Looking for something new to watch? Our critics have picked the 19 best shows to stream this weekend. Whether you’re in the mood for a dark Scottish comedy or an Italian gangster drama, there’s sure to be something for everyone in this guide.
So grab the TV remote, put your feet up and prepare to make the most of the weekend.
Benidorm Is Murder
Cosy crime drama set in Spain starring John Hannah
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Say hello to TV’s latest crime-fighting duo. Dennis Crown is a burned-out ex-police officer hiding behind a failing Scottish pub in Benidorm. Rosa is an aspiring actress, obsessed with classic British crime shows. Together, they’re the last people you would trust to solve a murder – but they keep solving them all the same.
In this six-part slice of sunny crime, John Hannah plays Dennis and Carolina Becquer is Rosa, who in the opening episode help Spanish detective Maria Hernandez (Ariadna Cabrol) to figure out what happened to a member of a Take That tribute act, whose body ended up in a hotel pool. (Six episodes)
Furious
Cat-and-mouse thriller about a female serial killer from the writer of Dying For Sex
Year: 2026
Certificate: 18
A female serial killer is taking out men one by one in this dark and edgy thriller, and new FBI Agent Alice Black (Emmy Rossum) seems to be the only one who can catch her. That’s the premise of Furious, the title of which hints toward the righteous anger that drives the killer, and the shifting perspectives on justice it features along its eight-part length. Both lead actresses are terrific – Rossum rose to fame on the US version of Shameless and gives Alice a simmering depth, while Lola Petticrew (Trespasses, Say Nothing) is on awards-worthy form in the showier role as the killer she’s tracking.
Writer Elizabeth Meriwether has a history of writing strong shows about very different women, from chirpy sitcom New Girl with Zooey Deschanel as a manic pixie figure, to the corporate fraud Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout, to Dying For Sex, with Michelle Williams as a woman rediscovering life in the face of a cancer diagnosis. Furious feels like another intriguing entry in that ever-deepening on-screen CV.
Eight episodes may feel like a lot for a cat-and-mouse story but this is also a show that’s really tangling with an issue – what women should do with righteous anger, what society expects of them, and the consequences of the difference between the two things. For anyone who’s seen one too many TV dramas that open with the body of a dead blonde, Furious should certainly strike a chord. (Eight episodes)
Ann Droid
Diane Morgan and Sue Johnston team up for a quirky sitcom
Year: 2026
Certificate: 12
Mandy and Philomena Cunk comedian Diane Morgan stars as a humanoid care robot, assigned to help recently widowed Sue (Sue Johnston) live independently in this six-part sitcom. Written by Morgan and Sarah Kendall (who created the BAFTA-nominated Frayed), it offers a playful look at whether robotic droids might one day offer something resembling genuine companionship.
Sue is given Linda – a secondhand ‘AnnDroid Z58/100 Basic Eldercare Robot’ – by her son Michael (Motherland’s Paul Ready), who is moving out of the house he’s been sharing with his mother to try to fix his failing marriage. Linda is a socially inept early model, delivering a steady stream of misunderstandings and disorder, while an unexpected bond between human and bot steadily forms.
The opening episode takes a while to find its rhythm. Some early repeated jokes wear thin, and the mother-son dynamic initially feels more strained than amusing. Stick with it though, because once Linda arrives the comedy sharpens considerably as the dry humour and awkward exchanges that have defined Morgan’s past work come to the fore, particularly through Linda’s painfully literal observations.
Beneath the laughs, themes of grief, loneliness and embracing life at an older age give the series emotional grounding. Despite its slower start, Morgan’s robotic delivery paired with the sharply observed writing makes Ann Droid an odd, charming and ultimately rewarding treat. (Six episodes)
The Vampire Lestat
Interview With The Vampire’s rock star Lestat takes centre stage
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
The third in the Interview With The Vampire series based on Anne Rice’s famous novels renames itself after its hedonistic, charismatic and self-consumed lead, centuries-old vampire Lestat de Lioncourt (Sam Reid).
Lestat is now a rock star, an ‘out’ vampire of sorts, who wears his vampire persona as armour. His fans lap it up, believing it a ‘bawdy burlesque of is he or isn’t he’, but by the end of the first episode, Lestat’s secret is out, and he returns to the bosom of his great love, his mother Gabriella (Jennifer Ehle).
