The Listener’s 20 most-anticipated international TV shows of the year

The Bennet sisters and mother of Netflix’s Pride and Prejudice including Emma Corrin (at left) and Olivia Colman (third from left). (Netflix)

Having already covered what the local screen industry is throwing our way on television in 2026, here’s a survey of what’s coming down the international pipeline via streamers and broadcasters. Some big shows – like The Pitt, The Night Manager and A
Knight of the Seven Kingdoms – are already here. Elsewhere, it’s looking like a big year for book-based dramas, including two Austens, a Margaret Attwood, a Jo Nesbø and a rare adaptation of work by veteran crime writer Patricia Cornwell, whose Kay Scarpetta books helped invent forensic crime drama decades ago. NZ debut dates for shows have been added where the information is available.

THE ALTRUISTS

An eight-part true-life drama centred on Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced founder of the failed crypto exchange FTX, starring Julia Garner and Anthony Boyle. A release date might have to wait for the decision on Bankman-Fried’s appeal against his multiple fraud convictions. (Netflix)

BEEF

Season one of Lee Sung Jin’s road-rage comedy-drama won five prime-time Emmys in 2023. Now, he’s thrown it all out and come back with a new setting, new cast (including Oscar Isaac and Carey Mulligan) and a new beef. It was an anthology series all along! (Netflix, April 16)

BLADE RUNNER 2099

This has been a long time coming. Ridley Scott announced in 2021 that a 10-part TV series – effectively a sequel to the Blade Runner 2049 film – had been written. Its story is set 50 years on and centres on the unlikely alliance between a fugitive replicant (Hunter Schafer) and an ageing Blade Runner (Michelle Yeoh). (Prime Video)

THE BOROUGHS

With Stranger Things finally resolved (or not), the Duffer brothers are about to decamp to a new deal with Paramount. But their production company still has business with Netflix, including this supernatural series about a group of oddball retirees in New Mexico who band together to stop an otherworldly threat. Starring Alfred Molina and Geena Davis. (Netflix)

THE BOYS FROM BRAZIL

Ira Levin’s 1976 Nazi-hunter novel became a memorable film in 1978. Here, Peter Morgan (The Crown) works the book into a five-part thriller starring Jeremy Strong, in his first TV lead since Succession, and Gillian Anderson. The producers are calling it a “bold reimagining” of the text. (Netflix)

DTF ST LOUIS

A dark comedy with Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini and David Harbour starring as three bored suburbanites brought together by a hookup app. The swinging is all good fun – until one of them winds up dead. Also, don’t ask your kids what “DTF” stands for and definitely don’t google it. (Sky HBO)

EAST OF EDEN

The streets of Ōamaru and Devonport were made over as 19th-century California for this adaptation of the classic Steinbeck novel. Starring Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames and written by Zoe Kazan (The Deuce), whose grandfather Elia Kazan directed the 1955 film version. (Netflix)

Jamie Bell and Richard Gadd in Half Man (HBO).

HALF MAN

Richard Gadd’s follow-up to Baby Reindeer is the decade-spanning story of two mates in Glasgow, played by Gadd and Jamie Bell (Rocketman). The two “brothers” bond as troubled teenagers and fall out as adults, while the city evolves around them. Gadd might be hoping this one doesn’t end up in any sensational interviews with Piers Morgan. (Sky HBO)

JO NESBØ’S DETECTIVE HOLE

Norwegian polymath Jo Nesbø is, with more than 50 million books sold, his nation’s most successful author. Here he’s adapted his own series of whodunnit novels featuring brilliant but troubled Oslo detective Harry Hole, who has a serial killer to find and a corrupt colleague in the way. (Netflix)

LORD OF THE FLIES

Adolescence creator Jack Thorne is behind this BBC adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel (the first for television, remarkably) about young men and the veneer of civilisation. Four parts and a cast of young unknowns. (TVNZ)

Michelle Pfeiffer and Elle Fanning in Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Apple TV)

