The best upcoming TV shows for October 2026 and beyond

Mike Flanagan just doesn’t miss when it comes to adapting Stephen King. Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep and The Life of Chuck all did the great man’s tales the justice they deserve while adding new facets, and his take on King’s debut novel looks to be attempting the same trick. With eight episodes to use rather than 90 minutes, Flanagan has the space to build up Carrie White’s isolation rather than rushing to the famous prom night conflagration.

Perhaps Flanagan’s biggest gambit is the fact he’s dragging the story out of the 1970s and into the now. Carrie’s bullying plays out on social media instead of just in the locker-room, and the school itself gets kitted out with the modern trappings you’d rather it didn’t need – active shooter drills included. It’s an obvious way of updating the original material, but not necessarily an ineffective one: teenage cruelty might not have changed much in 50 years, but the tools it uses have.

Release date: 7 October 2026

Marvel’s WandaVision TV trilogy will come to a close this October, and we’re not sure how excited anyone will be for the news. It’s been five years since the genuinely interesting WandaVision kicked off Disney+’s golden era, but the shine has long since worn off Marvel’s TV series offerings – a true case of genre fatigue has set in among viewers.

Still, there’s a decent hook here: Paul Bettany is back as White Vision. With his memories restored, he’s trying to work out exactly who and what he is. James Spader returns as Ultron, which essentially means we get to watch Vision have it out with his dad, and in fact the show is apparently framed around three generations of fraught fatherhood, with Vision and Wanda’s son also playing a major role.

Arriving a couple of months prior to Avengers: Doomsday hitting cinemas, this show has a couple of important jobs to do: round off this story arc and get millions of wary (and weary) viewers hyped for Marvel’s biggest blockbuster of the year.

Release date: 14 October 2026

A prequel nobody asked for (it’s been 17 years since the last Friday the 13th movie!) gets a lot more interesting when you see that A24 is attached. The indie studio that essentially invented “elevated horror” lending its name to a spin-off buys this some credibility it might not otherwise have earned, and it seems that Crystal Lake wants to be a character study first and a slasher second.

And the character in question isn’t Jason Voorhess. He’s one of horror’s most recognisable stalk-and-slash villains, hockey mask and all, but the premise of this show means he may feature only as a memory. Linda Cardellini’s grieving mother, Pamela Voorhees, is the main focus here. Whether audiences who came for Jason’s machete kills will be happy to sit through a slow-burn origin story about his mum instead remains to be seen.
Release date: 15 October 2026

Moving to a sleepy small town for a quieter life is, as any crime-drama veteran knows, the surest way to guarantee the opposite. Liev Schreiber learns this the hard way as Jonah Lynn, an ex-soldier and burned-out Philadelphia homicide detective whose retreat to rural western Pennsylvania lasts roughly five minutes before a serial killer comes calling.

That killer is Jurek Walter, played by the always-watchable Stephen Graham, and he has Jonah’s family firmly in his sights – despite being firmly locked behind bars. That means Jonah must send his surrogate daughter, FBI agent Saga Bauer (Zazie Beetz), on a perilous undercover mission to prison.

Readers of Lars Kepler’s bestselling novels may raise an eyebrow: their hero, Stockholm detective Joona Linna, has been given an Anglicised name and shipped across the Atlantic, where he’s traded his rollmop herrings for a Philly cheesesteak.

Release date: 30 October 2026

In the first season, Keira Knightley’s double-dealing spy Helen Webb got us into the Christmas spirit with a sizeable body count. Round two shifts the calendar back to Bonfire Night which – which feels appropriate for a show about a woman betraying the state.

Helen is still passing secrets to the shadowy Black Doves, only now her husband is on the verge of becoming Prime Minister, which makes the whole treason thing an even bigger deal. With her handler Mrs Reed (Sarah Lancashire) under threat from a power grab within the organisation, Helen reunites with her bestie Sam (Ben Whishaw), a depressed hitman in a career rut. Newcomers to the cast include Neve Campbell, Ambika Mod and Sam Riley.

Release date: 5 November 2026

Let’s address the elf in the room: Rings of Power’s first two seasons arrived to a distinctly mixed reception, with plenty of viewers finding all that Second Age lore more nap-inducing than epic. Season three arrives with plenty to prove, and with the budget to match – this remains, reportedly, the most expensive television show ever made, and bar some nifty CGI we’ve yet to see why.