The rest of the series delves deeper into Lestat’s complicated relationship with Gabriella as he wrestles with the ‘failures’ which both inspire and torment him. It’s an extravagant helter-skelter descent into how the vampire Lestat was made, that also promises a hotly anticipated encounter with the mother of all vampires, Queen of the Damned Akasha herself.
Sam Reid’s performance is glorious in its excess and commitment (he sings all his own songs). He plays the rock god Lestat as part Marc Bolan, part Iggy Pop, part Michael Hutchence (who he at times eerily resembles) – all glitter and glam, and a character so big the stage or screen can barely contain him. But he leans into the humour and pathos, too, narrating his story in the most unreliable but eloquent of ways, and speaking only as someone who has lived 265 years can. ‘Gods are not swiped,’ he says, as he observes that ‘the dark, dreary industrial world has finally submitted to automation’.
It’s enormous fun, far less sombre and brooding than the earlier series, and a riot of colour and camp from start to finish. (Seven episodes)
The Devil Wears Prada 2
Well-heeled sequel to the fashion satire starring Meryl Streep
Year: 2026
Certificate: 12
This sequel had expensive Jimmy Choos to fill and it steps into them pretty stylishly, with the original quartet of leading actors doing as fine a job as you’d expect of Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt. The satire doesn’t bite as hard as it did the first time around but the film is smart and funny, and there are plenty of satisfying one-liners about how the world has changed in 20 years.
The characters, too, have moved on. Miranda Priestly (Streep) has an amiable new husband, played by Kenneth Branagh, but she remains as frostily imperious as ever, still ruling the roost at Runway with Nigel Kipling (Tucci) as her loyal right-hand man. Meanwhile, snooty Emily (Blunt) has married, divorced, and joined Dior; while Andy (Hathaway), an editorial minion in 2006, is now a highly decorated newspaper journalist. When she and her colleagues are all unexpectedly fired by text, it isn’t long before another job falls into her lap – as features editor, back at Runway.
There are cameos aplenty including from Donatella Versace, Naomi Campbell, Rory McIlroy and Lady Gaga, to enliven it all further, but the film’s real engine is Streep purring her lines enjoyably in the middle of it all. (119 minutes)
The Fall Of Sir Douglas Weatherford
Peter Mullan stars as a grieving man with something to prove in this dark Scottish comedy
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
If you’ve ever striven – passionately – to make someone care about something they have no interest in, then this Scottish comedy should strike a chord. The Fall Of Sir Douglas Weatherford stars Peter Mullan as Kenneth, a widower and alleged descendant of a great Scottish figure who no-one seems to care about, despite Kenneth talking endlessly about him in the small village where he lives. What the locals do care about is The White Stag Of Emberfell, a Game Of Thrones-style show that’s filming nearby and has been a boon for local business.
Why should everyone care about that fantasy nonsense when it never actually happened, though? Why don’t people care about Sir Douglas? And why don’t people care about Kenneth, when he’s hurting so much? The last is our main character’s unspoken question.
Kenneth (Mullan) tries to make them care in the feature-length directorial debut of Scottish writer-director Seán Dunn, which has been described as a ‘tartan Taxi Driver’. It’s nowhere near as violent as Scorsese’s film but it’s certainly an acting showcase for Mullan and takes a dark but tender turn in its third act. Jakob Oftebro co-stars as the handsome lead of the TV show, who aspires to play Hamlet. Don’t they all. (95 minutes)
Normal (2026 film)
Nobody’s Bob Odenkirk stars in an action movie about a small town with secrets
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
Like an American Liam Neeson, Bob Odenkirk seems to be one of those actors who have found a surprising second act in action movies. After Nobody and Nobody 2, now we have Normal, a ‘neo-Western’ that re-teams the Better Call Saul star with Nobody and Nobody 2 screenwriter Derek Kolstad (also the brains behind the John Wick movies) for a small-town tale with big action.
Odenkirk – who co-wrote the story for this one – plays the new interim sheriff in Normal, Minnesota, a town that’s clearly far from normal. The mayor is played by Henry ‘The Fonz’ Winkler who, coming off the back of his turn in the dark comedy Barry, seems like a great candidate to be behind some of the events. We’re saying nothing about what’s going on here – suffice it to say that Sheriff Ulysses (Odenkirk) is going to be at the centre of a whole heap of action in the movie’s second half.
