Fire Country is a CBS firefighting drama co-created by and starring Max Thieriot, and one of the most-watched scripted series on American broadcast television. It follows Bobby Bode Donovan, a young convict who joins a prison release program that places incarcerated firefighters on the front lines of Northern California's wildfires in exchange for a shot at reducing their sentences.
Bode is assigned to work in Edgewater, his small hometown, where he must face the family and community he left behind as he fights alongside the local Cal Fire crew. The ensemble includes Kevin Alejandro, Diane Farr, Billy Burke and Jordan Calloway, and the series balances high-stakes rescue set pieces with the family melodrama and small-town tensions at its emotional core.
A breakout hit for CBS, Fire Country consistently ranks among the top-rated scripted series on American broadcast television and has spawned an expanding franchise of spin-offs. Its blend of procedural firefighting action and soapy family drama has made it a dependable ratings anchor across multiple seasons. It streams on Paramount+.
The Testaments is a Hulu dystopian drama and the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, adapted from Margaret Atwood's 2019 Booker Prize-winning novel. Created by Bruce Miller, who stepped away from running the original series specifically to develop it, the show returns to the theocratic nation of Gilead more than a decade after Offred's story.
Ann Dowd returns as the fearsome Aunt Lydia, narrating the machinery of Gilead from the inside. The story follows two young women on opposite sides of the border: Agnes (Chase Infiniti), raised entirely within Gilead's rigid order, and Daisy (Lucy Halliday), a defiant teenager in Canada. Their converging fates drive a coming-of-age tale about resistance and complicity, with Elisabeth Moss returning as June Osborne.
Premiering in April 2026, The Testaments earned generally favorable reviews, with an 88% score on Rotten Tomatoes, for extending the franchise through a younger lens, and Hulu renewed it for a second season after it crossed 45 million hours streamed. It is streaming on Hulu.
Lanterns is an HBO original series set in James Gunn and Peter Safran's rebooted DC Universe, developed by Chris Mundy with acclaimed comics writers Damon Lindelof and Tom King. Rather than cosmic spectacle, it reframes the Green Lantern mythology as a grounded, earthbound crime drama in the vein of True Detective.
Aaron Pierre stars as John Stewart, a newly chosen Green Lantern and former Marine, partnered with the veteran, world-weary Hal Jordan (Kyle Chandler). When a murder in rural Nebraska hints at a deeper, otherworldly conspiracy, the two intergalactic cops are drawn into a mystery that unspools across decades. Kelly Macdonald and Nathan Fillion, as Guy Gardner, round out the ensemble.
Premiering in August 2026, Lanterns drew strong reviews as one of the most promising pieces of the new DCU, with critics praising the chemistry between Pierre and Chandler and its patient, character-driven storytelling. It is streaming on HBO Max.
Agatha Christie's Seven Dials is a Netflix period mystery adapted by Chris Chibnall, the creator of Broadchurch and a former Doctor Who showrunner, from Christie's 1929 novel The Seven Dials Mystery. Directed by Chris Sweeney and released in January 2026 as a three-part miniseries, it revives one of the author's lighter, thriller-tinged whodunits with a starry British cast.
Set in 1925, the story follows the spirited Lady Eileen 'Bundle' Brent, played by Mia McKenna-Bruce, who investigates the suspicious death of a Foreign Office colleague and uncovers a shadowy secret society known as the Seven Dials, along with a conspiracy tangled up in her own father's death years earlier. Martin Freeman plays Superintendent Battle, with Helena Bonham Carter as Lady Caterham, Iain Glen as Lord Caterham and Edward Bluemel among the ensemble.
The debut production of the newly formed Orchid Pictures, the series filmed across Bristol, Bath and Ronda in Spain, using the stately Badminton House to stand in for the country estate known as 'The Chimneys.' Reviews were solid, praising the cast and the handsome period trappings. It is streaming on Netflix.
Rooster is an HBO Max comedy from Bill Lawrence, the co-creator of Ted Lasso, Scrubs and Shrinking, developed with Matt Tarses. Premiering in March 2026, it hands Steve Carell one of his richest television roles since The Office and became a breakout hit for the platform, blending warm character comedy with a streak of midlife melancholy.
Carell plays Greg Russo, a middle-aged author who arrives at a small New England college ostensibly to give a talk, but whose real mission is to check up on his adult daughter Katie, an art-history instructor whose marriage is falling apart. Charly Clive plays Katie, with Danielle Deadwyler, Phil Dunster, John C. McGinley and Lauren Tsai rounding out a campus ensemble full of complications.
The series became HBO's most-watched comedy premiere in more than a decade, drawing millions of viewers in its opening days, and was quickly renewed for a second season. Carell earned an Emmy nomination for the role, anchoring a show about the messy business of being needed. It is streaming on HBO Max.
Star City is an Apple TV+ alternate-history drama and a spinoff of the acclaimed series For All Mankind, developed by that show's creators Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert and Ronald D. Moore. Premiering in May 2026, it shifts the vantage point of the space race to the other side of the Iron Curtain, telling the story of the Soviet program with the same blend of political intrigue and personal drama.
Rhys Ifans stars as Sergei Korolev, the secretive Chief Designer who masterminded the USSR's early triumphs in orbit. The ensemble includes Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O'Casey, Alice Englert and Adam Nagaitis as cosmonauts, engineers and intelligence officers at Star City, the closed training complex where the KGB hunts for a suspected traitor even as a secret mission to Venus takes shape.
