Most Anticipated TV Shows of 2026

Jon Bernthal. Tessa Thompson. Those two names alone should be enough to whet your whistle for this miniseries based on Alice Feeney’s 2020 novel of the same name. It’s a twisty thriller involving a small-town cop (Bernthal), a TV reporter (Thompson) trying to reclaim her spot as a star news anchor in Atlanta, and a dead body that brings them (back) together. The story reaches back into high-school friendships and marriage drama, and for those who didn’t read the book, chances you know where it’s going are approximately zero. —Maria Fontoura

Everybody’s favorite hospital drama (sorry, ER, we moved on with a younger model) is back with 15 new hours of white-knuckle drama. Can it sustain the intensity and depth of Season One? Our bet is yes, and then some. This season sees a new attending physician join the team as Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) prepares to leave the ED on an extended motorcycle trip. Don’t worry: He’s got one last shift to complete before that happens, and we all know how that’s gonna go. Expect the series to deftly touch on more social issues of the day that intersect with our health-care system, from immigration to insurance inequity and more. Paging viewers to HBO Max, stat. —M.F.

Hopefully you took the 15-month break between Industry seasons to brush up on your U.K. finance-speak, because series co-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay are throwing us directly back into its melee of financial corruption. When this slow-burn prestige drama premiered in 2020, it introduced fans to investment bankers Harper Stern (Myha’la), Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela), Eric Tao (Ken Leung), and their growing cohort of associates who let lust, deception, and some insatiable cocaine habits rule their actions on and off the trading floor. Kit Harington spiced things up in Season Three, and now, a fresh influx of soon-to-be fan favorites like Max Minghella, Kwabena Bannerman, and Kiernan Shipka arrive to give the show an extra jolt of energy. —CT Jones

Ten years after its debut, the sophomore season of this TV take on John le Carré’s thriller — starring Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, a former British soldier enlisted to nab an arms dealer — has arrived. Olivia Colman returns as Pine’s foreign-office liaison, assigning him to infiltrate the operations of the new big dog on the international smuggling scene. Soon, our man is in Colombia, mixing it up with Camilla Morrone’s sultry businesswoman, Roxana, and getting into dangerous (and by the looks of this trailer, quite steamy) situations. —David Fear

Or: What if Top Gun took place in space and featured Klingons? The latest addition to the venerable Star Trek franchise boldly goes where it has never gone before, i.e. officers training school. Come, follow a bunch of young recruits as they attempt to find out whether they have what it takes to go into the final frontier! Holly Hunter plays the captain of the USS Athena, the starship that doubles as a campus for these cadets; Paul Giamatti, Tatiana Maslany, and Tig Notaro will be on board as well. Stephen Colbert voices the academy’s Digital Dean. —D.F.

Readers of George R.R. Martin’s three Dunk and Egg novellas will be thrilled to see that HBO has chosen these Games of Thrones tales, set close to a century before the events of original series, as their latest GoT spin-off. Peter Claffey is Ser Duncan the Tall, a lowly squire who is liberated from his master and goes to seek his fortune amongst the knights. Dexter Sol Ansell is the future Prince Aegon Targaryen, a child now better known by his nickname “Egg”; he’s the underage Sancho Panza to Dunk’s Don Quixote. Expect a slightly less reverent tour through the Seven Kingdoms, though we assume that here be dragons as well. —D.F.

The ever prolific Ryan Murphy’s latest series for FX concerns a new wonder drug that causes people to become instantly smokin’ hot. Sounds great, unless you read the fine print (and who ever does that), which suggests users may experience a few… interesting side effects. The show is based on the comic book of the same name by Jeremy Haun and Jason S. Hurley, though if you think it also sounds like the American Horror Story producer doing his own riff on The Substance, then congratulations! You get to advance to the next round. As usual for a Murphy joint, the cast list is bananas: Ashton Kutcher, Isabella Rossellini, Anthony Ramos, Rebecca Hall, Dahmer’s Evan Peters, Bella Hadid, Billy Eichner, Meghan Trainor, Ben Platt, Peter Gallagher, and Vincent D’Onofrio. —D.F.

