The 15 Best Movies and TV Shows to Stream on Tubi for Free

The ad-supported streamer has a deep catalog of new and classic content

Thom Geier,

AARP

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En español

Published September 09, 2024

Helen Mirren with her hands placed on a table in a scene from the television miniseries Prime Suspect

Helen Mirren (middle) stars in "Prime Suspect."

Everett Collection

Since Fox acquired Tubi in 2020, the free, ad-supported streaming service — the only big one whose viewers are mostly over 50 — has acquired a massive catalog of TV shows and movies (1,000 titles in the horror category alone). And all of that free content, plus the fact that you don’t need a subscription to watch it, has made it one of the most popular streamers on the market, besting better known rivals like Peacock, Max, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ in total viewing time. If you don’t mind sitting through commercials, Tubi offers a ton of gems, particularly older, classic films and TV shows (everything from North by Northwest and Doctor Zhivago to Leave It to Beaver and The Carol Burnett Show). Here are our picks for some of the best for bingeing.

Broadchurch (2013-17, 3 Seasons)

This remarkable British detective show provided a breakout role for future Oscar winner Olivia Colman, 50, as a detective sergeant in a small seaside Dorset town with a suspiciously high murder rate. David Tennant, 53, plays the standoffish detective inspector who leads the murder investigation in the first season, the killing of an 11-year-old who seemed to have ties to everyone in town. Over three seasons and multiple cases, the two strike up an uneasy rapport that’s fascinating to watch.

Watch it: Broadchurch

The Carol Burnett Show (1967-78, 11 Seasons)

Is there any sketch comedy show that is more beloved than this one? Carol Burnett, 91, established herself as one of TV’s biggest stars over the course of 11 side-splitting seasons, creating legendary characters like working-class homemaker Eunice Higgins and the curtain-rod-wearing Starlet O’Hara in a parody of Gone with the Wind. It’s enough to make you want to tug on your earlobe in satisfaction.

Watch it: The Carol Burnett Show

Columbo (1971-2003, 16 Seasons)

Columbo broke the mold for detective shows, revealing whodunit in the very first scene and then following Peter Falk’s rumpled cop digging up clues and needling suspects with just one more question until he cracked the case. The show, whose stylish third episode in 1971 was directed by a newcomer named Steven Spielberg, 77, also popularized the idea of stunt casting A-listers like Janet Leigh, Vincent Price and Faye Dunaway, 83, at a time when movie stars rarely deigned to do TV.

Watch it: Columbo

The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-66, 5 Seasons)

This pioneering comedy starring the legendary Dick Van Dyke, 98, still holds up after more than half a century. Not only did it introduce the world to Mary Tyler Moore, who played Van Dyke’s wife, but it also successfully blended domestic life with workplace drama of a very meta nature. The late, great Carl Reiner, who created the show, also played the very high-maintenance host of a TV comedy show where Van Dyke works as a writer.

Watch it: The Dick Van Dyke Show

Doctor Zhivago (1965)

Director David Lean followed his 1962 hit Lawrence of Arabia with another sweeping epic, this one set in Russia during the upheaval of World War I and then the Russian Revolution. Omar Sharif and Julie Christie, 84, sizzle as the star-crossed lovers, who keep being torn apart by circumstance despite the swells of Maurice Jarre’s infectious and Oscar-winning musical score.

Watch it: Doctor Zhivago

His Girl Friday (1940)

Hollywood doesn’t make rom-coms as deft as this 1940 classic, which updates the 1931 screwball comedy The Front Page with an ingenious twist. The star reporter who’s threatening to leave the big-city paper and get married is now a woman (Rosalind Russell), and she’s the ex-wife of the editor who doesn’t want her to leave. The inimitable Cary Grant plays the editor with an ink barrel full of wry persistence.

Watch it: His Girl Friday

Memento (2000)

Christopher Nolan, 54, the Oscar-winning director of Oppenheimer, staked his claim on Hollywood with this twisty indie psychological thriller (only his second feature film). Guy Pearce, 56, stars as a man who suffers a type of amnesia that makes him unable to form new memories and wipes his slate clean every few hours. So he uses tattoos, Polaroids and handwritten notes to piece together his life — including his vengeance plot against the mysterious person who killed his wife and caused his condition. It’s a tour de force that rewards those who watch with undivided attention (or have the rewind button close at hand).

