From Off Campus to Widow’s Bay, 2026 has already delivered a strong lineup of television worth your time. Across Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+, Apple TV, Sky, HBO Max, and MagentaTV, critics have singled out a handful of standout shows over the past several months. Here are 15 series that have earned some of the highest praise so far this year.
1. The Vampire Lestat
Rotten Tomatoes: 100% Fresh
Technically the third season of the horror series Interview with the Vampire, this chapter carries a new title and shifts to a fresh point of view — that of the impulsive manipulator Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid). When Lestat discovers Daniel Malloy’s book, assembled from interviews with his former lovers Louis and Armand, he’s furious at the version of events they’ve told. His solution? Set the record straight in his own way: by becoming a rock star.
The tone diverges dramatically from its predecessor. One critic compared it more to Julie and the Phantoms than to the original series, since Lestat and his band become the subject of a music documentary (guess who conducts the interviews). Along the way, we learn more about the unrestrained party boy’s past, and he gains genuine complexity — a figure you can neither fully understand nor entirely despise, but can’t look away from.
2. Legends
Rotten Tomatoes: 97% Fresh
This adaptation of an extraordinary true story is one of the year’s Netflix highlights. In the early 1990s, Britain’s customs and revenue authority was losing its battle against cross-border drug smuggling — so it tried an unconventional fix. A small team of outsiders was deployed undercover in a top-secret operation, tasked with building new identities in the criminal underworld after only a brief crash course in the job.
3. The Boroughs
Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Fresh
Set in the sun-baked stretches of the New Mexico desert, the picturesque retirement community of “The Boroughs” promises its residents a peaceful final chapter. But from the moment he arrives, newcomer Sam Cooper feels more like he’s entered a prison. After an eerie nighttime encounter, he suspects something monstrous is lurking beneath the tidy surface. Dismissed by the staff as a confused old man, Sam finds unexpected allies in a band of rebels — a sharp ex-journalist, a spiritual seeker, a jaded music manager, and a brilliant doctor running out of options. Together, these overlooked and underestimated heroes must uncover the dark truth at the heart of The Boroughs before it’s too late.
4. How to Get to Heaven from Belfast
Rotten Tomatoes: 95% Fresh
Clever, chaotic TV writer Saoirse, glamorous but frazzled mother-of-three Robyn, and steady, reserved carer Dara have been an inseparable trio since school. Now in their late thirties and still bonded, they face the strangest adventure of their lives when an email informs them of the death of the fourth member of their childhood clique — someone they’d long lost touch with. What starts as a reunion spirals into a dark, dangerous, and wildly funny odyssey across Ireland and beyond.
The New Yorker described the series, created by Derry Girls writer Lisa McGee, as a bleak yet humorous portrait of friendship in middle age. NPR added that the show juggles so many different tones at once that watching it feels like watching a performer keep a chainsaw, a puppy, and a bowl of Jell-O in the air while playing banjo with their teeth.
5. Wonder Man
Rotten Tomatoes: 91% Fresh
Up-and-coming Hollywood actor Simon Williams (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II) is struggling to get his career off the ground. A chance meeting with Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley) — an actor whose biggest roles are likely behind him — brings news that legendary director Von Kovak is planning a reboot of the superhero film Wonder Man. At opposite ends of their careers, the two men chase the life-changing roles with fierce determination, giving audiences a look behind the curtain of the entertainment industry.
One Daily Telegraph critic called it “funny, moving, and easy to follow even for non-nerds,” while another noted the series is so deliberately offbeat and un-superhero-like that it may leave plenty of Marvel fans puzzled.
6. Ponies
Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Fresh
Moscow, 1977: Bea (Emilia Clarke) and Twila (Haley Lu Richardson) work as ordinary secretaries at the American embassy. To Cold War intelligence agencies, they’re simply “ponies” — people of no interest whatsoever. That changes overnight when both their husbands die under mysterious circumstances. The CIA promptly recruits the pair as agents to uncover why their spouses had to die — and the two very different women stumble onto a sprawling conspiracy.
7. The Pitt
Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Fresh
Fifteen years after ER wrapped, series creator R. Scott Gemmill and star Noah Wyle have reunited for a new medical drama. At the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Wyle) and his team fight not only to save their patients but also against an overstretched hospital system, personal crises, and the emotional toll of working under relentless pressure. Praised for its realism and gripping performances, the drama took home five Emmys and two Golden Globes.
8. Heated Rivalry
Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Fresh
Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) are two of the biggest stars in North American professional hockey. As new faces on the rival Montreal Metros and Boston Raiders, they share not just ambition and rivalry but a magnetic attraction neither fully understands. What begins as a secret affair in hotel rooms grows over the years into something real and deep.
