23 titles to celebrate Pride Month

If you’re looking to show your Pride, to see yourself represented onscreen, or to learn about LGBTQ+ identities, or if you’re quite simply looking for some smart, moving, funny, scary, exciting, or thought-provoking TV to watch, check out one of these great queer shows tonight!

Best LGBTQ+ shows

2022’s Our Flag Means Death follows the misadventures of real-life 18th century “Gentleman Pirate” Stede Bonnet, an aristocrat who leaves his life of luxury for piracy, assembling a crew and learning the rules of piracy as he slowly eases into his new reality. The high-seas comedy is full of queer characters who fall in love, discover their true identities, or simply live their lives, proud and happy. A tender romance between Bonnet and the infamous pirate Blackbeard stands out as the emotional core of the series, one of the best LGBTQ+ shows you can watch this Pride Month.

Noelle Stevenson’s reboot of the 80s cult classic cartoon She-Ra, a spin-off of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, has been praised since its premiere for featuring a diverse cast of main characters. She-Ra and the Princesses of Power tells the story of a sci-fi world ruled by cruel dictators. It follows a resistance movement led by She-Ra, the superpowered alter ego of Adora, a young defector raised to fight for bad guys but breaking free. In its final season, the series elevated a great deal of subtext to confirm a simmering love story between Adora and her frenemy Catra. The story contributed to a moving finale for the standout Netflix kids show.

The Matrix creators Lana and Lilly Wachowski worked with Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski in 2015 to launch one of Netflix’s best original series. Sadly cancelled after two seasons, Sense8 remains one of the best LGBTQ+ shows of all time, with a fierce fanbase to show for it. Eight strangers from around the world suddenly find themselves connected, sharing thoughts, memories, feelings and more. As a shadowy organization hunts them, they have to work together, using their new gifts to find out why they are united and who would exploit them for it.

High Fidelity is Hulu’s remake of the 2000 film of the same name and a new adaptation of the novel by Nick Hornby. It’s one of the streamer’s best shows despite being axed after just one season. In it, Zoë Kravitz plays Rob, a bisexual Brooklyn record-store owner and overall pop culture geek who loves top-five lists. The show is built around Rob’s latest list: her own top-five breakups. Rob wants to know what went wrong and whether she’s doomed to be unlucky in love, so she goes through her failed relationships one by one.

The Child’s Play franchise has seen some major changes throughout its long history, with the famous killer doll Chucky always finding his way back to cause more mayhem. With its many tonal shifts, it has remained one of the most consistently great horror properties in any format, including its latest incarnation: a coming-of-age TV series about a bullied gay teen in Chucky’s hometown. Chucky takes up after the events of 2017’s Cult of Chucky, and it’s one of the best LGBTQ+ shows around. When Jake Wheeler buys Chucky at a yard sale, he finds himself drawn into the doll’s murderous world and has to keep himself and his new friends alive as characters from the past congregate around a new batch of carnage.

Apple TV Plus’ Dickinson tells the story of American poet Emily Dickinson’s early years, as the budding writer pushes against restrictive gender norms and explores her romantic love for childhood friend Susan Gilbert. The series blends historical facts with contemporary music and themes. It’s one of the many shows that have established Apple TV Plus as a home for top-tier streaming content.

Admittedly a mixed bag, with a blend of raw teen angst and exploitative schlock, Euphoria boasts some of the best TV acting today, with frank discussions of sexuality and gender, focused on several queer leads. The HBO teen drama follows Rue Bennett, a high schooler whose stint in rehab has affected every relationship in her life. As her life intersects with friends, lovers, drug dealers, violent jocks, concerned parents, and more, Rue forges a new path for herself.

One of the smartest explorations of teen sexuality on TV, Sex Education follows Otis Milburn and the other teens at a British high school. Otis’s mother is a therapist specializing in sex. Looking to make a buck, Otis uses what he’s learned second-hand to help his classmates for a fee. As the student body throws off the shackles of repressive norms, the school undergoes a sexual revolution, which eventually draws the attention of local media and the school board.

A pitch-perfect survival horror drama, Yellowjackets follows the survivors of a plane crash, a high school girl’s soccer team, as they work together to survive the wilderness. The series jumps ahead to reveal a few of the survivors, slowly working towards dark revelations about what happened between the girls in the woods, and why some of them never made it back alive. With a killer soundtrack, performances by talented up-and-coming stars, and 90s pop culture icons, Yellowjackets is a rare treat.

The wealthy Rose family loses everything when their business manager is found guilty of embezzlement in this irresistible Canadian sitcom. Or, rather, they lose almost everything. They still own the small town of Schitt’s Creek, bought on a lark years earlier. Now, they have to make the best of their new situation, adjusting to small-town life and newfound poverty while they live out of a motel and get to know their new community. This fish-out-of-water comedy is hilarious and clever, and it features queer son David Rose finding love and purpose in his new environment.

