15 Most Underrated TV Shows On Max

First, there was HBO bringing superb programming to cable, then the legacy expanded to streaming on HBO Max, and now, just Max is keeping up the reputation for having some of the best shows on television. Programs like the mobster drama “The Sopranos,” the brutal fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” and the political satire “Veep”  not only stand out as great TV, but during their time, they were able to seep into the cultural zeigeist in a way that few are capable of achieving. But it’s precisely because of this fact that viewers of Max have been spoiled for choice, meaning a number of shows on the network have somehow fallen through the cracks. 

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Whether they failed to find an audience that connected with them the way they deserved, were cancelled too early, or were narratively or stylistically ahead of their time, these Max shows are of high quality but lack the reputation to match. If you’ve exhausted your options when it comes to the best that Max has to offer, here are some of their lesser known programs that may have escaped your attention but should still provide hours of viewing entertainment.

These are the most underrated shows on Max right now.

While audiences were losing their minds over the taut corporate family drama “Succession” (which is, to be fair, one of the network’s finest), they may have overlooked another show on Max that dealt with a wildly dysfunctional family in power — only it leans into the comedy of their situation. “The Righteous Gemstones” stars John Goodman as Eli Gemstone, the patriarch of the Gemstone televangelist family empire. The Gemstones are celebrities among the religious right, and they’ve conned piles and piles of cash out of the kind of people who sit by the television and happily ascribe to the “cashiers checks as prayers” mentality. 

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But the Gemstones are now in their second generation of fame, and these sorts of things tend to peter out once the entitled kids get their hands on the reins. Jesse (Danny McBride), Kelvin (Adam DeVine), and Judy (Edi Patterson) are all keen to prove to their daddy that they deserve to take over the family business — even if they have to beat each other to death with crucifixes to do it. Exploring both the dark side of televangelism (honestly, is there a non-dark side at this point?) and the lengths that emotionally neglected kidults will go to in order to win their father’s love, “The Righteous Gemstones” is, well, a gem.

If “Carnivale” had aired on HBO just a few years later, it might have had a much stronger response. As it was, the supernatural Dust Bowl gothic was just a little too strange for audiences who were used to more conventional prestige drama. “Carnivale” starred Nick Stahl as Ben Hawkins, a farmer in the 1930s who has unique healing abilities, leading him to impulsively join a traveling carnival. There, he joins up with a fascinating ensemble of outcasts, from Lila the Bearded Lady (Debra Christofferson) to Gecko the Lizard Man (John Fleck). 

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For the majority of its two seasons on the air, “Carnivale” gets by on the sheer power of atmosphere and how delightfully weird it was willing to get. But that wasn’t enough to keep it on the air. Although the show was originally sketched out for six seasons, low ratings during the second season saw HBO pull the plug, and with it, rob television of some of its wonder. Still, it has maintained a devoted following of fans known as Carnies who extol its eccentric virtues.

We’re used to a certain type of lady in our period dramas. Even the ones who are clearly written as an effort to create a character as a mouthpiece for our modern-day feminist sensibilities still look and speak a certain way. Not so in “Gentleman Jack,” where Anne Lister (Suranne Jones) stands out from the crowd for her androgynous appearance and unconventional lifestyle. Unlike many other lesbians of the past, who, until very recently, historians attempted to pass off as living with “roommates” or “companions,” there’s no disguising Lister’s sexuality, and she’s often regarded as one of the first modern lesbians.

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“Gentleman Jack” revolves around her return to Yorkshire, where Anne begins running the estate she’s inherited from her uncle and begins a clandestine relationship with Ann Walker (Sophie Rundle), a local landowner. It has a sly sense of humor and plenty of fourth-wall-breaking, but it also has genuine sentiment and plenty of chemistry between its two leads. Still, it was cancelled after just two seasons.

The original “Perry Mason” was a very specific type of procedural drama, where every episode followed a formula so tightly you could set your watch by it. But Max’s reimagining of the popular criminal defense attorney, starring Matthew Rhys in the titular role, captures a very different side of the character. He’s hard-boiled. He’s gritty. He’s haunted by the pain of his past. He drinks a lot.

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This iteration of “Perry Mason” takes place in Los Angeles several years before the original, in the midst of the Great Depression, where Perry’s scraping together a living as a private investigator. Unlike the earlier series, which had one case per episode, here we see Perry work on a single investigation over the course of an entire season. In season 1, for example, he’s investigating a gruesome child kidnapping case. This is, perhaps, why the show failed to catch on among audiences. While it’s high on atmosphere, it’s also incredibly bleak, maybe too much so for even Max’s intrepid viewers.

