From gripping dramas and heartwarming comedies to groundbreaking sci-fi and star-studded Originals, here are some must-watch series from the streaming platform. Watch them on KrisWorld, then redeem one free month of Apple TV+ subscription to continue enjoying them after your flight.
The Emmy-winning comedy series, Ted Lasso, is the TV embodiment of a big, warm hug. It became a pop culture sensation when it premiered in 2020, winning hearts with its relentless optimism.
Jason Sudeikis plays Ted Lasso, a small-time college American football coach from Kansas hired to coach UK professional soccer team AFC Richmond despite having no experience coaching soccer. He takes on that challenge with unwavering positivity, but mentoring a motley crew of clashing personalities, including egotistical up-and-comer Jamie Tartt (Phil Dunster) and the hot-headed veteran footballer Roy Kent (Brett Goldstein), proves to be tricky.
And, unknown to him, there is a powerful force within the club that doesn’t want him to succeed: AFC Richmond’s new owner, Rebecca Welton (Hannah Waddingham).
Still, there are no pure villains in the show. And it’s precisely Ted Lasso’s militant belief in the goodness of people — even ones who do nasty things — that feels like a balm for the weary soul. If you’re ever feeling down, Ted Lasso is just that ray of sunshine you need in your life.
When work-at-home arrangements became the norm, conversations about work-life balance naturally dominated social media. When your office space is also your living space, where does work end and life begin? Is it even possible to separate those two things?
In the award-winning high-concept thriller Severance, work-life balance is taken to the extreme — with frightening results. The biotechnology corporation Lumon Industries has formulated a medical procedure called ‘severance’, which allows their employees to compartmentalise their memories depending on whether or not they are at work.
When a ‘severed’ worker is at work, they are dubbed ‘innies’ and cannot remember anything of their lives or the world outside. When outside work, they are dubbed ‘outies’ and cannot remember their time at work. Due to this, innie and outie experience two different lives with distinct personalities and agendas.
Sounds like a useful procedure? Not quite. This excessive separation of professional and personal hurts innies, who experience a lack of agency and a constant sense of despair.
Severance paints a bleak portrait of the excesses of corporatism, one that explores how the need to bury personal baggage in pursuit of productivity can ultimately hurt people.
Based on the New York Times bestselling novel of the same name, this epic drama chronicles the hopes and dreams of a Korean immigrant family across four generations as they leave their homeland in an indomitable quest to survive and thrive.
Epic in scope and intimate in tone, the story begins with a forbidden love and crescendos into a sweeping saga that journeys between Korea, Japan, and America to tell an unforgettable story of war and peace, love and loss, triumph, and reckoning.
Pachinko is told in three languages — Korean, Japanese, and English — to maintain a ring of authenticity.
It uses something very specific — the migrant experience — to illuminate universal truths about being human: the need for a sense of belonging, the power of familial bonds, and the dream of a better future.
Featuring Academy Award-winning actress Youn Yuh-jung (Minari) and hotshot actor Lee Min-ho in its huge cast, Pachinko is a sprawling, moving drama that proves that when it comes to relating to art, language is indeed no barrier.
There’s little wonder why The Morning Show has turned out to be one of Apple TV+’s biggest hits. It explores the cutthroat world of morning news and the lives of the people who help America wake up in the morning, and is packed with terrific performances, especially by headlining stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon.
Told through the lens of Alex Levy (Aniston) and Bradley Jackson (Witherspoon), two complicated women navigating the minefield that is the high-octane world of morning news. The show is full of chaos — scheming! backstabbing! office politics! — and, well, drama. Multiple plotlines move in tandem at any one time, and they progress so briskly that you’re always engrossed.
In Season 1, Alex, the co-anchor of a morning talk show, is left feeling abandoned and lost when her co-presenter, Mitch (Steve Carrel, who proves he has dramatic chops in addition to comedic talent), is accused of sexual misconduct and fired. It was their chemistry that kept their show’s ratings high; with him gone, she’s in a vulnerable position.
But when she finds a new partner in Bradley, who comes from a serious journalistic background, the show starts taking flight in the ratings again. Along the way, Alex and Bradley discover that the network CEO’s negligence and deliberate inaction fostered a culture of sexual abuse in the company.
Fearless and fun, the unapologetically candid series looks at the power dynamics between women and men, and women and women, in the workplace without being preachy or heavy-handed. Sophisticated and engrossing — now that’s smart entertainment for you.
The environment has gotten toxic — so lethal it has wiped out most of humanity. There are only 10,000 people left on Earth, or so it seems. Their home protecting them from the deadly outside world? A mile-deep bunker. That’s the simple premise of Silo, a high-concept dystopian drama adapted from the first book in Hugh Howey’s bestselling trilogy of the same name.
No one knows when or why the silo was built, and anyone who tries to find out faces fatal consequences. Rebecca Ferguson (Dune) stars as Juliette, an engineer who seeks answers about her partner George’s (Ferdinand Kingsley) murder. But she stumbles onto a mystery that goes far deeper than she could have ever imagined, leading her to discover that if the lies don’t kill you, the truth will.
