Best TV shows of 2026 so far: Widow’s Bay, The Other Bennet Sister, Bait and more
We’re at the midpoint of 2026, which means there has been a lot of excellent TV that captivated, moved and tickled us. How many of these 13 shows have you seen?
It’s almost the end of the financial year and while responsible and organised people are collating receipts and booking appointments with accountants, that’s not the fun stocktake we want to do.
What better way to mark the mid-point of 2026 than with a look back at the best TV shows of the year so far – and to make sure you’ve checked them off your watchlist.
THE OTHER BENNET SISTER
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The Other Bennet Sister is pure joy distilled into a TV series. What an absolutely delightful experience that affirms your belief that storytelling can showcase the very best and most optimistic of humanity.
This revisionist show is centred on Mary Bennet, the least developed character in Pride and Prejudice. Here, she is a woman with seemingly few prospects of the marriage variety and an overbearing mother, but is still determined to live a life that’s hers.
She decamps to London where she finds people who appreciates her mind and her quirks, including two dashing men both vying for her affections.
Across 10 episodes, The Other Bennet Sister gives agency to a character and imbues her with significance while still maintaining the wit of Jane Austen.
WIDOW’S BAY
Apple TV
What a perfectly weird blend of comedy and horror that has notes of Stephen King and Jaws but is yet wholly original.
Created by Katie Dippold, a writer with predominantly a comedy background with the likes of Parks and Recreation, and starring Matthew Rhys, Stephen Root and Kate O’Flynn, Widow’s Bay is the breakout show of 2026 so far.
It’s set on an island off the east coast of the US where the town mayor is desperate to increase tourism but faces the unique challenge of a gnarly, centuries-old curse that manifests in bizarre and spooky ways.
HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN FROM BELFAST
Netflix
From the creator of Derry Girls, Lisa McGee, How to Get to Heaven From Belfast is a madcap comedy-drama-mystery that fully embraces the chaos of its trio of lead characters.
Old friends from their school days, they reunite when a former friend dies and they attend her wake. But something isn’t right – and that’s not just the oddballs around town. Robyn, Dara and Saoirse have the distinct feeling something else is afoot, especially after one of them peeks inside the coffin.
The mystery takes them all over Ireland, both Northern and Republic of, and further afield to Portugal where a strange, menacing woman keeps following them around.
The story itself is twisty and complex, but the whole point is to hang with these three rambunctious and opinionated friends who invite anarchy at every moment. Plus, there are some familiar faces from Derry Girls that keep popping up. That’s grand!
BAIT
Prime Video
That Riz Ahmed is a clever storyteller, weaponising his occasional inclusion on the list of potential James Bonds to craft a quirky comedy about a London-based actor of Pakistani heritage, just like he is.
It’s not a fictionalised version of himself but it’s very much engaging with his real-life profile. The character is called Shah, an actor scratching at the margins of the industry who manages to land an audition for Bond through his connections.
When his involvement is “accidentally” leaked, he becomes the focus of media and social media attention – and a lot of is threatening.
The pulsating series veers into the absurd and plays across genres in different episodes (one a rom-com, another a Bourne-esque action-thriller), as Shah descends into a full-on existential crisis.
ROOSTER
HBO Max
Rooster is such a great hang. Yes, it does have a story and even an arc, but this is a show that, at its best, is a character and vibes showpiece.
Ah, vibes, such a hard thing to nail but Rooster is that easygoing show that is very inviting into its world. And what a world - what’s more cosy than an American east coast university campus complete with ivy-covered buildings, quirky teachers, woolly jumpers, well-intentioned people and low stakes.
At the centre of it is Steve Carell’s Greg, a successful novelist who takes up a visiting professor post so he can be close to his daughter, an art history teacher, who is going through a divorce.
THE PITT
HBO Max
The Pitt made such a splash with its first season there was nowhere for it to go but down. But it somehow managed to maintain the quality of its writing, performances and production, even though parts of the internet didn’t like how dark their hero, Dr Robby (Noah Wyle), had turned.
But that was all working towards an endpoint, and one laden with emotional significance. Confronting, yes, but also resonant and true.
With its large ensemble cast playing the staff and patients of a tumultuous shift at a city hospital emergency department, The Pitt deftly weaves multiple storylines and character arcs, and without dropping the ball. Bravo.
MAXIMUM PLEASURE GUARANTEED
Apple TV
Just like gym junkies like to tell you there’s good pain and there’s bad pain, TV critics like to make the distinction between good stress and bad stress. Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is good stress. The 2019 remake of Pet Sematary is bad stress.
This series starring the incredibly talented Tatiana Maslany is a wound ball of anxiety but what it does is pushes the story from one wild beat to another as its lead character, a single mum named Paula, sinks further and further into a criminal conspiracy.
