The best TV shows of 2026 so far

Each season of The Pitt is one shift in a Pittsburgh emergency room, an hour per episode. Season 2 is set on a chaotic Fourth of July weekend, with Noah Wyle back as the attending doctor holding it all together.

The first season made a hit out of a format everyone thought was finished: a network-style medical drama with no gimmicks. The second was better, according to most critics, and it finished near 99 percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes across more than 150 reviews. The real-time structure makes every small case matter, and the ensemble has grown into one of the best on television. Looper called it gross, intense and still great, which is about right.

The medical scenes are graphic. Some beats repeat the first season's, so watch season 1 first, which also gives the returning characters their weight.

02 / TV show

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Season 1 · HBO · January 18 to February 22 · 6 episodes

A huge, penniless hedge knight called Dunk and his small, sharp squire Egg travel to a tournament, about a century before Game of Thrones. It is funny, humane and refreshingly low-stakes.

After two seasons of House of the Dragon's palace politics, this adaptation of George R.R. Martin's Dunk and Egg stories went the other way, and it was the right call. Most episodes run between 31 and 42 minutes, so the whole season is an evening or two. Peter Claffey and Dexter Sol Ansell make a terrific pair, and TVLine called it a cure for Game of Thrones fatigue. You don't need to have seen any Thrones to follow it.

If you want dragons, war and scheming, this is not that show. A few critics found it too simple, and fans were split on the humor.

Matthew Rhys plays the mayor of a struggling island town off the New England coast, trying to bring in tourists while his superstitious neighbors insist the island is cursed. They may be right.

Katie Dippold created it and Hiro Murai, who directed much of Atlanta, directs, and you can feel his touch in the way ordinary scenes start to feel wrong. It is mostly a comedy that turns into horror a little at a time. Rhys, best known from The Americans, is superb as a decent man in over his head. The season earned a perfect score on Rotten Tomatoes on release and Emmy talk for Rhys.

The early episodes are leisurely and lean on comedy, so give it three before deciding. One reviewer felt the ensemble was uneven outside Rhys and a few others.

Comedy legend Deborah Vance and her young writer Ava go back to Las Vegas after false reports of Deborah's death, and try to rebuild her legacy one last time.

Few comedies get to end on their own terms, and Hacks went out strong: the final season started with a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score, and RogerEbert.com's Brian Tallerico called the show practically flawless. Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder have been the best double act on television for five seasons. The writing still lands a joke every few lines, and the final episodes are about what two people owe each other after years of working together.

This is the last season of a serialized show, so start from season 1. The Hollywood Reporter felt a season so concerned with legacy stumbles at building its own.

The finance drama moves from a London trading floor to a fight over a fintech app. Harper starts her own short-selling firm and bets against the company Yasmin's partner Henry now runs, which puts their friendship on the line.

Industry keeps reinventing itself, and its fourth season is its sharpest yet. Kit Harington is now a series regular as Henry, Max Minghella joins as Whitney Halberstram, and the season is a sustained argument about money, loyalty and who gets to be ruthless. HBO says viewing was up about 30 percent on season 3, and it has renewed the show for a fifth and final season.

You need the earlier seasons. It is explicit, it is fast, and the finance jargon goes by without explanation.

06 / TV show

Wonder Man

Season 1 · Disney+ · all 8 episodes in late January

An overthinking actor with secret powers tries to win the lead in a remake of the cheesy superhero movie he loved as a kid, with help from Trevor Slattery, a washed-up actor looking for redemption.

Wonder Man is the Marvel show for people who are tired of Marvel. It is a buddy comedy about auditions, agents and the indignities of acting, and it has very little to do with the wider universe. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II is good as Simon, and Ben Kingsley, returning as Trevor, is wonderful. It reached 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, and NPR described it as a sensible, low-key comedy. All eight episodes came out at once, so it is an easy weekend binge.

If you want action, there is almost none. The jokes about Hollywood are familiar ones, and one reviewer called Kingsley the main reason to watch.

Two Green Lanterns, the veteran Hal Jordan and the new recruit John Stewart, investigate a murder in rural Nebraska that turns out to be the edge of something much bigger.

Lanterns is a superhero show that mostly behaves like a detective series, and reviewers kept reaching for True Detective as the comparison. Kyle Chandler plays Hal as a disillusioned burnout, Aaron Pierre plays John with a lot of quiet force, and their partnership is what holds the season together. It opened at 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Start here if you like crime dramas and have never cared about comic books.

Several critics found it talky and padded in the middle, and the later episodes take a big turn that not everyone liked. If you want space battles, you will wait a long time.

A newly divorced mother in a custody fight sees the cam performer she has been chatting with attacked by a masked intruder. The police call it a hoax, so she starts digging, and lands in blackmail and murder.

This is the year's best guilty-pleasure thriller, and TVLine called it one of the most underrated shows of 2026. David J. Rosen's series moves from suburban comedy to paranoia with real skill, and Tatiana Maslany is magnetic as Paula, a woman who keeps making the wrong call for understandable reasons. Jake Johnson plays her ex-husband. RogerEbert.com and others agreed that Maslany is the reason to watch.

The plot sprawls, the twists pile up, and the ending felt a little silly to several reviewers. Sex work starts the story, though it is not what the show is about.