As the small-screen calendar crosses its midway point, 2026 has already delivered an unusually strong mix of returning favorites, franchise surprises, bruising character studies, oddball genre swings, and stealth MVPs. The year’s best TV has not been defined by one dominant mode so much as a willingness to let shows get specific: a medical procedural stretched across a single day, a horror-comedy island curse, a “Star Wars” underworld saga, a country-club revenge war, a sex-work dramedy, and a legacy comedy about refusing to disappear quietly.
The strongest series so far has also pushed past easy loglines. “Margo’s Got Money Troubles” and “Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed” turn potentially lurid premises into humane portraits of women under pressure. “The Pitt” and “The Bear” reaffirm the pleasures of workplace drama when the characters are drawn with care. “Cape Fear,” “The Terror: Devil in Silver,” “Silo,” and “Widow’s Bay” prove genre TV is still at its best when dread and mystery have emotional stakes. And “Hacks,” “Rooster,” “Industry,” and “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” all understand, in very different ways, that a familiar mode can still feel alive when the writing and performances are sharp enough.
In no particular order, here are the best TV shows of 2026 so far.
“The Pitt”
Two seasons in and everyone’s favorite nerve-chafing medical procedural has turned into prestige TV’s most reliable stress machine. The sheer propulsion of R. Scott Gemmill’s humanist medical drama is reason enough to tune in, even before you get to the staggering performances, fluid direction, and overriding empathy of the whole enterprise. Set over a single harried 24-hour period during Pittsburgh’s Fourth of July celebration, Season Two deepens the medical staff’s surrogate family dynamic while paying off arcs only gestured at in Season One. Noah Wyle continues to give one of TV’s most compelling performances as Dr. Robby, a selfless, tormented doctor whose dedication to his staff and patients often comes at the cost of his own mental well-being. The ensemble remains tremendous, the pacing never lets up, and the show’s commitment to procedural competence never overwhelms its humanity. “The Pitt” remains competence porn of the highest order and is currently one of the most watchable workplace dramas of the last decade. – Nicholas Laskin [read our review]
“Wonder Man”
The recent failure of Craig Gillespie’s “Supergirl” seemed to confirm what many have suspected for some time: superhero media, once the dominant cultural force of the DCEU and MCU eras, may be nearing its expiration date. The sly appeal of Marvel’s “Wonder Man” is that it can be enjoyed as a standalone insider buddy comedy by pretty much anyone. It helps if you remember Ben Kingsley’s Trevor Slattery from Shane Black’s terrific “Iron Man 3,” but the show’s pleasures are not built around homework. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II gets one of his richest roles to date as a working actor stumbling into a superhero gig, and Kingsley proves an ideal comic foil. Creators Destin Daniel Cretton and Andrew Guest keep things refreshingly low on retina-scorching CGI, exposition dumps, and the post-“Guardians of the Galaxy” quip machine. What remains is warmth, wit, and real chemistry, a reminder that Marvel can still feel surprising when it stops trying to go bigger. -NL [read our review]
“A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms”
“Game of Thrones” remains one of the last truly great water-cooler shows, and “House of the Dragon” has often struggled to recapture that palace intrigue on the same scale. What makes “A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms” so refreshing is the approach taken by George R.R. Martin and Ira Parker: instead of expanding the mythology, the series scales down. It’s a small, often odd, sometimes very funny character study whose tone sits closer to Martin McDonagh than Tolkien, with a blessedly limited scope and episodes that rarely overstay their welcome. Former rugby player Peter Claffey gives a charmingly daft, deeply winning performance as the hapless Ser Duncan the Tall, while Dexter Sol Ansell brings warmth to his unlikely young companion. The show can’t match the majesty of “GOT” at its peak, but it doesn’t need to. It offers proof that there are plenty of stories left to tell in Westeros, not all of them epic by design.– NL [read our review]
“DTF St. Louis”
On paper, HBO’s dark suburban satire “DTF St. Louis” promises scandal, squirmy humor, sexual impropriety, and bad decisions. It delivers all of that, but the surprise is how much sadness and genuine feeling Steve Conrad finds underneath the sordidness. Conrad has long been drawn to uncomfortable, emotionally bruised characters, from “Patriot” to his scripts for Gore Verbinski’s “The Weather Man” and Ben Stiller’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” and this may be one of his strongest ensembles yet. Jason Bateman weaponizes his trademark smarm to chilling effect; David Harbor has rarely been better; and Richard Jenkins and Linda Cardellini give the show added weight. What makes “DTF St. Louis” so strong is that it never gawks at its characters as freaks or pats itself on the back for judging them. It’s a strangely empathic comedy about lies, loneliness, self-deception, and why suburban secrets rarely stay buried for long. – NL [read our review]
“The Terror: Devil in Silver”
Part of the pleasure in each new iteration of “The Terror” is how familiar notes of dread and unease seep into a new standalone story. The third season, “The Terror: Devil in Silver,” available on AMC and Shudder, is by far the anthology’s most modern and, in many ways, its most unsettling. Echoing psych-ward classics like Sam Fuller’s “Shock Corridor” and John Carpenter’s “The Ward,” the season plunges into the headspace of an unreliable protagonist trapped inside a psychiatric hospital where doctors, patients, paranoia, guilt, and horrifying visions begin to blur. Dan Stevens gives the show its engine, delivering another characteristically committed performance full of intensity and destabilized perception. But the real key is the pace: languid, patient, and immeasurably boosted by the moody direction of Karyn Kusama, who helms the first two episodes. “Devil in Silver” is one of the year’s more purely suspenseful small-screen experiences, a horror story that understands dread works best when it takes its time. – NL
