While Netflix seemingly led the way for other streaming networks to create compelling original programming, Hulu actually beat them all to the punch.
In 2011, a year before Netflix’s Lilyhammer and two years before the arrival of House of Cards, the burgeoning streamer premiered The Morning After, a pop-culture-focused news show that ran for 800 episodes over three years.
Hulu has continued to make TV history in the years since, most notably in 2017 when it became the first streamer to win an Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series with The Handmaid’s Tale (which recently dropped its long-awaited final season). In the years since, the streamer has continued to match—and often exceed—that high bar for quality entertainment with shows like Shōgun, which recently set an Emmy record with 18 wins in a single season, and The Bear, which took home 11 Emmys in 2024.
While more competition has popped up since Hulu started gaining critical credibility, the network has continued to stand out for its carefully curated selection of original series and network partnerships that make it the home of FX series and more. Below are some of our favorite shows streaming on Hulu right now.
Alien: Earth
With Fargo, Noah Hawley proved that he could transform an iconic movie into a compelling TV series. Now he’s done it again with Alien: Earth, a prequel series that takes place just two years before the events of Ridley Scott’s original Alien movie. The series revolves around the Prodigy Corporation, a tech company that has come up with a way to transfer the consciousness of terminally ill children into the bodies of synthetic beings. Wendy (Sydney Chandler) is one of these “hybrids,” whose memory of her past turns out to be a complication, especially when she volunteers herself and her fellow hybrids to investigate the mysterious crash of a Weyland-Yutani research spacecraft, which houses all sorts of horrors—and creatures.
