The Best TV Series Originals Ranked!
Earlier this year, Netflix dropped their “surprise me” feature. And with such an infinite catalogue, one might in fact just let the platform decide.
With more and more streaming platforms to choose from, how does one pick the right app to spend their hard earned cash on? Different budgets can result in different catalogue sizes, but what about the quality?
The ‘battleground’ for streaming services to get their brand front and centre has always been fought over the dreaded: Originals.
The team at PlayOJO handpicked three of the best TV Originals from the top six streaming services to find out which platform produces the most popular and highest quality TV shows based on Rotten Tomatoes IMDB ratings. We then created a popularity score by combining search data for selected queries (over a 12-month period), as well as both critical and audience reception to complete our ranking.
Best Shows Per Streaming Platform Ranked:
| # | Streaming Services | TV Show | Overall Rating |
| 1 | Disney+ | The Santa Clauses | 95% |
| 2 | HBO Max | The Last of US | 93% |
| 3 | Disney+ | The Mandalorian | 91% |
| 4 | Disney+ | Andor | 90% |
| 5 | HBO Max | House of the Dragon | 89% |
| 6 | Amazon Prime Video | The Boys | 88% |
| 7 | Paramount + | Star Trek: Strange New Worlds | 87% |
| 8 | Hulu | The Orville | 82% |
| 9 | Netflix | YOU | 81% |
| 10 | Netflix | Wednesday | 80% |
Surprisingly, the most recent services to have entered the market produce the highest rated and most popular TV shows. Disney’s The Santa Clauses currently stands as the most popular TV show on demand with a 95% rating. Moreover, Disney+ can count on Lucas Films’ widely popular Star Wars franchise as a way to attract new subscribers to the platform with The Mandalorian and Andor also rating above 90%.
HBO Max’s The Last of Us currently ranks first on IMDB’s popularity score with an overall rating of 93%. It far surpasses House of the Dragon (89%) as the best show currently available on the platform.
Whereas Amazon Prime Video only registers one entry in the top 10 (The Boys, 88%), Netflix barely scrapes the bottom with YOU (81%) and Tim Burton’s Wednesday (80%). Does this mean that Netflix Originals are losing their attraction? Whilst the four seasons of YOU may have impacted its ranking, Wednesday’s Tik Tok craze-inspiring hype wasn’t enough to earn it the podium.
This begs the question, will we start to see a tidal change and will the popularity of these household, brand-defining shows start to influence the subscription base?
Which streaming service provider has the most subscribers?
In terms of subscribers, Netflix still reigns as sovereign of the streaming services with over 230M paying subscribers in 2023. The company is also the longest serving online streaming service for Film/TV Entertainment.
The streaming services with the most paying subscribers
| # | Streaming Services | Number of paid subscribers | UK Launch Date |
| 1 | Netflix | 230,930,000 | 2007* |
| 2 | Amazon Prime Video | 200,000,000 | 2008 |
| 3 | Disney+ | 161,800,000 | 2019 |
| 4 | HBO Max | 81,000,000 | 2020 |
| 5 | Paramount + | 56,000,000 | 2021 |
| 6 | Hulu | 48,000,000 | 2007 |
Amazon Prime Video also stands above the competition thanks to its “Prime” subscription service which gives access to onsite advantages, as well as their video and music streaming services. With 200M people using their streaming service they rank higher than other competitors Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+ and Hulu.
Interestingly, Paramount+ has already overtaken Hulu (owned by Disney) despite only having been around for two years. Their top show by popularity is a Star Trek spin off.
Are you starting to notice a theme? While researching for this study it is almost impossible not to notice that hardly any of the popular titles that have been labelled as ‘streaming original’ is actually based on a new (original) idea, but it is based on very popular IPs. This trend, in time, may very well move the needle in favour of platforms like Disney+, which already have an enormous amount of highly bankable properties.
In summary, Disney+ and HBO Max’s new “Originals” have tremendously helped their streaming service grow their subscriber base, which is not surprising knowing that “Grogu” from the Mandalorian scores a third more Google searches than the show itself. Is Netflix’s era about to come to end? Only the future will tell.
Methodology:
The three highest rated originals from the following streaming platforms: Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+, Paramount+ and Hulu were sourced from IMDB.com and Rotten Tomatoes.
Secondary selection criteria for the shows were as follows: the show has been renewed for a new season or has run for at least two seasons, the show has aired one of its seasons in the last 12 months. Subscriber data was sourced from Statista.com.
