14 Best Streaming and TV Shows of 2026 (So Far)
- Joao Nsita
- 2 hours ago
- 16 min read
Your remote is about to get a lot of use.
If you've been half-watching things lately — scrolling past options, finishing nothing, half-engaged with shows that never quite grip you — welcome to your intervention. Because 2026 has been an extraordinary year for television, and the best streaming and TV shows of 2026 deserve your full, undivided attention.
We're talking about shows that make you turn your phone face-down. Shows that keep you on the sofa long past the point where you told yourself "just one more episode." Shows that you're still thinking about at 11am the next day while you're trying to do actual work.
This year has delivered medical dramas that make you feel like you're in the room, crime thrillers that sprint from the first second, prestige character studies that reinvent themselves each season, and docudramas so important they deserve to be called essential television. We've had sport-romance hybrids, Scandinavian noir, wine-soaked Franco-Japanese dramas, and a fantasy spin-off that just might be the best Game of Thrones content ever produced.
Whatever kind of television you love, 2026 has served it up — and then raised the stakes.
This ranked list covers the 14 best streaming and TV shows of 2026 so far, drawing from Netflix, HBO Max, BBC, Apple TV+, Prime Video, Hulu, Disney+, and Channel 4. Some you may have already discovered. Some you might have overlooked. All of them are worth your time.
Let's start 👇
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14. Steal (Prime Video)
A timely commentary on capitalism and the insidious corruption of greed? Possibly. But subtext takes second place to the full-pelt sprint of this barnstorming and gloriously daft crime thriller.
Steal begins with a group of armed robbers storming the trading floor of a City of London pension fund — and it barely pauses for breath across its six hugely entertaining episodes. Game of Thrones' Sophie Turner is the junior analyst swept up in it all, delivering a steely, commanding performance that proves she is one of British television's most exciting stars right now.
What makes Steal so addictive is its commitment to fun. This is not a show that takes itself too seriously. It knows exactly what it is — a propulsive, witty, genuinely clever heist thriller with a knockout central performance — and it executes on that brief with enormous confidence.
The conspiracy that Turner's character unravels across the series is satisfyingly complex without becoming incomprehensible, and the show moves fast enough that you're never given the time to question its more absurdist flourishes. Which is exactly as it should be.
Why you should watch: Steal is the show you put on when you want to actually enjoy yourself. Pure, high-octane fun with a performance at its centre that elevates everything around it.
Watch on: Prime Video
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13. Drops of God Season 2 (Apple TV+)
A boozy Succession based on an oenophile manga — a curio even by Apple's already adventurous standards when it first arrived in 2023. Season 2 builds on that distinctive foundation with even more confidence and depth.
The premise remains wonderfully absurd: Camille (Fleur Geffrier) and Issei (Tomohisa Yamashita), who competed in Season 1 through a series of fiendish wine challenges for their father's inheritance, now join forces to investigate a mysterious yet legendary vintage. The sibling rivalry has evolved into something more complex, and the investigative element gives Season 2 a forward momentum that propels it elegantly through its episodes.
Some of the wilder flights of fancy of Season 1 have been decanted — the show is slightly more grounded, slightly more focused. But the epicurean storytelling, the luscious visual approach to depicting the sensory experience of tasting extraordinary wine, and the central relationship between its two leads all remain deeply compelling.
If you've never watched Drops of God, this is the ideal year to start. Both seasons reward patient, focused viewing — much like a rare vintage that needs time to breathe.
Why you should watch: A genuinely unique television experience. Drops of God is the show you recommend to people who claim they've seen everything and can't find anything interesting.
Watch on: Apple TV+
12. Jo Nesbø's Detective Hole (Netflix)
If you want something done properly, do it yourself. After the lamentable 2017 film adaptation, Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbø brings his own iconic Harry Hole novels to life as screenwriter — and the results are everything a Nesbø fan could ask for.
Based on The Devil's Star (the sixth Harry Hole novel), Detective Hole is an artfully woven tapestry of police corruption, gang violence, and a serial killer with a rather distinctive — if macabre — aesthetic preference. Tobias Santelmann plays Hole ('Hoh-la', for the uninitiated) as almost comically hard-boiled, a detective who operates at the absolute edge of professional conduct and personal self-destruction.
