The New Shows of the 2026 Spring TV Season

The spring season may not be well known as fertile ground for new shows you need to watch — traditionally, the fall season has been TV's time to self-promote — but the period from March to May is used to manipulate a very influential subset of people who can make or break a series' future: Emmy voters. With the Emmy eligibility period ending in May and Emmy voters having notorious long-term memory issues, springtime is the best opportunity for new shows to elbow their way into voters' goldfish brains. 

That's why this crop of new shows is looking particularly lush. HBO is starting the season off with a pair of comedies that could be surprise Emmy contenders with the limited series DTF St. Louis and Steve Carell's Rooster, and Hulu's The Testaments hopes to make an awards splash in its debut season similar to the show it was spun off from, The Handmaid's Tale. Riz Ahmed, Nicole Kidman, and Matthew Rhys are also looking to add to their Emmy collections in a trio of shows that seem tailor-made to get them another prize.

Elsewhere, Taylor Sheridan is adding to his empire with a pair of Yellowstone offshoots, The Real Housewives franchise is sprouting up in Rhode Island, and Spider-Man is challenging the colors of spring with a black-and-white noir mystery.  

Here are all the noteworthy new shows of the spring. 

The lives of the Duttons post-Yellowstone begins with Marshals, which sees Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) thrown into a CBS law enforcement procedural. There's not much to figure out here; Kayce, after a personal tragedy, joins the U.S. Marshals to catch bad guys. It's the first true Yellowstone spin-off — more are coming — but it looks like it has more in common with CBS dramas than the Paramount Network hit.

Premieres Sunday, March 1 at 8/7c on CBS

This limited series from Patriot's Steven Conrad stars Jason Bateman and David Harbour as a pair of suburban dads whose middle-aged marital malaise leads them into the world of infidelity... and murder. But it's not as grim as it sounds. The dark comedy also stars Linda Cardellini and Richard Jenkins.

Premieres Sunday, March 1 at 9/8c on HBO and HBO Max

Kevin Kline stars in this feel-good comedy as Richard Beane, a disgraced Broadway star who returns home upon learning of his mother's death and decides to inject a bit of life into the sleepy town by putting on a play at the local dinner theater. But is the town big enough for his ego? Laura Linney also stars as the town's mayor and Richard's ex, who also happens to be married to Richard's brother.

Premieres Sunday, March 1 at 9/8c on MGM+

Grey's Anatomy's Scott Speedman is going from doctor to detective for RJ Decker, a blue skies P.I. show set in Florida that will pair nicely with High Potential. You know his type: Hawaiian shirt-wearing, five o'clock shadow-having, trailer park-living hunk who solves crimes and breaks hearts.

Premieres Tuesday, March 3 at 10/9c on ABC

Step aside, Sheldon. Young Sherlock follows Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famed detective in his early years at Oxford — what a wasted opportunity to follow him in elementary school! — before he was an investigator as he takes on a murder case that has far-reaching consequences. Hero Fiennes Tiffin, nephew of Ralph and Joseph, stars as Holmes, Dónal Finn plays young Moriarty, and Max Irons, son of Jeremy, plays Sherlock's brother Mycroft.

Premieres Wednesday, March 4 on Prime Video

Do we need another cooking competion show? No, but you're going to open your gullet and let CBS force this down your throat anyway. Pro chefs cook food for judges, one of whom is Padma Lakshmi, and then one of them wins money. I fail to see how this isn't just a reheated version of every other cooking competition.

Premieres Wednesday, March 4 at 9:30/8:30c on CBS

Rachel Weisz plays a college professor going through a midlife crisis spurred by accusations of sexual misconduct against her professor husband (John Slattery) when a new hunky co-worker (Leo Woodall) comes along to fulfill her sexual fantasies. Boing! Except things don't go exactly as planned, as Weisz's character will tell you in fourth-wall-breaking asides. It's based on the 2022 book by Julia May Jones. 

Premieres Thursday, March 5 on Netflix

Steve Carell stars as a famous author of tough guy books who is invited to a college campus to do a reading, and ends up sticking around for a while to reconnect with his adult daughter (Charly Clive), who is a professor there. Both of their lives are messes, but together they might be able to fix one of them. It's another Bill Lawrence show (Ted Lasso, Scrubs, Shrinking), and it feels like it. Danielle Deadwyler, John C. McGinley, and Phil Dunster also star.

