The Best TV Series to Stream This Week

Credit: Max/YouTube

The big news in TV show streaming this week is the return of Curb Your Enthusiasm; The first episode of the 12th and final season of the show is streaming on Max. Netflix dropped an original series, One Day, that deserves an audience, and weirdos (like me) are excitedly binging the documentary series Raël: The Alien Prophet.

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 12

Curb Your Enthusiasm might be the best comedy that has ever been on television, and so far, season 12 clears the high bar the previous 11 seasons set. Larry David’s delightful misanthropy is so honest and fearless, it’s impossible not to care about the old bastard. “I really did the best under the circumstances as a person who hates people but had to be among them,” David says in the trailer, which really sums up his whole persona. The first episode of the new season begins with Larry making a trip to Atlanta. In Curb style, it ends in hilarious disaster. This is the last season of the show, so show some respect and check it out. 

Where to stream: Max

One Day 

Based on David Nicholls’ 2009 novel, One Day explores the complex friendship of Emma Morley (Ambika Mod) and Dexter Mayhew (Leo Woodall) over two decades, from 1988 to 2007. He’s a handsome rake; she’s a serious student. Told in a series of vignettes that take place on July 15 of different years, One Day sees its main characters mature from hopeful-but-callow 20-somethings to bruised-but-wise middle-aged people, with an eye on the complicated nature of their lifelong bond instead of the “will they end up together?” plot you might expect. 

Where to stream: Netflix

Raël: The Alien Prophet

This four-part documentary series takes you into the world of Raël, a sports writer, race car driver, UFO contactee, and cult leader who is perhaps best known for claiming he’d cloned a human in the early 2000s. There’s a lot to unpack in Raël: The Alien Prophet, including allegations of sexual abuse, a ton of defamation lawsuits, space alien intrigue, and the big question: Did they really clone a human? That Raël is alive and appears in this doc makes the whole thing even better.

Where to stream: Netflix

The Redemption Project (2019)

Each episode of CNN’s The Redemption Project details a meeting between a convicted criminal and the people they’ve victimized—the families of murder victims confront their loved ones’ killers; victims of assaults meet with their attackers. It’s a powerful premise, and it’s handled with sensitivity by host Van Jones, who lets all sides speak openly, and leans toward honesty instead of sensationalism. 

Where to stream: Max

Arctic Ascent with Alex Honnold

Produced by National Geographic, Arctic Ascent follows climber Alex Honnold on his quest to scale huge, unclimbed cliffs and walls in Greenland. These rock and ice faces are among the most dangerous in the world, and Arctic Ascent’s you-are-there approach will have you gripping the arms of your sofa. 

Where to stream: Hulu

The Cleaning Lady (2022)

If you missed The Cleaning Lady when it premiered on Fox in 2022, you can catch up on the first two seasons on Max. This crime drama tells the story of a Cambodian-Filipino doctor who brings her son to the US for a life-saving medical procedure. When things fail to go as planned, she ends up employed as a crime scene cleaner for a criminal organization. Caught between the mob, ICE, and the FBI, the cleaning lady plays by her own rules as she fights to save her son. 

Where to Stream: Max

The Kids in the Hall (2022)

The original Kids in the Hall was like Saturday Night Live for smart people. Instead of celebrity impressions and pop culture references, Kids trafficked in character sketches, surrealism, and experimentation. After a nearly 30-year hiatus, the cast returned to the show that made them semi-famous, and dropped a new season on Amazon. Instead of reprising schtick from the early '90s, the cast makes old characters new (or young characters old) through clever writing and nuanced performances. 

Where to Stream: Prime

Last week's picks

Mr. & Mrs. Smith 

This Prime original series shares a title with the 2005 film starring Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but it strays far from the source material. In this version of the story, the Smiths (Pen15's Maya Erskine and Atlanta’s Donald Glover) are a couple of intelligence agents who get married for real to make their undercover identities bulletproof. But feelings develop between the two opposites—complicated feelings. Each episode details a dangerous case the couple work as well as charting their equally dangerous marriage.

Where to stream: Prime

Feud: Capote vs. the Swans

The second season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology series tells the true(ish) story of writer Truman Capote’s conflict with a gaggle of rich, powerful wives. To research his seminal 1966 book In Cold Blood, Capote spent countless hours among lowlifes and murderers in the Midwest, but it wasn’t until he spilled the literary tea of a hive of society mavens that Capote learned the meaning of “ruthless.” Directed by Gus Van Sant with a cast including Chloë Sevigny, Diane Lane, Calista Flockhart, Molly Ringwald, Demi Moore, and Naomi Watts, Capote vs. the Swans is a must-stream.

Where to stream: Hulu

Baby Bandito

This Spanish-language series embellishes the hell out of a real-life heist that happened in Chile in 2014. Over the course of Baby Bandito’s eight fast-paced, funny chapters, Chilean skateboarder Kevin Tapia falls in love, double-crosses a crime lord called “The Butcher,” and pulls off the heist of the century, boosting tens of millions of dollars with the help of his friends. Getting the money turns out to be easier than keeping it, as both cops and criminals chase the Baby Bandito and his girl across the world, while his crew can’t help flaunting their new wealth on social media. 

Where to stream: Netflix

Genius: MLK/X

The fourth season of Genius, an anthology drama series about historically brilliant people, examines civil rights icons Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. Genius delves deeply into their lives to bring out the personal, comparing and contrasting two men who shared a goal, but had very different ideas about how it should be achieved.

Where to stream: Hulu

Clone High, Season 2

The first season of Clone High aired for one season on MTV in 2003. It was canceled after a depiction of Mahatma Gandhi sparked an international uproar. But Clone High’s creators apparently spent the last 20 years working on being edgy without being shitty, because the new, improved Clone High earned a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has yet to inspire any protests or hunger strikes. The show tells the story of a high school populated by clones of historical figures like Abraham Lincoln and Frida Kahlo (but not Gandhi) through crude animation and funnier-than-you expect writing.

Where to stream: Max

Farmer Wants a Wife, Season 2 

There probably isn’t a TV show that is less aimed at me than Farmer Wants a Wife, but I like to confound expectations, so I’m going to watch every episode of season 2, starting tonight with episode 1. The reality show follows the romantic adventures of four hunky famers. Each farmer picks five city ladies to live with them on their farm and wear straw hats or swat flies or do whatever people do on farms. Through this rigorous process, love is achieved. Yee, and I cannot stress this enough, haw.

Where to stream: Hulu

The Devil’s Hour (2022)

Too many people slept on Prime’s The Devil’s Hour, a six-episode British supernatural crime drama released in 2022, but it deserves an audience beyond a small niche. The “Devil’s Hour” of the title is between 3 and 4 a.m, when troubled main character Lucy Chambers awakens every night with nightmarishly specific visions, but Lucy and her nightmares are only one part of a deliberate, slow-burn story that carefully builds to an unexpected and chilling conclusion. 

Where to stream: Prime

Julia (2022)

This Max original series detail the fascinating life of uber-chef Julia Child over two seasons. It opens with the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and goes on to chronicle how this eccentric, boisterous woman parlayed a local PBS cooking show into becoming the most famous celebrity chef in history. The details in Julia come together like the ingredients in a Child's coq au vin: the performances are excellent (particularly Sarah Lancashire’s as the iconoclastic main character), the writing is witty and smart, and the production design nails the time period perfectly. I bet the snacks on the set were particularly delicious too.  

Where to stream: Max