We’ve already taken you through the best movies on Binge, so now let’s turn our attention to the best shows on Binge.
The streaming service has largely come into its own over the years, and it appears the more-is-more approach is working well for subscribers who want access to a great variety of content.
While Binge has an excellent selection of modern and classic movies, it’s the spread of shows that really makes the streaming service worth your time. Networks like HBO and AMC have signed some of their best shows over to Binge, giving the streaming service some of the more enviable streaming rights in Australia.
Everything from Succession and Game of Thrones to Barry and The Office is available on Binge, with all episodes and all seasons there for you whenever you want to catch up on or re-watch the classics. These are our favourites.
RELATED: Check Out What’s Coming To Binge Next Month
Best Shows On Binge – Table Of Contents
- The Best Shows On Binge
- Succession
- The Sopranos
- The Wire
- Friday Night Lights
- The Leftovers
- Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty
- Sons of Anarchy
- The Walking Dead
- True Blood
- The Newsroom
- Barry
- True Detective
- Curb Your Enthusiasm
- The Night Of
- Parks & Recreation
- The Office US
- The White Lotus
- Chernobyl
- 30 Rock
- Entourage
- The Last Of Us
- Game of Thrones
- House of the Dragon
- Euphoria
- This Is Going To Hurt
- Warrior
- How Boss Hunting Chose The Best Shows On Binge
- Frequently Asked Questions
The Best Shows On Binge
Succession
This award-winning series didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, but the hype steadily built over the years. And that’s rare for a TV series. Aside from the likes of Breaking Bad and The Leftovers, it’s not usual for a TV series these days to get substantially better with time.
Succession goes from strength to strength, and the consistent upping of quality, from the first season to the final season, completely validates claims of this being one of the best HBO shows in the network’s extensive history.
You should already know the deal. Roy family siblings Kendall (Jeremy Strong), Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Roman (Kieran Culkin) slowly come into their own in the ongoing struggle to become the successor for their ailing media conglomerate father, Logan (Brian Cox) and juggle ambition with their personal lives. Watching them do so, set against an intense and expensive backdrop of New York City, is seriously great TV.
Complex characters, witty writing and some genuinely thoughtful themes. Succession has it all and then some.
The Sopranos
Not much needs to be written about The Sopranos. It’s still considered the best TV show ever made by most critics and fans alike. And it’s hard to argue against that, with the late great James Gandolfini bringing just the right mix of sensitivity and pure, unadulterated masculinity to the role of mafia boss Tony Soprano.
Tony’s family life and the symbolism that sits on both sides of his four walls is what creator David Chase captures so perfectly. And while Tony’s own life is interesting enough, it’s what happens around him that’s what truly keeps the show on the rails and grounds it in a frenetic blend of existential angst and getting sh*t done.
The Wire
The Wire is the only show that could truly stand toe-to-toe with The Sopranos in debates on the greatest moments in television history. David Simon’s five-season essay on American politics, crime, race relations and social hierarchies is given a sturdy microcosm in the fractures of Baltimore.
As each season takes on a different theme, exploring an entire layer of the way modern society works, David Simon’s vision for The Wire becomes more than just a thoroughly entertaining, brutal account of gang wars, drug dealing, corruption and backchannel dealings.
I still think season 4 is one of the greatest runs in television history, and everything leading up to that point is just as good. While Oz will always be my favourite HBO series, I completely understand why The Wire is held in such high regard.
If it wasn’t for the odd pacing of the fifth and final season, I’d say this was a perfect show.
Friday Night Lights
The ultimate drama series. Forget Dawson’s Creek and The O.C., Friday Night Lights is a deeply complex, beautifully acted and expressive show set in a fictional Dillon, Texas, centred around the town’s obsession with high school football.
Not only is teenage life in small-town Texas examined closely, but complicated family dynamics are broken down, savage relationship woes are threaded throughout and triumphant sports-drama beats are played to great effect.
Importantly, the show’s quality doesn’t stumble throughout its five seasons. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the perfect portrayal of two guiding parents, played by Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, but the acting is uniformly excellent and varied with standout performances from Michael B Jordan, Jesse Plemons, Zach Gilford and Taylor Kitsch.