Premieres Sunday, March 8 at 10/9c on HBO and HBO Max

Netflix never met a dating show premise it didn't like — but if it did, I would LOVE to see that show! — and its latest is essentially Love Is Blind, except the only thing these contestants are is blind to each other's ages. Can a 20-something year old find love with a 50-something year old? Leo DiCaprio insists yes, but we'll find out for ourselves. 

Premieres Wednesday, March 11 on Netflix

Amazon used to be the online superstore for books, so it makes sense that Prime Video is the online superstore for book-to-streaming adaptations. Scarpetta is based on Patricia Cornwell's series of novels featuring Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner who goes beyond the autopsy table to solve crimes. Nicole Kidman plays the lead role, whose career-making case from decades before may be connected to the current mystery she's trying to solve. Jamie Lee Curtis, Bobby Cannavale, and Simon Baker also star.

Premieres Wednesday, March 11 on Prime Video

American siblings and tanning entrepreneurs (Will Forte and D'Arcy Carden) head Down Under to do business, but end up blackmailed by crooks in this crime comedy that aired on Australia's Stan late last year.

Premieres Wednesday, March 11 on Hulu

The second Yellowstone spin-off on this list is much different than the other. Whereas Kayce Dutton is off roping bad guys in Marshals, The Madison has Michelle Pfeiffer playing a woman who, after suffering a tragedy, packs up her family and leaves her home in New York City to grieve in the natural beauty of Montana. This will be a bit of a swerve for creator Taylor Sheridan, as it's a meditative look at healing and not a "get off mah land" struggle for power and land ownership.

Premieres Saturday, March 14 on Paramount+

Mia McKenna-Bruce (Agatha Christie's Seven Dials) continues her rise up the ladder of England's most promising young actresses in the limited series The Lady, in which she portrays former royal dresser — aka stylist to the royal family — Jane Andrews. Andrews rose to prominence as the dresser of Sarah Ferguson (Natalie Dormer), the Duchess of York, but fell from grace after being sentenced to prison for the the murder of her lover in 2001. The Lady was released in 2025 in the U.K.

Premieres Wednesday, March 18 on BritBox

A trio of gal pals (played by Elisabeth Moss, Kerry Washington, and Kate Mara) become a couple of gal pals after one of them is murdered in this salacious Apple TV page-turner. As the two survivors do their own investigations into the crime, they learn that their seemingly perfect lives held a lot of deep secrets and their friendship wasn't as strong as it seemed. 

Premieres Wednesday, March 18 on Apple TV+

Fox is only giving The Faithful three episodes — airing over Easter and Passover — to tell the interconnected stories of five famous women from the Bible, including Sarah, Rebekah, Hagar, Leah, and Rachel. Minnie Driver and Jeffrey Donovan star.

Premieres Sunday, March 22 at 8/7c on Fox

A struggling actor (Riz Ahmed) gets the opportunity of a lifetime when he's up for becoming the new James Bond. The meta-comedy goes inside the world of show business and the chaos that can be created from a story on Deadline.

Premieres Wednesday, March 25 on Prime Video

Can you make it through this blurb without giggling like a third-grader who just saw Lake Titicaca on a world map? The latest literary dick to hit streaming is Harry Hole, the popular — at least in Scandinavia — detective who is the main character in author Jo Nesbø's series of books. Like most TV detectives, he has his demons, and in Netflix's series he'll butt heads with a corrupt colleague while hunting down a serial killer. And even though Harry's last name is technically pronounced HOO-leh, that ain't happening. He's Harry Hole.

Premieres Thursday, March 26 on Netflix

I love a good title that's also a spoiler, and in Netflix's Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen, something (or things!) very bad is going to happen in the days leading up to a young couple's wedding. The horror series is produced by Stranger Things' Duffer Brothers and created by Haley Z. Boston, who wrote the most memorable episode of Netflix's Brand New Cherry Flavor.

Premieres Thursday, March 26 on Netflix

Did you know that Rhode Island has the highest percentage of Italian-Americans of any U.S. state? Well, you will definitely know that bit of trivia with the twelfth iteration of the Real Housewives franchise. Among the cast is Ashley Iaconetti, who got famous for crying a lot on various Bachelor franchise shows before marrying fellow Bachelor in Paradise legend Jared Haibon.

