10 great TV shows to stream instead of watching the 2024 Super Bowl
At last, it has arrived: Super Bowl 2024. For football fans, the Super Bowl is the apex of their year. For everyone else, it’s just another Sunday to pass the time by catching up on work, hanging out with friends, or watching TV shows on your favorite streaming service.
With the 2024 Super Bowl overwhelming the pop culture landscape, it can be hard to find the right TV show to watch. Digital Trends has compiled a list of excellent series showing on various streamers like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Max, and Hulu that are guaranteed crowd-pleasers.
Still want more Super Bowl alternatives? Try the five best Netflix TV shows to watch instead of the 2024 Super Bowl and three great Hulu shows to watch instead of the 2024 Super Bowl.
Need Super Bowl 2024 recommendations? Check out 10 best Super Bowls of the last decade, 10 biggest Super Bowl broadcasting mistakes, 10 most-viewed Super Bowl halftime shows, who is performing in the Super Bowl halftime show, how to watch the Super Bowl for free, how long is the 2024 Super Bowl, and three great sports documentaries to watch.
Netflix
The Tourist (2022-Present)
Some shows are appealing due to their stars. Others are attractive because of their source material. The Tourist is irresistible primarily due to its central plot. The Netflix series tells the story of a man who wakes up in the Australian outback with no idea who he is and has to work to piece together where he comes from and why he’s being chased.
The cast isn’t bad either, with Irish actor Jamie Dornan, who was so memorable as the charming serial killer in The Fall, standing out as the titular tourist with a bad case of deja vu. The second season just dropped on Netflix, and it’s guaranteed to keep you hooked until the very end.
Band of Brothers (2001)
Masters of the Air is a big hit on Apple TV+ this year, so it’s a good time to check out the WWII miniseries that started it all. Band of Brothers chronicles the men who fought through the darkest days of World War II. This epic 10-part miniseries dramatizes the real-life exploits of Easy Company, one of the army’s Parachute Infantry Regiments, during the war. Easy Company’s story begins in 1942 and flows through the invasion of Normandy and other European battles before the focus shifts to the Pacific and a potential campaign in Japan.
Homeland and Billions actor Damian Lewis leads the stacked cast as Major Richard “Dick” Winters, and you’ll see a lot of familiar faces in the series, like Michael Fassbender, David Schwimmer, James McAvoy, Andrew Scott, Simon Pegg, and many more. You probably won’t finish Band of Brothers in one night, but you’ll definitely eat up a few hours with its totally immersive narrative.
Suits (2011-2019)
Suits’ has recently received a lot of new viewers in the last year thanks to its availability on Netflix, and with good reason — it’s an addictive show to binge. The series follows the unlikely partnership between prominent attorney Harvey Specter (Gabriel Macht), and a brilliant con man, Mike Ross (Patrick J. Adams). Harvey is so impressed by Mike’s legal knowledge that he hires him on the spot to be his associate despite knowing full well that he never went to law school.
Harvey and Mike’s efforts help the firm win several high-profile cases, even as Mike’s secret threatens to emerge. Meanwhile, Mike catches the eye of Rachel Zane (Meghan Markle), an ambitious paralegal with her own plans to advance in the legal world. If ever there was a perfect show to watch at the end of the weekend, it’s Suits.
Hulu
Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (2023)
FX’s hugely popular anthology series Feud is back with a new season-long storyline: Capote vs. The Swans. The series is based on the real-life breakdown in relations between the famous writer, Truman Capote (Tom Hollander), and his female friends in New York City’s high society. In 1975, an excerpt from Capote’s unfinished novel, Answered Prayers, is published, and the women instantly realize that Capote has betrayed their confidence and used barely disguised versions of them in his book.
The titular Swans — Babe Paley (Naomi Watts), Nancy “Slim” Keith (Diane Lane), C.Z. Guest (Chlo? Sevigny), Lee Radziwill (Calista Flockhart), Ann Woodward (Demi Moore), and Joanne Carson (Molly Ringwald) — resolve to destroy Capote no matter how long it takes. And this battle of wills only encourages Capote’s self-destructive streak, especially when he can’t understand why the Swans are so angry with him.
