Sometimes nothing hits better than some quality time between you and your TV. Leave the world (and its worries) behind by cozying up with the comforts of a great binge-watch. Whether you’re seeking silly sitcoms, mind-bending mysteries, or addictive dramas, we’ve got you covered with a selection of superb shows.
Peacock offers an immense library of streamable movies, from comedies to action and horror. But their television section is even more impressive, presenting shows from NBC, Universal Pictures, Bravo, WWE, NBC Sports, the Hallmark Channel, Telemundo, and more. This means you can revel in classic reruns of your old favorites or get easily hooked on a hot new series.
But where to begin? We’re here to help.
Here are the top 15 shows worth binge-watching on Peacock right now.
1. Poker Face
Credit: Evans Vestal Ward / Peacock via Getty Images
Both Columbo and Murder She Wrote are streaming on Peacock, and they remain as delightful as the day they were released. But why not also find time to hang out with this here heir-apparent to your grandparents’ favorite murder-mystery programs? Rian Johnson’s Poker Face stars the unstoppable Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a woman with the innate super-ability to sniff out lies — or as she puts it, “bullshit.”
But this truth-detector of hers seems to be more trouble than it’s worth, as it keeps getting her involved in dangerous shenanigans, starting in the first episode when Charlie stumbles on a murder involving her casino boss and is forced to go on the run. Her loss is our gain, as from there the show slides into an episodic mystery-of-the-week formula. Like Jessica Fletcher before her, everywhere Charlie goes, somebody’s dropping dead. And she uses her unique bullshit-sniffing ability to figure out just whodunnit.
That every stop along the road is populated by an awesome parade of character actors — including Chloë Sevigny, Lil Rel Howery, Hong Chau, Ron Perlman, Tim Meadows, Tim Blake Nelson, and (my favorites) Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson as a pair of weed-loving, nursing-home terrorists — is only part of the charm. Lyonne is our captain, and we’re riding this ride for as long as she’s taking it. (That said, there’s just one 10-episode season so far, so binge wisely.)
How to watch: Poker Face is now streaming on Peacock.
2. Unsolved Mysteries
You can’t go wrong with former actor Robert Stack walking through a haze of fog in an alleyway or somebody’s dark backyard while wearing a trench coat and looking like the creepiest creep who ever creeped. And every single episode of Unsolved Mysteries gave us so very much of that right stuff. Originally airing starting in 1987, the first 12 seasons of the original series’ 16 are available to stream here, adding up approximately 10 million hours of sometimes spooky, sometimes ooky reenactments of every kind of crime you can imagine. And then 10 thousand you never could imagine, not with your wildest imagination. Ranging from Boston stranglings to alien abductions, there is something sordid here for the entire family.
But the best parts are always the updates, where some of the “un” part of “unsolved” dissipates before our very eyes as they revisit old cases with new news. It always makes us feel like we accomplished something without ever having to leave the couch! Which really is the best way to accomplish something, when you come down to it.
How to watch: Unsolved Mysteries is now streaming on Peacock.
3. 30 Rock
Credit: Ali Goldstein / NBC
It’s hard to believe that it’s been over a decade since this show ended, but take it from a good friend of mine who is binging 30 Rock again every time I ask her what she’s currently watching: 30 Rock remains a most bingeable show. The seven seasons of comedy-writer Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) working on a thinly veiled version of SNL — so thinly veiled it would be arrested in most states for public indecency — are so rat-a-tat-tat with riffs and toss-off gags that you’ve got to watch every episode at least twice to catch even half of them.
And the supporting cast is so stacked with talent — Jane Krakowski’s Jenna Maroney continues to live rent-free in every gay man’s brain — that every re-watch is like catching up with good friends. Or frenemies, in the case of that teenaged harridan Kaylie Hooper (Chloë Moretz). Sure, it’s admittedly a little weird to watch Alec Baldwin now. But there’s so much late period Elaine Stritch to cherish that it ultimately ends in the positive column.