The Leftovers
This is my personal pick for the single best TV show on Binge. The Leftovers may not have caught the masses when it came out, but the cerebral and incredibly poetic show about how people struggle to deal with grief is nothing short of spectacular.
The first season, dark, depressing and slightly confusing, turned quite a few people off. But anyone who stuck with it was rewarded with a second and third season that exceeded all expectations, routinely attracted near-perfect reviews, and present something wholly unique for TV.
The acting is faultless. Particular standouts include lead Justin Theroux and the incredible Carrie Coon, as well as Doctor Who alum Christopher Eccleston and the unstoppable Ann Dowd. But Damon Lindelof’s writing is the real star here, milking an incredible amount of emotion out of the simple plot, lifted from Tom Perrotta’s novel of the same name.
Springboarding off some of the themes of LOST, Lindeolf uses grief as a way of exploring the complex ways different people deal with loss, how they move forward and what happens to their mental health in the process. It’s a cathartic, emotional show that’s better left unexplained. Watch it.
Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty
While Netflix holds court on sports biopics, it’s actually Binge that is streaming one of the best shows for sports fans going right now. That’d be Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. The plot is in the name; this scripted show is based on the wild era of the L.A Lakers, showing us just how wild the 80s was for one of the most prolific names in NBA.
Sons of Anarchy
The legendary Sons of Anarchy fits the bill for that Binge TV series that you always wanted to get into but never found the time. Well, it’s right there waiting for you. All seven seasons of this outrageously brutal and entertaining show. One that really put FX on the map and helped take some attention off HBO as the sole home of prestige TV.
Creator Kurt Sutter really hit the nail on the head when he set out to make a bikie crime drama, following a club operating in the fictionalised town of Charming in California’s Central Valley.
The Walking Dead
While quality famously dipped after the shockingly brutal seventh season and a certain character’s death, The Walking Dead is still one of the most monumental TV shows of our time. AMC really sunk its teeth into a ratings monster when Robert Kirkman’s graphic novels were turned into the ultimate post-apocalyptic zombie show back in October 2010.
Andrew Lincoln’s performance as Rick Grimes drove much of the show in its earlier stages, but the diverse cast really shined as storylines started to deepen and the show’s rag-tag group of survivors started to grow. Across eleven seasons, many names were cemented including Steven Yuen, Norman Reedus, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Lauren Cohen, Danai Gurira, Lennie James, Jon Bernthal and the great Melissa McBride.
True Blood
HBO’s attempt at a sexy vampire series fizzled in the latter stages but for a good while there, True Blood earned its popularity with fun characters and some genuinely riveting scenes set against the atmospheric fictional town of Bon Temps, Louisiana.
Having such a swampy setting for a more grounded fantasy series really resonated with viewers until fairies were introduced to the plot. Yeah, it wasn’t good. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of enjoyment to be had from giving this a spin. Even if it’s for background viewing.
The Newsroom
Powered by a virtuoso Jeff Daniels in one of his finest roles to date, The Newsroom is another highly underrated HBO show that is, unfortunately, more known for its dwindling quality than its strong first season.
While there were only three seasons to this show, the latter two really sank. Seemingly, showrunner and writer Aaron Sorkin was too ambitious for the show’s contained eight-episode seasons. It’s hard to suggest getting into The Newsroom knowing how bad it gets, but the first season alone is well worth your time. Just don’t expect closure.
Barry
A contract killer being tempted away from killing by the lure of a typical Los Angeles acting class in this incredibly dark comedy. Not really a plot you’d expect Bill Hader to eat through, but he does so with a perfect balance between genuinely funny comedy and some serious dramatic chops.
Wrapping up at the same time as Succession, Barry helped bring HBO back into the limelight and reaffirm the network’s iron-clad grip on prestige TV. I guess you could consider it a straight-laced crime drama, but the seriously clever way Hader and co-creator Alec Berg split Barry between these two vastly different worlds is endlessly entertaining and provocative.
True Detective
HBO’s anthology detective series peaked with Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in the first season. While seasons two and three are still very divisive for fans, the first 8-episode run of Nic Pizzolatto’s creation is nothing short of perfection.
McConaughey is a deeply philosophical and eccentric detective, bouncing off a snub-nosed Harrelson as they pursue a genuinely sickening and clever serial killer. The simple combination is all killer, no filler, as all ten episodes of True Detective season 1 give HBO a true gem.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
I didn’t think it was possible for Larry David to top the brilliant work he did on Seinfeld. Yet, Curb Your Enthusiasm surpasses its meta successor in pretty much every way.