MCU alumni Daniel Destin Cretton and Andrew Guest — the former directed Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings, the latter was a producer on Hawkeye — take a spin at giving the comics’ on-again, off-again Avenger his own series. It remains to be seen whether they’ll delve into the character’s backstory from the books, which is complicated (to say the least). But we do know that Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Watchmen) is stepping into the suit as Simon Williams, a struggling actor who gets the opportunity to audition for the title role of Wonder Man in a big superhero blockbuster. It seems he may be a little too qualified for the role, however, given his own unique powers. Ben Kingsley reprises his role from Iron Man 3 and Shang-Chi, Williams’ fellow thespian Trevor Slattery. —D.F.

Grief reverberates in new ways for the Shrinking crew in the sweet hangout comedy’s third outing. Jimmy (Jason Segel) struggles with the pending departure of his daughter Alice (Lukita Maxwell) for college, and with the introduction of a potential love interest (played by Cobie Smulders!). Paul (Harrison Ford) faces the rapid progression of his Parkinson’s (including with the spirited help of guest star Michael J. Fox). Brett Goldstein’s guilt-ridden drunk driver Louis comes to a realization about his future, and Jessica Williams’ Gaby gets a spotlight that brings new emotional depth to her fun-loving sidekick character. A sleeper hit whose audience just keeps growing, this show feels like a big squishy hug in chaotic times. —M.F.

A suburban resident and several neighbors watch as a new couple moves onto their block, and they begin to suspect something fishy is going on. Naturally, these nosy folks decide to start snooping and get way more than they bargained for. If this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the plot of the 1989 Tom Hanks comedy of the same name. If you’re tempted to yawn about another cult movie from the Rubik’s Cube decade getting a TV makeover, consider this: The creators of this redo cast Keke Palmer in the lead role. Now you have our attention, Peacock! The supporting cast ain’t too shabby, either: Paula Pell, Haley Joel Osment, Weeds’ Justin Kirk, British stand-up Jack Whitehall, Newhart’s Julia Duffy, and What We Do in the Shadows MVP Mark Proksch. —D.F.

The Southwestern noir once again drops Zahn McClarnon’s tribal sheriff and Kiowa Gordon’s former fed turned deputy into the middle of a hot case, this time involving a missing Navajo girl last seen on the seamier streets of Los Angeles. Once they and their fellow law enforcement officer (played by Jessia Matten) head to the City of Angels, things quickly go from bad to worse. Run Lola Run‘s Franke Potente and the late, great Udo Kier join a host of returning regulars in this series we’ve consistently hailed as one of TV’s best. —D.F.

Tracy Morgan is back! 30 Rock co-creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (along with one of the show’s writers, Sam Means) have crafted a good old-fashioned network sitcom around the comedian, who plays a former NFL great now on the skids. Enter an award-winning filmmaker (Daniel Radcliffe) who wants to help the sports legend rehabilitate his bad image and win back his family and friends. Get Out’s Erika Alexander and SNL alum Bobby Moynihan join in the fun as well. —D.F.

One of the most bonkers shows of 2025 returns — let’s call this round Paradise II: Beyond the Bunker. When we last left the mountains of Colorado (or their undercarriage), evil-ish bajillionaire mastermind Redmond (Julianne Nicholson), code name “Sinatra,” had been shot by definitely evil Secret Service agent Driscoll (Nicole Brydon Bloom). The president (James Marsden), code name “Wildcat,” was still dead. And our hero, special agent Xavier Collins (the always heroic Sterling K. Brown), was piloting a plane back to what remained of aboveground America to hunt for his wife, who he had reason to believe was still alive. This season, we get Shailene Woodley joining the cast and a whole new batch of eye-popping reveals. Strap in. —M.F.