Watch it: Memento

Moonstruck (1987)

In an Oscar-winning rom-com, Cher, 78, stars as a widowed Brooklyn bookkeeper who sparks an unlikely connection with her fiancé’s estranged brother, a one-handed baker played with laconic charm by Nicolas Cage, 60. Their scenes together have a grownup authenticity, and the supporting cast (including Olympia Dukakis as Cher’s blunt-talking mom) is the real deal.

Watch it: Moonstruck

NYPD Blue (1993-2005, 12 Seasons)

The late Steven Bochco and David Milch, 79, reinvented the cop show with this perennial Emmy winner, which held the record as ABC’s longest-running primetime one-hour drama series until Grey’s Anatomy. The show was rightly acclaimed for its gritty realism, including its revolutionary depiction of nudity and alcoholism. And while the cast turned over often during the long run, the one constant was Dennis Franz, 79, as Andy Sipowicz, who morphs from a racist drunk of a detective into the gruff but secretly tender moral center of the show.

Watch it: NYPD Blue

One Night in Miami… (2020)

In her directorial debut, Regina King, 53, imagined a 1964 encounter between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke in which the four Black celebrities hash out their differences about how to live their lives amid the roiling changes in American society and within the Civil Rights Movement. It’s a fascinating back-and-forth that earned three Oscar nominations, including one for Leslie Odom Jr. as Cooke.

Watch it: One Night in Miami...

Pride and Prejudice (1995)

Jennifer Ehle, 54 is delightful as the lively Elizabeth Bennet in this six-part limited-series adaptation of the Jane Austen classic, but the breakout star is a young Colin Firth, 64, as a Mr. Darcy who’s alternately an arrogant jerk and a smoldering slice of tea cake, depending on the scene.

Watch it: Pride and Prejudice

Prime Suspect (1991-2006, 7 Seasons)

There’s never been a TV detective quite like Jane Tennison, who takes a savvy, no-nonsense approach to both criminal suspects and chauvinistic superior officers. Helen Mirren, 79, memorably portrayed Tennison over seven seasons (spread out over 15 years), bringing a sharp intelligence to the role. Even as she rises through the ranks of London’s Metropolitan Police Service in later seasons, she’s still frustrated by the roadblocks she faces.

Watch it: Prime Suspect

Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares (2004-14, 6 Seasons)

Quick-tempered British super-chef Gordon Ramsay, 57, first made a name for himself on this reality series, going into failing restaurants and berating chefs, owners and front-of-house staff at volumes higher than a perfectly executed soufflé. Better yet, the original British version was pure fly-on-the-kitchen-wall vérité — with the struggling restaurateurs expected to step up to the stove on their own (in the better-funded American reboot, Ramsay and the producers ponied up for new appliances and full dining-room makeovers). Kitchen Nightmares captured Ramsay at his cheffiest and anticipated a whole genre of foodie-centric series like The Bear.

Watch it: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares

Scandal (2012-18, 7 Seasons)

Shonda Rhimes, 54, broke new ground with this long-running political thriller series, starring Kerry Washington as a crisis management consultant in Washington, D.C., who’s developed a well-earned rep for helping politicians out of jams. Her clients soon include her ex, who also happens to be the president of the United States (Tony Goldwyn, 64). And the crisis-of-the-week format gives way to a twisty, conspiracy-tinged political soap opera that kept viewers hooked for years.

Watch it: Scandal

Stalag 17 (1953)

Tubi is chock full of classic films, including Billy Wilder’s comedic look at a German POW camp in World War II. (The hit inspired the TV sitcom Hogan’s Heroes). As a cynical U.S. airman who openly barters with the German guards, William Holden holds the film’s delicate balance of humor and drama together. No wonder he won the best actor Oscar (beating out both Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift for another WWII classic, From Here to Eternity).

Watch it: Stalag 17

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Thom Geier is an AARP contributor and the award-winning former executive editor of TheWrap, senior editor at Entertainment Weekly, film reporter at The Hollywood Reporter and associate editor at U.S. News & World Report.

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