The Best TV Shows of 2026 (So Far)

Inspired by the 1989 film starring Tom Hanks, Peacock’s horror comedy, “The ‘Burbs,” is the perfect mix of fun and terrifying. Created by Celeste Hughey, the show follows married couple Samira (an exceptional Keke Palmer) and Rob (a charming Jack Whitehall), new parents who leave behind their life in the city for a fresh start with their newborn son in Rob’s childhood home. But the suburb of Hinkley Hills isn’t exactly what Samira expected. She’s the only Black person in the neighborhood, and the abandoned old Victorian sitting directly across the street gives her the creeps. What’s worse, Samira begins to think that Rob is hiding things from her. Brilliantly written, with winning performances and an engaging mystery at the center, “The ‘Burbs” is dark, hilariously funny and totally bizarre.

“Baby Reindeer” creator Richard Gadd’s latest series, HBO’s “Half Man,” is a riveting and profound examination of masculinity and the broken prisms through which men see themselves. A devastating watch, the show spans three decades and chronicles the friendship between two brothers, bound not by DNA, but by time and circumstance. The series follows Niall Kennedy (Mitchell Robertson, and later Jamie Bell), a shy and sensitive man, and his brother Ruben Pallister (Stuart Campbell, then later a barely recognizable Gadd), whose entire being is steeped in violence and hypermasculinity. The pair form an intense alliance, fortified by secrets, obligation and obsession in their teen years, and their relationship spills over into adulthood. Violent and disturbing, the series showcases how deeply hurt men create prisons of their own making.

Prime Video’s “The House of the Spirits” is a dazzling and gut-wrenching adaptation of Isabel Allende’s acclaimed 1982 novel. The series chronicles three generations of women in the Trueba family, bound by destiny and by the decisions of the violent, tyrannical men who attempt to keep them under their control. The series opens in the 1970s amid a terrifying military coup, when Alba (Rochi Hernández) returns to her family home and digs through her late grandmother Clara’s (Dolores Fonzi) old trunk. Diving into Clara’s old journals, the audience is transported back to the 1920s, to Clara’s childhood, before moving forward five decades. Much more than an epic family saga, “The House of the Spirits” is a beautiful and fascinating watch about the mindless choices of men and how they shape the lives of the women around them for decades to come.

Apple TV’s enthralling thriller “Imperfect Women,” based on Araminta Hall’s novel of the same name, follows the lives of three longtime friends whose twisted lies and sinister deceptions undo their friendship forever. Set in present-day Los Angeles, the series opens as Eleanor (Kerry Washington) is called in by the police to identify the body of her best friend, Nancy (Kate Mara), who has been found murdered. From there, Eleanor and her other best friend, Mary (Elisabeth Moss), try to uncover what happened to Nancy. Flashing back in time, the series explores the women and their unusual bond, highlighting the many secrets and lies they’ve kept from each other. More than a mystery, the series is an intricate portrait of friendship and womanhood, one that also enforces how important it is for women to unlearn the habit of keeping broken men’s secrets.

Prime Video’s breakout hoax sitcom, “Jury Duty,” proved it’s not a one-hit wonder with its second iteration, “Company Retreat.” Hilarious and completely endearing, this season follows Anthony Norman, who is hired as a temporary assistant for the (unbeknownst to him) fictional family-owned hot sauce brand, “Rockin’ Grandma’s”. Though Anthony has agreed to be a part of a “Rockin’ Grandma’s” documentary, he has no clue that this entire experience is staged. As he works to make the annual company retreat a success, Anthony deals with his eclectic co-workers, hijinks, a secret romance and everything in between. As with its 2023 predecessor, “Jury Duty: Company Retreat” soars because of its wholesome depiction of humanity.

A wholly delicious dark comedy, Hulu’s “Rivals” is the perfect soapy adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s “Rutshire Chronicles” novels. The series is set in the fictional town of Rutshire, England and follows the intense rivalry between legendary television executive Lord Tony Baddingham (David Tennant), the managing director of media company Corinium, and his former show host, Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner). After quitting Corinium in spectacular fashion, Declan has teamed up with millionaire and notorious rake Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) to create their own television enterprise, Venturer. They have also poached Tony’s producer and longtime lover, Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams), further igniting his ruthlessness and vengeance. Though the narrative is centered on the rivalry between Corinium and Venturer, the series also expands outward, immersing us in the world around these television executives while delivering jaw-dropping twists, steamy sex scenes and intricate business espionage. 

Apple TV’s long-running series “For All Mankind” offers viewers an alt-history of the space race in which the Soviet Union beat America to the moon. Now, with the creative team’s spinoff, “Star City,” an intense, immaculate paranoid thriller, creators  Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi and Ronald D. Moore go behind the Iron Curtain to explore their alternative universe through the perspective of the Soviet space program. Teeming with intrigue, the series opens in 1969, the day Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (Sam Wilkinson) lands on the moon. From there, viewers are introduced to the Soviet Space Program Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans), as well as the cosmonauts and their loved ones, who are under constant surveillance. Though this is a world rife with ingenuity, it is also one on the verge of consuming itself and its genius because of the government’s tyranny and ghastly rigidity.  A riveting, thought-provoking drama, “Star City” showcases the bloody, horrific costs of what it takes to be first in the world. 