Larry David goes full George Costanza on everyday life, getting into even more absurd situations and strutting through them with the confidence of a very wealthy, petty and neurotic white man who just doesn’t give a flying f*ck about anyone or anything. Okay, well maybe except for bests friends Jeff (Jeffrey Garlin) and Leon (J.B. Smoove) and, maybe, ex-wife Cheryl (Cheryl Hines).
The Night Of
I feel like The Night Of was widely appreciated when it was released in 2016 but the Riz Ahmed vehicle is rarely mentioned these days. It makes sense, I guess. The eight-part miniseries came and went just as fast, but it was so well-acted and genuinely engrossing that it’d be a shame if more people weren’t exposed to the brilliant script, which was originally supposed to star James Gandolfini before his death.
Ahmed is a fish out of the water as Naz, accused of murder after a night of sex and drugs and then thrown into the complicated, fractured and punitive justice system. Handled by Richard Price and Steven Zaillian, the intelligent script really digs deep into the various unilateral decisions that hammer Naz and his family, perfectly demonstrating a loss of control once one comes under the thumb of the law, whether it’s deserved or not.
Parks & Recreation
While The Office is generally considered the ultimate workplace comedy, there’s not much anyone can take away from the unfettered brilliance of Parks & Recreation. This political satire, using the most negligent and unimportant arm of Government possible, is one of those shows that instantly makes things look brighter, funnier and more entertaining.
The best comedy shows of all time really dial into that process of distracting viewers from the stress of everyday life and reminding us that life is more of an absurd comedy than a monotonous dumpster fire. Parks & Recreation does that well, using the most pleasantly idiotic ensemble cast to make damning comments about multiple layers of American society. It’s simply one of the best shows on Binge.
The Office US
While the original UK version isn’t on Binge, you’ve got the equally hilarious US version to watch through you’re feeling like a laugh. The beauty of The Office, much like Seinfeld or Parks & Recreation, is that you can just choose a random episode and sink into 30 minutes of genuine entertainment, no matter if you’ve seen it a million times before.
This is the role that really cemented Steve Carell as one of that era’s most creative and timely comedy actors. A satire about the workplace that is actually quite a fierce takedown of corporate America. Genius then; genius now.
The White Lotus
Although you’d have to get through an average first season to arrive at the brilliant murder mystery that is The White Lotus season 2, it’s still worth picking this one up from the very beginning. The anthology-like series, piercing the same vein as movies like Knives Out, is equal parts charming and deadly serious as it takes an intelligent, genuinely shocking approach to the classic whodunnit!? formula.
Chernobyl
Chernobyl should have been screened in cinemas. What creator Craig Mazin and director Johan Renck lifted from the history books is a riveting, brutal and disturbing account of the before, during and after stemming from the earth-shattering, air-polluting Chernobyl disaster.
Reading about what happened at Chernobyl is one thing. Watching it unfold with precision, brilliant acting and an overarching sense of dread that eludes even the best horror and disaster movies. Different, haunting and insightful. This is one of the best shows on Binge no doubt.
30 Rock
30 Rock is so wild and unhinged that it makes Parks & Recreation look like House of Cards. Tina Fey may overshadow the ensemble cast but 30 Rock’s magic lies in how each and every character has been worked up so well that there simply isn’t a dull moment. You’d barely go a few seconds without a punchy joke landing at just the right time.
There’s an art in silliness and 30 Rock embodies that.
Entourage
You know the deal. If you’re a regular reader of Boss Hunting then I’m not even going to act like you haven’t barrelled through the entirety of Entourage more than once. There are fewer shows that offer this kind of premium escapism, bottling it up and spraying it all across eight seasons of non-stop privilege and ostentatious wealth. The life of a Hollywood star has never been illustrated so colourfully.
The Last Of Us
The Last Of Us was the biggest show of 2022 and has now got HBO thinking about all kinds of video game adaptations. If Game of Thrones, Narcos and The Mandalorian hadn’t propelled Pedro Pascal already, The Last Of Us certainly solidified him as one of the most beloved TV actors of the past decade.
