DC’s neo-noir take on the Green Lantern mythology is pulling in serious numbers: Lanterns streaming viewers reached a series high of 10 million worldwide, with 7 million in the US alone during the third episode’s opening week, making it the most-watched TV series of September according to data from JustWatch. It has also landed a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, in case you needed more convincing.
The show pairs experienced Lantern Hal Jordan, played by Kyle Chandler, with new recruit John Stewart, played by Aaron Pierre. Jordan takes on the role of reluctant mentor, teaching Stewart how to handle the Green Lantern Ring. It is a reserved, neo-noir style rather than a bombastic superhero spectacle, and the tone is clearly landing.
What the Lanterns streaming viewers are actually watching
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the series premiere sends Jordan and Stewart to Nebraska to investigate a mass shooting that Jordan suspects involves aliens. The Hollywood Reporter also confirms that Nathan Fillion will reprise his role as fellow Lantern Corps member Guy, adding another familiar face to the ensemble. Stream it on HBO Max.
The rest of September’s top 10 is a genuinely eclectic mix, which at least proves nobody agrees on anything any more.
The rest of the top 10: spies, gangsters and a haunted mayor
Spy drama accounts for two entries pulling in opposite directions. Lioness, on Paramount+, goes big: international operatives, personal betrayals, a cast that includes Oscar winners Zoe Saldaña, Morgan Freeman and Nicole Kidman, and an Emmy nominee in Michael Kelly. Season 3 dives into a hidden network of dangerous foreign operatives and a high-stakes war that could reshape every character’s life. Loud, expensive, compulsively watchable.
On Apple TV+, Slow Horses goes the other way entirely. The agents of Slough House are not chiselled heroes saving civilisation. They are, by design, the rejects: dysfunctional, morally compromised, and usually making the right call for the wrong reasons. Gary Oldman plays their gruff, obnoxious leader Jackson Lamb with something approaching perfection. The show carries an almost perfect Rotten Tomatoes score across its first five seasons, and season 6 is setting new records.
Reacher, on Prime Video, keeps things more straightforward. Alan Ritchson plays a hero of considerable physical presence who, in season four, witnesses a supposed suicide that unravels into a conspiracy reaching world governments. It is action TV stripped of complication, done well.
Two sports comedies made the cut. Ted Lasso is back on Apple TV+ for a fourth season, with Jason Sudeikis returning as the title character to coach AFC Richmond’s second-division women’s football team, the Lady Greyhounds. All the warmth of the earlier run is apparently intact. On Hulu, Chad Powers takes a different angle: Glen Powell plays a disgraced college football star who adopts a disguise and a fake name to try out for a failing team. It works, until it doesn’t.
The crime corner of the chart is occupied by two very different shows. On Hulu, Furious stars Emmy Rossum as an FBI agent investigating murders pointing to a female serial killer. Critics have given it a 99% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. On Netflix, Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen plants Theo James in the middle of a world where the British aristocracy and the country’s criminal underworld have become effectively indistinguishable. Inherited estates, drug operations, and a lot of hard-edged wit.
Apple TV+’s Widow’s Bay is the outlier. A horror-comedy in which Matthew Rhys plays Mayor Tom Loftis, determined to attract tourists to an island that is genuinely, comprehensively haunted. Sea hags, fog monsters, serial killer ghosts: the mayor presses on regardless. Stephen Root plays an old-timer called Wyck who exists largely to remind everyone that time is short and doom is inevitable. Critics and audiences are in rare unanimous agreement that it works.
Rounding things out is Silo on Apple TV+, dystopian sci-fi tracking what remains of humanity living underground in a vast subterranean structure. This season goes back in time to explain how things got so dire. The answer, unsurprisingly, involves human beings.
Ten shows, ten very different reasons to stay on the sofa. Lanterns leads the pack for now, with that viewer count still climbing after the third episode.
