has published its favorite television show picks for 2026 so far, and the list puts a lighter, funnier Westeros spin-off among the standouts. It also singles out Lucy Punch’s Amanda, a character who has already joined the ranks of the most memorable British comedy antiheroes.
That makes the roundup an easy click for viewers looking for what to watch next on HBO Max, iPlayer and Prime Video. It is not a full-year verdict, but it does tell audiences which current series are setting the pace before the year is half done.
The Westeros offshoot is described as a good-humored detour from Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, with Ser Dunk and Egg emerging as a pair worth backing as they head for the tourney. Dunk is chasing his dream of becoming a knight, and the simpler storytelling, mostly sweet characters and smaller scale make the show feel easier to enjoy. That softness does not last forever. The series is still not without gore, and the Targaryen twist sends it into a blood-soaked spiral.
Punch’s work in Amanda is treated with similar enthusiasm. The character is a divorced middle-class mum, an influencer and a kitchen shop worker, and by the second series the appeal is partly that viewers want her dream of moving into a bigger house in SoHa to come true. Philippa Dunne plays Anne, Amanda’s longsuffering friend and dogsbody, while Joanna Lumley appears as her overbearing mother. Together, they turn the show into what is described as a celebration of some of the best women in comedy, with Amanda compared to the kind of delusional, narcissistic, indefatigable figure usually reserved for Alan Partridge or David Brent.
Other entries widen the frame. Patrick Stewart lends his voice to a dead pig’s head in Bait, while Guz Khan plays an entrepreneur trying to disrupt the taxi market with Muber. Riz Ahmed’s semi-autobiographical project follows an actor trying to become the next James Bond, and one sharply delivered exchange undercuts the fantasy with a joke about whether Bond could really look like him. In Bait, the absurdity is wrapped in family drama, and the result is framed as a woozy tale of a borderline breakdown caused by the pressure to fit into the mainstream without losing touch with the community you come from.
The most moving entry is the 90-minute iPlayer film about the Blitz, which speaks to survivors from across the British Isles and turns memory into testimony. One detail carries unusual weight: the death of Patsy Moneypenny between filming and broadcast makes the project especially poignant. Ted Bush in Cardiff remembers going to the pictures with his dad, then coming home to find their house reduced to rubble. That is why the list feels less like a casual ranking than a snapshot of what television is doing now: mixing scale, memory and character while leaving readers with a clear question about which of these shows will still belong at the top when 2026 is over.