Creator Jacob Tierney built something groundbreaking with Heated Rivalry: a sexually explicit series about queer love that never feels exploitative or voyeuristic. In the U.S., the Canadian production ranked among HBO Max’s ten most-watched series during its premiere run.
9. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Fresh
Set in the world of Game of Thrones, this new series follows young would-be knight Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his squire “Egg” (Dexter Sol Ansell) as they roam the continent of Westeros in search of glory and honor. Tonally, it’s a complete departure from the original — closer in spirit to lighthearted fairy tales like A Knight’s Tale or The Sword in the Stone — and that’s precisely its strength.
10. Bait
Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Fresh
This comedy from and starring Riz Ahmed centers on failing actor Shah Latif, whose last shot at a breakthrough is the audition of his life. Over four chaotic days, his world spins increasingly out of control as his family, his ex-partner, and the wider world weigh in on whether he’s right for the part.
The Houston Chronicle called Bait the kind of series “you call in sick for, draw the curtains, order delivery, and put your phone on silent” for. Vulture, meanwhile, described it as a singular, boldly conceived experiment exploring two questions that run through Ahmed’s body of work: where has minority visibility taken us, and what has it cost us to rely on the prevailing order to get there?
11. The House of the Spirits
Rotten Tomatoes: 92% Fresh
Isabel Allende’s classic novel The House of the Spirits is a richly atmospheric tale of memory, trauma, and the way history echoes through individual lives. Little wonder the family saga has been adapted several times — but this new Prime Video series is the first Spanish-language version, and Allende herself served as a producer. The eight-part saga from Chile follows three women across generations — Clara, Blanca, and Alba Trueba — over half a century, chronicling the class struggles, political upheavals, and magic of their conservative South American homeland.
12. Off Campus
Rotten Tomatoes: 91% Fresh
At Briar University, music-loving Hannah (Ella Bright) and Garrett Graham (Belmont Cameli), captain of the school’s hockey team, cross paths by chance. With his grades slipping and her too nervous to approach her crush, the two strike an unusual bargain: she tutors him in philosophy, and in return he pretends to date her to catch the attention of musician Justin (Josh Heuston).
What follows is a charming romantic comedy with an eighties flavor. Between Dirty Dancing movie nights, joyful dance sequences, and witty dialogue, it strikes a breezy tone somewhere between The Sex Lives of College Girls and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Almost overnight, the adaptation of Elle Kennedy’s book series became a viral hit, winning praise especially for its smart, sensitive handling of sex and dating. Filming on season two is already underway.
13. Widow’s Bay
Rotten Tomatoes: 98% Fresh
This horror-comedy also earned a spot among the year’s best. Mayor Tom Loftis (Matthew Rhys) is desperate to transform his struggling community of Widow’s Bay — a picturesque island town 40 miles off the New England coast — into a tourist hotspot on par with Martha’s Vineyard. It’s not so simple, though: there’s no Wi-Fi, spotty cell service, and superstitious locals convinced their island is cursed. When Loftis’s plans finally start to pay off and the first visitors arrive, it turns out the townspeople were right all along.
Created by Katie Dippold, this nerve-jangling yet funny newcomer radiates a pleasing retro charm reminiscent of 1970s and ’80s horror, gracefully balancing comedy, folk horror, and emotional thriller into a series that feels both familiar and wholly original.
14. Only Margo
Rotten Tomatoes: 96% Fresh
This tragicomedy comes from David E. Kelley — creator of Big Little Lies, The Undoing, and Ally McBeal — and follows the turbulent life of young Margo (Elle Fanning). A college dropout and new mother, she’s facing serious money troubles. With little help from her parents, a former Hooters waitress (Michelle Pfeiffer) and an ex-pro wrestler (Nick Offerman), the young woman turns in desperation to the internet.
15. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed
Rotten Tomatoes: 93% Fresh
In this new Apple TV production, freshly divorced mother Paula (Tatiana Maslany) is convinced she’s witnessed a murder. Though she’s in the middle of a custody battle and an identity crisis, she decides to investigate — and gets pulled into a dangerous whirlpool of blackmail, sex, lies, and youth soccer.
The Best Returning Series of 2026
New shows aren’t the only source of great television this year. Among the standout continuations of recent months:
- Deadloch, Season 2 on Prime Video (100% on Rotten Tomatoes)
- High Potential, Season 2 on Disney+ (100%)
- One Piece, Season 2 on Netflix (100%)
- The Bear, Season 5 on Disney+ (98%)
- The Comeback, Season 3 on HBO Max (97%)
- The Artful Dodger, Season 2 on Disney+ (95%)
- Industry, Season 4 on HBO Max (94%)
- A Thousand Blows, Season 2 on Disney+ (93%)
- Drops of God, Season 2 on Apple TV (92%)
- Shrinking, Season 3 on Apple TV (91%)
