Best TV shows — thriller on Apple TV+ : our Top 20

2019 · Craig Mazin · 1 season

A dramatized account of one of the gravest human-made disasters—the Chernobyl nuclear accident—and the aftermath that reshaped lives and nations. The series follows firefighters, plant workers, scientists and ordinary citizens whose courage, expertise and selflessness battled the invisible threat, exposed the truth and helped prevent a continent-wide catastrophe.

With Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, Paul Ritter, Jessie Buckley, Adam Nagaitis and Sam Troughton

2014 · Noah Hawley · 5 seasons

Set in and around Minnesota, this intimate anthology peels back the calm surface of close communities to reveal simmering malice, sudden outbreaks of violence and the lasting fallout of murder. Each episode is a self-contained portrait of ordinary lives upended by suspicion, revenge and the haunting consequences of criminal acts.

With Allison Tolman, Chris Rock, Jessie Buckley, Jason Schwartzman, Ben Whishaw, Jack Huston and Salvatore Esposito

2008 · Kurt Sutter · 7 seasons

The Sons of Anarchy are an outlaw motorcycle club with chapters across the United States and beyond. The story centers on the original Redwood charter—Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original (often called SAMCRO)—based in the small Northern California town of Charming. Mixing legitimate fronts like a garage with illicit ventures including arms trafficking and ties to the adult-film business, the club is run by Clay Morrow, a president who favors old-school, often brutal methods. His stepson and vice president, Jax Teller, grows increasingly uneasy with the club’s direction, and their growing rift over leadership and values reverberates through the organization and their personal lives, driving Jax to pursue a mission to reclaim SAMCRO’s name and reshape its future.

With Charlie Hunnam, Katey Sagal, Tommy Flanagan, Mark Boone Junior, Kim Coates, Dayton Callie and Ron Perlman

2022 · David DiGilio · 1 season

The station

With Chris Pratt, Constance Wu, Taylor Kitsch, Riley Keough, Arlo Mertz, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Jared Shaw

2018 · Carlton Cuse, Graham Roland · 4 seasons

CIA analyst Jack Ryan uncovers a web of suspicious bank transfers and is pulled from the relative safety of his desk into a perilous pursuit that stretches across Europe and the Middle East. Chasing the money trail, he becomes entangled with operatives linked to an emergent terrorist leader who is quietly building the capacity for a large-scale strike against the United States and its allies.

With John Krasinski, Wendell Pierce, Michael Kelly, John Hoogenakker, Abbie Cornish, Dina Shihabi and Ali Soliman

2022 · 5 seasons

A ragged MI5 unit, led by their cantankerous and infamous chief Jackson Lamb, fumbles through the shadowy, deceptive world of intelligence. With unconventional tactics, biting humor and stubborn grit, they confront hidden threats to England and try to keep the nation safe.

With Gary Oldman, Jack Lowden, Kristin Scott Thomas, Rosalind Eleazar, Christopher Chung, Saskia Reeves and Dustin Demri-Burns

2022 · 1 season

After his entire platoon is wiped out, Navy SEAL Commander James Reece abandons official procedures and sets out on a one-man campaign for retribution. Operating outside the chain of command, he draws on nearly twenty years of combat-honed skills, instincts, and tactics to unmask and pursue the shadowy architects behind the massacre.

With Chris Pratt, Taylor Kitsch, Constance Wu, Riley Keough, Arlo Mertz, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Jared Shaw

2021 · Taylor Sheridan, Hugh Dillon · 4 seasons

In a small Michigan town where the prison economy is the only thing thriving, the McClusky family pulls the strings across law enforcement, inmates, guards, criminals and local politicians, holding sway over a community whose livelihood and identity are built around its jails and the people inside them.

With Jeremy Renner, Hugh Dillon, Tobi Bamtefa, Taylor Handley, Emma Laird, Derek Webster and Hamish Allan-Headley

2021 · Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson · 4 seasons

A gifted high-school girls’ soccer squad survives a plane crash in the remote northern wilderness and must confront hunger, exposure, and the breakdown of order. Stripped of coaches, civilization, and certainty, the once-tight but emotionally complicated team fractures into rival factions, forcing the girls to reinvent rules, loyalties, and themselves as survival becomes increasingly brutal. The series intercuts that ordeal with a timeline almost twenty-five years later, following the women as they try to rebuild ordinary lives while carrying the physical and psychological scars of what they became in the wild. Equal parts survival thriller, psychological horror, and coming-of-age drama, the show probes how trauma remakes identity, how power reshapes relationships, and what it costs to live with the choices made to survive.

With Melanie Lynskey, Tawny Cypress, Sophie Nélisse, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Sophie Thatcher, Samantha Hanratty and Steven Krueger

2022 · Sharon Horgan, Brett Baer, Dave Finkel · 2 seasons

The Garvey sisters, bound by fierce loyalty, have always had each other’s backs. When the abusive brother‑in‑law they’d longed to see gone suddenly turns up dead, their orderly lives unravel, secrets surface, and their sisterhood is pushed to its limits.

