Best streaming and TV shows of 2026 (so far) – updated for April

The great murder-mystery revival rolls on with another adaptation of the grand dame of the genre’s back catalogue. Seven Dials is not Agatha Christie’s most robustly plotted series, a foray into spy-thriller terrain more elegantly essayed by John Buchan and Erskine Childers, but this Netflix three-parter is brisk fun for anyone tempted by a blend of Enola Holmes’ vivacity in Downton Abbey settings. Mia McKenna-Bruce and Martin Freeman nail the assignment as the gutsy amateur sleuth and wry detective on the case of a mysterious conspiracy. 

📍 The real-life filming locations behind Agatha Christie’s Seven Dials

Idris Elba returns for yet another hazardous trip on public transport in this follow-up to 2023’s hugely enjoyable plane-in-peril series. This time, it’s a Berlin-based subway train that goes (metaphorically) off the rails, as Elba’s Sam Nelson finds himself juggling terrorist demands and trigger-happy polizei. A commandeered locomotive (especially one making regular stops) might be inherently less tense than an airborne hostage crisis, but despite the venue downgrade, there are ridiculous twists and turns aplenty, and Elba remains hugely watchable as the growly commuter who should probably consider just buying a bike.

The O.C. in space? Not quite but Star Trek’s first YA show does an admirable job of folding teen melodrama into a 32nd century package. The bumpy first episode strains to set the scene (a class of teens sign up to Starfleet’s space college – think Hogwarts with an Apple store aesthetic and more Klingons), but an engaging rhythm of didactic space fable and hormone-fuelled misadventure soon kicks in. Trek references abound, but this works perfectly well as a standalone teen romp, and Holly Hunter and Paul Giamatti lend it all gravitas.

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, which begins with a group of armed robbers storming the trading floor of a City of London pension fund. Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner is the junior analyst swept up in it all, delivering a steely performance as she unravels the conspiracy over six hugely fun episodes. 

A boozy Succession based on an oenophile manga, this French-American-Japanese drama was a curio even by Apple’s standards when it arrived in 2023. Season 1 had Camille (Fleur Geffrier) and Issei (Tomohisa Yamashita) competing for their father’s inheritance in a series of fiendish wine challenges, and now the pair join forces to investigate a mysterious yet legendary vintage. Some of the wilder flights of fancy have been decanted, but the epicurean sibling rivalry remains compelling. A rare vintage worth savouring, once you get a taste for it.

If you want something done properly, do it yourself. After 2017’s lamentable movie adaptation, The Snowman, Norwegian novelist Jo Nesbø brings his own Nordic noir novels to life as screenwriter. Taken from the sixth Harry Hole (‘Hoh-la’) book, The Devil’s Star, this is an artfully woven tapestry of police corruption, gang violence and a serial killer with a diamond fetish. Hole (Tobias Santelmann) himself is almost comically hard-boiled, but this is nonetheless a potent mix of dark character work and labyrinthine Scandi-crime that will hopefully prove to the first season of many.

Would this John le Carré spy thriller still compel and surprise ten years on and without the input of the great espionage writer? For a few episodes, it seemed not. Tom Hiddleston’s jaded spook roamed London and Medellin in crisply ironed shirts looking for a suitably gripping storyline and flirting with Diego Calva’s brooding gun-runner Teddy Dos Santos. Then – spoiler alert – Hugh Laurie’s alpha dog Richard Roper rose from the grave and it was game on again. The finale was a jolt of pure small-screen nihilism too. 

📍 The globe-trotting locations behind The Night Manager season 2

Of Steven Knight’s countless projects, A Thousand Blows best recaptures the rock ‘n’ roll swagger of Peaky Blinders. But the bruises are mounting up in a slightly grimmer second season: bull-necked brawler Sugar has hit the bottle; disgraced Jamaican boxer Hezekiah Moscow is forced into the underground fight circuit; and arch thief Mary Carr has been toppled from her perch as head of all-girl crime gang the Forty Elephants. Erin Doherty’s Carr remains a shining light, wrapping the entire show around her like a voluminous Victorian ballgown.

Between Apple TV’s The Studio and HBO’s The Comeback, we’ve been spoiled for sharply-written, toe-curling Hollywood satire of late. This six-part series from writer/star Riz Ahmed offers something rather different, though, with Ahmed as struggling actor Shah Latif, whose career ignites after he auditions to be the next James Bond. The resulting exploration of fame, racism and ingrained self-loathing is seasoned with wild flights of fancy (Patrick Stewart cameos as a pig’s head) and the meta movie commentary is entirely on-point. But it’s the culture-clash comedy mined from Shah’s archly-observed dynamic with his Pakistani family that delivers the real goods here.