How to watch: 30 Rock is now streaming on Peacock.
4. Kingdom
This drama about a family of MMA fighters originally ran for three seasons starting in 2014 on the Audience Network and DirecTV, which translated roughly to about 10 people total watching it as it aired. Which is a damn shame, because it deserved better than that. Now’s your chance. Kingdom starred Frank Grillo, Jonathan Tucker, and Nick Jonas (yes, that Nick Jonas) as three brothers all actively involved in the mixed-martial-arts scene, along with Matt Lauria and Kiele Sanchez, who were there to form a love triangle with Grillo. Cue many a battle, both external (fights, fights, and more fights!) and internal (Tucker’s character had substance issues while Jonas’s was in the closet). And cue many an ab, just an unholy number of abs. Abs everywhere. Anyway it all abs up — excuse me, adds up — to some must-see-TV right here.
How to watch: Kingdom is now streaming on Peacock.
5. Iron Chef
While you might be more familiar with the Food Network’s spin-off series Iron Chef America, it’s the original Japanese series, which aired for seven seasons starting in 1993, that’s where it’s really at. All of the ingredients between the series are basically the same — a flamboyant chairman (here played by actor Takeshi Kaga) lords over a timed battle between two esteemed chefs inside of “Kitchen Stadium.” They’ve both been given a main ingredient to focus their meals on. And we all sit back like sloths and watch the foodie fireworks explode. But as is almost always the case, the original flavor is richer, weirder, and way more entertaining. We’ve just been copying their recipe ever since.
How to watch: Iron Chef is now streaming on Peacock.
6. Chucky
Credit: Shane Mahood / SYFY via Getty Images
The Child’s Play horror franchise of movies just turned 35, and, save one misbegotten 2019 remake, it’s been steered since day one by the same man, Mr. Don Mancini. That’s been possible because Mr. Mancini has kept finding ways to make his goofy story about a serial killer named Charles Lee Ray (Brad Dourif), who transfers his dying soul into a red-haired little doll, surprise us. That 35-year streak only got stronger and more surprising when the TV series Chucky premiered in 2021. Now in its third season, the adventures of Chucky and his girlfriend Tiffany (who sometimes looks like actress Jennifer Tilly and sometimes just sounds like her) is a tightrope walk of gore and guffaws that keeps finding fresh ways to stab, slash, decapitate, and delight.
And on top of all of that, it’s quite possibly the queerest show on TV. Chucky’s main antagonists are two teenage boys named Jake (Zackary Arthur) and Devon (Björgvin Arnarson), whose love story forms the backbone of the show, while all of the body-swapping storylines make for a trans paradise that Mancini and his writers lean hard into. Plus did I mention Jennifer Tilly? She’s basically a pride parade in human form.
How to watch: Chucky is now streaming on Peacock.
7. Alfred Hitchcock Presents
An anthology series famously hosted by that master of the macabre, Psycho director Alfred Hitchcock himself, Alfred Hitchcock Presents ran for 10 seasons beginning in 1955. Which means that while he was busy directing Grace Kelly and Cary Grant being their most glamorous selves in Morocco in To Catch a Thief, he was also getting ready to film Barbara Bel Geddes smashing her husband’s head in with a leg of lamb. A man of many talents, that Hitch!
Hitchcock himself directed 17 episodes of the show, which always began with that famous theme song and him slyly introducing our story of murders most foul. But there are 30-minute mysteries from directors as varied as Arthur Hiller, Ida Lupino, Robert Altman, and William Friedkin, with stars as starry as Clint Eastwood, Bette Davis, Peter Lorre, Robert Redford, Joanne Woodward, Steve McQueen, Charles Bronson, and Gena Rowlands showing up to take turns behind the guns, knives, ropes, and other killing instruments that were invariably wielded at one time or another.
How to watch: Alfred Hitchcock Presents is now streaming on Peacock.
