing original programming, Apple TV has assembled a library of sharp comedies, mind-bending thrillers, sweeping dramas, stunning animations, and at least one musical comedy. Here are ten near-perfect Apple TV shows that are worth your time, and these dive straight in, no countdowns or fillers, just time well-spent in front of the TV.
***Ted Lasso ***follows the titular Ted (Jason Sudeikis), an American college football coach with an endless supply of optimism who is hired to manage a struggling English Premier League soccer team, despite knowing nothing about the game. The catch is that the team’s new owner, Rebecca (Hannah Waddingham), secretly wants him to fail as a form of retaliation against her cheating ex-husband, who happens to be the team’s former owner. But Ted, played with impossible warmth by Sudeikis, is more than just an optimistic cliché; his unwavering kindness gradually rewires everyone around him, from the cynical team captain Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein) to the ice queen owner herself.
Ted Lasso became a genuine cultural phenomenon, winning back-to-back Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series. Sudeikis, Waddingham, and Goldstein all won acting awards, and the show’s third season concluded the story with a satisfying finale; however, constant pressure from global fans prompted Sudeikis and co. to make Season 4. Ted Lasso may turn sappy at times, but it consistently shows that sincerity, when executed with sharp wit and emotional intelligence, makes genuinely appealing and lovable television.
Consider a work-life balance so extreme that your office self has no recollection of your outside existence, and your home self has no idea what you do all day. That’s the terrifying premise of Severance, a sleek, slow-burning psychological thriller about Mark Scout (Adam Scott), who undergoes a “severance” procedure that divides his consciousness between work and private life, created by the enigmatic Lumon Industries. Mark’s “innie” only exists in the Backrooms-style office space, and he begins to suspect something is very wrong. The show is a masterclass in building suspense, but it also vibes as a dark corporate satire with stunning visual storytelling.
Severance, directed by Ben Stiller and written by Dan Erickson, received 14 Emmy nominations and became an instant critical favorite, with a 95% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Many people consider the Season 1 finale to be one of the most tense and masterfully crafted hours of television, bringing each mystery to a breathtaking close. Season 2 made sure to continue the legacy of iconic television, often being deemed a near-perfect work of science fiction.
Vince Gilligan’s first series since Breaking Bad and*** Better Call Saul*, Pluribus, **is a wildly original pandemic drama that explores what happens when world peace arrives, and you don’t want to be a part of it. Astronomers detect an alien radio signal that encodes a viral RNA sequence; within a year, humanity transforms into the “Others,” a perpetually happy, peaceful hive mind with a single consciousness. However, thirteen people prove immune, including Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn). The hive mind will give the immune whatever they want, but it also wants to assimilate them, which is something only Carol seems to be against.
Pluribus was immediately hailed as Gilligan’s return to form, earning a 99% Rotten Tomatoes rating and praise for its philosophical ambition and emotional honesty. The show doesn’t provide easy villains: the Others are truly nonviolent, and Carol is a grieving protagonist who understands as much as we do. Pluribus is a haunting, one-of-a-kind drama about loneliness, individuality, and freedom; though many find its meditative pace and stunning landscape shots too slow, Pluribus takes its time to establish the new world order.
What would happen if the worldwide space race never ended? For All Mankind starts with a brilliant twist: in 1969, the Soviet Union makes the first lunar landing. This propels NASA and the United States into an alternate history where astronauts keep pushing farther into space and scientific discovery. The show follows a wide ensemble, from engineers and astronauts to their families, over several decades as the world changes around a new and ambitious space program. For All Mankind uses historical “what ifs” to explore progress, prejudice, and the price of big dreams in this grand, character-driven epic that is absolutely worth your time.
*For All Mankind *was created by Ronald D. Moore, and it has received praise for its meticulous alternate-history world-building and dedication to letting characters mature, change, and deal with the fallout from their choices. This show has a loyal following and has been nominated for multiple Saturn Awards over the years. **It’s the first-ever series to premiere on Apple TV **and one of the most ambitious and emotionally fulfilling sci-fi dramas on any platform.
Widow’s Bay follows Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys), the well-intentioned but skeptical mayor of Widow’s Bay, a sleepy island town off the New England coast that he desperately wants to turn into a tourist attraction. However, the island is thought to be under a centuries-old supernatural curse that results in disappearances and bad luck. Tom’s rational worldview collapses when a visiting New York Times reporter shows up right after a fisherman disappears at sea. Widow’s Bay was directed by Hiro Murai and created by Katie Dippold and centers on Tom’s hesitant exploration of the island’s sinister past.
Widow’s Bay premiered in April 2026 with a 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating. The cast is excellent: Rhys uses his trademark charm to anchor the horror-comedy chaos, while **Stephen Root **is a delight as the conspiracy-minded Wyck. The Massachusetts filming locations give the island a genuine feel, and the production values are stunning. The first season is still airing weekly episodes as of June 2026, with a finale that promises to address whether the curse can ever be broken and whether Tom can handle the revelation of the island’s darkest secrets.
Your answers point to the world your instincts were built for. This is the universe your temperament, your survival instincts, and your particular brand of stubbornness were made for.
You took the red pill a long time ago — probably before anyone offered it to you. You’re a systems thinker who can’t help but notice the seams in things.
The wasteland doesn’t reward the clever or the well-connected — it rewards those who are hard to kill and harder to break. That’s you.
You’d survive here because you know how to exist in moral grey areas without losing yourself completely.
Arrakis is the most hostile environment in the known universe — and you are precisely the kind of person it rewards.