An early landmark in queer television and lesbian representation on mainstream TV, Showtime’s The L Word explores the lives of a group of friends in LA. The women at the center of the show are all queer and navigate their love lives and friendships while balancing careers and other relationships. The series has been celebrated for its depiction of lesbian sex presented from a female perspective, a radical exception to industry norms when the show premiered in 2004. You can also watch the more recent follow-up series The L Word: Generation Q on Showtime and Hulu.

Based in Toronto, Sort Of is a CBC sitcom created by Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo, and it’s among the best LGBTQ+ shows currently streaming. Baig plays Sabi Mehboob, a gender-fluid, Pakistani-Canadian millennial navigating life, work, and identity. Balancing jobs as a bartender and nanny, they hold off on an exciting move to Berlin when the mother of the kids they care for falls into a coma. Sort Of is a funny and tender look at Sabi at a crossroads in their life.

One of Netflix’s most beloved reality shows, Queer Eye is a reboot of the early 2000s Bravo series Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. In each episode, a new “hero” is nominated to get a full makeover. Stepping in to provide the glow-up are the Fab Five: queer hosts who each have a particular focus. Those are food and wine, design, grooming, culture and lifestyle, and fashion. This uplifting makeover show is hard to resist.

This Netflix original teen series only lasted one season, but in that short time, it managed to establish itself as one of the best LGBTQ+ shows on the service, or anywhere. It’s also among the most underrated. The nostalgic comedy drama is set in the 90s in the aptly named Boring, Oregon. It follows a group of outsider teens grappling with their identities and joining forces to make a movie together. With an incredible soundtrack packed with 90s hits and a touching central romance, the series is absolutely delightful.

Superstar drag queen RuPaul Charles hosts this game show that arguably brought drag into the mainstream. Each season sees a group of talented drag queens competing for RuPaul’s approval, a cash prize, and the title America’s Next Drag Superstar. Challenges generally foreground performance and fashion, with the queens giving it their all, win or lose.

A rather underrated HBO series, Looking follows a group of gay friends in San Francisco. The three main characters support each other through various relationships and career developments as they all work through their different ambitions, struggles, and successes. Despite positive reviews, the show never quite get the, er, following it deserved. Cancelled after two seasons, Looking did get a TV movie that served as its series finale.

Another HBO series, Six Feet Under was part of the cable network’s early rise alongside shows like The Sopranos and Sex and the City. It’s also among the best LGBTQ+ shows and an early example of thoughtful and powerful representation of its gay characters. The series follows the Fisher family, who come together when patriarch Nathanial dies. The Fishers own a family funeral home. With Nathanial gone, Nate, the eldest Fisher child returns to help his brother David run things and spend time with the family.

While the queer elements of Hannibal often operated at the level of subtext, creator Bryan Fuller did claim that the sexuality of main characters Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter become fluid as the series progressed and that he would have liked to include a kiss between them in the series finale. The chemistry between the two remains electrifying throughout the series, earning the show a huge queer following. Hannibal, adapted from the stories of Thomas Harris, explores criminal profiler Will Graham’s attempts to catch a serial killer. What Will doesn’t realize is that his friend and colleague Hannibal Lector is that very killer. The brilliant and deeply disturbed cannibal has been toying with Will.

FX’s Pose has been celebrated as a groundbreaking series and one of the best LGBTQ+ shows on TV. It centers on the New York queer scene in the 80s, including the origins of drag ball culture. The dance musical brings together disparate stories to paint a portrait of a very specific time and place. That includes LGBTQ+ youth, sex workers, drag queens, and more in the city that never sleeps.

Canadian comedian Mae Martin co-created this British comedy series with Joe Hampson. Martin stars in the semi-autobiographical show as, well, Mae. The comedian in Manchester begins a relationship with George, a repressed English woman she meets at one of her shows. The series largely revolves around the budding relationship between the two, as Mae works on the fallout of her past drug addiction.

A heartwarming teen drama, Heartstopper earned a huge following when it premiered on Netflix in 2022. The show tells the story of Charlie and Nick, two teens who start to realize that their friendship may be something more.

While coming out is often depicted as a milestone for the young, and one which involves a character entering the queer community, The Bisexual flips the script. This British comedy follows Leila, who begins sleeping with men and exploring her sexuality after a breakup with the woman she’d shared a life with for a decade. Reluctant to identify as bisexual, she looks for the right way to come out to her friends after years of already being out as a lesbian.

Set in the universe of the 2018 film Love, Simon, this Hulu original teen drama follows Victor, a new student at an Atlanta high school. Victor struggles with his sexual orientation, reaching out to Simon for help coming out. Love, Victor is one of the best LGBTQ+ shows for teens, focusing on a touching story of self-discovery, friendship, and young love.

Those are just some of our picks of the best LGBTQ+ shows you can stream today to celebrate Pride Month.

What are your favorite queer shows? Did they make the list? Let us know in the comments.

Happy viewing, and happy Pride!