8. Girls5Eva
Credit: Heidi Gutman / Peacock / Photo Bank
If aughts-nostalgia is all the current rage, then Girls5Eva was way ahead of that curve when it premiered in 2021. Telling the story of the titular girl group — a one-hit-wonder circa the heyday of TRL who fell off the face of the earth soon after — the show catches up with them in middle-age 20 years later as they reconnect and start to consider maybe reuniting the group. There’s Broadway star Sara Bareilles as the seemingly straitlaced mom, Busy Philipps as the wannabe influencer who hasn’t done much growing up, Paula Pell as the lesbian dentist with a bad back, and, of course, the larger-than-life Renée Elise Goldsberry, permanent diva and icon. (The fifth member, played by Ashley Park, died in 2004 in an infinity pool accident — RIP, Ashley.)
Created by many of the same people who did 30 Rock, with a similar relentlessness to the speed of the jokes, the show very much rewards repeat viewings — so you can catch the jokes that landed while you were still laughing your fool head off at the previous one.
How to watch: Girls5Eva is now streaming on Peacock.
9. The Kids in the Hall
The five famously Canadian members of The Kids in the Hall — Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson — only became a hit after breaking up. Not long after forming in 1985-ish, a couple of them took off to write for Saturday Night Live, and that might have been that. But Lorne Michaels happened to see them perform together and decided they should have their own show, and in 1989 they did just that. Running for five full seasons across a few different platforms in the U.S. (beginning on HBO and then switching over to late Friday nights on CBS), The Kids in the Hall was its own weird little thing.
It was sketch comedy that leaned hard into the surreal, not to mention the queer — the openly gay Thompson, who was the last member to join the group, surely had a formidable hand in that. And for a lot of young people in the ’80s and ’90s, the Kids were their introduction to gay comedy, a scene that was wildly marginalized for a very long time. But it’s not all Kevin McDonald in a dress. The Kids in the Hall felt like the Gen X answer to Monty Python, like latchkey kids who’d grown up on variety shows unleashing their bizarre home-made videos. They put the id in idiosyncratic.
How to watch: The Kids in the Hall is now streaming on Peacock.
10. We Are Lady Parts
Credit: Saima Khalid / Peacock
Saira (Sarah Kameela Impey), Ayesha (Juliette Motamed), Bisma (Faith Omole), Momtaz (Lucie Shorthouse), and Amina (Anjana Vasan) make up the five devout Muslim members of the fictional punk-rock band called We Are Lady Parts. And the show is as interested in bearing witness to how those cultural identities aren’t at odds at all — their passion for their religion feeds their passion to be creative, and vice-versa — as it is in just being knock-down, drag-out LOL funny.
With only six episodes to date — a fact that is supposed to change in 2024 when a second season is set to drop — thankfully We Are Lady Parts is the kind of cult hilarity you’ll want to zoom back to the start and re-watch all over again the second you finish. And you’ll probably find yourself listening to the killer soundtrack (which has been officially released) nonstop too. Best of luck getting “Ain’t No One Gonna Honour Kill My Sister But Me” out of your head.
How to watch: We Are Lady Parts is now streaming on Peacock.
11. Hoarders
For those of us who consider ourselves collectors of things, whatever those things might be (physical media, creepy dolls, soggy board games, and cat skeletons), the reality documentary series Hoarders scratches a couple of intoxicating and irresistible itches. Most obviously, the show — which goes inside the homes of people whose collecting habits have gone far off the rails, which they confront with therapists and cleaning specialists — offers the same car-crash voyeurism that all reality TV does. “At least I’m not as bad as that,” we can tell ourselves. It exists as a warning: Here but for the grace of Hummel figurines soaking in sinks full of brown water go I.
