We're nearly at the midpoint of 2026, which means it's time to check in on my favorite shows of the year so far.
Alan Sepinwall
2025 offered a pretty spectacular cream of the crop. This year has been a bit sparser. We're really in the post-Peak TV era now. There were weeks in March, April, and May — what were once the prime Emmy-bait season, where there were always way too many shows to watch — where I looked at the list of premieres and wondered if there as anything worth writing about.
But the good stuff has been really, really good, often in improbable ways. Below, I've got 10 shows featuring unlikely heroes of both the physical and musical kind, medical professionals in need of self-healing, multiple terrifying island visits, and more.
Honorable mentions: You'll see several other Apple shows on the list, and Tatiana Maslany's Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is another entertaining entry on what's been a great half-year for the streamer. Stephen Colbert's Michigan public access show episode that ran the day after his final Late Show may have been the single funniest hour of television of the past six months. Abbott Elementary remains reliably amusing, and Zahn McClarnon was terrific as always in the latest season of Dark Winds, even if this wasn't my favorite story they've told.
In alphabetical order:
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (HBO/HBO Max)
Alan Sepinwall
Even with its gargantuan title character, the latest Game of Thrones spinoff took a smaller-is-better approach. No dragons to be found — other than a puppet that caused a lot of trouble — in this modestly-scaled buddy adventure about the strong but simple Dunk (Peter Claffley) and his clever young squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). The entire first season took place at a jousting tournament in a relative backwater of Westeros. That focus gave the show and its two leads plenty of time to develop Dunk and Eggs both as individuals and an endearing duo, making both the comedy and emotion of this straightforward tale more engaging than anything George R.R. Martin-related has been in a minute.