There’s too much TV! We know this, you know this. But it bears repeating, because with so many good (and bad) shows out there, it can be hard to decide what to watch.
So we’ve compiled a list of 17 great shows from the first half of 2017 that you can finish over a long, lazy weekend. All of them are in their first or second seasons — save a couple of more standalone exceptions. All of them have already aired complete seasons in 2017. And all of them are easily available to catch up with on this magical internet of ours.
These aren’t necessarily the best shows of 2017 so far, but they’re all series you can easily polish off before summer’s over, if you’re so inclined.
Big Little Lies (HBO)
Rich people doing horrible things to each other will always make for compelling TV if executed well, and this HBO miniseries adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same name is nothing if not well-executed. Boasting top-notch performances by an all-star cast (including Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon!), the series examines the events leading up to a murder in the tony California city of Monterey. To say more would be to spoil all the fun.
Number of episodes: Seven hour-long episodes, including a thrilling finale
Available on: HBO Go and HBO Now
Brockmire (IFC)
One part small-town comedy, one part paean to baseball, and one part hilariously mutated viral video, Brockmire is the year’s most unlikely success story. Hank Azaria plays the title character, a gone-to-seed baseball announcer who has one last chance to pull his career together by working with a minor league team. He can’t stop saying the most ridiculous things, but he also can’t help falling for the team, the town, and the team’s owner (played by Amanda Peet). This is a winning comedy, with great jokes.
Number of episodes so far: Eight half-hour episodes
Available on: IFC.com, or major digital download services
Dear White People (Netflix)
Justin Simien took his first crack at Dear White People — a story about racism and related tensions on an overwhelmingly white Ivy League-esque campus — with the 2015 movie of the same name that he wrote and directed. But in his Netflix series, he has so much more room to dig into the bracing particulars. The first season is hard to stop watching, with each episode focusing on a different character — from unapologetic radio host Sam (Logan Browning) to nervous school paper reporter Lionel (DeRon Horton) to insecure mean girl Coco (Antoinette Robinson). The stakes only escalate as the season progresses, so if you decide to give this one a shot, be prepared to get sucked in.
Number of episodes so far: 10 half-hour episodes
Available on: Netflix
Downward Dog (ABC)
Let’s get this out of the way: Downward Dog features a talking dog. But the show isn’t nearly as wacky as that premise might imply. Martin is a morose, neurotic, and slightly self-absorbed mutt. He observes his owner Nan (Fargo breakout Allison Tolman) with some confusion and total devotion, especially as she stumbles to get her own life together and assert herself.
As of now, the show’s eight-episode first season is all we’ll get of Downward Dog, since ABC has officially canceled it, and that’s truly too bad. The show was an unexpected, lovely gem of a comedy, equal parts heartfelt and strange. But don’t say we didn’t warn you: This talking dog show is prepared to give you some feelings.
Episodes so far: Eight half-hour episodes
Available on: ABC.com and Hulu
The Expanse (Syfy)
It’s been ages since TV has seen a space opera as compelling or brainy as The Expanse, which had a solid first season but came into its own as an intense and enthralling treat in season two. The series began as a murder mystery set a few centuries into the future, when humanity has colonized the solar system; now it’s expanded to tell the tale of a species on the brink of war, that finds itself confronted with evidence that there really might be something else out there. It’s compulsively watchable stuff, with some tremendous action sequences.
Number of episodes so far: 23 hour-long episodes across two seasons
Available on: Season one is available to stream on Amazon. Season two is available for digital download, with some episodes available on Syfy’s website.
Feud: Bette and Joan (FX)
Take a trip back to one of Old Hollywood’s most notorious rivalries with FX’s luxurious and deliciously pointed series about the melodrama surrounding Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, their 1962 film Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, and the sexism pulsing beneath it all. Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon are ferociously good as Joan and Bette (respectively), as are the supporting performances from Alfred Molina as director Robert Aldrich and Kiernan Shipka as Bette’s daughter, BD. If nothing else, Feud makes for some particularly gorgeous viewing thanks to its canny costume and production design, which evoke the glamour and artifice of 1960s Hollywood to stunning effect.
Number of episodes so far: Eight hour-long episodes
Available on: iTunes, Amazon, and Vudu, for purchase
GLOW (Netflix)
Netflix’s wrestling comedy GLOW just might be the perfect weekend marathon. An ‘80s-set, fictionalized version of the origin story of the decade’s Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling, the first season of GLOW unfolds like a classic sports movie, assembling a team of determined misfits that has to learn to work together to get anything like real glory. The women of GLOW — including Community’s Alison Brie and American Gods’ Betty Gilpin — are scrappy and undeniably fun to watch as they hurl themselves around the ring and learn how to capture each other in theatrical headlocks. You could do a lot worse than to spend some time with these unlikely heroes.
Number of episodes so far: 10 half-hour(ish) episodes
Available on: Netflix
The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)
Offred lives in what was once the United States and is now the Republic of Gilead. She’s a Handmaid — a fertile woman who’s been forced into sexual slavery by Gilead’s fundamentalist Christian government, in a world where birth rates have fallen dramatically. This dark series uses Margaret Atwood’s classic 1985 novel as its basis but quickly finds ways to expand the book’s world, along with the help of a tremendous cast, headed up by Elisabeth Moss, who has to perform much of the series in extreme close-up. This series has already been hyped to the high heavens — but with good reason.
