16 Hidden Gems on YouTube You Can Watch for Free

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

.This sci-fi action thriller starring Tom Cruise, 62, was a surprising box-office underperformer. That’s a shame, because it's an entertaining spin on the alien-invader genre that’s straight out of Groundhog Day. Cruise plays a military PR specialist who’s demoted and thrust into the frontlines – where he gets stuck in a time loop, forced to get killed by alien Mimics over and over again. He’s joined by a similarly stuck sergeant (Emily Blunt) and together they plot a way to defeat the aliens at last.

Watch: Edge of Tomorrow

Arrival (2016)

Denis Villeneuve’s film is a thinking person’s sci-fi adventure, following a linguist (Amy Adams, 50) who’s recruited to puzzle out the communications from an alien race that’s landed its ships on Earth. (Technically, the ships tend to hover just about the surface.) The aliens are neither cute (like E.T.) nor instant threats (like just about every other aliens-from-outer-space movie). And that makes the twists and turns of this story all the more plausible and fascinating.

Watch: Arrival

The Big Short (2015)

Adam McKay, 56, made his name directing broad comedies like Anchorman and Stepbrothers and he brought that antic energy to directing this Oscar-winning adaptation of Michael Lewis’s nonfiction bestseller about the origins of the 2007 housing market crash. Who knew that talk of hedge funds, subprime mortgages, and collateralized debt obligations could be so fun? (It helps that he got Margot Robbie to offer an economics lesson while sipping champagne in a bubble bath.)

Watch: The Big Short

The Carol Burnett Show (1967–78)

With apologies to Lorne Michaels and Saturday Night Live, is there any sketch comedy show more beloved that this one? Carol Burnett, 91, established herself as one of TV’s biggest stars over the course of 11 sidesplitting seasons, creating legendary characters like the 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: The Carol Burnett Show

Death on the Nile (1978)

Forget Kenneth Branagh’s recent remake. This classic Hollywood take on the Agatha Christie mainstay is a lush, Oscar-winning delight, led by Peter Ustinov as the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. Plus, it’s hard to top the cast of Hollywood legends, including Bette Davis, David Niven, Maggie Smith, Angela Lansbury and Mia Farrow.

Watch: Death on the Nile

The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash (2019)

The Man in Black returns to the spotlight in this original YouTube documentary, featuring previously unseen (and unheard) archival material from the country legend’s memorable performance at California’s Folsom Prison. His daughter Rosanne Cash, Emmylou Harris and Bruce Springsteen chime in with additional insights.

Watch: The Gift: The Journey of Johnny Cash

The Goes Wrong Show (2019–21)

There’s something irresistible about bloopers, an idea that has birthed a wide variety of (mostly) reality TV shows. In this hilarious two-season series, a fictitious amateur theater troupe from the U.K.’s Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society mounts a series of error-prone productions, from a courtroom drama to a Christmas play featuring a Santa who enjoys way too much sherry.

Watch: The Goes Wrong Show

Grand Designs (1999–present)

For two decades, designer Kevin McCloud has hosted this series that unblinkingly follows the building of a new house, from blueprints to final trims. What sets the show apart from its high-gloss HGTV cousins is how it keeps the cameras rolling when problems arise: contractors quit, cranes won’t go up steep hills, budgets get busted, tempers flare. Some projects come off without a hitch, while others are epic disasters worthy of Greek tragedy.

Watch: Grand Designs

Kitchen Nightmares (2007–14)

Quick-tempered British superchef Gordon Ramsay, 57, 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. While the original British version was pure fly-on-the-kitchen-wall vérité, with struggling restaurateurs expected to step up to the stove on their own, in the better-funded American reboot, Ramsay and the show 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: Kitchen Nightmares

Midsomer Murders (1998–present)

With a theme tune boasting an otherworldly theremin, this long-running crime drama is set in a fictional county that seems to have a body count as high as Cabot Cove (the Maine town Angela Lansbury’s Jessica Fletcher called home in Murder, She Wrote). Cases are cracked by Detective Chief Inspector Tom Barnaby (John Nettles; in later seasons, his younger cousin Detective Chief Inspector John Barnaby (Neil Dudgeon) takes the lead.

Watch: Midsomer Murders

Alpha (2018)

Alpha is a most unusual boy-and-his-dog story. In this case, Kodi Smit-McPhee (The Power of the Dog) plays a young hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age of 20,000 years ago who befriends an injured wild wolf (played by an incredibly telegenic Czechoslovakian Wolfdog). The two embark on a series of adventures together in a lushly shot glacial landscape meant to represent the last throes of the Ice Age.

Watch: Alpha

Taskmaster (2015–present)

Each season in this addictively entertaining show, five comedians compete in a series of bizarro tasks (throwing a tea bag into a mug from the greatest distance, getting a stuffed toy camel “through the smallest gap”). All are seeking to win the favor of Taskmaster Greg Davies and his obsequious assistant (and show creator) Alex Horne, with humor wrung from the easily flustered contestants’ exasperation as well as their outside-the-box thinking. (Former Great British Bake Off host Mel Giedroyc, for example, ran her toy camel through the local Baby Gap, winning admiration and top marks.)

Watch: Taskmaster

Unsolved Mysteries (1987–2010)

The granddaddy of true-crime shows still holds up decades after its launch. Unlike modern imitators and a recent reboot, the long-running show benefited from sharp writing, minimal padding (no music cues or talking-head interviews), and host Robert Stack’s no-nonsense narration.

Watch: Unsolved Mysteries

Wiseguy (1987–1990)

This crime series, starring Ken Wahl as an FBI agent who goes undercover to infiltrate the Mafia, was ahead of its time. Instead of neatly resolved plots in discrete episodes, Wiseguy offered story arcs that unfolded over multiple episodes, often featuring notable guest stars like Jerry Lewis, Maximilian Schell and a young Kevin Spacey.

Watch: Wiseguy