Best Shows of 2026, So Far

Shows this year have jumped genres just as restlessly as the movies did, swinging from a haunted New England island to a teenage OnlyFans hustle to Westeros stripped down to a single hedge knight and his squire, and the standard has rarely dipped. Apple TV alone has quietly built one of the strongest comedy benches on television. This list rounds up what's actually held up so far in 2026, and where to watch it.

Widow's Bay
Apple TV
Katie Dippold's horror-comedy about a cursed New England island has been the year's biggest surprise. Matthew Rhys plays a mayor trying to turn the town into a tourist spot while the old local legends start proving true. It balances scares and laughs better than most shows attempting both, and Apple has already greenlit a second season.

Rooster
Jio Hotstar
Steve Carell plays a novelist who shows up at his daughter's college to help her through a collapsing marriage, then gets pulled into campus politics he has no business being part of. Bill Lawrence and Matt Tarses keep it warm and breezy, the kind of show that goes down easy without trying too hard. Danielle Deadwyler and Phil Dunster round out a cast that knows when to underplay it.

The Capture [Season 3]
Holliday Grainger returns as Rachel Carey, now acting commander of counter-terrorism, trying to win back public trust in surveillance technology right as a coordinated terror attack throws her into a conspiracy that reaches into the British state itself. The show's whole premise, that footage can lie and still be believed, only gets more relevant with each season, and this one has been called the best yet.

Margo's Got Money Troubles
Apple TV
Elle Fanning plays a college dropout who turns to OnlyFans after an affair with her professor leaves her pregnant and broke. David E. Kelley adapts Rufi Thorpe's novel with real warmth for its characters rather than judgment, and Fanning makes Margo's choices feel earned instead of shocking. Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman play her parents, a former Hooters waitress and an ex-pro wrestler, and the show is at its best when it lets that chaos breathe.

Your Friends & Neighbours [Season 2]
Apple TV
Jon Hamm's disgraced hedge fund manager doubles down on his life as a suburban thief, this time with James Marsden arriving as a new neighbour who threatens to unravel everything. The first season was a solid one-watch; this one tightens the screws and adds a mystery thread that gives it more reason to exist.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Jio Hotstar
The most restrained thing to come out of Westeros yet. No dragons, no armies, just a hedge knight named Dunk and his squire Egg making their way to a jousting tournament. Peter Claffey and young Dexter Sol Ansell carry it entirely on character and quiet stakes, and it has already out-reviewed both Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon on Rotten Tomatoes.

DTF St. Louis
Jio Hotstar
Jason Bateman and David Harbour play a weatherman and his station's ASL interpreter whose friendship curdles after both turn to an app for affairs. It plays like a dark comedy until it becomes a murder mystery, gripping all the way through, and Linda Cardellini and Richard Jenkins do some of the season's best work as the detectives unravelling it.

Shrinking (Season 3)
Apple TV
Jason Segel's grief-stricken, rule-breaking therapist is now dealing with an empty nest, while Harrison Ford's Paul faces the realities of Parkinson's. It is, somehow, still one of the better mental-health-adjacent shows on television, mixing real ache with the kind of humour that doesn't undercut it. Michael J. Fox and Jeff Daniels join this season, and the show remains as good at earning its tears as its laughs.

Rafa
Netflix
Netflix's four-part documentary on Rafael Nadal, directed by Zach Heinzerling, traces his return from injury through to retirement, drawing on years of personal archive footage and interviews, including with Federer and Djokovic. It talks through his injuries in real depth, but it's so well made that it never feels heavy for its own sake, more an honest account of why he kept going long after his body told him to stop.

Words Hansika Lohani
Date 24.6.2026