MARGO’S GOT MONEY TROUBLES

This adaptation of Rufi Thorpe’s 2024 comedic novel comes with some big names attached. It’s created by TV legend David E Kelley (Big Little Lies), and Elle Fanning stars as Margo, a financially stretched woman who strikes fortune with OnlyFans. Nick Offerman and Michelle Pfeiffer play her parents. (Apple TV, April 15)

THE MINIATURE WIFE

Les (Matthew Macfadyen, Succession) and Lindy (Elizabeth Banks, The Hunger Games) are a husband and wife whose battle for dominance takes an unexpected twist when she is shrunk to doll size. Metaphorical magic realist romantic dramedy from the people who brought you Boardwalk Empire. (TVNZ)

THE OTHER BENNET SISTER

A 10-part series adapted from Janice Ludlow’s 2020 novel, which sought to give Mary, the most unassuming of the Bennet sisters, the personal story Jane Austen didn’t write for her in Pride and Prejudice. Ella Bruccoleri (Call the Midwife, Bridgerton) plays Mary; the supporting cast includes Richard E Grant and Ruth Jones. (TVNZ)

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

“It is a truth universally acknowledged,” runs a cheeky headline on the Netflix website, “that each generation gets its own adaptation of the Austen classic.” This one, written by UK memoirist Dolly Alderton and starring Olivia Colman, Rufus Sewell, Emma Corrin (The Crown) and many others, has been hotly anticipated. (Netflix)

ROOSTER

The highly bankable Bill Lawrence (Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Shrinking, all of which also have new seasons) is behind this show, in which Steve Carell plays Greg Russo, a popular novelist (and not the real-life guy who wrote Mortal Kombat) trying to mend things with his adult daughter. Expectations are high. (Sky HBO, March)

Kay Scarpetta (Nicole Kidman) in Scarpetta (Prime)

SCARPETTA

With Nicole Kidman and Jamie Lee Curtis playing the leads and 35 books to draw on, this adaptation of Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta novels is shaping up as a procedural drama juggernaut. Kidman plays the sharp-eyed medical examiner and Jamie Lee Curtis (who worked for years to bring Cornwell’s work to screen) is her sister Dorothy. (Prime Video, March 11)

Spider-Noir starring Nicholas Cage (Prime Video)

SPIDER-NOIR

When Nicolas Cage turned up in 2018’s Into the Spider-Verse as Spider-Man Noir, a 1930s private investigator with Spidey powers, it just seemed like another classic Cage cameo. But no. Here’s a whole live-action series with Cage in the lead role. You’ll be able to choose between full colour and nostalgic black and white versions. (Prime Video)

THE TESTAMENTS

Margaret Atwood wrote The Testaments, her follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, with a line open to the producers of the Hulu adaptation of the first book, to make sure they understood where her story was going. Fifteen years on, it’s still grim in Gilead. Ann Dowd returns as Aunt Lydia, otherwise it’s a new cast, including One Battle After Another sensation Chase Infiniti. (Disney+, April 26)

TRINITY

Cop drama king Jed Mercurio reunites with Richard Madden, the star of Bodyguard, for this nine-part thriller. Madden plays a charismatic US Defense Secretary and Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Loki) is the navy officer who begins to suspect his motives. (And yes, there’s a new Line of Duty due this year, too.) (Netflix)

Matthew Rhys in Widows Bay (Apple TV)

WIDOW’S BAY

Matthew Rhys (The Americans) plays the mayor of a quaint island town off the New England coast. He wants to bring back tourists and revive the place. No, say locals, there is a curse. Turns out they’re right. According to the publicity, it “blends genuine horror with character-driven comedy”. (Apple TV, April 29)

Welcome returns and last gasps

The year brings back seasons of Listener-approved shows including Aussie black comedy crime series Deadloch (Prime, March 11), which switches location from Tasmania to Darwin, a fourth season of football comedy Ted Lasso (this time featuring a female team, Apple TV), a sixth season of Slow Horses, and Netflix thrillers Black Doves, The Gentlemen, Lupin and The Diplomat. Among the bigger titles coming to an end with final seasons are Outlander (Neon, March), the Karl Urban and Antony Starr-starring superhero spoof The Boys (Prime), and the Melanie Lynskey-starring Yellowjackets (Neon).

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