6 Near-Perfect Peacock Shows Everyone Should Watch
Zach Moser has been writing for ScreenRant since 2022, covering movies, classic TV, and streaming TV. His areas of expertise cover a wide range of genres with a particular interest in horror and drama, and the conversations around the TV and film industry. When he's not covering the latest film releases or chronicling the latest season of a new show, he's writing humor pieces for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Slackjaw, and Points In Case or working on short stories and his second novel.
These six Peacock original series are some of the best the streamer has to offer. Peacock has always been in a unique spot in the streaming landscape. As the streaming app for NBC, Peacock has access to a huge library of TV shows extending as far back as the network, and it includes some of the most bingeable series ever.
When you have The Office, Parks and Rec, and 30 Rock built into your platform, you might not need much else. I'm guilty of using Netflix as a permanent screen for The Office back when it was still on Netflix. So Peacock has never felt obligated to constantly produce original shows in the way of HBO or Hulu.
Still, they have produced a few original TV shows. While it's true they don't often run more than two seasons, and though the current slate is wanting, there are still a few diamonds to be found in the original library. Peacock has still not made the perfect TV show, but it has gotten close a few times.
Girls5eva (2021-2024)
Meredith Scandino, a writer for The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, reunited with Tina Fey for Girls5eva, a three-season musical comedy that premiered its first two seasons on Peacock before moving to Netflix for its third and final season. The series centers on a girl group from the '90s who have a chance at a comeback.
Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Paula Pell, and Renée Elise Goldsberry star as four members of "Girls5eva", who have since moved on in their lives, some to more success than others, but no matter where they've landed, they each still have lingering resentments and regrets from their time as international pop stars.
It's a witty and charming look back at the 1990s, and no series has managed a satire of that decade so well. The four main characters have incredible chemistry, which makes their journey back to stardom all the more satisfying and realistic. The music is fantastic too, making for a funnier version of Glee.
Angelyne (2022)
Angelyne stars Emmy Rossum as the titular Angelyne, a mysterious blonde advertising star of the Marilyn Monroe variety who rose to prominence in the 1980s. The series jumps back and forth between Angelyne's rise to fame in the '80s and a journalist's quest to find out who she really is in the 2010s.
Just as in real life, the Angelyne of the Peacock series is an enigmatic figure. Her stories conflict; there aren't great records of who she was before the '80s, and Angelyne herself seems unsure who she was then and who she is now. It's a terrific exploration of a character we still don't know very much about.
Rossum deserves more than to be known as the woman from Shameless, and Angelyne is in a line of recent roles that have placed her in the upper echelons of the best actors currently working in television. The difficulty in grasping the character makes grasping Angelyne itself difficult at times, but there is enough there to keep you engaged.
Mrs. Davis (2023)
Damon Lindelof's Mrs. Davis is probably the best series on Peacock, and one of the best miniseries of the last 2020 years. The show is Lindelof's fourth stab at the same existential question he's been grappling with since he co-created Lost: whether it's science or faith that ultimately guides humanity.
Of all his shows, Mrs. Davis leans more into the comic side of that question, and it's also one of the funniest shows on Peacock. Chris Diamantopoulos as an Australian beef stick who leads a pack of angry but harmless men against the show's antagonist is worth watching for alone.
The series is set in a near-future where an A.I. program known as "Mrs. Davis" has evolved to the point that it solved hunger and war,, leading to worldwide peace and worldwide malaise. Sister Simone (Betty Gilpin) sets out to end the A.I. and finds an unlikely ally: Mrs. Davis, who also sees her existence as an impediment to humanity.
Poker Face (2023-2025)
Poker Face is arguably Peacock's most well-known series. The two-season crime comedy is a procedural murder mystery starring Natasha Lyonne as Charlie Cale, a woman with the ability to tell when people are lying. She travels across the country solving crimes and meeting all manner of oddballs.
The series uses the "Columbo" crime story plot method, where the crime and culprit are shown at the beginning of the episode, and the tension comes from wondering how Charlie is going to solve what the audience already knows. This throwback storytelling pairs perfectly with the modern, black-comedy writing of the show.
Poker Face wisely holds on to its case-of-the-week plot throughout two seasons, leaving just enough room to tell a compelling serialized storyline that gives us insights into Charlie we might not otherwise have. It's as well-executed a show as you're going to watch, with Breaking Bad-levels of paying attention to detail.
Twisted Metal is one of a handful of ongoing series currently in Peacock's lineup, with its third season on the way. Based on the video game series of the same name, Twisted Metal is a post-apocalyptic action comedy that stars Anthony Mackie as John Doe, a delivery driver with amnesia and a motormouth.
In this post-apocalyptic world, order has fallen, and in its place, warlords and criminals have sprung up all over, outfitting vehicles with a variety of deadly add-ons and upgrades. It's a little like Mad Max meets Fallout but with far fewer mutants than in either franchise. It's weird, funny, and action-packed.
It's as cartoonish as any video game adaptation from the last ten years, and it revels in its violence and mayhem, having a ton of fun while it does so, and the joy of the series effectively rubs off on the audience. The direction of Twisted Metal, particularly in the many car battles, is also top-notch, important criteria for any fan of the games.
The Day Of The Jackal (2024-Present)
The Day of the Jackal is another ongoing series on Peacock and a joint effort between the streamer and Sky Atlantic. Based on the Frederick Forsyth novel that was turned into an acclaimed film in 1973, The Day of the Jackal stars Eddie Redmayne as "The Jackal", an international hitman.
Renowned for his effectiveness, the Jackal uses a myriad of disguises to take on clients, both those deserving of retribution and the more innocent. Lashana Lynch co-stars as Bianca Pullman, an MI6 operative set on hunting him down. It's a twisty, sharply written spy series with plenty of surprises in store.
The series is brilliantly staged, with each of the Jackal's missions tightly laid out and creative from top to bottom. They are so tense that you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat, praying for the murderer's success. The Day of the Jackal season 2 is set to premiere on Peacock sometime in 2027.
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