10 Most Underrated TV Shows Streaming On Paramount Plus
10 Most Underrated TV Shows Streaming On Paramount Plus
- Paramount+ isn't always included in conversations about the very best streaming platforms for TV, though the service features plenty of great content.
- But if you're an avid TV watcher with a Paramount+ subscription who's watched all the hits, where do you turn to next? We've got you covered.
- These series run the gamut from supernatural mysteries to quirky comedies to hard-hitting action and impassioned period pieces.
Paramount+ isn't always included in conversations about the very best streaming platforms for TV, though the service features plenty of great content. The streamer is home to all of TV mogul Taylor Sheridan's shows as well as most of the series in the vast "Star Trek" universe.
If you're not a Trekkie nor a fan of modern westerns, you can probably find something else to watch in the library, from procedurals like "FBI" and "NCIS" to classic comedies like "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Frasier." You've probably heard of most of the shows we just listed, which include some all-time classics.
But if you're an avid TV watcher with a Paramount+ subscription who's watched all the hits, where do you turn to next? We've got you covered. What follows is a roundup of the best shows on Paramount+ that haven't received the love they deserve.
These series run the gamut from supernatural mysteries to quirky comedies to hard-hitting action and impassioned period pieces. Here are 10 underrated TV shows streaming on Paramount+. Comment below if any of these are your unsung favorites, and what else you would add to the list.
Robert and Michelle King have been writing consistently great television for years now, from their brilliant legal drama "The Good Wife" to its spin-offs "The Good Fight" and "Elsbeth." Their most consistently overlooked show is "Evil," a spooky serial we'd advise you not to sleep on. Katja Herbers plays Dr. Kristen Bouchard, a forensic psychologist living in New York City.
She is hired She teams up with David Acosta (Mike Colter), a priest-in-training, and tech expert Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi). "Evil" owes a lot to "The X-Files," what with its central premise of a skeptic (or two) and a believer coming together to investigate puzzling cases.
Like Mulder and Scully, Kristen and David share intense chemistry that threatens to upend both their lives.
The show is truly scary, with terrifying demons aplenty, and also uproariously funny at times. Andrea Martin is a scene stealer as sardonic nun Sister Andrea, who has a habit of hitting demons with a broom. Michael Emerson plays Dr.
Leland Townsend, one of Kristen's biggest enemies, and Christine Lahti appears as her morally ambiguous mother. "Evil" is whip-smart and brilliantly satirical, but it never sacrifices character development for wit. Kristen and her four boisterous daughters are a delight to spend time with, and the show explores knotty moral issues with great dexterity.
"Colin From Accounts" has one of the worst titles we've ever heard, but that doesn't pause it from being one of the funniest rom-coms we've seen in ages. The title character is not, in fact, a boring man who works in an office — he's a dog. Gordon (Patrick Brammall) is a 40-something brewery owner.
When a cheery nurse, Ashley (Harriet Dyer), flashes him while crossing the street, he short-circuits and runs over a dog. The pair end up adopting the poor pooch, naming him "Colin From Accounts." Australian duo Brammall and Dyer are married in real life, and their relationship on the show is a hot mess we can't look away from.
Gordon has a serious case of arrested development and doesn't take good care of himself. Ashley has a sleepwalking problem and is prone to impulsive behavior like flashing a stranger on the street. They are extremely flawed individuals who probably shouldn't be together, but somehow, they make perfect sense.
"Colin From Accounts" eschews the will-they-won't-they aspect of many TV couples, as Ashley and Gordon jump right into the relationship without much planning. They constantly find themselves in disastrous and embarrassing scenarios that Brammall and Dyer have somewhat masochistically forced upon themselves.
Despite the show's cringier elements, it has a lot of heart, and the characters are likable enough to root for.
Thankfully, the series keeps its momentum after their relationship solidifies, exploring the many ways they are both compatible and incompatible and mining these inconsistencies for endless laughs. One of the best Comedy Central shows of all time is also one of the most underrated.
Created Sam Duvet (Richardson) and Tim Cramblin (Robinson) run a low-level advertising company in Detroit, and spend their days coming up with hairbrained schemes to grow their business without actually doing very much work.