Death and Other Details (2023)
Crime and the high seas may seem like strange bedfellows, but the new series Death and Other Details makes it work. The show follows Rufus Coteworth (Broadway legend Mandy Patinkin), the man who was formerly known as “the world’s greatest detective.” The one case that Rufus couldn’t crack was the murder of Imogene Scott’s mother, which is something that Imogene (Violett Beane) has never forgiven him for.
Fate reunites Rufus and Imogene on the luxury cruiser SS Varuna when a murder takes place at sea. And in order to solve this case, Imogene will have to put aside her distaste for Rufus before more bodies start piling up.
Amazon Prime Video
Reacher (2022-Present)
Remember Tom Cruise in the 2012 movie Jack Reacher? Well, forget him and that movie. Alan Ritchson (Smallville) now plays Jack Reacher, the former U.S. Army major who has moved on to travel the U.S., looking for whatever odd jobs he can find to take down bad guys.
The Amazon Prime series is based on the popular Lee Child book series, and like the first movie, season 1 of Reacher adapts Killing Floor. After being arrested for a murder he did not commit, Reacher finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy. In season 2, the story is based on the events in the book Bad Luck and Trouble. Reacher is a surprisingly great action series, and Ritchson makes the role his own.
Zorro (2024)
Did you know that there’s a new Zorro series? And that’s it’s actually pretty good? The classic pulp hero Zorro lives again in a new Prime Video series that debuted in 2024. Miguel Bernardeau stars as Diego de la Vega, the son of the previous Zorro. In 1834, Diego is forced to return to California from Europe when his father is murdered.
Now, Diego must pick up his father’s sword and assume the mantle of Zorro to fight injustice on behalf of all of the people in Los Angeles. Diego may even be able to win back the love of his life, Lolita Marquez (Renata Notni), assuming he can live up to his father’s legend.
Apple TV+
Masters of the Air (2024)
Who knew watching history could be so much fun? Thank Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg for that. After collaborating on Band of Brothers and The Pacific for HBO, Hanks and Spielberg are executive producing the Apple TV+ miniseries Masters of the Air, which tells the true stories of the men who served in the 100th Bomb Group during WWII.
The show’s cast is impressive, with Dune: Part Two’s Austin Butler, The Boys In the Boat’s Callum Turner, and Saltburn’s Barry Keoghan portraying the pilots who carry out several daring adventures. The show also boasts an impressive budget and epic scale seldom seen on the small screen.
Paramount+
Halo (2021-Present)
Video game adaptations usually aren’t good, save for The Last of Us, but Halo is ok enough to be better than most. The series’ second season just debuted, and the show seems to be drawing more inspiration from its Xbox source material. After the first season, Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 (Pablo Schreiber) still has much to sort out about himself, but one thing is clear. To win the war with the alien Covenant, Master Chief has to find the ringworld known as Halo.
However, time may be running out on the human colony Reach, as the Covenant closes in on the planet’s location. Once that happens, nothing, not even Master Chief himself, can prevent the Fall of Reach.
Max (formerly HBO Max)
Tokyo Vice (2022-Present)
The second season of Tokyo Vice just debuted, so now’s a good time to watch season one. The series focuses on Jake Adelstein (West Side Story‘s Ansel Elgort), a young man who moves to Tokyo to make his name as a crime reporter. But the more Jake learns about the Yakuza and the criminal underworld, the more trouble he seems to attract.
Tokyo Vice is an intoxicating look at the criminal underbelly and a fascinating view of a different culture. Elgort makes for an engaging hero, and his relationships with his police connection, Detective Hiroto Katagiri (The Last Samurai‘s Ken Watanabe), and fellow journalist Emi (Babel‘s Rinko Kikuchi) are what make the crime series so interesting to watch.