Mystery is woven into the fabric of the first season. Fresh revelations only raise new questions. When did the world become uninhabitable? Why are even fleeting mentions of the era before the silo prohibited? Why is there still a tiny group of resistance fighters preserving memories from the past with ‘relics’ (items from the old world)?
The show is also part conspiracy thriller. On her quest to get to the roots of her partner’s murder, Juliette bumps heads with the ‘Judiciary’, a ministry-of-sorts within the silo that has a say in almost every aspect of its governance. The shadowy Judiciary is menacing and cruel, crushing dissent in the silo with an iron fist and meting out terrible punishments for even the slightest transgressions. Were they responsible for George’s death?
With its constant air of suspense, smart metaphors on class warfare, and twisty plot, Silo makes for a terrific binge-watch.
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters introduces a novel chapter in the MonsterVerse, the multimedia franchise and shared fictional universe featuring Godzilla, King Kong, and other gigantic creatures.
The show is set in a world where the existence of Titans, or huge monsters (kaiju in Japanese), is the reality for humans.
The show’s kaiju are as varied as they are fascinating. You’d have probably seen (or at least heard of) the iconic, dino-like Godzilla, but the rest of the monster cast are less frequently seen, including Mother Longlegs, a gigantic spider, and Mantleclaw, a crab-like kaiju with the ability to burrow beneath Earth’s mantle. The show also features the Endoswarmers, an insectoid superspecies, and Skullcrawlers, a two-limbed amphibious menace. New titans like the Frost Vark and the winged bat-like Ion Dragon add to the show’s diverse roster of monstrous beings.
Magnificent and terrifying as the kaiju are and colossal as the action scenes may be, the show still mostly focuses on the human stories that unfold against the backdrop of these gargantuan creatures. The kaiju are often the backdrop — and sometimes the catalyst — for grounded drama to play out. Character development is given the priority, and, fortunately for the show, its ensemble cast are impressive in their various roles.
Headlining stars Kurt Russell and his son Wyatt portray former US Army Colonel Lee Shaw across different timelines. They play the character with winky mischief and action-hero brashness but balance that out with gentleness during quieter scenes. Other cast members like Anna Sawai, Ren Watabe, and Kiersey Clemons complement the Russells with their performances, and the chemistry between all of them is palpable.
Newly minted Emmy winner Sawai, who plays Cate, a woman suffering from PTSD after a kaiju attack, is the beating heart of the show. To accurately portray the trauma and agony of surviving the ordeal, Sawai tells The Hollywood Reporter: “I reflected on my memory from the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake. I didn’t lose family, but so many Japanese lost people important to them.”
Monarch: Legacy of Monsters is a powerful reminder of storytelling’s ability to bridge disparate worlds. It celebrates the human capacity to adapt and thrive, even under the shadow of giants.
Who says you need labyrinthine plots or gun-slinging to make an espionage thriller work? Forget about pyrotechnics or outrageous plot twists — Slow Horses proves that great acting and even greater writing are all you need to make an exciting spy drama.
Based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novel series, Slow Horses follows a dysfunctional team of British intelligence agents who serve in Slough House, a dumping-ground department of MI5, due to their career-ending mistakes.
After River Cartwright (Jack Lowden), an up-and-coming MI5 agent, makes a life-altering mistake in a public training exercise, he is relegated to performing dead-end work at Slough House. He resents his new ramshackle workplace, which is populated by intelligence officers who have, like him, committed serious blunders. Making his life even tougher is his boss, the curmudgeonly Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), who’s the brilliant but irascible leader of Slough House.
Haunted by his past mistake and itching to redeem himself, he sticks his nose into an investigation of a far-right terrorist group despite not being assigned to it.
Despite its name, Slow Horses never feels sedate. While it eschews frenetic plotting, the show smuggles in plenty of twists and cliffhangers. The espionage dealings, while suspenseful at every turn, are grounded in a sense of authenticity. Tense but believable at all times, serious but also wickedly funny, the show is one of the best under-the-radar gems on TV right now.
Created by TV legend David E. Kelley (The Practice, Big Little Lies) and executive produced by J. J. Abrams (Super 8, Star Wars: The Force Awakens), this eight-episode limited series is based on the New York Times bestselling novel of the same name by Scott Turow.
Jake Gyllenhaal, who also served as executive producer, stars as chief deputy prosecutor Rusty Sabich, who becomes the prime suspect in the death of his colleague, Carolyn Polhemus (Renate Reinsve). Acting alongside Gyllenhaal and Reinsve is a star-studded ensemble cast, including Ruth Negga, Bill Camp, Elizabeth Marvel, and Peter Sarsgaard.
The series takes viewers on a gripping journey through the horrific murder that upends the Chicago Prosecuting Attorney’s office while following Rusty’s personal life as he fights to hold his family and crumbling marriage together.
While the book was adapted for the big screen in 1990, this is the first time it has been made into a TV series. The expanded run time of the silver-screen format affords Presumed Innocent more leeway in exploring its themes of obsession, sex, politics, and the power and limits of love.
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