Variety’s editors opened their fall preview on 9 September 2026 with a concession: peak TV is over. Then they listed 55 shows anyway. Their point was that nobody could watch it all, and the list was not meant to be complete. Even the summer’s output was piling up unwatched, with “Furious” on Hulu, “Sterling Point” on Prime Video, HBO’s “Lanterns” and Netflix’s “My Brilliant Career” named as titles the writers admitted they had not caught up on either.
The calendar
September was only nine days old, and Season 2 of “The Gentlemen” and FX’s “The Drop: A Snowfall Saga” had already premiered. The dates that followed read like a timetable:
Fox put out a “Best Medicine” and “Doc” double feature on Sept. 22. CBS brought “Marshals” and “Tracker” on Oct. 4. “Abbott Elementary” started its sixth season on Oct. 7, the same night as the One Chicago shows, and “Law & Order: SVU” and “Law & Order” followed on Oct. 8. ABC’s “9-1-1,” “9-1-1: Nashville” and “Grey’s Anatomy” were due on Oct. 15. NBC planned to bring back “St. Denis Medical” for Season 3 and “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins” for Season 2 on Nov. 2.
Streaming and cable were scattered through the same weeks. Comedy Central’s “South America,” the show formerly known as “South Park,” premiered on Sept. 16 after an Emmys win and a name change that mocked Trump. Hulu’s “Reasonable Doubt” returned for Season 4 on Oct. 6, and “Tulsa King” began its fourth season on Paramount+ on Oct. 16. Netflix’s “Lupin: Part 4” came back on Oct. 23, its first run since 2023, and Season 2 of “Black Doves,” with Keira Knightley, landed on Nov. 5. “Percy Jackson and the Olympians” was set to return for Season 3 on Disney+ on Nov. 20.
Some familiar names were absent. Variety said CBS’ “Matlock” and ABC’s “High Potential” would premiere midseason, and Netflix’s “Pride & Prejudice” remake, with Emma Corrin as Lizzy Bennet, had no date yet. Newsday’s Verne Gay later put the Netflix remake on Dec. 3.
A thinner fall and one giant exception
Gay, writing on 25 September, argued that the idea of a fall season barely means anything now. ABC and Fox would introduce no scripted series at all this fall, a first. He tied the shift to football: to cover contracts worth $100 billion for the 2023-33 cycle, the NFL has spread further across prime time and streaming. The streamers, weighed down by fixed costs of their own, would have fewer launches too. Gay found little in those three months that could not wait a week.
The exception was “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” arriving on HBO Max on Dec. 25. Variety conceded that Christmas is “decidedly … in the winter” but included it anyway, expecting a major pop culture event that would also stir debate because of J.K. Rowling. Newsday noted that the TV industry has long counted all of December as part of the fall, or the fall/holiday season.
The numbers behind it are large. Newsday called it the most expensive TV series ever, costing $100 million an episode, which comes to nearly $1 billion for season one. It follows eight films that took nearly $8 billion at the box office between 2001 and 2011. Season one runs eight episodes. Dominic McLaughlin plays Harry, Arabella Stanton is Hermione Granger and Alastair Stout is Ron Weasley, with Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape and John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore. Francesca Gardiner and Mark Mylod, both of “Succession,” write and direct.
Sources
- Fall TV Preview: 55 Most Anticipated New and Returning Shows of 2026 – Variety
- 'Harry Potter' and 12 more must-see shows this fall – Newsday