Filmed in Vilnius, Lithuania and premiered at the 2026 Canneseries festival, the series earned rapturous reviews, with a 94 percent critics' score, and became one of Apple TV+'s biggest hits of the year. Because the site has no dedicated Apple TV+ field, its streaming link is listed as the source website. It is streaming on Apple TV+.
Ponies is a Peacock espionage thriller created by Susanna Fogel and David Iserson that became one of the streamer's standout original series of 2026. Premiering in January with all eight episodes released at once, it is set in 1977 Moscow at the height of the Cold War and pairs sharp period atmosphere with a wry, character-driven approach to spycraft.
Emilia Clarke stars as Bea Grant and Haley Lu Richardson as Twila Hasbeck, two secretaries at the U.S. Embassy whose CIA-officer husbands die under mysterious circumstances. Rather than retreat, the pair volunteer to become operatives themselves, proving unexpectedly effective precisely because the KGB would never suspect two embassy typists of being spies. Adrian Lester co-stars as their handler.
Critics praised the show's 1977 texture and, above all, the chemistry between its two leads, who play cleverly against the types audiences associate with them; it earned a 94 percent critics' score. Filmed in Budapest standing in for Soviet Moscow, it was nonetheless canceled after a single season despite its acclaim. It is streaming on Peacock.
The Boroughs is a Netflix science-fiction horror series created by Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews, the writers of The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance, and executive produced by the Duffer Brothers through their Stranger Things banner, Upside Down Pictures. It premiered in May 2026 as an eight-episode limited series and quickly became one of the platform's most-talked-about genre swings of the year.
Set in an idyllic desert retirement community in New Mexico, the story follows a group of older residents whose peaceful lives are shattered when they uncover a dark conspiracy involving a subterranean supernatural entity and a cult intent on stealing youth. The remarkable ensemble of screen veterans includes Alfred Molina, Alfre Woodard, Denis O'Hare, Clarke Peters, Geena Davis, Jena Malone and Bill Pullman.
Filmed around Albuquerque and Santa Fe, the series drew rave reviews, holding a 97 percent critics' score, and debuted at number two on Netflix's chart with millions of views in its first week. Despite the acclaim, Netflix did not renew it beyond its single, self-contained season. It is streaming on Netflix.
Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is a Paramount+ series and the first Star Trek show set primarily at the fabled training academy, created by Gaia Violo and run by franchise steward Alex Kurtzman alongside Noga Landau. Premiering in January 2026, it is set in the 32nd century, the far-future era first opened up by Star Trek: Discovery, as the Academy reopens to welcome its first new class of cadets in more than a century.
The young ensemble of cadets aboard the training vessel navigate friendship, rivalry and first command while learning the Federation ideals of diplomacy and empathy. Oscar winner Holly Hunter leads the adult cast as Chancellor Nahla Ake, with Paul Giamatti recurring as the antagonist Nus Braka, and franchise veterans Robert Picardo, reprising the Doctor from Voyager, and Tig Notaro, returning as engineer Jett Reno, lending the series continuity with wider Trek lore.
The show earned strong reviews, with an 85 percent critics' score, and was mounted on a lavish scale. Aimed at a younger audience without sacrificing the franchise's optimism, it leans into coming-of-age storytelling among the stars. It is streaming on Paramount+.
The Survivors is an Australian Netflix limited series adapted by Tony Ayres from Jane Harper's 2020 novel, a moody mystery from the author of The Dry. Set in the fictional Tasmanian coastal town of Evelyn Bay, the six-part drama moves between past and present to unpack how a single catastrophic day continues to shape a small community fifteen years later.
Charlie Vickers stars as Kieran Elliott, who returns home with his young family carrying guilt over a long-ago storm that killed three people, including his brother. When the body of a young woman is discovered on the beach soon after his arrival, old suspicions and buried secrets come roaring back, and the town's fragile peace begins to fracture. Yerin Ha plays Kieran's partner Mia, with Robyn Malcolm and Damien Garvey among the ensemble.
Premiering in June 2025, The Survivors became a major hit for Netflix, reaching the number-two spot on the platform's global chart in its first week and earning a perfect critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes. Atmospheric and grief-soaked, it confirmed Jane Harper's crime fiction as fertile ground for prestige television. It streams on Netflix.
The Last Frontier is an Apple TV+ action thriller created by Jon Bokenkamp, the creator of The Blacklist, together with Richard D'Ovidio. Set amid the vast, unforgiving wilderness of Alaska, it pairs survival-thriller spectacle with a conspiracy that steadily widens beyond a single catastrophe, with some episodes directed by Extraction filmmaker Sam Hargrave.
Jason Clarke, who also executive produces, stars as Frank Remnick, a lone U.S. marshal responsible for keeping order across 600,000 square miles of remote backcountry. His already difficult job turns deadly when a prison-transport plane crashes nearby and releases a group of dangerous inmates into the wild, and it soon becomes clear the crash was no accident, but part of a far larger scheme. Dominic Cooper, Haley Bennett, Simone Kessell, Dallas Goldtooth and Alfre Woodard co-star.
The ten-episode first season premiered on October 10, 2025 and rolled out weekly, offering a muscular, cat-and-mouse thriller staged against Alaska's punishing landscape. Reviewers welcomed its throwback, pulpy energy and Clarke's grounded lead performance. It streams on Apple TV+.
