Paramount+ (stylized as Paramount+, part of the Paramount Network) has become a new and evolutionary streaming service. Created by the CBS Corporation, and renamed from its existing CBS All Access title launched back in 2014, the platform totals over 32.8 million subscribers already, while housing a diverse range of content from the CBS network, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, and a variety of additional networks with an expansive collection of movies and shows.
The Columbia Broadcasting System’s origins have dated back to 1927, as Arthur Judson founded The United Independent Broadcasters, Inc. (later emerging as CBS in Chicago) as a result of his inability to work for the radio’s programs of his fellow clients, carried by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC).
In 2019, CBS surfaced as a branch of Viacom, an American multinational mass media conglomerate with interests primarily in film and television. The deal between CBS and Viacom was made in order for CBS to survive in a mainstream market among its competitors (Disney, Warner Bros. & innovative tech services such as Netflix), and Paramount+ was launched in early March 2021.
Updated October 4th, 2022: If you can’t get enough of the exciting streaming platform and its shows, you’ll be happy to know we’ve added additional titles and content to this article.
They have launched some highly-anticipated, massive shows like Halo, new Star Trek series, South Park specials, and Beavis & Butt-Head, and have some big brands like Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. There are plenty of interesting things on the horizon for Paramount+ even if it’s still early days, relatively speaking; in the meantime, these are the best original Paramount+ shows you can watch now.
8/8 Why Women Kill
The comedy-drama series Why Women Kill on Paramount+ details the lives of three women living throughout three different decades: a housewife in the ’60s, a socialite in the ’80s, and a lawyer in 2019, all three of the women dealing with infidelity and severe neglect within their marriages. The women are seemingly connected to each other by living in the same Pasadena, California mansion.
The dark comedy tackles a series of topics relating to sexuality, emotional abuse, and open-marriages, while dismantling the traditional stereotypical perceptions of how a housewife should act and be treated. It’s one of the great feminist shows on Paramount Plus, and even in the whole Paramount Network.
7/8 Tell Me A Story
While it was still CBS All Access, the Paramount Network created Tell Me A Story, taking some of the most celebrated fairy tales and reinventing them through a dark and twisted psychological thriller with nursery stories, such as The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Hansel and Gretel. Structured through a present-day New York City landscape, its first season remixes these classic stories with the modern implementation of love, greed, and murder. Not only is the series addictive, but the storylines are super juicy with shocking and twisted plot lines.
6/8 The Stand
In true Stephen King fashion, this hypnotic yet frightening apocalyptic vision of a world where elements of good and evil torment a cinematically fantastic landscape is striking, with seemingly random storylines unfolding together in brilliant ways. In the CBS All Access original miniseries The Stand, now on Paramount+, the fate of mankind’s existence essentially relies on Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg), a 108-year-old woman who leads the survivors of the Captain Trip plague to civilization.
Mother Abagail is a beautiful character, a woman who has experienced every high and low that life has thrown at her. She’s a nurturing presence with certain abilities who positions herself as an ally to provide assistance in this epic miniseries which was a great improvement on the original 90s iteration.
5/8 Tooning Out the News
Featuring an ensemble cast of animated characters led by anchor James Smartwood, Tooning Out the News parodies top news stories in pop culture while interviewing real guest subjects. The animated satirical news program is formulated to draw on from major segments of Stephen Colbert’s The Late Show, and builds on the shorter segments to create a biting, acidic satire of modern news media and politics.
If you ever experience a day of being down, angry at the idiocy and violence of the world, turn this show on and choose to laugh at it all; it’s practically guaranteed to leave you with almost excruciating laughter. The Paramount Network owes its continued success to comic geniuses like Colbert on CBS, and brilliant parodies like Tooning Out the News on Paramount+.
4/8 Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Serving as the 11th series in the beloved fan-favorite sci-fi franchise, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds centers on Captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) as he leads the diverse crew of the USS Enterprise throughout unique new worlds within the galaxy in the 23rd century.
Pike must deal with the disturbing knowledge that he will meet a horrible fate, and works closely alongside beloved characters like Spock (Ethan Peck) and Christine Chapel (Jess Bush) on their thrilling, dangerous voyages into the great unknown. Similar to the opening narrations from previous installments, the series features Pike declaring “to boldly go where no one has gone before” in the iconic monologue. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds currently has a critically-lauded season under its belt with a second season of the Star Trek show due to premiere in 2023.
3/8 The Good Fight
If real life, scandal-filled national news stories aren’t enough to satisfy those cravings of drama and the occasional intrigue (a jouissance people may be experiencing after the infamous Trump years), the Paramount Network has created a series targeted towards picking up where the final episode of its The Good Wife left off on CBS nearly a year prior. The Good Fight was originally a part of CBS All Access from Paramount, incorporating 21st century politics, undertones of romance, women rising in the long-regarded patriarchal field of law, and enormous amounts of scandal.
Maia Rindell (Rose Leslie) faces a series of financial and personal challenges after a financial scam dismantles her reputation as a lawyer. Maia and her godmother Diane Lockhart (Christine Jane Baranski) join forces with Lucca Quinn (Cush Jumbo) at one of Chicago’s pre-eminent law firms after being forced out of Lockhart & Lee. Determined to build their careers, Diane later becomes a partner at the firm as Maia struggles to regain momentum personally and professionally.
2/8 Mayor of Kingstown
Marvel superstar Jeremy Renner headlines the gripping crime thriller series Mayor of Kingstown, which depicts the lives of the rich and influential McLusky family, power brokers who use their reach to bring justice and compassion to a town plagued by violence and crime.
Dianne Wiest joins Renner as matriarch Miriam, who disapproves of her son Mike’s shady activities and questionable methods and volunteers in one of the many prisons he serves as a liaison for. Mayor of Kingstown features the additional talents of Kyle Chandler, Taylor Handley and Derek Webster and was greenlit for a second season in February. The gritty program went on to become Paramount Network’s most-watched scripted premiere since 2018, attracting an impressive 2.6 million viewers.
1/8 Evil
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- Paramount Global Content Distribution
Revolving around a group of strange supernatural occurrences taking place, Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers), a psychologist who is skeptical of all things paranormal, teams up with Catholic priest-in-training David Acosta (Mike Colter) to investigate the church’s backlog of unexplained mysteries.
Their job in Evilentails looking into supposed miracles, demonic possessions, and other out of the ordinary occurrences. They often later assess if there’s a logical explanation behind these experiences or if something supernatural comes into play, examining the origins of evil along the dividing line between science and religion. The now Paramount+ show is like a more religious and modern X-Files, and brilliant walks the tightrope between extremely weird and engagingly accessible.