Andy Warhol once said that in the future, every sitcom that had at least nine seasons would be rebooted for at least 15 minutes. (We’re pretty sure that’s the quote.) And so, this Primetime Emmy-nominated comedy — which ended, or so we thought, in 2010 — gets a new batch of eps for nostalgia’s sake. Zach Braff and Donald Faison don the titular doctor duds once again, heading back to the teaching hospital of Sacred Heart for more medical misadventures and, we’re assuming, more voiceover commentary. Looks like J.D. and Turk may finally get that man-date after all! —D.F.

The ongoing Monsterverse saga returns to the small screen with more clashes of the Titans — your Kongs, your Godzillas, your other raging, ginormous kaiju beasties. This time around, something wicked this way comes on the great ape’s home of Skull Island, which brings the various humans chasing these creatures together once again. Oh, and there’s some type of sea monster that’s burst onto the scene wreaking oceanic havoc as well. The Russells (Wyatt and Kurt) are back, as is Shōgun‘s Anna Sawai, Kiersey Clemons, Ren Watabe, and Anders Holm. —D.F.

If you are old enough to have lived through the Nineties heyday of John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette — their tumultuous courtship, paparazzi-stalked NYC existence, the unfathomably chic wedding at a tiny chapel in Cumberland Island, Georgia — you understand both the fervor and the glamour producer Ryan Murphy is looking to recapture with this dramatization of their relationship and tragic deaths. (The couple, along with Bessette’s sister, perished in 1999, when the plane John was flying crashed into the Atlantic en route to Martha’s Vineyard.) If you’re a Gen Z newcomer who’s just discovered the pair (mostly Carolyn) as style icons of the era, welcome to the story of one of America’s great tragedies. Murphy’s shown he can do great things with historical spectacles like the O.J. Simpson murder trial. Here’s hoping he honors the last vestige of Camelot. —M.F.

They call her Kay Scarpetta — a brilliant Italian-American forensic pathologist who uses medical science, the latest technical advances in her field, and her ability to rock an autopsy like nobody’s business to figure out whodunnit. Patricia Cornwell’s popular crime novels come to the small screen with no less than Nicole Kidman playing the sleuth with the scalpel. Jamie Lee Curtis is Kay’s sister; Ariana DeBose is her niece; Bobby Cannavale is a former detective and resident complicated hot guy; and Simon Baker is an FBI profiler. —D.F.

Araminta Hall’s 2020 novel gets the celebrity-packed prestige-TV treatment with Kerry Washington, Elisabeth Moss, and Kate Mara playing three lifelong friends known to clink their wine glasses together (see above photo) while hiding whatever jealousies and hurt feelings have bubbled up over time. Then a murder takes place, some secrets come to light, and all hell breaks loose. The book followed a Rashomon-like structure where each woman got a section to delve into her own perspective; no word yet whether the show will do the same. Joel Kinnaman and Corey Stoll co-star. —D.F.

Lately, when we see Steve Carrell on TV, we can’t help but long for his days as Michael Scott. His forays into straight drama often lack the inherent charm he brings to comedic performances. But this series from Bill Lawrence, creator of Scrubs, Ted Lasso, and Shrinking (hey, three other shows on this list!), and Matt Tarses promises to hit the sweet spot between the two for its star. Carell plays Greg Russo, a famous beach-lit author trying to repair a strained relationship with his adult daughter, Katie (Charly Clive), a college art history professor. The great Danielle Deadwyler plays one of Katie’s colleagues, John C. McGinley is the school’s president, and Phil Dunster (Lasso’s Jamie Tartt) is Katie’s preening estranged husband. That’s a Ph.D.-level comedy ensemble. —M.F.

Malcolm fans, rejoice! The beloved Fox sitcom of the early 2000s gets a four-episode update and reunites most of the original cast — notably Frankie Muniz, who played Malcolm; Jane Kaczmarek, a.k.a. Malcolm’s mom Lois; and Bryan Cranston (who sadly never did anything of note after this sitcom, certainly not a drama series with a strong claim to be the best TV show of all time) as Malcolm’s dad Hal. It seems Mom and Dad are celebrating their 40^th wedding anniversary in a big way and demand the presence of their son with the genius I.Q. This is easier said than done, apparently. Cue shenanigans. —D.F.

