The Best TV Shows to Binge Watch

 Clear your schedules -- here are the best shows to binge, and where to find them.

But whether you've been binge-watching your whole life or recently slid into the habit, there are some shows that are just perfect to mainline as quickly as possible. If you're scrolling through streaming and wondering "What show should I watch?", the Collider staff has put together handy list of our favorite shows to binge-watch below on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Disney+, and Prime Video.

Bodyguard (2018)

Image via Netflix

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​Creator: Jed Mercurio ​​​​​​​

Cast: Richard Madden, Keeley Hawes, Gina McKee

The opening scene of the first episode of Bodyguard sinks its hooks in you, and the show never really lets up throughout its six-episode first season. The series premiered in the UK to staggering numbers before making its US debut on Netflix, and it follows a metropolitan police officer named David Budd (Richard Madden) who is tasked with guarding the life of Conservative Home Secretary Julia Montague (Keeley Hawes) in the midst of a political crisis—namely the debate over how to deal with terrorism. Budd’s personal life and background are slowly revealed throughout the show, forcing the audience to consistently question whether he’s a true hero or a potential villain. If you loved the first season of Homeland, this show is absolutely for you. – Adam Chitwood

Breaking Bad (2008-2013)

Image via AMC

Creator: Vince Gilligan

Cast: Bryan Cranston, Anna Gunn, Aaron Paul

Binge-watching Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould's definitive Golden Age series Breaking Bad can feel like an emotional marathon, but the payoff is well worth the tumult of the journey. A masterpiece of long-format storytelling, Breaking Bad is a series that veers left every time you think you have a read on it and is never afraid to swing for the fences with despicable human behavior and the far-reaching fallout from wicked deeds. As Walter White, the high school chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin, Bryan Cranston is a revelation and he's supported at every turn by an ensemble of prodigiously talented peers. Breaking Bad is a perfectly crafted show, each season feeling like both a tightly-contained unit of storytelling and a part of a bigger whole. It will keep your nerves on end and put a pit in your stomach for a breathless rollercoaster of character drama through crime and punishment. -- Haleigh Foutch

Game of Thrones (2011-2019)

Creator: David Benioff, D. B. Weiss​​​​​​​

Cast: Peter Dinklage, Lena Headey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Emilia Clarke

You know a show is going to be a good binge-watch when you're tearing your hair out waiting for new episodes week to week, and new seasons year to year. Building on the structure of shock drama and high fantasy in George R. R. Martin's best-selling book series, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss' adaptation Game of Thrones translates all the political machinations, royal intrigue, and apocalyptic fantasy underpinnings into TV gold. Backed by a game-changing budget from HBO, Game of Thrones might be the most spectacular sight to ever hit the airwave and that luxurious attention crafts a completely immersive world where anything can happen, anyone may perish, and each new twisted cliffhanger and moment of violent punctuation leaves you clamoring to see what's next. -- Haleigh Foutch

The Boys (2019-present)

Image via Amazon Prime

Creator: Eric Kripke

Cast: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Antony Starr

The Amazon superhero series The Boys is really the perfect combination of a “prestige”-type program with the engine of a well-oiled serialized network drama. Based on the comics of the same name, the show takes place in a world in which superheroes not only exist, but they’re celebrities. As it turns out, however, most of those superheroes are drunk with power, committing atrocities all the time with zero consequences. Enter The Boys: a ragtag group of regular ol’ humans with their own personal grudges against the superhero team known as The Seven. The show is extremely violent, darkly funny, and definitely not for kids – but it’s also more thoughtful than you’d expect as it tackles themes like capitalism, fame, and even sexual misconduct. And while it goes to some very dark places, above all The Boys is just tremendously fun. – Adam Chitwood

Lucifer (2016-2021)

Creator: Tom Kapinos

Cast: Tom Ellis, Lauren German, Kevin Alejandro

Based on the comic series of the same name, Lucifer follows the titular devil himself as he takes a "vacation" from Hell and sets up a home in Los Angeles as a high-end club owner. After a friend is killed at his club, he inserts himself into the police investigation and finds that he loves the work... almost as much as he loves the detective on the case, Chloe Decker. The show began on Fox, where it was canceled after three seasons. After a tremendous outpouring of fan love, Netflix picked up the show and gave it three more seasons. Lucifer is light, breezy entertainment with just a hint of the supernatural to prevent it from becoming too much of a procedural. In addition to solving murders, the show introduces us to the first woman, Eve; God and his wife, the Goddess of all creation; Lucifer's conniving twin brother, Michael; Lucifer's best friend, a demon named Mazikeen; and the devil's therapist. — Alyse Wax

Stranger Things (2016-present)

Creator: The Duffer Brothers

Cast: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo

Here’s where the lines start to blur between TV and film. A show like House of Cards is clearly built and presented like a traditional TV series, just one meant to be binge-watched. But the smash-hit Stranger Things is much more filmic in nature, not just in its reduced number of episodes, but the structure of each. They play like parts of a whole instead of standalone episodes, and bingeing Stranger Things is more akin to reading a great novel in one day than watching a bunch of TV at once. Indeed each season of the show is seen by its creators, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, as more of a film than a TV series, which makes it possibly the most satisfying binge-watch on this list. Even if the final episode leaves the door open for more questions, each of the first two seasons have a clear beginning and end. – Adam Chitwood