Directed by Ben Wheatley as a kind of Fargo-style, slow-burn twist on John Wick, with Odenkirk as an appealingly noble sort at the centre of it all, this is a B+ instalment in the older-man action genre. (91 minutes)
Gomorrah: The Origins
Prequel to the brilliant Italian gangster drama, set in the 1970s
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
This prequel to the great Italian gangster drama Gomorrah more than stands on its own two feet. If you remember the original series, Origins is all about the rise of Pietro Savastano who, by the time of Gomorrah, was the boss of a criminal empire – and the father of that show’s main character, Gennaro.
When we meet him here it’s 1977, and Pietro is a 16-year-old eager to impress a local gangster, Don Angelo, who in reality is barely more grown up than he is. A robbery in episode one gives Pietro the opportunity to impress, and it isn’t long before he takes a big step down a road from which there will be no turning back – although there is a girl in his life, too. How will she figure into his calculations?
Luca Lubrano’s performance as Pietro is everything you’d want it to be, while the show around him is strong on cinematography and 1970s atmosphere, with a touch of noir to how it conjures these stories of lives lived permanently on the edge. Classic with a stylish edge, this six-parter will certainly appeal to fans of the original but it stands on its own as a coming-of-age tale, too. (Six episodes)
Boris Johnson: Into Ukraine’s Kill Zone
The former PM spends 72 hours on Ukraine’s front line
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Boris Johnson standing shoulder to shoulder with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv is one of the defining images of his premiership. Now, this powerful documentary follows the former PM as he returns to Ukraine, this time reverting to his former career as a journalist, embedded with battle-hardened men to undertake an under-the-radar 72-hour journey to the front line.
Johnson wants to bring the world’s attention to the realities of the barbaric warfare that Putin has chosen to unleash on the people of Ukraine, and to find out for himself whether the Russian leader’s cruelty has a chance of succeeding in accomplishing his aims. And to do so, he is risking his life – he’s a little disconcerted to learn from his escorts (among them his Daily Mail colleague, war correspondent Richard Pendlebury), that he will be putting himself at substantial risk if he wears the reporter’s blue helmet as the Russians actively target journalists.
On entering the ‘kill zone’ near the besieged city of Zaporizhzhia, among obliterated villages and abandoned homes, he meets the infantrymen holding the line in the trenches, elite drone operators in their top-secret bases, and workers in a makeshift bomb factory. He learns, too, of the devastating personal cost of this illegal, treaty-breaking conflict to the Ukrainian fighters themselves and to their families.
This is a riveting and important film, and one that Johnson hopes will highlight the heroism of the Ukrainians, and encourage the West to act on their desperate need for continued support. It’s also the first programme from Daily Mail Originals – in association with Soho Studios – which takes the Daily Mail’s brilliant content and turns it into compelling TV and film. A full-length version, 100 per cent raw and uncut, will also be available on the Daily Mail app and Daily Mail World YouTube channel. (68 minutes)
A Toxic Love Story
Extraordinary story of threatening messages that seemed to be coming from an ex
Year: 2026
Certificate: 18
Friends of Ian said they were genuinely pleased when he met Angela, a woman who seemed to be ‘everything he ever wanted in a woman’. Ian recalls them meeting at a Starbucks in Anaheim just outside LA and, within months, the couple were married, living together and expecting twins. Then, Angela started receiving threatening emails – and it seemed they might be coming from Ian’s ex, Michelle.
The couple had split up but still owned the home that Ian, a US marshal, was now living in with Angela. Could she be sending the messages? Then, things turned violent, and we hear the story from Michelle’s point of view. This is where it starts to take a surprising turn, as the film reveals more about each person in turn.
We’ll leave the details to the documentary to reveal but, suffice to say, you’re in for quite a ride from this riveting and succinct film. Keep an eye out for some jaw-dropping footage that was shot during the unfolding madness of it all. (88 minutes)
The Curse Of Love Island
Past participants reflect on the dark side of the show
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Love Island began in 2015 and, over the years, it’s been linked to more than its fair share of tragedy, including three suicides – contestants Sophie Gradon in 2018 and Mike Thalassitis in 2019, and then presenter Caroline Flack in 2020. This two-parter digs into the darker side of the hit dating show and the pressures of living in the spotlight, speaking to contestants Luis Morrison (series one), Malin Andersson (series two), Marcel Somerville (series three) and Anton Danyluk (series five).