But the character study is only part of the appeal. The plotting is genuinely labyrinthine — Nesbø's gift for interlocking storylines and misdirection translates beautifully to the series format — and the dark atmosphere of Oslo permeates every frame.
If this proves to be the first season of many, as it clearly intends to be, Nordic noir enthusiasts are in for a very good few years.
Why you should watch: Potent, atmospheric, and fiendishly plotted. Detective Hole is the Scandi-crime series that does the source material justice — finally.
Watch on: Netflix
11. The Night Manager Season 2 (BBC/Prime Video)
Would this John le Carré spy thriller still compel and surprise without the input of the great espionage writer himself? The answer, it turns out, is a qualified yes — with some caveats.
The first few episodes of Season 2 find Tom Hiddleston's jaded spook roaming London and Medellín in crisply ironed shirts, searching for a storyline as compelling as Season 1's. He finds it in Diego Calva's brooding and dangerous gun-runner Teddy Dos Santos, but it takes time for the central dynamic to ignite.
Then — without spoiling too much — Hugh Laurie's alpha dog Richard Roper rose from what appeared to be certain death and everything changed. The finale delivers a jolt of pure small-screen nihilism that recontextualises everything that came before it and leaves you slightly shaken in the best possible way.
The globe-trotting locations remain spectacular, the performances are uniformly excellent, and the show's understanding of how power, charm, and moral compromise intersect in the world of international arms dealing is as sharp as ever.
Why you should watch: The Night Manager Season 2 is a grower — it rewards patience with a second half that is genuinely riveting and a finale that is deeply memorable.
Watch on: BBC / Prime Video
10. A Thousand Blows Season 2 (Hulu/Disney+)
Of Steven Knight's seemingly endless list of projects, A Thousand Blows best recaptures the raw, rock 'n' roll swagger of Peaky Blinders. But the bruises are mounting up in a grimmer, more complex second season.
Bull-necked brawler Sugar has hit the bottle. Disgraced Jamaican boxer Hezekiah Moscow has been forced into the underground fight circuit. And arch-thief Mary Carr has been toppled from her perch as head of the all-girl crime gang the Forty Elephants.
The world of Victorian bare-knuckle boxing has rarely looked quite this viscerally alive on screen, and the show's refusal to romanticise the poverty and violence at its edges gives the period drama genuine bite.
But it's Erin Doherty's Mary Carr who remains the show's beating heart. Doherty wraps the entire production around her like a voluminous Victorian ballgown — she's electric in every scene, commanding your total attention without ever appearing to try for it.
Why you should watch: A Thousand Blows Season 2 is bold, bruising, and brilliantly performed. Essential viewing for fans of prestige period drama.
Watch on: Hulu / Disney+
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9. Bait (Prime Video)
Between Apple TV+'s The Studio and HBO's The Comeback, television has been spoiled for sharply written, toe-curling Hollywood satire of late. Riz Ahmed's Bait offers something rather different — and considerably more personal.
Ahmed plays Shah Latif, a struggling actor whose career ignites explosively after he auditions for the next James Bond. What follows is an exploration of fame, racism, and ingrained self-loathing that is seasoned with wild flights of fancy — including a Patrick Stewart cameo as a pig's head, which is as surreal and pointed as it sounds.
The meta movie commentary is entirely on-point, and Ahmed's ability to move between slapstick absurdism and genuine emotional devastation within the same scene is extraordinary. But it's the culture-clash comedy mined from Shah's relationship with his Pakistani family — archly observed, deeply felt — that delivers the real goods here.
This is a show that rewards close attention. It knows exactly what it's doing, even when — especially when — it appears to be completely unhinged.
Why you should watch: Bait is like nothing else on television right now. Riz Ahmed cements his status as one of the most interesting creative forces working today.
Watch on: Prime Video
8. Lord of the Flies (BBC One)
William Golding's beloved GCSE staple gets the Jack Thorne treatment in this svelte and genuinely disturbing BBC adaptation of the 1954 novel.
After a plane crash leaves a group of tweenage schoolboys marooned on a desert island, social norms swiftly dissolve — leaving tribal savagery in the place of civilisation. Golding's classic cautionary tale of feral youth has lost absolutely none of its bite, delving into the mire of humanity's worst instincts with unsettling relish.
