10 Best 2023 TV Shows on Max (HBO Max) Right Now

With a masterful sense of character and its finger firmly on the pulse of pop culture, this dark comedy—about two thirtysomething siblings desperately trying to hold on to success in the shadow of their teen brother’s fame—manages to be both incredibly specific and instantly timeless. As a comedy, there might not be another show with a greater laugh-to-minute ratio than The Other Two, as a razor-sharp cast fully commit to playing characters stumbling into opportunity then debasing themselves to protect it. And the ensemble’s work is only elevated by dynamic direction that knows exactly how best to deploy an insane comic set piece.

But under the surface, there’s something gleefully twisted about how the characters gradually lose their souls in their pursuit of the spotlight. As the titular “other two” siblings abandon their values, pander to every audience, and become hooked on arbitrary signs of success, the tension in their family only tightens, too. The show knows it has a big heart deep down—and it’s so very good at chipping away at it for the sake of a great laugh.

Bright, breezy, and refreshingly unburdened by the seriousness of so many live-action Superman shows and movies, this new animated series wipes the slate clean and boils down the titular hero to his most endearing qualities. Here, Clark Kent is still learning to be more in touch with his identity and emotions—most evident in his enigmatic flashbacks to his childhood, and in his absolute nervousness around the energetic and spontaneous Lois Lane. So while the action and the intrigue in My Adventures with Superman are still somewhat ordinary for an animated series, the undeniable, bashful chemistry between its two leads is what keeps these adventures worth going on. It’s a romcom and a coming-of-age story wrapped in a classic superhero adventure, where selflessness and courage are firmly at the heart of everything.

You just wouldn’t expect yet another superhero show from The CW to carry the sort of emotional weight typically reserved for prestige melodramas, but Superman & Lois gets close. In contrast to recent darker portrayals of the Man of Steel, this series allows Clark Kent to remain a nerdy, wholesome dad, whose greatest challenges come from the problems he can’t solve with his powers. In fact, some of the superheroics only slow the show down from doing what it does best: navigating different relationships within the Smallville community, exploring various conflicts that can still pop up in a loving marriage, and looking at how Clark and Lois’s kids deal with the secrecy around having (or not having) powers.

Strong, character-focused writing and mature, measured performances help put Superman & Lois above a number of its superhero contemporaries. It still falls victim to cheesy situations and occasional stretches of monotony (especially in the second season), but its dedication to human drama over action set pieces and expanding its lore makes it easy to be moved by their most personal problems. This is what DC has needed all this time.

Set in 1930s Hollywood, a decadent city festering with crime and corruption, Perry Mason is a stylish noir series that fully recalls the crime classics of its era. It has the hallmarks of an old-fashioned mystery, the most prominent of which is the titular detective himself, Perry Mason—a boozy antihero with a heart of rusty gold—but it keeps plenty of secrets up its sleeve, making it fresh and surprising at almost every turn. 

Sometimes, it gets ahead of itself and takes on too many plot lines for its own good, but if you can forgive the occasional convolutedness, the show rewards you with shocking twists and rich performances.  

Directed by Steven Soderbergh (Oceans trilogy, Erin Brockovich, and more recently, Kimi), Full Circle is a twisty and stylish noir that takes a while to grasp, what with its epic ensemble and sweeping storylines, but once that first thread of connection is made, it becomes a series that’s very hard to leave. Each episode leaves you excited for the next, which in turn ups the ante even more. Soderbergh is in his element, and aided by a stacked cast of veterans and newcomers alike, he turns in a series that’s expertly tense and watchable throughout.

Bookie’s very premise is funny: it follows old-school bookmakers Danny (Sebastian Maniscalco) and Ray (Omar Dorsey) as they manage bets via phone calls and actual visits to their clients’ (swanky) whereabouts. They have to do all this the hard way because, in Los Angeles, gambling has yet to be legalized, so the sneaking around makes for an entertaining watch. In true sitcom fashion, their increasing bad luck equals more zany misadventures, but there’s a grimness and darkness to it too as Bookie explores the struggles of Danny and Ray’s paycheck-to-paycheck living. They feel like real people, people you can bet on to have a good time.

Today’s comic book industry and cinematic universes are inextricable from popular culture, but the road to global recognition was long and arduous. Superpowered: The DC Story chronicles a fraction of that journey including the quiet beginnings of the publishing house as Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s response to being bullied, all the way to the risky investments in film and TV adaptations and championing diverse voices. The three-part series delves into the  “holy trinity” (Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman) and how the cultural phenomenon of comics evolved over the years. Every era summarizes how DC creators had to overcome rigid executives, competing publishers like Marvel, and the highs and lows of relevancy in the ever-changing consumer market. With contributions from creators, innovators, directors, and actors, the attention to the politics of media and the call for diversity round out the somewhat-insightful and fan-sustained life of the DC universe. 

If you spent any significant time on social media this year, you won’t have been able to avoid hearing about the eight-day-long trial revolving around a ski crash in which actor and Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow was involved. The trial played out via Tiktok livestreams and Twitter memes for its duration; with a reported 30 million people tuning in online, it was one of the defining and most intense social media events of 2023.

But this hour-long documentary isn’t interested in grappling with the uneasy phenomenon of live-streamed celebrity trials that has sprung up in recent years — instead, it’s designed to feed the same urge. Though it preserves some integrity by not engaging in the kind of wild speculation that raged in livestream chat boxes during the trial, it can’t disguise the fact that it wants to be fodder for exactly that. If all you want to do is relive the he-said-she-said tension of the courtroom — with the added input of legal commentators and one member of the jury — this will do just fine, but its reluctance to really engage with their contributions renders it all a bit pointless. What’s more, arriving 9 months after the original trial means such a throwaway doc might already have surpassed its shelf life.