Nine Puzzles is a Korean crime-mystery thriller released on Disney+ in 2025, which became the platform's most-watched Korean title of the year. Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Yoon Jong-bin in a notable move into series television, the show is a twisty, atmospheric hunt for a serial killer built around a chilling signature.
Kim Da-mi stars as Yun-i, a gifted criminal profiler who, years earlier, was the prime suspect in the shocking murder of her uncle — a case that left her an outsider haunted by suspicion. When a new string of killings begins, each crime scene marked with a piece of a puzzle, she is pulled back in alongside a wary detective played by Son Suk-ku, and the scattered pieces slowly point toward her own buried past.
Praised for its moody visuals, its intricate plotting, and the tense dynamic between its two leads, Nine Puzzles helped reinvigorate Disney+'s Korean slate and was a critical and popular success. Its deliberate, clue-by-clue construction rewards viewers piecing the mystery together alongside its heroine. It is streaming on Disney+.
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+.
Get Millie Black is a gritty crime drama created by the Booker Prize-winning novelist Marlon James, marking his first work written for television. A co-production for HBO and the UK's Channel 4, the five-part series is among the first major HBO dramas set and filmed largely in Jamaica, steeping its mystery in the streets, patois and social fault lines of Kingston.
Tamara Lawrance stars as Millie-Jean Black, a Jamaican-born detective who trained at Scotland Yard before returning home to work missing-persons cases for the Jamaica Constabulary Force. When a routine disappearance collides with a Scotland Yard investigation led by a visiting detective, played by Joe Dempsie, Millie is pulled toward a dangerous web of trafficking and long-buried family wounds. Gershwyn Eustache Jnr plays her partner Curtis, and Chyna McQueen appears as Millie's sister Hibiscus.
The limited series earned rapturous reviews on both sides of the Atlantic, holding a perfect critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes and drawing praise for its performances and its vivid, unsentimental sense of place. It aired on HBO and Max in the United States in late 2024 and on Channel 4 in the UK in early 2025. It streams on HBO Max.
Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy is a Peacock limited series created by Patrick Macmanus that dramatizes the crimes of one of America's most notorious serial killers. A scripted companion to Peacock's 2021 documentary of nearly the same name, the eight-episode drama revisits Gacy's murders in 1970s Chicago while deliberately shifting the spotlight away from the killer and onto his victims and the investigation that finally stopped him.
Michael Chernus stars as Gacy, the outwardly genial contractor and neighborhood party clown who murdered at least 33 young men and boys and buried many beneath his own home. Gabriel Luna, James Badge Dale, Michael Angarano, Chris Sullivan and Marin Ireland lead a large ensemble that dramatizes the detectives, families and missed opportunities surrounding the case, foregrounding the systemic failures and prejudices that allowed Gacy to evade detection for years.
Premiering in October 2025 from NBC News Studios and Universal Content Productions, the series drew exceptional reviews, earning a rare 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes for what critics called a compassionate, morally clear reexamination of a much-sensationalized story. It streams on Peacock.
We Were Liars is a Prime Video adaptation of E. Lockhart's 2014 young-adult bestseller, developed for television by Julie Plec and Carina Adly Mackenzie of The Vampire Diaries. Faithful to the novel's dreamy, unreliable narration, the eight-episode series unfolds as both a lush summer romance and a slow-tightening psychological mystery about a family with everything to hide.
Emily Alyn Lind stars as Cadence Sinclair, the eldest grandchild of a wealthy New England dynasty that decamps each summer to its own private island. Cadence, her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and the outsider Gat call themselves the Liars, and after a mysterious accident leaves Cadence with amnesia, she spends the following year desperate to remember what really happened during Summer 16. David Morse, Mamie Gummer, Caitlin FitzGerald and Candice King anchor the adult cast as the scheming Sinclair elders.
Premiering in June 2025, the series climbed to number one on Prime Video's charts and earned generally favorable reviews for its juicy family dynamics and its handling of the book's famous gut-punch of a twist. Prime Video renewed it for a second season, drawing on Lockhart's prequel novel Family of Liars. It streams on Prime Video.
Happy Face is a Paramount+ true-crime drama created by Jennifer Cacicio and developed with Robert and Michelle King, the team behind The Good Wife and Evil. It adapts the podcast and memoir of Melissa Moore, the daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson, the so-called Happy Face Killer, who murdered at least eight people in the early 1990s and taunted authorities with smiley-face-signed letters.
Annaleigh Ashford stars as Melissa, who has spent her adult life hiding her connection to her incarcerated father, played with unnerving control by Dennis Quaid. When Jesperson resurfaces claiming responsibility for an unsolved murder, Melissa is drawn back into his orbit and into a true-crime investigation that forces her to weigh a possibly innocent man's fate against her father's manipulations. James Wolk, Tamera Tomakili and David Harewood co-star.
The eight-episode series aired in the spring of 2025 and drew praise for its central performances even as critics were divided on its tone, which balanced domestic drama against serial-killer procedural. Grounded in Moore's real efforts to reckon with her father's crimes, Happy Face offers a victim-and-family-centered angle on a genre often fixated on its killers. It streams on Paramount+.