In an inspired structural move, each of the four episodes unfolds from a different boy's perspective. This gives the audience far deeper insight into both the backgrounds and motivations of the characters than a straightforward narrative would allow. It's great television storytelling — and it will infuriate Golding purists in exactly the way that great adaptations should.
Seven decades after it was first published, the story's central darkness feels as relevant as ever — perhaps more so. What happens when the structures we build to contain the worst of ourselves are stripped away? Lord of the Flies (2026) doesn't soften the answer.
Why you should watch: Lean, powerful, and genuinely disturbing. This is the adaptation the novel deserves — faithful in spirit, inventive in form.
Watch on: BBC One / BBC iPlayer
7. Waiting for the Out (BBC)
Prison dramas tend to show the very worst of incarcerated life. Dennis Kelly's extraordinary Waiting for the Out is interested in something more difficult and more rewarding: finding the light inside.
Based on Andy West's memoir, the show follows anxiety-riddled teacher Dan (Josh Finan) as he takes a job teaching a philosophy class at HMP Kenworth. The inmates he meets are fully realised human beings rather than types — each carrying hope, sadness, vulnerability, and emotional complexity that the show has the patience and confidence to fully explore.
Dan's own journey — an exploration of masculinity, professional purpose, and the dark shadow of his abusive ex-con father — is tragic, tearful, and painfully honest. He's not a knight in shining armour who fixes everything with the power of Socrates. He's a frightened young man trying to do something meaningful in conditions that test every assumption he has about himself.
Waiting for the Out is the kind of television that actually changes how you see things. Rare, brave, and essential.
Why you should watch: One of the most morally serious and emotionally generous pieces of television made in Britain this year. Don't miss it.
Watch on: BBC / BBC iPlayer
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6. Beef Season 2 (Netflix)
The delightfully dark and deranged Netflix black comedy returns, upping its stakes dramatically by shifting locations to a White Lotus-style country club and throwing in some thrillingly absurdist subplots that stretch all the way to the Seoul high life.
Season 2 might lack the grounded, claustrophobic bite of its more streamlined predecessor — the original Beef's road rage premise was an almost perfect container for everything the show wanted to say about thwarted ambition and middle-class misery. But what it loses in focus it more than compensates for in ambition and sheer chaotic energy.
The Coen Brothers-esque chases are spectacular. Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac, trapped in what amounts to an extended Scenes from a Marriage reprise, are extraordinary together. And Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung delivers a spine-chilling performance that is about as far from the cuddly grandmother of Minari as it's possible to get.
It's messy in the best possible way — a show that refuses to be neat, refuses to be comfortable, and trusts that its audience is willing to be taken somewhere genuinely surprising.
Why you should watch: Beef Season 2 is chaotically comedic, beautifully performed, and completely unpredictable. One of Netflix's boldest commissions.
Watch on: Netflix
5. Heated Rivalry (HBO Max/Sky Atlantic)
If you entered 2026 not realising that an ice hockey drama would dominate your early-year viewing, you're in very good company.
This adaptation of Rachel Reid's novel series centres on Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie as ice hockey players whose match-day feuding evolves into a passionate, complicated, and deeply convincing love affair. It is, in the most unashamedly positive sense of the term, a sweaty and sexy romp of a show — one that takes both its sport and its central relationship entirely seriously.
The hockey sequences are spectacular. The producers clearly understood that if you're going to make a show about elite athletes, the sport itself has to look right, feel right, and matter. It does. The on-ice confrontations between the two leads crackle with competitive intensity that makes their inevitable off-ice connection feel earned rather than contrived.
The central relationship between a Canadian all-star and a Russian bad-boy is sweet, believable, and — crucially — built on genuine characterisation rather than just chemistry. You understand why these two people, who have every reason to despise each other, are drawn together. And that understanding is what elevates Heated Rivalry above comparable sports romance series.
Why you should watch: Pure, confident, emotionally intelligent sports romance television. Heated Rivalry is the unexpected gem of 2026's early months.
Watch on: HBO Max / Sky Atlantic
4. Industry Season 4 (BBC/HBO Max)
Having started life as a little-watched satire about young London bankers, Industry is now a genuine television phenomenon — and one that has managed the exceptional feat of reinventing itself meaningfully with each passing season.
