Paramount+ could've easily been a failure. The subscription streaming service is the by-product of Viacom and CBS Corporation merging and rebranding the fledgling CBS All Access streaming service. There was no stopping Paramount from simply tugging on nostalgia strings by repackaging its old TV and movies as new content to stream in one place, slapping a plus sign at the end of its company's name, and ignoring it forever. Since its launch on March 4, 2021, the new kid on the streaming block has taken big swings in the crowded content space, and the 15 best Paramount+ tv shows make the $4.99 subscription price worth it.

The tentpoles of an excellent streaming subscription service are accounted for at Paramount+. You have the reboots that actually add to the series' legacy (Star Trek: Picard), reality TV shows (RuPaul Drag Race All-Stars), heart-warming docuseries (The Check Up with Dr. David Agus), and gritty crime drama (Mayor of Kingstown). Paramount smartly polished up fan-favorite relics of the past, like the music documentary series Behind The Music and former BET comedy The Game. It also expanded upon its world-building cash cow Yellowstone with two equally as good spin-offs in 1883 and 1923.

With the merging of Showtime and Paramount+ into one streaming service, there are hundreds of TV shows to binge on. But, for this list, only the TV show originals exclusive to Paramount+ are included because those are the shows that truly make a streaming service worth your money. Sure, you can stream every episode of Better Call Saul on Netflix, but it's the Stranger Things and Wednesday shows that are the true Netflix shows.

Sorry to say, but the 15 best Paramount+ shows are going to force you to open up your budget and let another streaming service in.

Improving perfection is futile, but exploring how many imperfections almost stopped it from coming to fruition is gripping television. In 10 episodes, The Offer explores the mafia intimidation, ornery executives, and cannolis behind the making of The Godfather. Miles Teller is stellar as stubbornly idealistic producer Albert S. Ruddy, Juno Temple as managerial Swiss Army knife Bettye McCartt is a perfect partner for Ruddy, and Matthew Goode will make you believe in the power of cinema as Paramount Production head Robert Evans with his drug-fueled neuroticism around making movies the right way. Some of The Offer seems too made-for-movie dramatic to be true (Did Al Pacino’s height almost keep him from playing Michael Corleone?), and a lot of it was (Yes, Frank Sinatra wanted to beat up Mario Puzo.) Nevertheless, if you have even a cursory interest in arguably the greatest film of all time, The Offer is one of Paramount+’s finest achievements and a must-watch.

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Jeremy Renner went from helping save the world from a digitally enhanced blue tyrant in the Marvel Cinematic Universe to quelling prison riots by walking into the belly of the beast in the gritty drama Mayor of Kingstown. As crooked cop Mike McLusky, Renner is forced to assume the ignominious role as “mayor” of prison-riddled Kingstown, Michigan, after his surly yet respected older brother Mitch McLusky (Kyle Chandler) is murdered. Whether it means throwing tennis balls full of drugs over prison fences to be distributed or simultaneously satiating prisoners, gang members, and police in a deadly frenemy power structure, Mayor of Kingstown is a perfect exploration of how great power comes with greater headaches.

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There’s no separation between church and state on Evil where forensic psychologist Dr. Kristen Bouchard (Katja Herbers) and prospective Catholic priest David Acosta (Mike Colter) investigate which people are possessed and which are simply insane, with terrifyingly unclear results. Originally a CBS darling, the critically acclaimed dark drama has become a staple on Paramount+ over its last two seasons. On Evil, demons working out on stair masters and giving post-coital handjobs is par for the course in a show where the supernatural and the earthly are sometimes only separated by nightmares.

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After a six-year hiatus, the queen of the irreverent sketch comedy show returned with the fifth season of her award-winning show Inside Amy Schumer without missing a beat. She pokes fun at the omnipresence of woman's beauty standards with a brand of Spanx for every occasion, the dangers of being a female college student with a school supplies bag with mace and a rape whistle, and cluelessly antisemitic coworkers trying to learn about workplace harassment. The commentary is as sharp as ever, and Schumer holds nothing back in the Paramount+ version of the show that made her famous.

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One of the enduring appeals of Paramount’s streaming service is its revival of fan-favorite shows, and The Game is near the top of that list. Originally on Paramount’s subsidiary networks, The CW and BET, the sports comedy revival debuted on Paramount+ in November 2021 following super agent Tasha Mack (Wendy Raquel Robinson) as she enters a new era of player empowerment with her sights set on getting Black players everything they’re deserved. Naturally, when you enter a world where people are paid millions to play a game, comedy like private jet outbursts and juggling enough women to trap even the shiftiest running backs. But, at its core, The Game tackles the recent wave of players waking up to their collective power socially we saw during the early years of the pandemic. From players putting a multi-billion dollar industry on a standstill with a strike to a Black woman fighting for a legacy she started in The Game’s early days 15 years+ years ago, the players may have changed, but the stakes of the game remain the same.

