The Shows Worth Cancelling Plans For Right Now
The problem with television in 2026 is not a shortage of content. It is the opposite. The volume is so extreme that the curation problem, finding what is actually worth your time, has become the primary difficulty of the medium. Every algorithm is trying to solve this problem in ways that mostly serve the platform rather than the viewer.
What follows are shows recommended by people who watch critically and disagree with each other regularly, which is at least some evidence that the list is not the product of collective groupthink.
The best television right now is being made by people who have decided the format has no ceiling.
What follows are shows recommended by people who watch critically and disagree with each other regularly, which is at least some evidence that the list is not the product of collective groupthink.
The best television right now is being made by people who have decided the format has no ceiling.
Slow Horses on Apple TV Plus remains the most consistently excellent thing on any streaming platform, and its fourth season is its best. The spy fiction is never quite what it appears to be, the performances are exceptional across a large ensemble cast, and Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb is one of the great television characters of the past decade.
Adolescence on Netflix is the four-part drama that everyone you know has either seen or is actively avoiding because they have been told it is upsetting. Both responses are accurate. It is also the finest piece of British television writing since Happy Valley's final series, and the single-take format is not a gimmick but a structural choice that changes what the show is able to do.
Adolescence on Netflix is the four-part drama that everyone you know has either seen or is actively avoiding because they have been told it is upsetting. Both responses are accurate. It is also the finest piece of British television writing since Happy Valley's final series, and the single-take format is not a gimmick but a structural choice that changes what the show is able to do.
For those who want something lighter: The Bear season three continues to find new ways to be tense about cooking, relationships and the particular anguish of caring too much about something. It is not exactly light. It is very good.
And on BBC iPlayer, two things that deserve more attention than they received at broadcast:
Sherwood's second series, in which the Nottinghamshire mining communities of the first series face a different kind of rupture, and which contains a performance by David Morrissey that is almost offensively good.
And on BBC iPlayer, two things that deserve more attention than they received at broadcast:
Sherwood's second series, in which the Nottinghamshire mining communities of the first series face a different kind of rupture, and which contains a performance by David Morrissey that is almost offensively good.
And The Way, which takes a Welsh family on a Camino pilgrimage and makes something genuinely affecting from what sounds, in summary, like a hard sell.
The best television right now is being made by people who have decided the format has no ceiling, and several of the shows above justify that belief. Clear a night. Put the phone down. These are worth it.
The best television right now is being made by people who have decided the format has no ceiling, and several of the shows above justify that belief. Clear a night. Put the phone down. These are worth it.
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