Season 4 evolves beyond its Square Mile Hunger Games origins into a genuinely fascinating character study of Machiavellian finance types under pressure. The ever-relevant narrative brings in Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton as an investigative journalist whose presence complicates everyone's carefully maintained fictions. Kit Harington delivers what the show's critics are already calling an extraordinary showcase in Episode 2. And the reunion of dream team Myha'la and Ken Leung provides some of the season's most electrically charged television.
Industry is nasty, ingenious, and relentlessly compelling — a show about people doing terrible things to each other in service of making money, which sounds straightforward but is actually one of the most precise and damning observations about contemporary capitalism on television.
You will need a shower after every episode. Plan for that.
Why you should watch: Industry is one of the best shows on television right now, and Season 4 continues its remarkable run. Essential binge-watching.
Watch on: BBC / HBO Max
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3. Dirty Business (Channel 4)
This three-part UK docudrama about illegal sewage dumping in England's waterways might be the most important television series of 2026.
David Thewlis and Jason Watkins play the accidental activists who uncover an industry-wide stink — and that is not a metaphor — after their local river in Oxfordshire turns an alarming shade of brown. Charlotte Ritchie and Vicki Pepperdine are suitably shifty as cogs in the corporate machine that allows water companies to prioritise profit over actually cleaning up their polluted waterways.
What makes Dirty Business particularly effective is its decision to tell a story of systemic environmental failure through deeply personal human characters rather than abstract policy. You're not watching a documentary about sewage. You're watching ordinary people discover that something they thought couldn't possibly be true is very, very true — and deciding what to do about it.
You will be gripped. You will also be enraged. And you will probably think very differently about where your water comes from and who is responsible for it.
Why you should watch: Dirty Business is the rare docudrama that genuinely matters. Urgent, infuriating, and brilliantly performed. Watch it with someone you trust, because you'll need to talk about it afterward.
Watch on: Channel 4 / All4
2. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Sky Atlantic/HBO Max)
If you've always wondered what the Game of Thrones fuss was about but couldn't face wading through all eight seasons — plus the House of the Dragon prequel — then this low-stakes, bite-sized, newbie-friendly spin-off might be the perfect fantasy on-ramp.
Based on George R.R. Martin's 'Dunk and Egg' novellas, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms follows Peter Claffey's leggy, endearing swordsman Ser Duncan the Tall, who, alongside his diminutive squire Egg, enters a tourney to scrape together enough coins to keep them both fed. Naturally, he blunders into some thorny court politics before long.
Set over six half-hour episodes, the show has laughs aplenty — beginning with a perfectly pitched bathroom joke that sets the show's tone beautifully — but it doesn't pull any punches when it comes to its genuinely show-stopping tourney sequences. The action is visceral and kinetic, and the consequences feel real.
What distinguishes A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms from its parent shows is its lightness. This is a small story about two people, told with warmth and wit, in a world that Martin has been building for decades. You don't need to know any of that history to fall completely in love with Dunk and Egg.
Why you should watch: Whether you're a Game of Thrones devotee or a complete newcomer to Westeros, this is simply excellent television. Warm, funny, exciting, and perfectly formed.
Watch on: Sky Atlantic / HBO Max
1. The Pitt Season 2 (HBO Max)
Finally arriving on UK screens alongside the entirety of Season 1, The Pitt's second run confirms what American audiences already knew: this is the best new drama on television.
Taking place ten months after the carnage of Season 1, Season 2 follows Noah Wyle's Dr Robbie as he clocks on for what he intends to be his last shift before an extended road trip. He immediately butts heads with his brilliant and sharp-tongued sabbatical cover — Sepideh Moafi's Dr Al-Hashimi, who arrives like a force of nature — and has to contend with the complicated return of his disgraced former protégé.
As before, The Pitt unfolds in real time — each episode covers one hour of a single shift in a Pittsburgh emergency room. It begins with cases that seem manageable: a sore tooth here, a fractured coccyx there. And then it shifts.
The medical detail is extraordinary, and deliberately so. This is television that trusts you to handle what emergency medicine actually looks like, and that trust is one of the reasons it's so compelling. When something happens in The Pitt's ER, it feels real in a way that sanitised hospital dramas simply do not.
But it's the inter-character drama — the relationships and histories and tensions among the staff — that gives the medical spectacle its emotional weight. The Pitt understands that the most important thing about what happens in an emergency room is not the medicine. It's the people doing it.