William Golding’s GCSE staple gets the Jack Thorne treatment in this svelte BBC adaptation of the 1954 novel. After a plane crash leaves a bunch of tweenage schoolboys marooned on a desert island, social norms swiftly melt away, leaving tribal savagery in this classic cautionary tale of feral youth. Seven decades on the story has lost none of its bite, delving into the mire of humanity’s worst instincts in a Darwinian nightmare that puts Yellowjackets to shame. In an inspired move, each of the four episodes unfolds from a different boy’s perspective giving far deeper insight into both their backgrounds and motivations — great for audiences, upsetting for Golding purists.

Prison dramas tend to show the very worst of incarcerated life but this Dennis Kelly drama looks for the light inside. Based on the memoir by Andy West, it does an admirable job of humanising its inmates as anxiety-riddled teacher Dan (Josh Finan) takes a job teaching a philosophy class at HMP Kenworth. Fully-realised characters do an exemplary job of portraying the hope, sadness, vulnerability and emotional toll of prison, while Dan’s own exploration of masculinity and the dark shadow of his abusive ex-con father are tragic, tearful and painfully honest. 

The delightfully dark and deranged Netflix black comedy ups its stakes by shifting locations to a White Lotus-style country club and throwing in some thrillingly absurdist subplots that stretch as far as the Seoul high life. While it might lack the grounded bite of its more streamlined precursor, Beef season 2 makes for chaotically comedic binge, complete with Coens-esque chases, Carey Mulligan and Oscar Isaac trapped in a Scenes from a Marriage reprise, and a spine-chilling turn from Oscar-winner Youn Yuh-jung – a country mile from the cuddly grandma in Minari.

If you entered 2026 not realising an ice hockey drama would dominate your early year viewing, you’re in good company. This adaptation of Rachel Reid’s novel series, with Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie as ice hockey players whose match day feuding evolves into a passionate affair, is a sweaty, sexy romp of a show that takes its stickhandling seriously both on and off the ice. The central relationship between Canadian all-star and Russian bad-boy is sweet and believable too.

Having started out as a little-watched satire about London bankers, Industry is now a phenomenon, evolving beyond a Square Mile Hunger Games into a fascinating character study of Machiavellian finance types that reinvents itself each season. Here, the ever-relevant narrative brings in Stranger Things’ Charlie Heaton as an investigative reporter, delivers Kit Harington an extraordinary episode 2 showcase, and reunites dream team Myha’la and Ken Leung. Nasty, ingenious and relentlessly compelling – though you will need a shower after every episode.

This three-part UK docudrama about illegal sewage dumping in England's waterways could be the year's most important TV series. David Thewlis and Jason Watkins play the accidental activists who uncover an industry-wide stink after their local river in Oxfordshire turns brown; Charlotte Ritchie and Vicki Pepperdine are suitably shifty as cogs in the corporate machine that allows water companies to prioritise profit over cleaning up their act. You'll be gripped and enraged in equal measure.

If you’ve ever wondered what all the Game of Thrones fuss was about but couldn’t face wading through all eight seasons (not to mention 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 RR Martin’s ‘Dunc & Egg’ novellas, this sees Peter Claffey as leggy swordsman Ser Duncan The Tall, who, alongside his diminutive squire Egg, enters a tourney to scrape together some coins, only to blunder into some thorny court politics. Set over six (mainly) half-hour episodes, this has laughs aplenty (beginning with a perfectly pitched poo gag) but doesn’t pull any punches (or kicks, or maces to the head) with its show-stopping tourney sequences. 

Finally arriving on UK screens alongside the entirety of its first season, this second run of the award-hoovering medical drama takes place 10 months after the A&E carnage of season 1. Noah Wyle’s Dr Robbie clocks on for his last shift before an extended road trip, butting heads with his sassy sabbatical cover (Sepideh Moafi’s Dr Al-Hashimi), while struggling with the return of his disgraced former protégé. As before, this real-time account of a single shift in a Pittsburgh ER starts small – a sore tooth, a fractured coccyx – only to shift up a gear both in terms of its gruesome medical detail (you’ll never look at a shard of glass the same way) and the compelling inter-character drama. Unmissable.