The galaxy far, far away is vast, loud, and in a constant state of violent political upheaval — and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
Slow Horses is about MI5 agents who have spectacularly messed up and are exiled to Slough House, a grimy, forgotten outpost where they are buried in paperwork and dull tasks. The man in charge is Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), a flatulent, chain-smoking, profoundly unwashed spy who appears to have given up on life; except, he is secretly the sharpest operative in the building, with his wit still sharp and mind still agile. When every season introduces a new case, Lamb’s band of misfits gets into real danger, transforming the show into an intelligent, darkly hilarious spy thriller that shows our “slow horses” can still run. Oldman’s Lamb is a masterclass, and it seems to be a role he thoroughly enjoys.
Based on Mick Herron’s Slough House book series, Slow Horses has received praise from critics and been nominated for multiple BAFTA and Emmy Awards. The show’s short six-episode seasons guarantee that it never outstays its welcome, even leaving viewers to constantly wish for more. The writing tosses and turns between thriller and drama, embellished with the driest of dry humor.* Slow Horses* is a rare series that consistently delivers exceptional quality, with multiple seasons already approved and shot back-to-back.
Shrinking centers on grieving therapist Jimmy Laird (Jason Segel), who chooses to break all professional boundaries and start telling his patients exactly what he thinks. He encourages one patient to leave her emotionally abusive husband and another to follow her dreams with reckless abandon, and naturally, chaos ensues. Instead of being a cynical farce, Shrinking, co-created by Segel, Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso), and Brett Goldstein, is a profoundly touching comedy about the messiness of healing. Harrison Ford delivers a career-defining performance as Jimmy’s stern mentor Paul, stealing every scene with deadpan perfection.
Ford received his first Emmy nomination for the show’s first season, as did Jessica Williams, who played Jimmy’s co-worker. Shrinking is a grief-themed series that keeps you laughing, set in sunny Pasadena, California, and it feels like a character in its own right. The ensemble chemistry is so natural, it feels like the show has been running for a long time. Season 2 increased the emotional stakes while maintaining its uplifting charm, demonstrating that a comedy about sadness can be the most life-affirming thing on television. Because of how uplifting it is, Shrinking is more than worth your time.
Pachinko is a stunning, multigenerational saga based on Min Jin Lee’s best-selling novel that follows a Korean family from Japanese-occupied Korea in the early 1900s to the glittering, discriminatory world of 1980s Japan. It follows Sunja (Kim Min-ha and Youn Yuh-jung), a young woman whose perseverance serves as the backbone of a story that includes wars, forbidden love, and the never-ending grind of survival, especially as an immigrant family. The show is visually stunning, with each frame resembling a painting, and the trilingual storytelling (Korean, Japanese, and English) is executed with effortless grace.
Pachinko earned a 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating, a Peabody Award, and widespread praise for its ambitious plot and emotional depth. Kogonada and Justin Chon’s **direction in Pachinko Season 1 adds meditative beauty to even the bleakest of situations, and the performances, particularly Youn Yuh-jung as older Sunja and Kim Min-ha as her younger self, are breathtaking. It’s a prestige drama that feels epic while also being deeply intimate, the type of show that makes you want to call your grandmother afterward.
Black Bird follows Jimmy Keene (Taron Egerton), a cocky former high school football star serving a ten-year drug sentence; he is offered an impossible deal by the FBI: transfer to a maximum-security prison for the criminally insane, befriend a suspected serial killer, and extract a confession from him before his appeal is denied; if he succeeds, he will be able to walk freely. What follows is a slow, suffocating dance between Keene and the disturbingly quiet Larry Hall, played chillingly by Paul Walter Hauser. Ray Liotta’s final performance as Jimmy’s father is heartbreaking and emotional, too.
This six-episode miniseries, based on Keene’s true-crime memoir, is a masterwork of tension, built not on action but on the incredible weight of words and silence. Egerton sheds his*** Kingsman*** persona to portray Keene’s growing terror, and Hauser’s Hall is a terrifying villain you’ll never forget.** The show received numerous Emmy nominations and rave reviews for its tight storytelling**, which refused to sensationalize the darkness of the story while remaining utterly captivating. It’s kind of sad that it’s a limited series, but given its themes, it’s lucky that it was.
Set in the MonsterVerse following Godzilla’s devastating battle of San Francisco in 2014, Monarch: Legacy of Monsters follows two siblings, Cate and Kentaro Randa (Anna Sawai and Ren Watabe), as they discover their late father’s secret double life within Monarch, the shadowy organization that studies giant monsters, aka kaiju. The show alternates between the immediate aftermath of Godzilla’s rampage and the agency’s 1950s origin, with Kurt Russell and his real-life son **Wyatt Russell **playing the older and younger versions of the same character, army officer Lee Shaw.
Season 1 was a massive hit for Apple, praised for diving deeper and bringing genuine heart and character work to the kaiju genre. This allowed Season 2 to up the scale dramatically, introducing new Titans, a globe-trotting conspiracy, and a finale that features a spectacular monster brawl. Critics have applauded the** show’s insistence on giving its monstrous chaos some genuine emotional stakes**, and Wyatt Russell is expected to return in a spin-off/prequel revolving around Lee Shaw, raising the stakes further. It’s a blockbuster with a brain, a rare franchise show that works just as well for people who’ve never seen a Godzilla film as it does for die-hard fans.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters ](/tag/monarch-legacy-of-monsters/)
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Chris Black, Matt Fraction
Julian Holmes, Matt Shakman, Mairzee Almas, Andy Goddard, Hiromi Kamata