With Sharon Horgan, Anne-Marie Duff, Eva Birthistle, Sarah Greene, Eve Hewson, Claes Bang and Brian Gleeson

2014 · Sally Wainwright · 3 seasons

A gritty, blackly comic crime drama centered on Catherine, a seasoned and relentlessly dedicated police officer whose sharp instincts and work ethic are tested by the darkest corners of her town. While unraveling complex, dangerous cases and navigating institutional pressures, she must also shoulder deep personal grief after losing her child and take on the responsibility of raising her orphaned grandchild. Taut and emotionally charged, the series mixes suspense, dry humor and moral complexity as it examines duty, survival and the price of protecting those you love.

With Sarah Lancashire, Siobhan Finneran, James Norton, Rhys Connah, Charlie Murphy, Shane Zaza and George Costigan

1997 · Tom Fontana · 6 seasons

In Emerald City, an experimental wing of Oswald Maximum Security, inmates fracture into tight, identity-based factions—Muslim, Latino, Italian and Aryan groups among them—whose fierce loyalties drive a daily cycle of alliances, rivalries and intimidation that shapes every aspect of life behind bars.

With Lee Tergesen, Harold Perrineau, Dean Winters, Eamonn Walker, Ernie Hudson, Terry Kinney and Rita Moreno

2015 · Daniel Zelman, Glenn Kessler, Todd A. Kessler · 3 seasons

Beneath the picture-perfect surface of a respected Florida Keys family that runs a cherished hotel, the return of their long-estranged son for his parents’ forty-fifth anniversary threatens to expose decades of hidden transgressions. As long-buried scandals begin to surface, the siblings are forced into a tense confrontation between preserving the family’s reputation and facing the truth, pushing loyalty, trust and love to breaking point.

With Kyle Chandler, Ben Mendelsohn, Linda Cardellini, Norbert Leo Butz, Jamie McShane, Sissy Spacek and Jacinda Barrett

2020 · Michael Petroni · 1 season

A skeptical CIA operative is assigned to follow a magnetic figure whose growing spiritual movement is unsettling the political order — as she probes his past and motives, she must determine whether he is a genuine visionary, a manipulative provocateur, or a dangerously concealed threat.

With Mehdi Dehbi, Michelle Monaghan, John Ortiz, Tomer Sisley, Stefania LaVie Owen, Sayyid El Alami and Wil Traval

2024 · Alfonso Cuarón · 1 season

A high-profile journalist whose career is built on exposing other people’s sins finds an anonymous novel waiting on her nightstand; as she reads, the pages begin to reconstruct her past and cast her as the central figure in a long-buried scandal that threatens to reveal the darkest secret she has fought to keep hidden. As fiction and reality collide, she must hunt down who is writing her life—and decide whether unmasking the truth will vindicate her or shatter everything she’s worked for.

With Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline, Sacha Baron Cohen, Lesley Manville, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Louis Partridge and Leila George

2022 · Jonathan E. Steinberg, Robert Levine · 2 seasons

Having vanished from the CIA decades ago, Dan Chase now lives off the grid, determined to bury the life he once led. When a lethal hitman tracks him down, Chase is dragged back into a dangerous game where surviving tomorrow means confronting the secrets and enemies he thought he’d left behind.

With Jeff Bridges, John Lithgow, E.J. Bonilla, Bill Heck, Leem Lubany, Alia Shawkat and Gbenga Akinnagbe

2014 · Roberto Saviano · 5 seasons

Adapted from Robert Saviano's bestselling book, this uncompromising Italian crime drama plunges into the violent world of the Neapolitan Camorra. The narrative follows Ciro Di Marzo, a disciplined and self-assured lieutenant who acts as the trusted right-hand to clan patriarch Pietro Savastano.

With Salvatore Esposito, Marco D'Amore, Ivana Lotito, Fabio De Caro, Christian Giroso, Giovanni Buselli and Arturo Muselli

2018 · Carlos Montero, Darío Madrona · 8 seasons

Three teenagers from working‑class families gain places at Spain’s most prestigious school, triggering a bitter confrontation with wealthy classmates that escalates into violence and ultimately ends in tragedy.

With Itzan Escamilla, Omar Ayuso, Miguel Bernardeau, Arón Piper, Georgina Amorós, Claudia Salas and Mina El Hammani

2021 · Nick Antosca, David Kirschner, Don Mancini · 3 seasons

A vintage Chucky doll unearthed at a suburban yard sale plunges a seemingly perfect American town into turmoil, as a rash of brutal murders strips away the community’s polished veneer to reveal buried lies and moral rot. When foes — and unexpected allies — from the doll’s history reappear, they threaten to unravel who is behind the killings and to lay bare the sinister, long-hidden origins of the malevolent toy.

With Brad Dourif, Zackary Arthur, Björgvin Arnarson, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Jennifer Tilly, Carina Battrick and Teo Briones

2019 · Ben Chanan · 3 seasons

Exonerated when footage tied to an Afghanistan murder is revealed to be unreliable, former soldier Shaun Emery is released and tries to start anew with his young daughter. But when compromising CCTV from a night out in London surfaces, his hard-won freedom unravels and he must fight to prove his innocence once again.

With Ben Miles, Nigel Lindsay, Ginny Holder, Lia Williams, Holliday Grainger, Ron Perlman and Cavan Clerkin