This miniseries adapting Rufi Thorpe’s bestselling novel follows down-on-her-luck single mom Margo (Elle Fanning), desperately trying to raise her baby after an ill-advised affair ends in an unexpected pregnancy. Her estranged parents — mom (Michelle Pfeiffer) was a Hooters waitress and dad (Nick Offerman) a semipro wrestler — don’t have much advice in the way of child-rearing. But when bills pile up, Margo turns her frustration with life into a quirky and wildly successful run on OnlyFans. Pfeiffer’s husband, the legendary TV creator David E. Kelley, serves as showrunner, and Nicole Kidman co-stars, because she is simply not busy enough. —CTJ

Writer-producer Katie Dippold (Parks and Recreation) and director Hiro Murai (Atlanta) gin up a horror-comedy starring Matthew Rhys as a small-town mayor who wants to turn an island community off the coast of New England into a touristy hot spot. The locals aren’t crazy about the idea, due to some sort of ancient curse. The mayor ignores their warnings. Bad idea. This sounds like a cross between a Stephen King novel and a Northern Exposure-type sitcom, which, OK, we’re here for it. —D.F.

How do you solve a problem like an overwrought high school television series? For Euphoria creator Sam Levinson, the answer may be granting fans their long-awaited time jump. According to early interviews, Season Three of the blockbuster series — returning after a four-year hiatus — begins five years down the road from where we last saw its characters, pushing Rue (Zendaya), Jules (Hunter Schafer), Lexi (Maude Apatow), Nate (Jacob Elordi), Cassie (Sydney Sweeney), and Maddy (Alexa Demie) out of the schoolyard and straight into the world of adulthood. That means plotlines about Nate and Cassie’s marriage, Rue’s ongoing debt to a drug dealer, and Maddy’s potential involvement with a strip club. The show will also welcome 18 new cast members, including a guest appearance by viral content creator and former exotic dancer Trisha Paytas. If messy is the theme, this season might have it in full. —CTJ

If you had asked us beforehand whether we needed a TV-series version of A.J. Quinnell’s Eighties thriller novel of the same name, which was already adapted into not one but two movies — a 1987 flop starring Scott Glenn and a gritty 2004 nail-biter starring none other than Denzel Washington and directed by Tony Scott — we would’ve offered a hard no. But this unexpected take starring Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as the troubled ex-Special Forces soldier John Creasy, and helmed by Creed II director Steven Caple Jr., is mighty enticing. Bobby Cannavale, Scoot McNairy, and Alice Braga co-star — and keep your eye on newcomer Billie Boullet, who plays Creasy’s young charge. —M.F.

What, like it’s hard to make a prequel series based on a beloved movie that came out 25 years ago and spawned two sequels (one still in production) and a musical? Well, yeah. It sounds like it is. But, with Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine production company behind this latest foray into the Legally Blonde universe, we trust it’s in great hands. The new show will follow a young Elle Woods (played by Lexi Minetree, handpicked by Witherspoon herself) on her high school adventures in Bel Air. There’s sure to be plenty of pink, pools, parties, and deceptively adorable overachieving. —M.F.

The Bear may have lost its crown as the series America is most obsessed with (see: The Pitt, another hilarious comedy) but don’t pretend you’re not counting the days till the next batch of episodes following Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) — who’s emerging as the show’s focal point — Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and the gang. Last season ended on a properly big moment: Carmy is turning over the restaurant to Syd and leaving cooking to go deal with his glaring emotional problems (maybe this season he’ll say something other than “sorry” to everyone). How will that decision actually play out? We can’t wait to find out. —M.F.

