The back half of 2026 is shaping up to be an embarrassment of riches for drama fans. Westeros is going back to war, the Bennet sisters are getting yet
The back half of 2026 is shaping up to be an embarrassment of riches for drama fans. Westeros is going back to war, the Bennet sisters are getting yet another glow-up, and somehow Timothy Olyphant is in not one, but two shows on this list. Who’s #Blessed? We are.
From prestige juggernauts wrapping up their runs to splashy literary adaptations stacked with movie stars, here are the eight dramas we can’t stop thinking about, ranked from “we’ve cleared our calendars” to “we’ve been seated since January.”
8
‘The Five-Star Weekend’ (July 9)
Pour the rosé. Jennifer Garner stars as Hollis Shaw, a food influencer reeling from a devastating loss who decides the cure is a picture-perfect girls’ trip to Nantucket. The guest list pulls friends from different chapters of her life, and the ensemble assembled to play them is a delight: Chloë Sevigny, Regina Hall, Gemma Chan, and D’Arcy Carden, with Olyphant and Harlow Jane rounding out the cast of this eight-episode adaptation of Elin Hilderbrand’s bestseller, developed by Bekah Brunstetter.
Streamers have been chasing the beach-read boom ever since Netflix’s The Perfect Couple became a sensation, and Hilderbrand’s brand of sun-soaked secrets practically begs for the treatment. Add Garner, whose girl-next-door warmth makes her the ideal anchor for a story about grief hiding under a shiny veneer, and you have the kind of summer show tailor-made for TikTok’s clipping era. The trailer already has our book club group chat buzzing.
7
‘The Good Daughter’ (November 12)
Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy in The Good DaughterImage via Peacock
Karin Slaughter is adapting her own novel for this one, which should tell you how protective she is of it. Rose Byrne and Meghann Fahy play Samantha and Charlotte Quinn, sisters who have spent twenty years trying to rebuild lives shattered by a single night of violence. When a modern attack rocks their petite town, Charlotte, now a lawyer like her father, is the first witness on the scene, and the case starts prying open every secret the family buried. (Brendan Gleeson is also in this thing.) Byrne and Fahy as trauma-bonded sisters? Someone in casting deserves a raise.
Fahy has been on an absolute tear since The White Lotus, and Byrne remains one of the most underrated dramatic actors working. All episodes drop on November 12, which means this crime thriller is built for a single, gut-wrenching weekend binge.
6
‘Pride & Prejudice’ (Fall 2026)
Mrs. Bennett walking in a field with her daughtersImage via Netflix
Yes, another one. No, we’re not complaining. Dolly Alderton penned this six-part take on Jane Austen’s most beloved novel, with Heartstopper director Euros Lyn at the helm. Emma Corrin steps in as Elizabeth Bennet opposite Jack Lowden’s Mr. Darcy, and the supporting cast is stacked: Olivia Colman, Rufus Sewell, Jamie Demetriou, Daryl McCormack, Freya Mavor, and Louis Partridge among them.
Every generation gets its Lizzie and Darcy, and the internet has been litigating this pairing since the casting news broke. The February teaser only poured gasoline on the discourse. Alderton understands current romance and its humiliations better than almost anyone writing today, which makes her the most stimulating person to take a crack at Austen in years. Expect yearning. Expect hand flexes. Expect think pieces. A lot of think pieces.
5
‘The Gilded Age’ Season 4 (Late 2026)
Harry Richardson as Larry with Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector at Gladys’ wedding in The Gilded Age Season 3.Image via HBO
Bertha Russell changed society, and now the bill is coming due. Season 4 finds Carrie Coon’s social titan reckoning with the cost of her triumphs while Christine Baranski’s Agnes van Rhijn seizes a chance to claw back her ancient position. Marian (Louisa Jacobson) forges a modern path, and Peggy (Denée Benton) fights to win over her future in-laws. Cynthia Nixon, Morgan Spector, Taissa Farmiga, and Audra McDonald are all back too for this next eight-episode season.
But the modern arrivals are half the fun here. Dennis Haysbert, Jim Gaffigan, Elizabeth Marvel, and Tony winner Bonnie Milligan are all joining the party, and Jordan Donica has been promoted to series regular. This show has steadily transformed from a polite curiosity into appointment television, and the petty warfare of ancient New York money has never been more delicious. Late 2026 cannot come soon enough.