Some of their jingles are pretty catchy, though. If you're familiar with Robinson's work, which includes the iconic cringe comedy series "I Think You Should Leave," you'll enjoy the full-throated quirk that permeates "Detroiters." The show is filled with eccentric characters making disastrous decisions, but none of the comedy is mean-spirited.
Sam and Tim's sweet friendship anchors the series, and the buddy comedy occasionally veers into the surreal.
The show also works as a love letter to Detroit, an often overlooked city and the hometown of both Robinson and Richardson. With Lorne Michaels on the team as an executive producer, "Detroiters" features several "SNL" alumni as guest stars, including Cecily Strong and Michael Che, as well as Jason Sudeikis, who would go on to cast Richardson in "Ted Lasso." Robinson and Richardson don't need to do much to entertain us — just hanging out in their wacky world is enough to guarantee chuckles a plenty.
If you've turned to Paramount+ to enjoy the works of Western auteur Taylor Sheridan, may we present another underrated show for your consideration? "Joe Pickett" is one of the best neo-westerns we've seen, though it's mostly flown under the radar.
Michael Dorman plays the title character, a game warden who moves with his family to Wyoming to look after the wildlife in Yellowstone National Park.
Things take a turn for Joe when he discovers the body of poacher Ote Keeley (Ben Hollingsworth) on his property. This discovery draws Joe into a conspiracy involving the wealthy Scarlett family, who rule the community.
In contrast to the more self-serious, melodramatic shows in Sheridan's Western universe, "Joe Pickett" (the show and the character) has a sense of humor, and his fish-out-of-water circumstances are played for drama as well as the occasional chuckle.
The Pickett family — which includes Joe's wife, Marybeth (Julianna Guill) and their two daughters — is an endearing bunch, gentle and nature-loving yet willing to take up arms to defend each other and the land they've sworn to protect. It's refreshing to see a protagonist as fundamentally good and just as Joe, as his moral compass never wavers despite legitimate threats to his life.
Dorman delivers a solid performance as our unassuming hero, and his vulnerability makes him feel more relatable than most Western protagonists. It's an old-school show that leaves plenty of room for nuance and complexity. "Corporate" is a pitch-black comedy with an underlying sense of goofiness that tempers the dark depths of its cynical heart.
The setting is Hampton DeVille, a nefarious global conglomerate and their slogan is "We make everything." Working in this cubicle-laden hellscape are Junior-Executives-in-Training Matt (Matt Ingebretson) and Jake (Jake Weisman), trapped like cogs in a soul-crushing wheel. Executives Kate (Anne Dudek) and John (Adam Lustick) make up pointless tasks and spew endless corporate jargon.
The company's CEO, Christian (Lance Reddick), is the embodiment of evil and delivers many of the show's best lines.
Aparna Nancherla plays Grace, a cheery HR manager with zero power to help anyone. In Season 2, she fills her office with plants and gives them voices.
"Corporate" goes deeper than obvious jokes about office politics and corporate lingo, going for the jugular when it comes to biting critiques of capitalism and the soul-sucking feeling of living within a greed-driven society with crumbling morals.
There are funny jokes, of course, including a binder filled with Acceptable Female Tones for the Workplace and the concept of Makeup For Men as their newest addictive product. But the show is fundamentally nihilistic and cynical, which will either work for you or it won't.
Still, something about the series — lovably hopeless characters, perfect comedic timing — makes it appealing to return to, post-apocalyptic hellscape and all.
The Paramount+ series "The Agency" is perfect for fans of James Bond or the works of John le Carré, though it may have slipped under your radar when it premiered in 2024. Michael Fassbender plays Brandon Col He's spent the last six years undercover in Sudan, where he fell in love with anthropology professor Dr.
Samia Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith). Ordered to return to London, Col The meeting proves problematic for them both. Col A fellow agent disappears while undercover, and Col Zahir's reappearance in his life causes Col "The Agency" is a slow-burn, and it respects its audiences enough not to spoon-feed them the answers they seek.