When it dropped back in 2023, Lee Sung Jin’s Beef was as shocking as a slap across the face with a cold slab of raw meat. That’s a compliment, to be clear. The show was original, bold, clever, and shifty — the tone and plot always racing and zagging one step ahead, urging you to keep up. Its tale of dueling revenge schemes — and how they intoxicated and nearly destroyed their perpetrators — was so expertly played by stars Steven Yeun and Ali Wong, it was tough to shake. As a limited series, we didn’t necessarily expect to see it again; but now it returns in anthologized form, with a new cast featuring Oscar Isaac (!) and Carey Mulligan (!!). —M.F.

After Denis Villeneuve extended and expanded upon the, ah, Bladerverse with Blade Runner 2049, his 2017 sequel to Ridley Scott’s sci-fi cinema game-changer, fans hoped that wouldn’t be the last we’d see of replicants and bounty hunters running around dystopian worlds. Thankfully, this series grabs the baton and fast-forwards 50 years, where it’s safe to guess that androids still dream of electric sheep and the elite law enforcers known as blade runners still track down rogue bots. Details are scarce, but we do the know year in which the action takes place (see title), and that Hunter Schafer, Michelle Yeoh, and Furiosa’s Tom Burke star. Frankly, you had us at “Blade Runner.” —D.F.

OK, so this entry may be an act of wishful thinking — precious little has been confirmed about this reboot — but the Buffy faithful have been engaging in such fantasies for years, so why stop now. Here’s what we can say, based on reports and interviews out there in the world: No, the problematic showrunner behind the original teen-horror series to end all teen-horror series will not be helming this extension of the 1990s classic. Yes, Sarah Michelle Gellar will be returning as Buffy Summers, the worst thing ever to happen to vampires, ghouls, demons, and other creatures of the night. Word is that the OG slayer revisits the place she once called home and finds that things around the ol’ Hellmouth are still alive and kicking. The executive producers include Gellar, director Chloé Zhao, and Dolly Parton — seriously! —D.F.

Plenty of shows take time off between seasons; few take a whole decade. But by doing just that, The Comeback — a mockumentary series starring Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, a onetime television It girl — is able to skewer Hollywood’s ever-changing expectations of its female stars. The first season, in 2005, saw a 40-year-old Cherish taking on a matronly character in a network sitcom, while also documenting her journey on the then-nascent platform of reality TV. Season Two, in 2014, had her struggling to find her place within the world of streaming prestige dramedies. Twelve years later, as social media stars reshape the entertainment landscape, where will Cherish fit in? There’s only one way to find out. —Elisabeth Garber-Paul

Does that acronym mean what you think it means? It sure does! This miniseries follows some bored and frustrated middle-America married folks (played by Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini, and David Harbour) who wind up in an extramarital entanglement — and then one of them winds up dead. As with much of creator Steven Conrad’s work (like the cult-favorite series Patriot), expect more than meets the eye: This show promises to be quirky, darkly funny, and sometimes just dark. With this cast (which also includes Richard Jenkins as a cop investigating the death), we’ll follow wherever it leads. —M.F.

In 1955, Elia Kazan directed a film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s opus that was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Actor for its star, James Dean. Seven decades later, his granddaughter Zoe Kazan has written and executive produced this adaptation for television. Florence Pugh stars as the volatile Trask family matriarch Cathy Ames, who flees motherhood for life as a bordello madam. Christopher Abbott is her abandoned husband, Adam. Mike Faist plays Adam’s brother Charles. But the spotlight will really be on up-and-comers Joe Anders (Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes’ son) and Joseph Zada, tackling the roles of doomed twins Aron and Cal, respectively, and bringing the full weight of this intergenerational saga to bear. —M.F.

When we last left Ronald D. Moore’s extraordinary sci-fi show about an alt-historical space race, Mars colony rebels pulled off a “heist” of a resource-valuable asteroid, an ensuing riot almost left one person dead, and the former head of NASA got marched off to the hoosegow. Season Five should pick up right after the previous finale’s ended, with a time jump to 2012 and the fate of our tenure on the Red Planet secure… for now. Mankind OGs Joel Kinnaman, Krys Marshall, and Wrenn Schmidt are all slated to return for what may (or may not) be the Apple TV drama’s final go-round. —D.F.