“How To With John Wilson” is sort of difficult to summarize, and that’s perhaps part of the reason why the show failed to catch on outside of its niche audience. In each episode, documentarian John Wilson takes us on a journey, initially focusing on one lesson he’d like to impart to us (one does a deep dive on scaffolding, for example, while another tries to figure out exactly where you’re supposed to dispose of your batteries). 

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But where the episodes start with one thesis in mind, they go off on unexpected tangents, revealing truths about the human condition as John Wilson delves deeper into what he’s actually trying to figure out. An episode that begins with John attempting to find a couch cover to protect furniture from his cat goes down the rabbit hole, eventually becoming a treatise on how we crave the illusion of control over our surroundings. Complete with documentary footage of New York City that provides the punchline for John’s halting, uncertain narration, “How To With John Wilson” is a strange but utterly endearing series filled with more than just oddball observations.

Buried deep in Max’s library is one of the best period dramas they’ve ever produced — albeit in collaboration with BBC, which has more experience with these matters — and an excellent adaptation of “Parade’s End” by Ford Madox Ford. The acclaimed Benedict Cumberbatch plays Christopher Tietjens, a mild-mannered, intelligent man who finds his relationship with his wife (Rebecca Hall) deteriorating — or rather, he’s faced with the crushing realization that she finds him dull and dispassionate, leaving her to impulsively pursue sexual gratification with other men. 

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But between his unexpected connection with a young suffragist (Adelaide Clemens) and the outbreak of World War I, his life only spins further out of control. At the same time, though, these challenges might just be the making of him. With a top-notch script from Tom Stoppard that elegantly adapts the source material and excellent performances from a talented cast — Rebecca Hall in particular is a delight for the sheer chaos she leaves in her wake — “Parade’s End” deserves to have so many more eyes on it.

To be totally fair, “The Gilded Age” is probably one of the better known shows on this list. It had two relatively popular seasons, and it’s slated to have its third come out in 2025. But when compared to the success and widespread adoration of period juggernaut “Bridgerton” on Netflix or creator Julian Fellowes’ previous effort “Downton Abbey,” the earnestly escapist “The Gilded Age” seems like it’s been denied the love it desperately deserves.

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Initially, the show revolves around Marian Brooks (Louisa Jacobson, daughter to Meryl Streep), an orphaned Pennsylvanian woman who moves in with her wealthy aunts (played by Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski) in Manhattan at the turn of the century, when a tendency towards excess gave birth to the era’s name: the Gilded Age. But as much as “The Gilded Age” wants to be about Marian, the show’s highlights are her neighbors, the social-climbing Russells. Between Bertha’s (Carrie Coon) desire to force her family on high society by any means necessary and her robber baron husband George’s (Morgan Spector) casual dominance of New York industry, they’re the definition of the ultimate power couple.

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There’s some science fiction that’s exciting, and there’s some that just sort of makes you uncomfortable deep down in your stomach. “Scavengers Reign” definitely falls into the latter category. When a spacecraft crash lands on a strange planet, the survivors attempt to reunite with their colleagues, only to be met with challenges from its bizarrely hostile environment. Although there are plenty of animal life forms around, even the plants seem to have it out for our intrepid heroes and antiheroes, often sabotaging them along the way. 

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Creative and endlessly inventive, “Scavengers Reign” offered up compelling adult entertainment through its unique brand of animation, which feels in some ways like a spiritual successor to the work of “Primal” creator Genndy Tartatovsky. But although critics were quick to praise it, Max was less impressed, canceling the animated series after just one season. For a little while, there was a glimmer of hope for its renewal, as Netflix was said to be in talks to pick the series up from Max, but in 2024 it was announced that “Scavengers Reign” had reached the end of its journey.

If you’ve ever found modern medicine grisly or winced and turned away from a surgery scene in “ER,” spare a thought for those poor souls being operated on back when anathesia was rudimentary, to say the least, and it was safer to cut off a limb than try to protect it from infection. These are the patients we bear witness to in “The Knick,” a turn-of-the-century medical drama that spares us none of the surgery gore that was a reality at the time. 

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It stars Clive Owen as Dr. John Thackery, who spends his days working at the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York City, and nurses a pretty significant opium addiction by night. These are the days of the Wild West in medicine, when new innovations were being put into practice all the time, and surgeons were just starting to cross over the line from being a step up from butchers to actual scientists. Fair warning, though: “The Knick” is not for the faint of heart.

Years after starring in the mega-hit “Friends” as Phoebe, Lisa Kudrow launched her very own, extremely meta sitcom called “The Comeback.” In it, she stars as Valerie Cherish, an actress whose career fell off after she quickly rose to fame on a 1990s sitcom. When she’s cast in a new television series, Valerie decides to make a companion reality show documenting her return to the big time. But the reality series captures a bit more of her personal reality, of being an actress on the wrong side of 30 in a town obsessed with youth, than she’s comfortable with.

