Where can you watch Adult Swim shows in Australia?

Once upon a time, when Foxtel reigned supreme, little ankle biters in Australia who stayed up past their bedtime would be treated to some edgier material on Cartoon Network. It might not have been as confronting as accidentally watching SBS too late but Adult Swim still provided pre-teens with a rotating program of more mature cartoons. Some, like Ghost in the Shell were dead-serious dramas that were a little too violent to be shown during regular hours, but the programming block was mostly dominated by relatively niche shows with a unique sense of humour; shows like Home Movies, Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.

Australia’s history with Adult Swim is a complicated one. A fixture of the Cartoon Network channel on Foxtel between 2005 and 2007, a few Adult Swim shows airing in Australia eventually made it to the Comedy Channel’s Animania lineup.

Long after that all came to an end, Turner Broadcasting and MCM Media launched a short-lived Adult Swim Australia video-on-demand service in 2013. Three years later in 2016, Nine Network signed a two-year deal with Turner Media to broadcast Adult Swim shows on the 9Go! Channel, resulting in Saturday and Sunday night Adult Swim programming with the overnight success Rick and Morty streaming on Thursday nights. That imperfect solution wrapped up in 2019. Queue a three-year hiatus from Australian screens. 

Eventually, in 2022 Nine Network’s streaming on-demand service Stan began streaming a limited selection of Adult Swim TV shows. Despite the success of TV shows like Rick and Morty and Smiling Friends, that’s still where we’re at today. Now, the only Adult Swim show on Stan is YOLO, a distinctly Aussie cartoon from Michael Cusack, one half of the Smiling Friends brain. 

Before you say anything, yes, we’re aware that you can also obtain Adult Swim shows via other unsavoury methods. It’s 2024, you didn’t invent piracy. Plus, there are still a couple of ways you can pay money for your Adult Swim content which is the ideal method if you want these shows to continue being made. 

The easiest way to watch anything without jumping through some hoops is to catch it on one of Australia's growing range of streaming services. There aren't a lot of Adult Swim shows streaming in Australia. And, honestly, most that are streaming locally were never a part of Australia's version of Adult Swim; shows like Futurama and American Dad were FOX8 fare. A little more mainstream, but beloved by the same crowd nonetheless. 

Here's the list of Adult Swim shows you can stream in Australia with a subscription. 

By our count, there are over 64 Adult Swim TV shows you can buy or rent on Apple TV in Australia, making it the largest, most accessible trove of Adult Swim content currently available. Apple TV is where you're going to find most of the Adult Swim shows from your childhood, like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Brak Show, Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law, The Boondocks and Space Ghost: Coast to Coast. 

Expand the list below for a complete list of every Adult Swim show available via Apple TV. 

If you're after the really niche Adult Swim stuff that nobody is willing to pay for, you can still find a tonne of bootlegged TV shows (like Home Movies) and official specials and shorts (like Too Many Cooks) on YouTube. Below is a semi-comprehensive list of all the free content we could find on YouTube from Adult Swim's back catalogue. 

At the end of the day, there is still a large swathe of Adult Swim shows that you won't find on a streaming service, Apple TV or YouTube. A few elusive gems include Mike Tyson Mysteries and Dragon Ball Z Kai (the abridged version of one of the best anime shows of all time.) For the shows listed below, you're going to need a VPN. Not just any VPN, a VPN with a good track record for circumventing geo-restrictions on services like Max and Hulu. 

Here's the list of shows you can only access via the US Adult Swim subscription:

And here's a list of reputable VPN services we've used to access Max and Hulu from Australia without much trouble in the past.