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Starfleet admiral Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) couldn’t enjoy his retirement in a vineyard without otherworldly beings needing his help. Star Trek: Picard is a worthy continuation of one of the most cherished TV universes of all time, with enough fan service to have the OG Star Trek fans feel like its beloved universe is expanding while introducing new fan favorites, synthetic and natural humans alike. William Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Guinan (Whoopi Goldberg) have returned into the fold first Piacrd’s first two seasons, with LeVar Burton (Geordi La Forge) and Michael Dorn (Worf) hopping back into the interdimensional fight for survival in season 3, the show’s final season.

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Sometimes we confuse celebrity with invincibility because they're mostly in our lives as perfected characters. The Check Up with Dr. David Agus humanizes these larger-than-life figures through their honest chats with cancer specialist Dr. David Agus about their personal health. Nick Cannon opens up about battling lupus and losing his five-month-old son Zen in ways he never has before. Ashton Kutcher gets emotional sitting next to his brother Michael Kutcher as they discuss the latter's heart stopping when the former visited him in the hospital. Oprah, Jane Fonda, and so many other avatars of greatness let viewers into their relationship with their health in ways that can connect us all.

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There isn’t a streaming service worth your money that doesn’t have a respectable catalog of in-depth sports documentaries. Paramount+’s five-part docuseries Dream Team: Birth of the Modern Athlete tells the uncensored story of the 1992 U.S. Olympic Men’s Basketball Team, arguably the greatest collection of NBA talent on one team in history. When you thought every little detail from the paradigm-shifting team led by hall of famers Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird had been distilled into dozens of documentaries and books over the last 30 years, Dream Team author and sportswriter Jack McCallum uncovered a treasure trove of forgotten micro-cassette tapes from that auspicious time. Those tapes contain interviews from those legendary players we thought we knew everything about, speaking candidly about their life-changing experiences in ways we’ve never heard for the first time. For Dream Team completists and casual sports nerds alike, Dream Team: Birth of the Modern Athlete is essential to understanding how the NBA you love now came to be.

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The Taylor Sheridan Television Universe isn’t an opinion but a fact of life, and Paramount+ keeps his out-of-this-world offspring in order. The prequel series to Sheridan’s western drama epic Yellowstone puts us in the post-Civil War era of the Dutton family as they precariously attempt to flee poverty in Tennessee to greener pastures in Montana, where they establish the famed Yellowstone Dutton Ranch. Yellowstone’s Kevin Costner may not be piercing souls with gravely-voiced threats to protect his land as Dutton patriarch John Dutton, but there’s enough salt-of-the-earth stoicism and betrayal in 1883 to keep you in this western.

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The Dutton family’s legacy has been through enough to warrant the rare “betweenquel” with 1923. After Yellowstone established how far the Dutton empire could go, 1883 showed the depths they came from; 1923 is a look into how the family survived turbulent times in America, including The Great Depression and the Prohibition Era. The unflappable Helen Mirren blesses us with her talents as Cara Dutton and Harrison Ford stars in the first-ever major TV role of his 57-year career. There’ll only be two seasons of this remarkable show, so get it while the getting is good.

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Iconic drag queen RuPaul has helped change the view of masculinity in America with his 14-year run of his reality competition show RuPaul Drag Race. All-Stars is a fabulous continuation of that legacy. Successful models from the original RuPaul Drag Race show return to face off against one another for a shot at $100,000 and a place in the Drag Race Hall of Fame. The seventh season was the first with all previous winners, double the cash prize, and the new title of “Queen of Queens” up for grabs, so the Paramount+ Original is the most competitive of the show’s illustrious history.

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In Tulsa King, Sylvester Stallone is a New York City mobster released from prison and dropped in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to create a new crime syndicate. Do you really need to know any more than that to binge Stallone’s first-ever major TV role? Even at 76, Stallone can still strike fear in the hearts of any law enforcement and charm former federal agents. Watching Taylor Sheridan (yes, he’s behind this show, too) take the mafia story into a working-class town so Stallone can intimidate and motivate a ragtag group of ordinary people into becoming crime associates is a novel and often compelling change of pace for an archetype that’s been done to death.

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For 17 years between 1997-2014, VH1’s documentary series Behind The Music answered the question every artist fears and every fan wants to know: “Whatever happened to them?” From Goo Goo Dolls John Rzeznik’s childhood accordion-playing origins to Mary J Blige’s public battles with alcoholism and drug abuse, Behind The Music was the definitive music retrospective. The Paramount+ reboot is no different, featuring rapper Remy Ma detailing the six-year prison sentence that derailed her career and country music artist Jason Aldean recalling the shooting at the 2017 Route 91 Harvest Music Festival in Las Vegas.

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After nearly a decade off of our TV screens and two decades since she made vampires cool in Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Sarah Michelle Gellar is back in the supernatural with Wolf Pack. After a group of teenagers gets caught in a California wildfire, two are bitten by a supernatural beast, become werewolves, and discover others with the same fate. Gellar is arson investigator Kristin Ramsey tasked with finding out who started the wildfire and ended up getting mixed up in the supernatural mess herself. Gellar might be the main draw for people over a certain age, but young actors Armani Jackson and Bella Shepard are the driving forces for one of Paramoun+’s best shows.

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