But through another lens, the show also exists as a testament to American ingenuity. These folks are so good at packing! Most of them have managed to fit about five homes worth of stuff into their single home, and as a New Yorker with a small apartment and a lot of collecting habits, I for one appreciate their resilience in the face of the laws of physics. And there’s something so soothing about discovering all of the reasons a human being needs a hundred bottles of shampoo. For anyone who’s ever made themselves believe something despite what the world told you, this show’s for you!
How to watch: Hoarders is now streaming on Peacock.
12. Quantum Leap
Credit: Chris Haston / NBC / NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
If you feel the need to continue onto the 2022 reboot of the show starring Raymond Lee, it’s also right there waiting for you, but here we’re recommending the original 1989 series that starred Scott Bakula as our body-jumping hero Dr. Sam Beckett. (A literary reference my 10-year-old self, who was obsessed with this show, never got.) A physicist who lives in “the near future,” Beckett is able to invent time travel, but there’s a wrinkle (isn’t there always): His consciousness “leaps” back in time into different people’s brains, where he is forced to experience their specific lives for a moment.
Through the show’s wonderful and succinct use of science-fiction to create empathy, Sam walks in the shoes of everyone from soldiers in Vietnam to pregnant women to Black people in the South during segregation. Alongside him, we experience their experiences and try to make their lives a little bit better. Along for the ride is the great Dean Stockwell as a hologram named Al, who beams in and assists Sam with getting his bearings. Al’s wild “future” outfits alone are worth the price of admission.
How to watch: Quantum Leap is now streaming on Peacock.
13. Kolchak: The Night Stalker
Credit: ABC Photo Archives / Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty Images
The show that inspired The X-Files! Beginning with two TV movies — The Night Stalker in 1972 and The Night Strangler in 1973 — we were introduced to intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak, played by the great Darren McGavin (probably best known today as the dad with a fetish for sexy lady leg lamps in A Christmas Story), who chased down weird stories that nobody else was paying attention to. Those movies proved so popular that the character was given his own series, where the stories got even weirder, diving into their own episodic spins on monster myths including vampires and werewolves and succubi, oh my. But the series proved less popular than the movies and only lasted for 20 episodes — 20 episodes that’s gone on to garner an enormous cult following in the decades since.
How to watch: Kolchak: The Night Stalker is now streaming on Peacock.
14. Yellowstone
Because you’re gonna need something to talk to your relatives about at the holiday dinners, right? It’s either Yellowstone or politics, so choose wisely. Now in the middle of its fifth and final season, this gargantuan hit from actor-turned-writer Taylor Sheridan is basically the reason we have anything to watch on Peacock at all. Starring Kevin Costner, Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, and Wes Bentley as the main members of the Dutton family who run the Yellowstone cattle ranch in modern-day Montana, it’s a dustier Dallas, with all of the family dramas and saddle-backing and cow-poking that entails.
Set to debut a flotilla of date-themed spin-offs — 1883 in the Old West! 1923 during Prohibition! 1944 presumably fighting Nazis? — it’s time to get in on the ground floor and familiarize yourself with the original before your cousins can suddenly wipe the floor with you when playing your annual Thanksgiving game of Trivial Pursuit.
How to watch: Yellowstone is now streaming on Peacock.
15. Law and Order: SVU
There is a reason this show has been running for longer than some of you people — some of you people with school-aged children of your own! — have been alive. And that reason is that producer Dick Wolf has fine-tuned the science of the television procedural down to its purest essence: lurid ripped-from-the-headlines crimes that seemed too unbelievable at the time get filtered through and explained to us via the SVU’s roster of familiar faces, including front and center Detectives Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and Eliot Stabler (Christopher Meloni).
A spin-off of the original series that’s proven even more popular and enduring due no doubt to the more sensationalistic nature of the crimes being investigated — “Special Victims” is a euphemism for sex crimes, for the most part — shows like this are our modern day soap-opera equivalent. Meaning they’re built like a machine to keep pulling you back in, and in, and in, and sometimes there’s no point in fighting it. It’s science, man.
How to watch: Law and Order: SVU is now streaming on Peacock.
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