Number of episodes so far: 10 hour-long episodes
Available on: Hulu
Harlots (Hulu)
There are so many ways a drama about dueling prostitutes could go wrong, but luckily, Harlots abandons most of the usual clichés about working girls. The drama follows 18th-century brothel turf wars(!) and feels something like the high-stakes power plays of The Sopranos divided by the insidious social games of Gossip Girl, with a fantastic performance from Samantha Morton as the downtown brothel madam determined to rise into a veritable queenpin.
Number of episodes so far: Six hour-long episodes
Available on: Hulu
I Love Dick (Amazon)
There are plenty of “not for everyone” picks on this list, but I Love Dick might be the most prominent example. And yet if it hits your sweet spot, you’ll devour all of it in an afternoon. Chris, played by the incomparable Kathryn Hahn, is a frustrated filmmaker who moves with her husband to the middle-of-nowhere Marfa, Texas. There, she promptly meets the titular Dick, a hyper-masculine cowboy artist played by Kevin Bacon — and when she confesses her near-instant crush on Dick to her husband, he doesn’t exactly discourage it. That’s just the first weird turn in this new series from Transparent creator Jill Soloway and writer Sarah Gubbins.
Number of episodes so far: Eight half-hour episodes
Available on: Amazon
Into the Badlands (AMC)
How many TV shows can say they’re post-apocalyptic martial arts epics? Pretty much just this one. The story involves a lot of exposition about Into the Badlands’ future-set world, where disputes are often settled via martial arts battles; while it’s frequently silly, it also allows the show to deliver some of the most inventive action sequences on TV, often jaw-dropping in their ability to come up with perfectly choreographed moments of joyful, kinetic motion.
Number of episodes so far: 16 episodes, across two seasons
Available on: The first season (just six episodes!) is streaming on Netflix. Season two is available on AMC’s website.
The Keepers (Netflix)
The 1969 murder of “Sister Cathy,” a beloved school teacher from Baltimore, provides the impetus for this documentary miniseries that functioned as Netflix’s follow-up to its wildly popular 2015 series Making a Murderer. But the question of who killed the nun is just the introduction to a saga that pulls in church corruption, horrible secrets, and a slow-building network of survivors who manage to endure in the face of so many terrible things. The Keepers is one grim watch, but one filled with an inspiring quality of endurance.
Number of episodes: Seven hour-long episodes
Available on: Netflix
Legion (FX)
The host of articles that greeted this superhero series as the weirdest thing on TV in ages seem a little silly now that the third season of Twin Peaks is unfurling in its intentionally bizarre glory. But this X-Men adaptation from Fargo’s Noah Hawley is still a trippy dance through a mind-melting mélange of genres, hopping from horror to romance to workplace drama with practiced ease, and stopping off every so often along the way to, say, visit Jemaine Clement in an extra-dimensional ice cube — why not?
Number of episodes so far: Eight hour-long episodes
Available on: iTunes, Amazon, and other major online video merchants, for purchase
The Magicians (Syfy)
Syfy’s adaptation of Lev Grossman’s book trilogy grew exponentially in its second season, transforming what had already been an entertaining series into the heir apparent to the late, lamented Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Like that earlier series, this is a show in love with tonal mish-mash, with jokes, with language. And even more like that earlier series, it uses fantastical tropes (in this case, a bunch of young magicians trying to find their place in the world) to tell a vital story about growing up.
Number of episodes so far: 26 hour-long episodes, across two seasons
Available on: Season one is streaming on Netflix. Some season two episodes are available on Syfy’s website, while all season two episodes are available for digital download.
Man Seeking Woman (FXX)
FXX’s bizarre and sometimes brilliant comedy has officially shut down after three seasons, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t catch up on what you missed. Created by essayist and former Saturday Night Live writer Simon Rich, Man Seeking Woman threw dweeby everyman Josh (Jay Baruchel) into the horrors of dating — and made those horrors literal in increasingly surreal sketches.
But if you’re just looking for a quick marathon, we highly recommend the third and final season, in which Josh leaves the single life behind and settles into a real relationship with Lucy (Katie Findlay). The season ends up being fairly split between both Josh and Lucy’s points of view, which is both refreshing and necessary as Man Seeking Woman dives into what it means for two people to get to know each other’s best, worst, and grossest features as they merge their lives.
Number of episodes: 30 half-hour episodes total, 10 per season
Available on: Seasons one and two are streaming on Hulu; season three is available to buy on iTunes and Amazon.
One Day at a Time (Netflix)
Traditional sitcoms are staging a bit of a comeback, and this Netflix revival of Norman Lear’s ‘70s hit comedy about a single mother is a terrific example of just what can be accomplished within the classic format. Justina Machado plays Penelope, a woman raising her two children with the help of her mother (the immortal Rita Moreno, in an Emmy-worthy role), her landlord, and occasionally her boss. This one will sneak up on you; if you’re not deeply moved by the finale, you’re made of sterner stuff than us.
Number of episodes so far: 13 half-hour episodes
Available on: Netflix
Speechless (ABC)
The DiMeo family is messy, shameless, and fiercely loyal to each other above all else. They also tend to orbit around JJ, the eldest DiMeo kid who also happens to have non-verbal cerebral palsy, and whose needs require some extra considerations that most of the other families, especially the ones the DiMeos encounter in whatever suburb they’re currently trying on for size, never have to think about.
The show is fantastically smart and fun, especially when grounded by performances like that of the wry Micah Fowler (who plays JJ), John Ross Bowie as his dad, and Minnie Driver as the family matriarch who gets shit done. With Speechless, ABC has found another winning family sitcom with a real — and very funny — voice.
Number of episodes so far: 23 half-hour episodes