The cinematography is gorgeous, and Fassbender delivers an intense performance and has sizzling chemistry with Turner-Smith. Col The show carefully pieces together a compelling puzzle that demands your attention as everything slowly comes together.
The Showtime series "Fellow Travelers" was well received If you're looking for a show about gay, star-crossed lovers like "Heated Rivalry" but with more tragedy and political consequence, "Fellow Travelers" is worth your time.
Matt Bomer plays Hawkins "Hawk" Fuller, a WWII veteran and an official in the State Department. Jonathan Bailey plays Tim Laughlin, an idealistic congressional staffer. The show takes place from the 1950s to the 1980s, covering McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, the disco era, and finally, the AIDS crisis.
Hawk and Tim begin a clandestine relationship at a time when it was unsafe to do so, putting their jobs and even their lives at risk. Hawk is adept at hiding his queerness, using his charm and macho attitude to conceal his true feelings, while Tim is more naturally openhearted.
The series tracks the many difficulties they face in their relationship, both internally and externally.
Hawk's years of repression make him cold and mean at times, while Tim's hopes for the world often clash with reality. Shame hollows out both men over the years, as political turbulence affects their lives in ways big and small.
Ruth Wilson is one of the greatest TV actors working today, and the BBC-Showtime series "The Woman in the Wall" is yet another wonderful display of her talents.
Wilson plays Lorna Brady, a solitary woman living in the made-up Irish town of Kilkinure. Lorna is, as a local policeman describes her, "not right in the head." She shuffles around town furtively glancing at her neighbors, and she sleepwalks.
One night she makes it as far as the pastures, and wakes up with cows, and another day she finds that she stabbed a portrait of Jesus with a knife in her sleep.
How's that for religious symbolism? Things get exponentially worse when she wakes up and finds a dead body in her house, with no memory of how it got there — hence the show's title. This sets Lorna on a mission to find out who the woman was and how it connects to her traumatic past.
Elsewhere, a detective (Daryl McCormack) investigates the death of a priest, and learns that his family history is intertwined with Lorna's. Wilson delivers a mesmerizing performance as a woman teetering on the brink of insanity, and the character's status as an unreliable narrator gives the show's central mystery teeth.
Before Ben Stiller directed Patricia Arquette in "Severance," the pair collaborated on "Escape at Dannemora," a top-notch true crime series from Showtime.
Arquette plays Tilly Mitchell, an employee at the Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in upstate New York. Tilly becomes romantically entangled with two convicted murderers incarcerated there, Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro) and David Sweat (Paul Dano). Matt and Sweat use Tilly's access to plan a high-stakes prison break that would go on to make the national news.
"Escape at Dannemora" is not a mystery, as we learn from the very beginning that Matt and Sweat were both recaptured and Tilly was arrested for her role in the escape. The show then goes back in time, revealing how the trio got acquainted and planned the daring escape.
Stiller is a sharp director, and many of his choices elevate the already engaging story.
For example, a nine-minute-long tracking shot following Sweat as he practices his escape route in Part 5 had us on the edge of our seats. The acting is another high point. Arquette is astounding in the role, depicting Tilly as a mean-spirited woman who spreads her unhappiness to those around her, yet so clearly longs for love and attention.
Del Toro is both charming and scary as Matt, while Dano embodies a hardness we haven't seen from him before. The show failed to take home any Emmys, though Arquette won a Golden Globe for her performance.
Like the quirky supernatural comedy "Ghosts," the Paramount+ series "School Spirits" proves that there are still plenty of novel ways to tell stories about spirits.
The show follows Maddie Nears (Peyton List), a teenager who dies and finds herself trapped in her high school as a ghost. She's indoctrinated into the supernatural realm She also meets Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman), a teacher trying to free the ghosts from the confines of the school.
After learning the rules of ghost life from her peers, Maddie embarks on a mission to find out who killed her, while the living residents of her community investigate her disappearance. While this mystery is compelling, it's the clever worldbuilding and the dynamics between Maddie and her new ghost friends that make the show worthwhile.