Unmissable. Unreservedly.
Why you should watch: The Pitt Season 2 is the best show on television right now. Clear your schedule, start from Season 1 if you haven't seen it, and experience one of the most remarkable pieces of dramatic storytelling in years.
Watch on: HBO Max
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The Bottom Line: TV in 2026 is Extraordinary
The best streaming and TV shows of 2026 are not just competing with each other. They're competing with cinema, with social media, with every other claim on your limited attention — and they're winning.
The Pitt is as tense and emotionally devastating as any film. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is as purely enjoyable as the best blockbusters. Dirty Business is more urgently important than most documentary films. Beef Season 2 is weirder and funnier and more committed to its vision than anything you'll find at the multiplex.
This is the golden era of television — and 2026 is proving it, month after month, with show after show that refuses to be ordinary.
Work through this list. All fourteen are worth your time. But if you can only start somewhere, start at number one.
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Frequently Asked Questions
1. What is the best streaming show of 2026? The Pitt Season 2 on HBO Max is widely considered the best streaming show of 2026 so far. This real-time medical drama set in a Pittsburgh ER has received extraordinary critical praise and audience devotion since it arrived in the US, and UK viewers are now catching up. Start from Season 1 for the full experience.
2. What are the best shows on HBO Max in 2026? HBO Max is having an exceptional 2026 for scripted television. The standout shows include The Pitt Season 2, Heated Rivalry, Industry Season 4 (HBO/BBC co-production), and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (Sky Atlantic/HBO Max co-production). Between them, these shows represent some of the best television of the year.
3. Is Industry Season 4 worth watching? Absolutely. Industry Season 4 continues the show's remarkable trajectory of reinventing itself each season. If you haven't watched the series before, start from Season 1 — but know that Season 4, with Kit Harington and Charlie Heaton among the new additions to the cast, is being talked about as the show's best yet.
4. Is there a Game of Thrones spin-off in 2026? Yes — A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on Sky Atlantic and HBO Max is a Game of Thrones spin-off based on George R.R. Martin's Dunk and Egg novellas. It's low-stakes, funny, brilliantly performed, and perfect for viewers who want to experience the world of Westeros without committing to eight seasons of the original show.
5. What is The Pitt about? The Pitt is a medical drama set in a Pittsburgh emergency room, with each episode unfolding in real time over the course of a single shift. Noah Wyle stars as Dr Robbie, a senior emergency physician. The show is known for its unflinching medical realism, extraordinary ensemble performances, and deeply compelling character drama.
6. Is Beef Season 2 on Netflix? Yes, Beef Season 2 is on Netflix. The show relocates to a country club setting and introduces new characters, including Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac, while maintaining the dark humour and moral complexity that made Season 1 such a sensation.
7. What is Dirty Business about on Channel 4? Dirty Business is a three-part docudrama about illegal sewage dumping in English waterways. David Thewlis and Jason Watkins play real-life activists who uncover the scandal; Charlotte Ritchie and Vicki Pepperdine play corporate figures trying to contain it. It's been called the most important British television series of 2026.
8. Is Heated Rivalry on HBO Max based on a book? Yes. Heated Rivalry is based on Rachel Reid's popular novel series of the same name, which follows two rival ice hockey players whose on-ice antagonism evolves into a passionate relationship. The adaptation has been praised for capturing both the sport and the central romance with conviction and authenticity.
9. What are the best British shows of 2026? British television has been outstanding in 2026. The standout shows include Dirty Business (Channel 4), Waiting for the Out (BBC), Lord of the Flies (BBC One), The Night Manager Season 2 (BBC/Prime Video), Industry Season 4 (BBC/HBO Max co-production), and Steal (Prime Video). It's been one of the strongest years for British drama in recent memory.
10. Is A Thousand Blows Season 2 good? Yes, though Season 2 is slightly grimmer and more demanding than the show's first outing. Erin Doherty is extraordinary as Mary Carr, and the show continues to deliver the period atmosphere and character complexity that made Season 1 such a hit. Fans of Peaky Blinders will feel very much at home.
Further Reading: Time Out's continuously updated guide to the best streaming and TV shows of 2026 is updated monthly and covers every major platform.
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