A stunning follow-up to the acclaimed “The Handmaid’s Tale,” Hulu’s return to Gilead in “The Testaments” is an exemplary coming-of-age tale about girlhood, survival, rage and friendship. Set four years after the War of Massachusetts, the series follows 16-year-old Agnes MacKenzie (Chase Infiniti), who has lived a life of affluence as the daughter of a Gilead commander. A pupil at the preparatory school run by Aunt Lydia (Ann Dowd, reprising her Emmy-winning “Handmaid’s Tale” role) that prepares young women, called “Plums,” to become Gilead wives, Agnes is content to prepare for the marriage market. But the arrival of Daisy (Lucy Halliday), a Gilead outsider, shatters everything Agnes thought she knew about her life and the world around her. Deeply disturbing and beautifully acted, “The Testaments” is a stellar examination of how patriarchy underestimates the power of female connection, often to its peril.

The iconic detective Sherlock Holmes has been depicted in popular culture ad nauseam, yet Matthew Parkhill’s adaptation for Prime Video, with Guy Richie in the director’s role, delivers a spin on the titular character that fans have never seen previously. Set in late 19th-century England, 19-year-old Sherlock (Hero Fiennes Tiffin) is no polished detective. Instead, he’s a troublemaker struggling to find a path for himself. However, when his new job at Oxford University connects him with scholarship student James Moriarty (a winning Dónal Finn), the pair team up to track down a missing relic. Over eight fast-paced episodes stuffed full of secrets, mysteries and some hilarious one-liners, audiences get acquainted with this new version of Sherlock and the very first mystery that enables him to flex his investigative skills. 

In Season 1 of the Apple TV dramedy, former hedge fund executive Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) coped with losing both his prestigious position and his family by literally stealing valuable items and keepsakes from his friends and neighbors in his affluent New York suburban community. Season 2 of the Jonathan Tropper show gets more textured, unveiling a new level of wealth and affluence, and why rich white men continue to win. Back to his old games of thievery and deception to keep up appearances, Coop is doing well. That is, until his world is upended once again when he finds himself in the crosshairs of his new billionaire neighbor, Owen Ashe (a perfectly cast James Marsden). Fully outlandish yet tender and heartfelt, “Your Friends & Neighbors” is completely off the wall and totally outstanding.

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Even tech titans need therapy. That’s how JoAnne (Sarah Goldberg), a humble Palo Alto shrink, ends up in the middle of a tug-of-war between male egos inflated by a messiah complex and billions of dollars. Duncan Park (Billy Magnussen) has money, but he wants the approval of the reclusive investor Carl Bardolph (Zach Galifianakis) more — so he blackmails JoAnne, their mutual psychologist, into giving him tips. Created by “Succession” alum Jonathan Glatzer, “The Audacity” is more interested in Silicon Valley’s mental quirks than its technical accomplishments, because they mark the industry’s true contributions to the world. The AMC drama is a heady, sharp, deliciously acted take on our current overlords. If we can’t beat ‘em, at the very least we can heap scorn upon ‘em.

Steven Conrad writes in a language all his own. Yes, the emotionally stunted adults of the HBO miniseries “DTF St. Louis” conduct their extramarital affairs in English. But they talk to one another like overeager children, gushing “I love it and stuff” or protesting with a “no way, Jose.” The pursuit of childlike innocence through an open-minded exploration of kink is a counterintuitive project; no wonder Conrad packages it in the mystery of what happened to David Harbour’s Floyd Smernitch, an ASL interpreter who ends up dead in the Kevin Kline Community Poolhouse. The love triangle between Floyd, his wife Carol (Linda Cardellini) and local weatherman Clark (Jason Bateman) is gradually filled in via flashbacks, but the world creator, writer and director Conrad builds is so intriguing — despite the banal suburban setting — that we’re hooked right away.

The mockumentary sitcom is an overused device, but a screen presence as singular as Tracy Morgan’s can give a crowded genre new life. Reuniting with his “30 Rock” colleagues Robert Carlock and Sam Means, who co-created the NBC half-hour, Morgan stars as the title character, a disgraced football player hoping filmmaker Arthur Tobin (Daniel Radcliffe) can help salvage his reputation. Morgan’s Reggie is as zany and compulsively likeable as the performer, and he’s bracketed by an ensemble all equally capable of handling executive producer Tina Fey’s signature joke-a-minute cadence. Erika Alexander and Precious Way are especially great as Reggie’s past and present partners. If these two very different women — one businesslike, one bubbly — can agree Reggie deserves an image rehab, then who are we to disagree?