Paramount+ isn't always included in conversations about the very best streaming platforms for TV , though the service features plenty of great content. The streamer is home to all of TV mogul Taylor Sheridan's shows as well as most of the series in the vast "Star Trek" universe.
If you're not a Trekkie nor a fan of modern westerns, you can probably find something else to watch in the library, from procedurals like "FBI" and "NCIS" to classic comedies like "SpongeBob SquarePants" and "Frasier." You've probably heard of most of the shows we just listed, which include some all-time classics.
Read More: What To Watch This Week: 40+ Premieres, Finales, And More
But if you're an avid TV watcher with a Paramount+ subscription who's watched all the hits, where do you turn to next? We've got you covered. What follows is a roundup of the best shows on Paramount+ that haven't received the love they deserve.
These series run the gamut from supernatural mysteries to quirky comedies to hard-hitting action and impassioned period pieces. Here are 10 underrated TV shows streaming on Paramount+. Comment below if any of these are your unsung favorites, and what else you would add to the list.
Robert and Michelle King have been writing consistently great television for years now, from their brilliant legal drama "The Good Wife" to its spin-offs "The Good Fight" and "Elsbeth." Their most consistently overlooked show is "Evil," a spooky serial we'd advise you not to sleep on . Katja Herbers plays Dr.
Kristen Bouchard, a forensic psychologist living in New York City.
She is hired She teams up with David Acosta (Mike Colter), a priest-in-training, and tech expert Ben Shakir (Aasif Mandvi). "Evil" owes a lot to "The X-Files," what with its central premise of a skeptic (or two) and a believer coming together to investigate puzzling cases.
Like Mulder and Scully, Kristen and David share intense chemistry that threatens to upend both their lives.
The show is truly scary, with terrifying demons aplenty, and also uproariously funny at times. Andrea Martin is a scene stealer as sardonic nun Sister Andrea, who has a habit of hitting demons with a broom. Michael Emerson plays Dr.
Leland Townsend, one of Kristen's biggest enemies, and Christine Lahti appears as her morally ambiguous mother. "Evil" is whip-smart and brilliantly satirical, but it never sacrifices character development for wit. Kristen and her four boisterous daughters are a delight to spend time with, and the show explores knotty moral issues with great dexterity.
"Colin From Accounts" has one of the worst titles we've ever heard, but that doesn't pause it from being one of the funniest rom-coms we've seen in ages. The title character is not, in fact, a boring man who works in an office — he's a dog. Gordon (Patrick Brammall) is a 40-something brewery owner.
When a cheery nurse, Ashley (Harriet Dyer), flashes him while crossing the street, he short-circuits and runs over a dog. The pair end up adopting the poor pooch, naming him "Colin From Accounts." Australian duo Brammall and Dyer are married in real life, and their relationship on the show is a hot mess we can't look away from.
Gordon has a serious case of arrested development and doesn't take good care of himself. Ashley has a sleepwalking problem and is prone to impulsive behavior like flashing a stranger on the street. They are extremely flawed individuals who probably shouldn't be together, but somehow, they make perfect sense.
"Colin From Accounts" eschews the will-they-won't-they aspect of many TV couples, as Ashley and Gordon jump right into the relationship without much planning. They constantly find themselves in disastrous and embarrassing scenarios that Brammall and Dyer have somewhat masochistically forced upon themselves.
Despite the show's cringier elements, it has a lot of heart, and the characters are likable enough to root for.
Thankfully, the series keeps its momentum after their relationship solidifies, exploring the many ways they are both compatible and incompatible and mining these inconsistencies for endless laughs. One of the best Comedy Central shows of all time is also one of the most underrated.
Created Sam Duvet (Richardson) and Tim Cramblin (Robinson) run a low-level advertising company in Detroit, and spend their days coming up with hairbrained schemes to grow their business without actually doing very much work.
Some of their jingles are pretty catchy, though. If you're familiar with Robinson's work, which includes the iconic cringe comedy series "I Think You Should Leave," you'll enjoy the full-throated quirk that permeates "Detroiters." The show is filled with eccentric characters making disastrous decisions, but none of the comedy is mean-spirited.
Sam and Tim's sweet friendship anchors the series, and the buddy comedy occasionally veers into the surreal.