Tasteful, patient and introspective, this apocalyptic show shied away from the dramatic bombast of The Walking Dead and landed on something more measured and restrained. And at the centre of it all: the unfailing dynamic of a reluctant father figure and a rebellious young girl.
Game of Thrones
There was no doubt that Game of Thrones would be one of the biggest TV series of all time for HBO when that first season wrapped. Equal parts shocking and invigorating, the hit HBO series built a rich tapestry of medieval fantasy, pitting houses and intriguing characters against one another in the most spectacularly brutal fashion.
As is the trend with TV now, Game of Thrones has now become an entire universe based on the books of George R.R. Martin. And while House of the Dragon is the first spin-off to emerge, we’re looking at numerous spin-offs in the next few years, all continuing what is truly one of the most fascinating fantasy worlds ever created in pop culture.
House of the Dragon
The first Game of Thrones spin-off started on some shaky ground. No one was sure if this prequel, which focused on House Targaryen almost two centuries before the mainline show, would hold up to those lofty standards. For a few episodes, it didn’t.
House of the Dragon may be overly obsessed with stretchy time jumps but once this condensed story reaches the meaty part of the plot, all hell breaks loose and we’re set up for House of the Dragon season 2 that’ll be well worth the wait.
It’s good to know you’ve got this short-and-sweet season on Binge to stream or when House of the Dragon season 2 comes around. You’ll need a refresher by that point.
Euphoria
On the surface, Euphoria is a show about the sex lives of zeitgeisty teenagers who aren’t dissimilar from the characters that were threaded through the iconic UK drama Skins. Yet it’s so much more than that, following 17-year-old Rue and her diverse social circle as main writer Sam Levinson brings to life an essay on angst, partying and typical coming-of-age cliches done differently.
This Is Going To Hurt
Co-produced by the BBC and AMC, This Is Going To Hurt is a dark comedy about the hospital hierarchy that takes a slightly more serious approach than its immediate comparison, Scrubs.
Based on Adam Kay’s memoir of the same name, the story follows Kay (Ben Whishaw) and Shruti Acharya (Ambika Mod) as they deal with the often unseen politics and dealing that happens behind the scenes in a hospital.
When shows deal with such a heavy topic as a hospital, they tend to either be too serious and dramatic (Grey’s Anatomy) or too silly (Scrubs). Only House has managed to find a balance, and This Is Going To Hurt is the closest we’ve been to seeing a happy medium since we had to deal with Hugh Laurie’s surly disposition.
Warrior
Cinemax doesn’t often produce hits. And I guess Warrior didn’t really change things in 2019. It wasn’t a super successful show when it came to ratings but the critics invariably loved this story about the gang wars in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the latter half of the 19th century.
Based on a concept Bruce Lee pitched back in the 1970s, Warrior is an excellent, beautifully choreographed show that seems to only be getting better as it goes on. Now that it’s made the move to HBO Max, it’s found its way onto Binge which is great news for anyone who wants something a bit more exciting than the saccharine Cobra Kai.
Liked our curated round-up of the best TV shows on Binge? Check out our other streaming content highlighting top picks from services like Amazon Prime Video and Netflix Australia.
- Best Movies On Netflix Australia
- Best Shows On Netflix Australia
- Best Movies On Amazon Prime Video
- Best Shows On Amazon Prime Video
How Boss Hunting Chose The Best Shows On Binge
At Boss Hunting, we’re lucky enough that part of our jobs is to actually experience what we’re writing about. Watching TV isn’t necessarily a perk of the job, but watching it with the feeling like you’re actually being productive is rare. As such, each of us set out to watch all, or at least a decent chunk, of the above TV shows on Binge. That is if we hadn’t seen them already.
This list is then put together by some good ol’ fashioned office banter. We regularly talk about what we’re watching, what we enjoyed and what we didn’t. The shows we didn’t enjoy aren’t included on this list; the ones we did are. It’s as simple as that.
For more information on how we handle content at Boss Hunting click through to our Editorial Policy.
Frequently Asked Questions
What should I watch on Binge tonight?
You can never go wrong with The Sopranos or The Wire.
What are some of the best shows on Binge?
Some of the best shows on Binge include The Leftovers, Succession, The Sopranos, The Wire and The Night Of.