After the runaway success of Richard Gadd’s Baby Reindeer, folks wondered what the writer-actor was going to do next. The answer: an equally intense-sounding drama, co-produced by HBO and BBC, about two brothers with a river of bad blood between them. When one shows up unannounced to the other’s wedding, several decades’ worth of issues bubble up to the surface. Jamie Bell plays one of the siblings; Gadd plays the other, and judging from the early stills, it looks like our guy has been hitting the gym for the role. —D.F.

In the immortal words of Billy Eichner, let’s go lesbians! Netflix’s campy surprise-hit charting the lives of a group of lying, cheating, murdering, girl-kissing Texas women is returning for another season. This comically entertaining take on the airport-novel thriller puts small-town mysteries mostly on the back burner in favor of seeing its main characters conduct steamy, sapphic affairs in as many scenes as possible. While Season One ended with no fewer than five dead bodies, there are still plenty of questions the writers need to answer — and plenty of new ladies to introduce to the group. After all, there is at least one vacancy. Our only request? Let Malin Ackerman keep her godawful shake-and-go wig. —CTJ

Remember that film noir-style alt-version of Spidey from Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse, voiced by none other than Nicolas Cage? The fan favorite gets his own live-action series, with Cage reprising the role of Ben Reilly, a 1930s private dick who, in his spare time, fights mobsters and criminals as a costumed superhero. Even if you’re not a fan of the comics or those animated Spiderverse movies, this sounds like a retro crime-flick blast. Brendan Gleeson, Lamorne Morris, Jack Huston, Lukas Haas, and Sinners’ Li Jun Li co-star. —D.F.

The Duffer brothers follow up their truly epic Stranger Things run with this nuptial horror series from showrunner Haley Z. Boston, about a bride and groom prepping for their big day. Before their knot can officially be tied, they must deal with a possible derailing factor. What, exactly, threatens their union, you ask? We don’t know, but if the title is to believed — and you factor in that Boston was a writer on Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities and this show’s executive producers gave us the Upside Down — let’s assume it’s very, very bad indeed. —D.F.

So remember how Ted Lasso‘s third season was rumored to be its last? Apparently the good folks involved with AFC Richmond are ready to get back on the pitch. Apple confirmed that production on the award-winning series’ fourth season was underway via a video that appeared to show Jason Sudeikis, Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, and Jeremy Swift filming a scene in an American diner. No word on whether this will now be a transatlantic workplace comedy, though fellow series regulars like Brett Goldstein and Nick Mohammed are said to be returning for this extra-time batch of episodes. —D.F.

Rachel Weisz and White Lotus breakout Leo Woodall star in Julia May Jonas’ adaptation of her own 2022 novel, about a college professor experiencing a marital crisis after her fellow-academic husband is accused of inappropriate behavior with students. She then develops a deep fixation on a hot young novelist who has recently joined the university’s faculty. If the limited series is half as suggestive as the book’s cover, we may be in for one of the hornier prestige dramas of the year. —D.F.

Not since Lost have survivors of a plane crash had so many quasi-spiritual, totally confusing experiences in the wilderness — only this time there’s cannibalism, same-sex love stories, grunge-era needle drops, and a slew of 1990s teen stars we’d watch read a phone book (looking at you, Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci, and Juliette Lewis). Last we saw the remaining members of the Wiskayok High girls soccer team in the wild, they were pretty sure they’d devised a method to contact the outside world for rescue; meanwhile, their 2020s counterparts were trying to figure out if the mysterious “it” could be passed on to younger generations. This will be the series’ final season, so hopefully showrunners Ashley Lyle, Bart Nickerson, and Jonathan Lisco will fare better than that other plane-crash show in tying up the loose ends. —EGP