The show also works as a love letter to Detroit, an often overlooked city and the hometown of both Robinson and Richardson. With Lorne Michaels on the team as an executive producer, "Detroiters" features several "SNL" alumni as guest stars, including Cecily Strong and Michael Che, as well as Jason Sudeikis, who would go on to cast Richardson in "Ted Lasso." Robinson and Richardson don't need to do much to entertain us — just hanging out in their wacky world is enough to guarantee chuckles a plenty.
If you've turned to Paramount+ to enjoy the works of Western auteur Taylor Sheridan, may we present another underrated show for your consideration? "Joe Pickett" is one of the best neo-westerns we've seen , though it's mostly flown under the radar.
Michael Dorman plays the title character, a game warden who moves with his family to Wyoming to look after the wildlife in Yellowstone National Park.
Things take a turn for Joe when he discovers the body of poacher Ote Keeley (Ben Hollingsworth) on his property. This discovery draws Joe into a conspiracy involving the wealthy Scarlett family, who rule the community.
In contrast to the more self-serious, melodramatic shows in Sheridan's Western universe, "Joe Pickett" (the show and the character) has a sense of humor, and his fish-out-of-water circumstances are played for drama as well as the occasional chuckle.
The Pickett family — which includes Joe's wife, Marybeth (Julianna Guill) and their two daughters — is an endearing bunch, gentle and nature-loving yet willing to take up arms to defend each other and the land they've sworn to protect. It's refreshing to see a protagonist as fundamentally good and just as Joe, as his moral compass never wavers despite legitimate threats to his life.
Dorman delivers a solid performance as our unassuming hero, and his vulnerability makes him feel more relatable than most Western protagonists. It's an old-school show that leaves plenty of room for nuance and complexity. "Corporate" is a pitch-black comedy with an underlying sense of goofiness that tempers the dark depths of its cynical heart.
The setting is Hampton DeVille, a nefarious global conglomerate and their slogan is "We make everything." Working in this cubicle-laden hellscape are Junior-Executives-in-Training Matt (Matt Ingebretson) and Jake (Jake Weisman), trapped like cogs in a soul-crushing wheel. Executives Kate (Anne Dudek) and John (Adam Lustick) make up pointless tasks and spew endless corporate jargon.
The company's CEO, Christian (Lance Reddick), is the embodiment of evil and delivers many of the show's best lines.
Aparna Nancherla plays Grace, a cheery HR manager with zero power to help anyone. In Season 2, she fills her office with plants and gives them voices.
"Corporate" goes deeper than obvious jokes about office politics and corporate lingo, going for the jugular when it comes to biting critiques of capitalism and the soul-sucking feeling of living within a greed-driven society with crumbling morals.
There are funny jokes, of course, including a binder filled with Acceptable Female Tones for the Workplace and the concept of Makeup For Men as their newest addictive product. But the show is fundamentally nihilistic and cynical, which will either work for you or it won't.
Still, something about the series — lovably hopeless characters, perfect comedic timing — makes it appealing to return to, post-apocalyptic hellscape and all.
The Paramount+ series "The Agency" is perfect for fans of James Bond or the works of John le Carré, though it may have slipped under your radar when it premiered in 2024. Michael Fassbender plays Brandon Col He's spent the last six years undercover in Sudan, where he fell in love with anthropology professor Dr.
Samia Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith). Ordered to return to London, Col The meeting proves problematic for them both. Col A fellow agent disappears while undercover, and Col Zahir's reappearance in his life causes Col "The Agency" is a slow-burn, and it respects its audiences enough not to spoon-feed them the answers they seek.
The cinematography is gorgeous, and Fassbender delivers an intense performance and has sizzling chemistry with Turner-Smith. Col The show carefully pieces together a compelling puzzle that demands your attention as everything slowly comes together.
The Showtime series "Fellow Travelers" was well received If you're looking for a show about gay, star-crossed lovers like "Heated Rivalry" but with more tragedy and political consequence, "Fellow Travelers" is worth your time.
