Good American Family has already premiered in the US on Hulu, but those in other territories will need to wait for its premiere on Disney+, which arrives on May 7.
However, there are plenty of other great dramas to sink your teeth into, and they’re available on both Disney+ and Hulu. I’ve picked five drama shows you won’t want to miss if you want to make the most of your subscription.
So far, audiences are split on Good American Family as it has a 53% Rotten Tomatoes rating; but don’t worry, because these five Disney+ dramas have gone down very well with audiences and critics alike.
High Potential
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RT score: 96%
Age rating: TV-14
Episode length: ~40-42 minute episodes
Creator: Drew Goddard
Main cast: Kaitlin Olson, Daniel Sunjata, Javicia Leslie, Deniz Akdeniz, Judy Reyes
Recently, I spoke about how I put High Potential on as background noise and ended up being completely engrossed.
I misjudged this one, to be perfectly honest, assuming it would be an easy watch that I didn’t have to pay much attention to. But this gem of a series sucked me in, and if you’re a fan of self-contained episodes with a new mystery to unravel each week, you’re going to love it.
Led by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia‘s Kaitlin Olson, we follow Morgan, a struggling single mother of three who’s super-smart but down on her luck, and who by chance lands a job as a consultant to a police department.
She’s what’s known as a ‘high-potential individual’, someone with a high IQ and who’s good at spotting the finer details, making her a welcome addition to a department that’s under a lot of pressure.
Paradise
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RT score: 83%
Age rating: TV-MA
Episode length: ~57 minute episodes
Creator: Dan Fogelman
Main cast: Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Nicholson, Sarah Shahi, Nicole Brydon Bloom, James Marsden
Paradise is incredible, and much like High Potential, it surprised me. At face value it looks like another political thriller, but it’s got a fun twist that adds even more drama to an intriguing storyline.
While there is a mystery at the heart of it, and it centers around solving the murder of the US President, there’s so much more to it than that. Sterling K. Brown is excellent as a troubled bodyguard who lost his wife, and cares for his two children alone.
There’s layer upon layer to this one, and I’m glad to see that Paradise has been renewed for season 2.
The Dropout
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RT score: 90%
Age rating: TV-MA
Episode length: ~45 to 55 minutes
Creator: Elizabeth Meriwether
Main cast: Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews, Elizabeth Marvel, Michel Gill
If, like me, you love a show that’s inspired by shocking true events, The Dropout is your next binge-worthy series. Amanda Seyfried shines in the leading role as Elizabeth Holmes, an American biotechnology entrepreneur who was convicted of a multi-million-dollar fraud.
This series dramatizes the rise and fall of Holmes and her company, Theranos, a healthcare startup. The show examines the life experiences that could have motivated Holmes’s deceptions and lies, starting from her preteens and all the way up to the moment she was uncovered as a fraudster.
The Dropout is based on the ABC Audio podcast of the same name if you want to delve even deeper.
Shōgun
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RT score: 99%
Age rating: TV-14
Episode length: 53–70 minutes
Creators: Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks
Main cast: Hiroyuki Sanada, Cosmo Jarvis, Anna Sawai, Tadanobu Asano, Takehiro Hira
If historical drama is more your thing, you won’t want to miss the award-winning Shōgun. I was captivated by this series, which explores the collision of two ambitious men from different worlds.
Those men are John Blackthorne, an English sailor who ends up shipwrecked in Japan, and Lord Toranaga, a shrewd and powerful feudal lord or daimyo, and it’s easy to become invested in both of these men’s lives, and the lives of those around them.
It’s a record-breaker, too, becoming the first Japanese-language series to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series. Its first season won 18 categories across both the Primetime Emmys and the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards, making it the most awarded single season of television in Emmy history.
Rivals
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RT score: 95%
Age rating:
Episode length:
Creators: Jilly Cooper and Dominic Treadwell-Collins
Main cast: Alex Hassell, Claire Rushbrook, Aidan Turner, David Tennant, Emily Atack, Danny Dyer
Finally, if you’re after some great British drama, Rivals comes highly recommended. It boasts a fantastic ensemble cast including David Tennant and Aidan ‘Poldark’ Turner, both of whom turn in stellar performances in this tale of feuding and intrigue among the movers and shakers of high society.
Based on Jilly Cooper’s novel of the same name, and set in the fictional English county of Rutshire, it follows the three-way rivalry between old-money MP Rupert Campbell-Black, Tony, Lord Baddingham (Tennant) and renowned ‘serious’ journalist Declan O’Hara (Turner), who Baddingham has hired, along with an ambitious American TV producer, in an attempt to add some gravitas to his media empire.