Five years on from the fall of Eregion, Sauron’s no longer bothering to hide who he is, and Middle-earth is bracing for outright war. We’re crossing our fingers that the extra scale and bigger stakes finally translate into the drama the show’s been chasing, because we’re not sure more nicely lit walking and talking is worth tuning in for.

Release date: 11 November 2026

50 years on from Blade Runner 2049, Los Angeles has been rebuilt — just not by the humans who used to run it. Hunter Schafer’s Cora, a human fugitive on the run, adopts one last identity as a Blade Runner, teaming up with Olwen (Michelle Yeoh), a replicant with only days left to live.

This eight-part series has taken its time getting here. Filming wrapped back in December 2024, making post-production nigh-on two years. Whether that’s because it’s been made with meticulous care, or due to something less encouraging, is the question hanging over the whole thing — but with Ridley Scott as executive producer, we’re hoping the time was spent on more than just visual effects.

Release date: 25 November 2026

Jane Austen’s novel has been adapted so many times that fans online have taken to calling the current wave of period romance a “yearn-aissance” – which is either encouraging or alarming, depending on your tolerance for bonnets and bodices. This six-part Netflix version at least has serious credentials behind it: the script comes from Dolly Alderton, and the cast includes Emma Corrin as Elizabeth Bennet, Jack Lowden as Mr. Darcy, Olivia Colman as Mrs. Bennet and Rufus Sewell as Mr. Bennet.

Early reactions to the first teaser (embedded above) have been mixed, with some fans clearly wary of another reinvention of a story that already has fantastic 1995 (TV) and 2005 (movie) adaptations. But the talented cast and Alderton’s ear for romantic comedy suggests this could be another banger – if it’s appropriate to describe a drama set in Regency England as such.

Release date: 3 December 2026

The announcement of this show raised many questions. Firstly, do we really need a new screen adaptation of the Harry Potter books when there’s a bunch of perfectly serviceable movies to stream? Secondly, are the characters and plotlines interesting enough to justify all that time and investment? And lastly, when the books’ author delights in using her fame and fortune to further a divisive agenda that millions of people find distressing, do we really want to be shining a spotlight on her?

Controversy aside, there’s clearly a market for this: the teaser clocked 277 million views in 48 hours. And, with Succession producer Francesca Gardiner and Game of Thrones director Mark Mylod running the show and a cast that includes bags of talent, there’s every sign it’ll be well made too. HBO has plans for a full seven seasons, so barring an absolute disaster, it looks like the Boy Wizard is here to stay.

Release date: Christmas 2026

Part of what makes The Pitt so appealing is the real-time structure – every episode in a season is one hour of the same relentless shift, which gives the whole thing a frantic, sweaty-palmed realism that other medical dramas can’t match. But that’s only half of why it’s worked so well for two seasons running: the other half is that we’ve become attached to watching the people staffing the ER, and not just the parade of gruesome emergencies they’re patching up.

Season three picks things up four months after the events of season two, and puts Dr Robby (Noah Wyle) straight back on shift following his sabbatical – because the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital was always going to throw him straight into the fire. We expect the show to lean into what his return has cost him rather than let him quietly get back to business as usual, with the wider team – Dana, Langdon, McKay, King and co – along for another 12-hour shift that’s sure to test everyone’s nerves.

Release date: January 2027

It’s hard to overstate the influence of Neuromancer. William Gibson’s 1984 novel didn’t just launch cyberpunk as a category – it gave the internet age half its vocabulary, long before the world wide web had even arrived. You can spot its DNA in everything from The Matrix to Ghost in the Shell to hundreds of video games that never quite admitted how much they owed it.

Which might partly explain why nobody’s managed to make a screen adaptation until now. Neuromancer has spent 40-plus years with an “unfilmable” tag attached – the plot is dense, the descriptions of cyberspace deliberately abstract – and other adaptation attempts have quietly died in development for decades. Apple’s version, led by showrunner Graham Roland, arrives at a time when the technology finally exists to visualise what Gibson could only describe.

The ubiquitous Callum Turner stars as Case, a hacker stripped of his ability to access the matrix after crossing his employer, attempting to claw his way back in with the help of Molly (Briana Middleton), a mercenary with retractable razor blades for fingernails and mirrored lenses for eyes.

Release date: 22 January 2027