Premieres Thursday, April 2 at 9/8c on Bravo

Lucasfilm president & CCO Dave Filoni's latest Star Wars project is set after the Clone Wars and focuses on Darth Maul, the Sith who made staffs cool again. In this animated series, Maul is rebuilding his empire and eyes a disillusioned Jedi Padawan as a potential apprentice. Sam Witwer voices Maul.

Premieres Monday, April 6 on Disney+

We haven't escaped Gilead. Based on Margaret Atwood's 2019 novel and set five years after the finale of The Handmaid's Tale, The Testaments is a direct sequel to Hulu's Emmy-winning drama and follows a pair of women (Lucy Halliday and One Battle After Another breakout Chase Infiniti) attending returning character Lydia's (Ann Dowd) brutal prep school for future wives.

Premieres Wednesday, April 8 on Hulu

Call it Honey, I Shrunk You. Matthew Macfadyen and Elizabeth Banks play a couple whose marriage goes miniscule when he accidentally shrinks her down to about 1/100 size after a technological experiment goes awry. It's a dramedy that puts a very high-concept spin on power imbalances in relationships.

Premieres Thursday, April 9 on Peacock

The Spider-Verse expands with this new series featuring Spider-Man Noir, the alternate-universe character popularized in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. The live-action series stars Nicolas Cage (in his first TV lead role) as Ben Reilly, a hardboiled detective in 1930s New York who just so happens to also be a retired superhero. Spider-Noir will be available in both color and black-and-white, so if you want to make a bad life choice, go ahead and watch it in color. 

Premieres Monday, May 25 on MGM+, Wednesday May 27 on Prime Video

The long-awaited Malcolm in the Middle continuation is finally here, and it's.... just four episodes long? Malcolm in the Middle: Life's Still Unfair may be unfairly short, but producers managed to get nearly the entire cast back for the reunion. (Erik Per Sullivan, who played youngest sibling Dewey, left acting in his late teens.) The story catches up with former boy genius Malcolm (Frankie Muniz) as he's forced to hang out with his family for his parents Hal (Bryan Cranston) and Lois' (Jane Kaczmarek) 40th wedding anniversary after avoiding them for decades. 

Premieres Friday, April 10 on Hulu

Billy Magnussen starring as a disgraced tech CEO after his company is embroiled by a data leak scandal. That should be all you need to know to get you excited for AMC's new comedy The Audacity. But if you need more, the series, from writers who worked on Better Call Saul and Succession, also stars Sarah Goldberg, Lucy Punch, Rob Corddry, Simon Helberg, Zach Galifianakis, and Randall Park. 

Premieres Sunday, April 12 at 9/8c on AMC and AMC+

Prolific producer David E. Kelley's latest is an adaptation of the 2024 Rufi Thorpe novel of the same name and stars Elle Fanning as the titular financially strapped single mother who turns to OnlyFans to get by. It's a comedic light drama about the crushing pressures of the world we've built for ourselves... with a little bit of whimsy thrown in! Michelle Pfeiffer and Nick Offerman also star as Margo's divorced parents. It's the first time in their 33-year marriage that Pfeiffer has starred in one of Kelley's shows, so it must be a good part.

Premieres Sunday, April 15 on Apple TV

Is this Conformity Gate!?!?!? No, because it is real. Netflix's first major Stranger Things spin-off is an '80s-style (obviously) animated series set between Seasons 2 and 3 with new paranormal threats plaguing the same characters you're familiar with. 

Premieres Thursday, April 23 on Netflix

Apple TV is purposefully keeping things cryptic with its new horror-comedy Widow's Bay in order to drum up interest, and you know what? It's working! We want to see Matthew Rhys play the mayor of a small coastal town that he wants to turn into a tourist destination if it weren't for the locals saying the town is cursed by an unseen menace. 

Premieres Wednesday, April 29 on Apple TV

Ozark co-creator Bill Dubuque is behind this new crime drama set in South Florida about a woman awesomely named Etta Tiger Jonze (Shannon Gisela) who takes on Miami's criminal underworld after her family's drug-running business goes belly-up. 

Premieres Thursday, May 7 on Peacock

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed is a bold promise for a show's title, but with the first detail being Tatiana Maslany playing a newly divorced soccer mom unraveling a grand conspiracy, it's on the right track. The 10-episode series is directed and EP'd by David Gordon Green, and also stars Jake Johnson and Murray Bartlett. 

Premieres Wednesday, May 20 on Apple TV

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