Matt Bomer plays Hawkins "Hawk" Fuller, a WWII veteran and an official in the State Department. Jonathan Bailey plays Tim Laughlin, an idealistic congressional staffer. The show takes place from the 1950s to the 1980s, covering McCarthyism, the Vietnam War, the disco era, and finally, the AIDS crisis.
Hawk and Tim begin a clandestine relationship at a time when it was unsafe to do so, putting their jobs and even their lives at risk. Hawk is adept at hiding his queerness, using his charm and macho attitude to conceal his true feelings, while Tim is more naturally openhearted.
The series tracks the many difficulties they face in their relationship, both internally and externally.
Hawk's years of repression make him cold and mean at times, while Tim's hopes for the world often clash with reality. Shame hollows out both men over the years, as political turbulence affects their lives in ways big and small.
Ruth Wilson is one of the greatest TV actors working today, and the BBC-Showtime series "The Woman in the Wall" is yet another wonderful display of her talents.
Wilson plays Lorna Brady, a solitary woman living in the made-up Irish town of Kilkinure. Lorna is, as a local policeman describes her, "not right in the head." She shuffles around town furtively glancing at her neighbors, and she sleepwalks.
One night she makes it as far as the pastures, and wakes up with cows, and another day she finds that she stabbed a portrait of Jesus with a knife in her sleep.
How's that for religious symbolism? Things get exponentially worse when she wakes up and finds a dead body in her house, with no memory of how it got there — hence the show's title. This sets Lorna on a mission to find out who the woman was and how it connects to her traumatic past.
Elsewhere, a detective (Daryl McCormack) investigates the death of a priest, and learns that his family history is intertwined with Lorna's. Wilson delivers a mesmerizing performance as a woman teetering on the brink of insanity, and the character's status as an unreliable narrator gives the show's central mystery teeth.
Before Ben Stiller directed Patricia Arquette in "Severance," the pair collaborated on "Escape at Dannemora," a top-notch true crime series from Showtime.
Arquette plays Tilly Mitchell, an employee at the Clinton Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in upstate New York. Tilly becomes romantically entangled with two convicted murderers incarcerated there, Richard Matt (Benicio del Toro) and David Sweat (Paul Dano). Matt and Sweat use Tilly's access to plan a high-stakes prison break that would go on to make the national news.
"Escape at Dannemora" is not a mystery, as we learn from the very beginning that Matt and Sweat were both recaptured and Tilly was arrested for her role in the escape. The show then goes back in time, revealing how the trio got acquainted and planned the daring escape.
Stiller is a sharp director, and many of his choices elevate the already engaging story.
For example, a nine-minute-long tracking shot following Sweat as he practices his escape route in Part 5 had us on the edge of our seats. The acting is another high point. Arquette is astounding in the role, depicting Tilly as a mean-spirited woman who spreads her unhappiness to those around her, yet so clearly longs for love and attention.
Del Toro is both charming and scary as Matt, while Dano embodies a hardness we haven't seen from him before. The show failed to take home any Emmys, though Arquette won a Golden Globe for her performance.
Like the quirky supernatural comedy "Ghosts," the Paramount+ series "School Spirits" proves that there are still plenty of novel ways to tell stories about spirits.
The show follows Maddie Nears (Peyton List), a teenager who dies and finds herself trapped in her high school as a ghost. She's indoctrinated into the supernatural realm She also meets Mr. Martin (Josh Zuckerman), a teacher trying to free the ghosts from the confines of the school.
After learning the rules of ghost life from her peers, Maddie embarks on a mission to find out who killed her, while the living residents of her community investigate her disappearance. While this mystery is compelling, it's the clever worldbuilding and the dynamics between Maddie and her new ghost friends that make the show worthwhile.
The series also embarks on a difficult task of balancing wit and energy with the objectively tragic circumstances of these characters, and it succeeds in that endeavor. While not a comedy, the show has enough of a sense of humor to avoid an overly morose atmosphere.
Yet it also holds space for the sad truth that these teens' lives were snuffed out far too soon.
It's a coming-of-age story where the protagonists are quite literally stuck in high school, and the series has a lot of fun playing within this witty premise.
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