It didn’t start out that way. She was lonely and had started a paid relationship with a cam-boy, but soon becomes embroiled in a plot that is 50 per cent happening to her and 50 per cent happening because of her.
THE FALL AND RISE OF REGGIE DINKINS
7plus
OK, OK, maybe this is cheating because The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins comes out next week, but we had to squeeze it in. Tina Fey and her cadre of TV writing acolytes rarely steer us wrong, and with this, they didn’t.
Executive produced by Fey and created by Robert Carlock and Sam Means, two scribes who have worked on the likes of 30 Rock, Girls5Eva and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, it’s very much in that vein of high-joke-density, absurd humour.
It even pairs 30 Rock alumnus Tracy Morgan with Daniel Radcliffe in a story about attempted comebacks. Morgan plays Reggie Dinkins, a former football star whose career met a disgraced end, trying to reclaim his story with a documentary maker who has a professional setback of his own to overcome.
The show is funny and warm, and triggers bouts of actual laugh-out-loud moments. A rarity.
SHRINKING S3
Apple TV
Now in its third season, the Jason Segel-starring comedy-drama has realised its power lies in the expanded ensemble. The series started off with its focus on Jimmy, a widowed dad incapable of emerging from his grief to take care of his teenage daughter.
The old saying is it takes a village, but in Shrinking, that’s not just raising a child, but raising each other up to be better versions of ourselves, even when we’re kind-of sh-tty.
A gentle series with a raft of excellent performances including from Harrison Ford, Shrinking found its rhythms and has morphed into a show about kindness and being there for each other.
That sounds corny as hell, but here it really works, and still manages to incorporate some of the sharper, thornier and more caustic aspects of its characters.
DTF ST LOUIS
HBO Max
DTF St Louis resonated in part because audiences just didn’t know what to expect. Those early questions were likely along the lines of “What is this show even?”.
Tonally strange and unpredictable, and yet resonant of a deeper malaise and dissatisfaction that sets in for some during middle age, DTF St Louis tapped into a sense of restlessness – while also luring you with the mystery of a death.
Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini and David Harbour play three points of a love triangle in Clark, Carol and Floyd. Floyd is married to Carol but Carol is having an affair with Clark, and Floyd and Clark are good buddies (but are they…?). Floyd ends up dead. Dun dun dun.
It’s oddly both idiosyncratic and banal but DTF St Louis is undoubtedly magnetic. Just try to stay away, we dare you.
HACKS S5
Stan
Every now and then, someone will write a list of “best TV finales ever” and you’ll find the usual suspects such as Six Feet Under, MASH and The Good Place. There’s a strong argument that Hacks will be an addition to that rollcall.
Five seasons of this spiky comedy about Deborah and Ava, a mismatched boss/employee, mentor/mentee, pseudo-parent/child pair culminated with an emotionally poignant episode (half set in Paris!) that encapsulated all the change and growth these two characters experienced.
Hacks was never about generational warfare, it was about how to really see and accept each other, and this series worked because of the superb performances from Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder. One for the ages.
RIVALS S2
Disney+
The second season of Rivals wasn’t as shocking as the first – but that’s only because we now know what to expect from this maximalist comedy-drama set in the excesses of 1980s England among the upper class.
Only the first half of the second season has dropped so far (the back batch will be out later this year) but what delicious fun to be plunged back into this fictional corner of the Cotswolds with all those garish clothes, big hair and even bigger personalities. Not to mention all the betrayal and scheming.
David Tennant is having way too much fun as Lord Tony Baddingham, a moustache-twirling villain out to destroy his rivals in pursuit of a TV licence. Everyone is playing for keeps, and we’re here for every moment of it.
A KNIGHT OF THE SEVEN KINGDOMS
HBO Max
Wow, who saw that coming? A Game of Thrones spin-off that didn’t take itself too seriously and wasn’t bogged down in layers and layers of boring lore. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms actually knew how to have a bit of fun.
Adapted from three novellas by George R.R. Martin, it’s a surprisingly contained series – and mercifully short at six half-hour chapters – about a hedge knight who wants to find his place among the noble courts.
He enters a tournament and becomes embroiled in the politics of the realm, but unbeknownst to him, the young squire he picked up, Egg, has some high connections.
The series can be violent at times, but mostly it’s a refreshing slice of story set in the Game of Thrones world that can be taken on as its own thing. It helps to have an earnest and naïve would-be hero in Dunk.
Honourable mentions: The Comeback S3 (HBO Max), Wonder Man (Disney+), Ponies (Binge), Dog Park (ABC), Paradise S2 (Disney+), Homebodies (SBS), The Testaments (Disney+), Margot’s Got Money Troubles (Apple TV+), This is a Gardening Show (Netflix), Amandaland S2 (Stan) and Leonard and Hungry Paul (ABC)