4
‘Lucky’ (July 15)
Anya Taylor-Joy: con artist, on the run, working the hell out of a blunt blonde bob. Sold yet? In this narrow series based on Marissa Stapley’s bestselling novel (a Reese’s Book Club pick, naturally), Taylor-Joy plays Lucky, a grifter forced to flee when a multimillion-dollar heist goes sideways. Jonathan Tropper (Banshee) created the series, Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine produces along with Taylor-Joy, through her own banner.
The supporting cast is basically a heist crew of character actors: Annette Bening, Timothy Olyphant (him again), Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Drew Starkey, William Fichtner, and Clifton Collins Jr. The explosive trailer promises a pulpy, propulsive ride, and frankly, Taylor-Joy has been owed a great TV vehicle since The Queen’s Gambit. Count us in.
3
‘East of Eden’ (Fall 2026)
Florence Pugh in East of EdenImage via Netflix
Florence Pugh as one of American literature’s great monsters? We are, as we said earlier, seated. Zoe Kazan spent years shaping this seven-episode adaptation of John Steinbeck’s sprawling classic, retold through the eyes of Cathy Ames, the manipulative antihero whose life entangles generations of the Trask family. Christopher Abbott and Mike Faist play brothers Adam and Charles Trask, with Ciarán Hinds, Tracy Letts, Martha Plimpton, and Hoon Lee filling out the ensemble.
Garth Davis (Lion) directed the first four episodes and Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre took the final three, and the May teaser, in which Pugh murmurs about wanting to disappear, already looks gorgeous and devastating in equal measure. Pugh doing capital-V villainy is uncharted territory for her, and centering Cathy reframes a novel that has been adapted before but never quite like this. Sorry to Austen, but this is the literary event series of the fall.
Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz
Which Taylor Sheridan
Show Do You Belong In?
Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown
Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn’t write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for.
Yellowstone
Landman
Tulsa King
Mayor of Kingstown
FIND YOUR WORLD →
01
Where does your power come from?
In Sheridan’s world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
ALand, legacy, and a name that’s been feared and respected for generations.
BKnowing the deal better than anyone else in the room — and being willing to walk away first.
CReputation. I’ve earned it the strenuous way, and everyone in the room knows it.
DBeing the only person both sides will talk to. That makes me indispensable — and unsafe.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Who do you put first, no matter what?
Loyalty in Sheridan’s universe is always absolute — and always costly.
AFamily — blood or chosen. The ranch, the name, the people who carry it with me.
BThe company — or whoever’s signing the cheques. Loyalty follows the contract.
CMy crew. The men who stood with me when it counted — I don’t abandon them for anything.
DMy community — even when my community is a powder keg and I’m the only thing stopping it from blowing.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
Someone crosses a line. How do you respond?
Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it’s crossed.
AQuietly, decisively, and in a way that sends a message to everyone watching.
BI outmanoeuvre them legally, financially, and politically before they even know I’ve moved.
CDirectly. Old school. You cross me, you hear about it to your face — and then you deal with the consequences.
DI absorb it, calculate the fallout, and find the move that keeps the whole system from collapsing.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
Where do you feel most in your element?
Sheridan’s worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
AWide open land — mountains, sky, silence. Somewhere you can see trouble coming from a mile away.
BThe oil fields of West Texas — brutal, lucrative, and indifferent to whoever happens to be standing on top of them.
CA mid-size city where the rules haven’t quite caught up yet — fertile ground for someone with vision and nerve.
DA rust-belt town built around a prison — where everyone’s life is shaped by what’s inside those walls.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
How do you feel about operating in the grey?
Nobody in a Sheridan show has immaculate hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
AI do what has to be done to protect what’s mine. I’ll answer for it eventually — but not today.
BGrey is just business. The line moves depending on what’s at stake, and I move with it.
CI have a code — it’s not the law’s code, but it’s mine, and I don’t break it.
DI’ve made peace with it. Keeping the peace requires compromises most people don’t have the stomach for.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
What are you actually fighting to hold onto?
Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they’re defending.
AA way of life that the current world is doing everything it can to erase.
BMy position — and the leverage that comes with being the person everyone needs to close a deal.
CRelevance. I’ve been away, I’ve been written off — and I’m proving that was a mistake.