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The story of “The Comeback’s” time on HBO is … well, complicated. It ran for a single season back in 2005 before being canceled, and then nearly 10 years later, it was brought back in 2014 for a second season. Its style of mockumentary and found footage comedy was very familiar to audiences by the time the series was revived, but when it was initially released, it was well ahead of its time.

What’s Pete Holmes’ deal, anyway? Do we like him? Is he annoying? Is he annoying, but in a likable way? Find out the answers to this and other questions on “Crashing,” a Max sitcom made by stand-up comedians for stand-up comedians. Pete Holmes stars as a version of himself, the human equivalent of a plain, unbuttered slice of toast, grappling with his wife’s (Lauren Lapkus) recent affair with another man. 

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While in the midst of personal crisis, he hits rock bottom — he’s homeless, couch-surfing on the goodwill of friends and acquaintances as he attempts to build a stand-up career for himself. But in a lot of ways, Holmes feels like the straight man of the series, despite his comedic aspirations. Much of the success of “Crashing” comes from its supporting cast of comedy stars, from John Mulaney and Bill Burr to Sarah Silverman and Ray Romano, all playing versions of themselves. Although it slowly started to eke out a following, it was cancelled by HBO after its third season. 

If there’s a reason why “Years and Years” didn’t make a huge impression with audiences, despite receiving positive critical attention and a string of awards, it probably has something to do with people not necessarily being in the mood for a show where a country is slowly turned into a fascist hellscape by an entertainer-turned-politician who uses populism to mask their racist and authoritarian tendencies.

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“Years and Years” revolves around a single British family, the Lyons, and how their lives are steadily and alarmingly changed over the course of a single political administration. It features excellent performances from its main cast members, including Rory Kinnear, Russell Tovey, and Jessica Hynes, as well as Emma Thompson as the reigning political figure who has insidiously transformed their country into a place they no longer recognize. It’s rare to see a show capture all of the small changes and minor crises that seem relatively insignificant in the moment, but when viewed together give a horrifying glimpse at a society careening out of control.

Way back in the 1970s, when presidents still faced consequences for their actions, Richard Nixon made a series of missteps that ultimately led to him resigning the presidency in the ultimate “you can’t fire me, I quit” move. The reason? Well, amongst another things, there was compelling evidence to suggest that he had instructed members of his re-election campaign to break into Democratic headquarters, which is where we get to “White House Plumbers.” 

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In it, Woody Harrelson plays CIA officer E. Howard Hunt, while Justin Theroux plays G. Gordon Liddy, a White House lawyer. Together, they work to combat information leaks within the White House but, ironically, their bumbling antics end up undermining the Nixon administration rather than protecting it. A sly take on the actual historical record, “White House Plumbers” has a truth is stranger than fiction feel to it, and it’s satirical even when it’s sticking fairly close to the truth. But the production was clumsily promoted, and it didn’t seem to register with audiences, many of whom are likely unaware that it even exists.

Have you ever sat in a hotel room and thought about all the people who must have passed through its doors over the years? “Room 104” might just be for you. “Room 104” was an anthology series from HBO created by the Duplass Brothers (who have done plenty for Netflix), where each episode told a different story — ranging from horror to comedy to drama and everything in between — all set in the same dingy motel room. 

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It’s an interesting concept, and it ran for four seasons, which is a qualified success in modern television. But it doesn’t seem to have lingered in the minds of audiences since it went off the air in 2020. Although it had enough of a novelty factor in that each episode told an entirely different story, “Room 104” was wildly overshadowed by other popular anthology series that were sucking up all the oxygen at the time, especially “Black Mirror,” which struck a similarly dissonant tone.

Packed full of talented television actors, from Timothy Olyphant and Claire Danes to Zazie Beetz and Jharrel Jerome, everything about “Full Circle” seems to suggest that it would be popular among audiences. A mystery series directed by Steven Soderbergh, it has at its heart a kidnapping gone wrong, as a woman who believes her family is cursed carries out seemingly bizarre actions in an effort to complete the circle that will remove the curse. Along the way, the show picks at all the tendrils coming off of this kidnapping, and all the people who are connected to it in various ways. 

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While it’s certainly not a comfort watch — its meandering storyline and ensemble cast result in a show that’s not an obvious pick to have playing in the background while you’re doing laundry — “Full Circle” was far more interesting than audiences gave it credit for. It didn’t make much of an impact when it was released on Max, but it’s a case of getting lost in the shuffle of a streaming world with too much content rather than through any fault of its own.