HBO’s London-set finance drama took a big risk by abandoning its premise at the end of Season 3. Then again, “Industry” is a show about risk-takers, chief among them the self-made maverick investor Harper Stern (Myha’la), now steering her own fund. So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that the bet placed by creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay paid off handsomely with a maximalist, melodramatic reinvention. In taking on Tender, a fraudulent fintech startup led by the Ripley-esque Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella), Harper found her perfect foil; in pushing her erratic aristocrat of a husband Henry Muck (Kit Harington) to jump aboard a sinking ship, heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela) prompted her own moral downfall. Headed into its final season, “Industry” has pulled off a shocking moral reversal that also feels rooted in the histories of characters we’ve come to know intimately. What more could we ask from longform storytelling?

The first “Game of Thrones” spinoff, “House of the Dragon,” is as dour and depressing as a show about a family destroying both itself and an entire continent probably should be. But that also makes the second a breath of fresh air. “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” features shorter episodes, a lighter tone and a radically reduced scale, qualities that combine to make Westeros fun the way transportive fantasy often can be. Crucially, though, there’s also an emotional anchor: the chemistry between Peter Claffey’s title character, an aspiring knight who fashions himself Ser Duncan the Tall, and Dexter Sol Ansell’s Prince Aegon Targaryen, who yearns to escape his toxic royal family and live as an anonymous commoner. The Dunk and Egg of George R.R. Martin’s novellas are now flesh-and-blood humans we’re deeply invested in. Season 2 can’t come soon enough — and thanks to a less onerous production schedule than “House of the Dragon,” it will.

William Golding’s classic novel is so ingrained in the culture it’s a universal shorthand for man’s brutality unmasked. How, then, could a Netflix adaptation give the story fresh life? By casting a group of child actors who give the tragedy of marooned schoolboys turning on each other tremendous weight. These kids won’t feel like discoveries for long: Dave McKenna, who plays the nerdily vulnerable Piggy, will soon star in Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew,” while Lox Pratt will graduate from one blonde bully (the brutal ringleader Jack) to another (Draco Malfoy in HBO’s “Harry Potter” series). But for now, writer Jack Thorne’s scripts give these young performers a platform to make a parable feel as immediate and personal as a first-person account.

This HBO docuseries is exactly what it says on the tin: a series of case studies in real-life neighbors nearly coming to blows. It’s a simple idea that contains a lot of big ideas about the American dream and even bigger characters who prove that truth really is stranger than fiction. From Montana to Florida, San Diego to Manhattan, nothing gets people riled up like a perceived threat to their domestic bliss. Directors Dylan Redford and Harrison Fishman mostly capture our divided nation through standalone vignettes, but the finale truly takes flight with a full-length story of an unrepentant nudist contemplating a move to a more like-minded community. If hell is other people, “Neighbors” is an exquisite kind of torture.

Expectations couldn’t be higher for the second season of a show that swept the Emmys and has been credited with no less than reviving the weekly procedural for the streaming era. Somehow, though, “The Pitt” managed to exceed them. Season 2 of the HBO Max medical drama followed the slow-motion implosion of Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle), the attending emergency physician whose time on the front lines of our overburdened healthcare system has taken a potentially deadly toll. Rather than an external crisis like the mass shooting that served as the climax of Season 1, the conflicts facing the cast in Season 2 are often internal — a testament to how much we’ve come to know these characters. But the ensemble is still growing, and new additions like the analytical Dr. Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) quickly earn their place over the course of one grueling day.

The artist formerly known as “Interview With the Vampire” has reinvented itself alongside its namesake (Sam Reid), who’s decided to process his centuries of trauma by hijacking a rock band and taking them on the road. There’s no show on TV that felt more like a musical — big feelings, big tonal swings — without technically being one than “Interview,” so “The Vampire Lestat” is more of a natural progression than a radical break. It’s still a thrillingly unorthodox take by creator Rolin Jones on the works of Anne Rice: a gay, interracial, nocturnal romance that’s now thrown original songs and incest into the mix. Reid is more than ready for his close-up, but Jennifer Ehle is an excellent new addition as Lestat’s mother, fledgling, and well…other things, too. After all, taboos are for mortals.

Horror and comedy prove natural playmates in “Parks and Rec” alum Katie Dippold’s fictional New England town, a cursed island governed with feverish denial by well-meaning mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys). The horrors that beset Widow’s Bay are an eclectic mix of haunted houses, killer clowns, masked madmen, epic storms and gnarled sea hags; the tension of every scare is only heightened by not knowing if the payoff will be a shriek or a laugh. Kate O’Flynn is the surprise breakout as Tom’s assistant Patricia, whose social insecurities fuel the cult horror of the series’ standout fourth episode, but every denizen of Widow’s Bay has something to contribute, from Chris Fleming’s kooky drug dealer to Stephen Root’s grizzled true believer. Widow’s Bay may not be the next Martha’s Vineyard, per Tom’s dream — it’s really something even better.

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