DWhatever frail order I’ve managed to build — because without it, everything burns.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
How do you lead?
Authority in Sheridan’s world is never given — it’s established, maintained, and constantly tested.
ABy example and force of will. People follow me because they believe in what I’m protecting — and because they know what happens if they don’t.
BThrough negotiation and leverage. I don’t need people to like me — I need them to need me.
CBy being the smartest, most experienced person in the room and making sure everyone quietly knows it.
DBy being the placid centre of a situation that would spiral without me — and accepting that nobody thanks you for it.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
Someone modern arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction?
Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you.
AThey’ll learn. Or they won’t. Either way, the land was here before them and it’ll be here after.
BI figure out what they want, what they’re worth, and whether they’re an asset or a problem — swift.
CI was the outsider once. I give them a chance — one — to show they understand respect.
DNew players destabilise everything I’ve built. I assess the threat and manage it before it manages me.
NEXT QUESTION →
09
What has your position cost you?
Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
AMy family’s peace — maybe their innocence. The ranch demands everything, and I’ve let it take too much.
BRelationships, time, any version of a normal life. The job eats everything that isn’t nailed down.
CYears. Decades in some cases. Time I can’t get back — but I’m not done yet.
DMy conscience, mostly. And the ability to ever fully trust anyone on either side of the wall.
NEXT QUESTION →
10
When it’s over, what do you want people to say?
Sheridan’s characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind.
AThat I held the line. That the land is still ours and everything I did was worth it.
BThat I was the best at what I did and that no deal ever got closed without me at the table.
CThat I built something real, somewhere nobody expected it, and I did it on my own terms.
DThat I kept the peace when nobody else could — and that the town is still standing because of it.
REVEAL MY SHOW →
Sheridan Has Spoken
You Belong In…
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you’re complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
Yellowstone
Landman
Tulsa King
Mayor of Kingstown
You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the current world’s indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you’re willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family’s weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what’s yours, you don’t escalate — you finish it. You’re not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone’s world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are lean, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You’re a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: piercing, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they’ll do to get it. You’re not naive enough to think this world is fair. You’re clever enough to be the one deciding who it’s fair to.
You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you’re not above reminding people that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they’d be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they’re more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don’t need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you’re the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky’s world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You’ve made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
2
‘House of the Dragon’ Season 3 (June 21)
Emma D’Arcy in House of the Dragon (2022)Image via HBO
The Dance of the Dragons stops dancing around its promised destruction and goes straight to open war. Season 3 picks up right where the finale’s mobilizing armies left off, headlined by the long-awaited Battle of the Gullet, a naval bloodbath between the Velaryon fleet and the Triarchy. Emma D’Arcy’s newly emboldened Rhaenyra gains the North as Cregan Stark’s Winter Wolves march south, Matt Smith’s Daemon emerges from Harrenhal fully committed to the cause, and Ewan Mitchell’s Aemond keeps making choices that should prompt his mother, Alicent (Olivia Cooke) to have him committed.
Book readers know the carnage that awaits, and with showrunner Ryan Condal confirming the series ends with Season 4, every episode of these eight counts.
1
‘The Bear’ Season 5 (June 25)
Carmy Berzatto standing with Sydney Adamu behind him, both of them looking upset, in the Season 4 finale of The BearImage via FX
Last call at The Bear. The fifth and final season opens after Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and Sugar (Abby Elliott) learn that Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) has walked away from the industry entirely, leaving the restaurant in their hands. With no money, a possible sale looming, and a literal torrential storm bearing down on Chicago, the modern partners have to rally the whole crew for one last service and one last shot at a Michelin star. White, Edebiri, Moss-Bachrach, Elliott, Lionel Boyce, Liza Colón-Zayas, and Matty Matheson all return, with Oliver Platt, Will Poulter, and Jamie Lee Curtis also popping up in and out of the kitchen.
No show wrecks us quite like this one, and knowing it ends here makes the anticipation almost unbearable. FX confirmed in May that this is the final season, and all eight episodes hit Hulu on June 25. Will Carmy find peace? Unclear. Will we be crying into a bowl of risotto by the finale? Yes, chef
The Bear
Release Date
2022 – 2026-00-00
Network
Hulu
Showrunner
Christopher Storer
Directors
Ramy Youssef
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