Ranking Hulu’s 15 Best Shows From Its First 15 Years
A decade and a half ago now — on October 29, 2007, specifically — Hulu launched as a joint venture between NBC and Fox, with ad-supported streams of 90-odd TV shows and 10 movies. And skepticism in Hollywood and Silicon Valley ran high at the time. (“Why Hulu Will Fail,” reads one headline from that day.)
“I think there’s a snarky desire to say this is big dumb media and this is a big dumb joint venture,” Peter Chernin, the then-president of Fox’s then-parent company, News Corporation, told The New York Times upon Hulu’s launch. “If there is a product that’s attractive to consumers, we’ll be just fine.”
Turns out, the venture was just fine, especially because 10 years ago now, Hulu got into the original content game. This July, CNBC reported that Hulu, now majority-owned by Disney, had 46.2 million subscribers, and that same month, the streaming service landed a record 58 Emmy nominations. Talk about “a product that’s attractive to consumers.”
To honor the streaming service turning 15, we’re sharing our picks for the 15 best Hulu series.
The Great
This “almost entirely untrue story” about Catherine the Great (Elle Fanning) and Peter III of Russia (Nicholas Hoult) lives up to its title, giving historical figures a royally funny spin.
McCartney 3, 2, 1
One of the most successful songwriters sits down with one of the most influential record producers as Paul McCartney opens up about his six decades of musical creativity — with the Beatles and without — in a conversation with Rick Rubin.
Love, Victor
Like its predecessor, Love, Simon, this sweet teen rom-com follows a gay Creekwood student (played by Michael Cimino) on his journey to self-acceptance and romance, but the series has more time than the movie did to focus on the joys and hardships of his friends and family.
The Act
With an Emmy-winning performance by Patricia Arquette, this arresting true-crime series dramatizes the story of Dee Dee Blanchard, a mother who allegedly faked her daughter’s illness and disability and was then murdered by that daughter, played in the miniseries by Joey King.
High Fidelity
As a Brooklyn record store owner revisiting her playlist of past romances, Zoë Kravitz got a long-overdue starring role. But the music ended too soon: Hulu only gave the show, an adaptation of the same Nick Hornby novel that inspired the 2000 film, a solitary season.
Mrs. America
With an all-star cast led by Cate Blanchett — and featuring Rose Byrne, Uzo Aduba, and Margo Martindale — this timely miniseries tracked the 1970s-era opposition to and support for the still-unratified Equal Rights Amendment, with Phyllis Schlafly and Gloria Steinem galvanizing activists on both sides.
Normal People
Screen adaptations of literary gems are hit or miss, but luckily, this romance drama had Sally Rooney, the author of the bestselling source material, on the writing staff. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal played two students in a tenuous, years-long relationship complicated by family trauma.
Devs
From Alex Garland, the inventive writer-director of Ex Machina and Annihilation, came this thrilling miniseries about a software engineer (played by Sonoya Mizuno) investigating the death of her boyfriend on the campus of a technology company, while navigating questions of free will in the age of quantum computing.
Dopesick
Toggling between the macro and micro, this limited series told the story of the United States’ opioid epidemic, the people who profited from it, and the people who paid the price — with Michael Keaton giving an Emmy-winning performance.
Taste the Nation With Padma Lakshmi
In a departure from her Top Chef hosting duties, Padma Lakshmi takes viewers on a cross-country culinary journey, focusing on the cooking of both immigrant and indigenous populations. Did you know, for example, that Paterson, N.J., is a hotspot for Peruvian food?
Little Fires Everywhere
If you didn’t know what racial microaggressions were before watching this drama (an adaptation of the Celeste Ng novel of the same name), you certainly do now. The series starred Kerry Washington and Reese Witherspoon as the mothers of two families who intermingle and clash with fiery results.
Ramy
Starring Ramy Youssef as a 20-something with a lot of growing up to do, this comedy-drama frequently gives the spotlight to his character’s family members, who are trying to chase that mythical American Dream while contending with anti-Muslim prejudices.
PEN15
With co-creators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle playing middle-schoolers at the start of the millennium — as 30-something actors, mind you — this series perfectly captures the humiliations of adolescence outside the cool-kid bubble, the weirdnesses of puberty, and the complexities of teen BFF-ship.
Only Murders in the Building
Comedy legends Steve Martin and Martin Short play showbiz has-beens who team up with a young artist who shares their true-crime obsession (played by Selena Gomez) to solve the murder of a neighbor in their Upper West Side apartment building. As you might imagine, hilarity ensues, as does additional bloodshed.
The Handmaid’s Tale
Premiering in the age of #MeToo and lasting through the stripping of Roe v. Wade, this Margaret Atwood adaptation — a dystopian story of women trying to upend a society of reproductive slavery — has only gotten more relevant, unfortunately. That timeliness aside, the show is an Emmy darling: Television Academy voters have lavished trophies on Elisabeth Moss, Alexis Bledel, Samira Wiley, Ann Dowd, Cherry Jones, Bradley Whitford, and the show itself.
