NEW YORK, September 22 — The story begins, as so many arguments about television do, with a list. Men’s Health has published its annual feature, “The 47 Best New Shows of 2026 (and 11 More We Can’t Wait For),” and the piece arrives with an illustration credit to Jason Speakman and imagery drawn from Netflix, HBO, Apple TV, Prime Video and ABC Entertainment.
Its premise is a familiar one for anyone who has spent the past few years scrolling through a streaming menu: genuinely original television still exists, but it now shares the landscape with a heavy volume of adaptations, continuations and reboots. Among the truly new, original series the feature cites is Severance, which it notes debuted a couple of years earlier.
The show sits alongside Pluribus, described as a show from last year, in the outlet’s accounting of what counts as original rather than derived. The feature also points to last year’s The Lowdown as an example of a rich, well-written, character-focused story that drew a major star in Ethan Hawke and connected with audiences.
The Year of the Reboot
What unfolded around those originals is a slate built almost entirely on pre-existing material. Films are being adapted into series, including Man on Fire and Cape Fear. Characters from comics and other mediums are getting their own vehicles, among them Lanterns and Spider-Noir.
Franchises are being extended with Blade Runner 2099 and Crystal Lake. And beloved shows are being rebooted outright, with Malcolm in the Middle and Scrubs among them.
At its heart, the feature’s editorial stance is one of hope toward this wave rather than despair. It singles out several of the entries as reasons for optimism. HBO’s Lanterns is modeled after True Detective, stars Kyle Chandler and Aaron Pierre as the titular Green Lanterns, and counts Watchmen producer Damon Lindelof among its producers.
Apple TV’s Cape Fear lists Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg among its producers and Javier Bardem, Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson among its cast.
The Names to Watch
Yahya Abdul-Mateen II opened 2026 with Marvel’s Wonder Man, which the feature calls one of the year’s early best shows and among the best Marvel has ever made. He next steps into Denzel Washington’s shoes for Netflix’s new take on Man on Fire. In Wonder Man, he plays the titular hero, also known as actor Simon Williams, who meets fellow actor and former fake terrorist Trevor Slattery, played by Ben Kingsley, and learns his favorite childhood movie is being remade by an acclaimed director.
Other specific titles the feature details include Netflix’s His & Hers, based on Alice Feeney’s novel of the same name, which follows a detective played by Jon Bernthal and his estranged journalist wife, played by Tessa Thompson, investigating the death of a local woman to whom both had a close connection. HBO’s A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms adapts George R.R.
Martin’s Dunk and Egg novellas, following a big, humble, anxious hedge knight played by former professional rugby player Peter Claffey and his small friend and squire, played by Dexter Sol Ansell. Peacock’s Ponies is a spy series set in 1970s Moscow about two women working with the CIA whose husbands die under mysterious circumstances, starring Haley Lu Richardson and Emilia Clarke.
NBC/Peacock’s The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, from the team behind 30 Rock, stars Tracy Morgan as a disgraced former football player and Daniel Radcliffe as the documentary filmmaker following him; it had a special debut in January and continues on a regular schedule later in February. For those involved in making television, the feature’s promise is a modest one.
It says it will keep tracking new shows all year, charting those already known to be good, those that might be good, and those that may not arrive in 2026 at all. What to watch next, then, is less a single premiere than a running ledger — one that will tell us, by December, whether the year’s originals held their ground against the reboots.
