5 TV Shows To Watch If You Like Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed

Apple TV continues to cement its reputation as one of the best places for original programming, with many of the best TV shows of 2026 so far coming from the streamer. With a 93% Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the dark comedy series "Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed" is yet another notch on Apple's impressive belt this year. Starring the always excellent Tatiana Maslany, the show follows her character Paula, a journalist and mother whose life spirals out of control during a messy divorce. After putting her trust in a webcam boy, Paula gets pulled into a blackmail plot that grows ever more dangerous as the show progresses.

Paula is only a slightly willing participant in her journey down a rabbit hole of sordid events that she must not only investigate, but also flat out survive. Seeing someone going about their business and living a pretty mild-mannered life only to be taken on a darkly funny ride into territory that is completely out of their element is a specific flavor of TV show that, thankfully, "Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed" isn't the only example of. If you loved it and you're looking for something similar to binge next, you should definitely check out these five shows.

Though she got plenty of acclaim for playing the role of Penny in "The Big Bang Theory," it wasn't until Kaley Cuoco produced and starred in "The Flight Attendant" that she finally landed her first Emmy nominations. Based on Chris Bohjalian's 2018 novel of the same name, the 2020 series sees Cuoco play the titular air hostess, who wakes up in a Bangkok hotel room after an apparent one night stand with a passenger — only the man in her bed has been violently murdered.

With no real memory of the evening, and therefore unsure as to the level of her involvement in said murder, Cassandra "Cassie" Bowden (Cuoco) decides to try and clean up the scene herself and go on with her life rather than contact the authorities or tell anyone what had happened. Nevertheless, the FBI approaches her about the incident, and thus begins Cassie's transition from boozing airline steward to stealthy CIA agent.  

While some fans hated the ending of Season 1, the general consensus of both seasons of "The Flight Attendant" overall is that it's an intriguing mystery thriller with big action and bigger laughs, kept flying by the stellar performance of Cuoco. There are a lot of similarities between this gripping HBO show and "Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed," which both see the main character getting sucked into something way bigger than they were prepared for after someone they got intimate with ends up dead.

Charles "Chuck" Bartowski (Zachary Levi) is working at a very Best Buy-esque big box electronics store. He's extremely book smart, but various life events have left him cynical and unmotivated. One day, after opening an email from his old college buddy — who is now a CIA agent — a top secret database containing extremely classified information gets beamed into Chuck's brain, and that is now the only place in the entire world where this important database exists.

Aided by government agents Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) and John Casey (Adam Baldwin), Chuck is pulled into a double life wherein he remains a retail worker by day but becomes a secret agent by night. Of course, Chuck himself doesn't initially possess any particular skills that facilitate this new role — that comes later — outside of the information locked away in his brain, so the three agents go on traditional spy missions in a hilariously untraditional fashion.

"Chuck" offers plenty of side-splitting espionage comedy, and it's surprisingly thrilling when it comes to action — the show won multiple Emmys for its stunt work. Levi has teased that a "Chuck" movie could become a reality at some point, but there have been no official announcements of any such project. At least there's a lot of the show to consume — "Chuck" ran for five seasons on NBC, with 91 episodes airing in total.

In 2019, a lot of people were wondering why we didn't hear from Steve Martin much anymore. Little did we know that he was about to knock out an impressive five seasons of "Only Murders in the Building" in just five years. Martin co-created and stars in the acclaimed Hulu series, playing a washed-up actor living in a swanky New York City apartment building that seems bizarrely prone to becoming a murder scene. After each murder, Martin and two fellow residents (played by Martin Short and Selena Gomez) get together to amateur sleuth their way to solving the crime, documenting their progress through their true crime podcast that shares its name with the title of the show.

The writing is fantastic, but it's the trio's chemistry that really makes this show great. Martin and Short being good together isn't a huge surprise, but Gomez proves herself admirably capable of keeping up with the two comedy icons every step of the way. Beyond that, "Only Murders in the Building" expertly skewers not only the true crime genre but also the public's current obsession with it, while also managing to be a genuinely engaging mystery all on its own. If you guessed any of the perpetrators before they were revealed, consider yourself a crime solving genius.

The very premise of Netflix's "Dead to Me" is dark comedy gold. A woman named Judy (Linda Cardellini) feels so guilty that she accidentally killed a man in a hit-and-run accident that she joins the grief support group being attended by Jen (Christina Applegate), the woman she turned into a widow. Judy pretends that she is there because she also lost her fiancé. In the process, Jen and Judy become friends, with Judy not revealing the truth of how she "knows" Jen, nor the fact that her fiancé actually just left her and isn't dead... at least, not at first.

Without giving too much away, "Dead to Me" doesn't stay a twisted buddy comedy for very long. Secrets are revealed, more murders occur, and things go completely off the rails in dangerous ways for Jen and Judy, including running afoul of the Greek mob. It goes full-on crime thriller, though it never stops being a black comedy. Sadly, it's likely that "Dead to Me" Season 3 will be Applegate's last on-camera work due to the progression of her multiple sclerosis, which made filming the third season difficult. But it was important for her to see the show through to the end, and it serves as a beautifully bittersweet coda to her career.

Very loosely based on the classic 1996 Coen brothers crime dramedy film of the same name, the FX anthology series "Fargo" follows a mostly different story and cast each season with just a few minor connective threads. What they all have in common, aside from some connection to the title North Dakota city, is that each season follows regular people who get drawn into an elaborate web of crime and violence.

As far as how willing these people are when it comes to their criminal turns, it definitely varies from person to person. Some are far more eager to commit crimes to achieve their own ends than others, and almost none of them are completely innocent. But what unites "Fargo" with the other shows on this list is that it is a series full of people who are definitely out of their element on this new path, and it manifests in ways that are often hilariously dark.

The show gets progressively less engrossing as it goes on, as Looper's ranking of all five seasons of "Fargo" exhibits, but the fact that it's an anthology series means that each season can be enjoyed in isolation. If you're a fan of "Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed," then you should absolutely check out the first couple of seasons of "Fargo" at the very least.