Apple TV’s best thrillers prove they need to focus on the horror genre next

For a long time, Apple TV aired great shows that no one watches. It’s not really the streamer’s fault since Netflix has won the streaming war a long time ago and today has more than 300 million subscribers. This dwarfs all competitors, with Amazon’s Prime Video coming in a distant second with 200 million subscribers. Where does Apple TV stand in the rankings? 13 (according to FlixPatrol). The service has a relatively paltry 30 million subscribers, which the list says is lower than Disney+, HBO Max, Paramount+, Peacock, and even something called “SonyLiv.”

Simply put, by and large, no one watches Apple TV – at least compared to the number of people who watch Netflix. It’s really a shame. On the one hand, it’s hard to feel sorry for the world’s largest technology company, which will undoubtedly help create the garbage future of AI that awaits. On the other hand, Apple TV has some great shows that absolutely deserve a wider audience.

How Tim Cook and co. Are you able to attract some viewers from your competitors? Well, one solution might be to create the next big horror hit. This may seem counterintuitive given that the genre isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but horror is the last big hurdle Apple TV must overcome to have one of the best and most comprehensive streaming catalogs in gaming.

Anyone who despairs of the absolute mountain of crudity produced by Netflix is ​​surely not alone. The service offers many quality film and television products (Lily James and Riz Ahmed’s excellent crime thriller recently reached the top 10 of the charts), but these gems are often buried by the sheer volume of half-baked streaming nonsense pumped onto the servers. Apple TV is the opposite.

The streamer’s catalog is nowhere near as extensive as Netflix’s, but the emphasis is clearly on quality over quantity. Apple TV has followed a path very similar to HBO in consistently offering premium TV series, from feel-good shows like “Ted Lasso” and “Shrinking” to sci-fi standouts like “Invasion,” “Pluribus” and The most mind-blowing movie on television, “Severance.” Those looking for thrillers won’t be disappointed either, since the “Blackbird” directed by Taron Egerton is a must-see. In the meantime, Apple TV hosts the best spy show on television in ‘Slow Horses,’ a series so good that it puts almost everything else on the small screen to shame.

The missing piece here is horror. Apple TV gave us titles like “Servant,” the M. Night Shyamalan-produced psychological horror that ran for four seasons. It also gave us a horror drama miniseries “Lisey’s Story”, based on the Stephen King novel of the same name and starring Julianne Moore and Clive Owen. “Servant” received critical acclaim while “Lisey’s Story” received poorer reviews. But neither really made a big impact like “Severance” or “Ted Lasso.” If Apple could land another hit with a horror series, it would only help the service and hopefully bring more attention to the streamer’s other overlooked series. Fortunately, the timing couldn’t be better.

In 2025, “Stranger Things” concluded with a finale that also received a major theatrical release and cemented the series’ position as the biggest streaming series in history. Meanwhile, HBO launched the prequel series “It” “It: Welcome to Derry,” which topped the streamer’s Top 10 and, according to the company, it was a big success (even though it has not appeared on the Nielsen charts since its debut). Before “Welcome to Derry,” HBO had another hit with “The Last of Us,” which followed several small-screen horror hits like “Black Mirror,” Netflix’s “The Haunting of Hill House” and, of course, AMC’s “The Walking Dead.”

Meanwhile, horror remains generally popular. From “Guns” and “28 Years Later” to “Frankenstein” and “Companion,” the genre doesn’t appear to be losing sight of moviegoers anytime soon. Since these films performed just as well once on streaming services (like when “Weapons” found new fans on HBO Max), it’s obvious that viewers are just as hungry for horror.

So far, Apple hasn’t managed to match any of these horror successes, but doing so would be a major win for the company. Some of Apple TV’s darker thrillers, like “Blackbird” and its other Taron Egerton-starring series, “Smoke,” have veered into darker territory without becoming outright horror. If Apple can go even darker, give us something to be afraid of, and finally find a horror hit, viewers will have no excuse not to sign up and maybe even cancel their Netflix subscription. Given that Netflix has become horribly expensiveit’s a very good thing.