They’re very open about what an intense and huge part of their lives the show was. ‘For me the appeal was seeking fame, seeking validation,’ recalls Andersson, while Danyluk remembers that ‘there’s no higher high than the summer you’re preparing for Love Island’. They cringe looking back at clips of themselves across a two-parter that really shows you why people enter the contest, the reality of how they act while they’re inside versus what they’re actually feeling at the time (‘you’re automatically putting on a front straight away,’ says Andersson) and the impact of all the attention that results. And, most importantly, what happens when that goes away.
We hear from those who knew Gradon and Thalassitis to reflect on the tragedy of what happened to them, but most poignant is the section when Danyluk remembers trying to take his own life when he felt that, after the show, there was no point in going on. (Two episodes)
I, Claudius
The history of early Rome in all its salacious, dangerous glory
Year: 1976
Certificate: 15
First shown in 1976, this acclaimed drama – an adaptation of two meaty works by First World War poet and novelist Robert Graves – caused quite a stir. Full of excess, backstabbing and intrigue, this was Ancient Rome unsanitised and in all its violent and salacious glory.
Narrated by an elderly Emperor Claudius (Derek Jacobi), we run through the history of early Rome in 12 episodes, introducing its key Caesars and their often-bloody downfalls. The cast is superb, from John Hurt as Caligula (his story had to be sanitised a touch) to Brian Blessed as Augustus (count how long his death scene lasts) and, er, Christopher Biggins as Nero (it might surprise you). This will seem dated in its styling to anyone who’s watching slick new Roman drama Domina on Sky/Now, but its dramatic impact has not diminished one bit. (12 episodes)
The Staircase (2022 drama)
Colin Firth and Toni Collette star in the HBO-produced true crime dramatisation
Year: 2022
Certificate: 18
Remember the hit documentary of the same name about novelist Michael Peterson, who was accused of murdering his wife, Kathleen, in 2001? He claimed she had fallen down the stairs when drunk at their mansion in North Carolina but her head injuries led police to suspect foul play.
Produced by HBO, this is an eight-episode dramatisation of the long-running case and its jaw-dropping twists and turns – at one point, an owl was accused of being the killer! As the press and police delve into the case, buried secrets about the Peterson family begin to rise to the surface and the story is told through flashbacks and flashforwards.
Colin Firth is excellent as Michael (it was originally going to be Harrison Ford in what would have been his first leading role in a TV series), while Toni Collette plays his unfortunate wife. The original documentary on which it is based is available on Netflix. (Eight episodes)
The Rapture
Psychological thriller about a 17-year-old who claims to have psychic abilities
Year: 2026
There’s a lot going on in this five-part psychological thriller so make sure you pay attention. Adapted from Liz Jensen’s bestselling 2009 novel, it follows a paralysed clinical psychologist Dr Fox (Ruth Madeley) who, while working in a high-security psychiatric ward during a heatwave that hits a sizzling 40 degrees, meets Bethany Krall (India Amarteifio), a disturbed teenager accused of murdering her mother.
Bethany claims to have psychic abilities that allow her to foresee the future, and warns of an imminent apocalyptic climate disaster. But is she a deranged liar or telling a terrifying truth? And what role does her cult leader father play in all this? Playing out as part psychological duel, part drama about the struggles of belief, it follows Fox as she joins forces with a news reporter played by Iwan Rheon (Game Of Thrones) to find out the truth.
If Amarteifio looks familiar, she was the lead in Netflix’s Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. (Five episodes)
CIA (2026 series)
Tom Ellis stars as a CIA case officer in a show from Dick Wolf’s FBI universe
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Tom Ellis plays case officer Colin Glass, a man with ‘clearance so high you need a ladder to reach it’ in CIA, a New York-set series from Dick Wolf that lives in the same TV universe as his FBI show. CIA opens with Glass rubbing characters from the FBI the wrong way, resulting in the creation of an FBI/CIA ‘fusion cell’ to take on tricky cases, but the fusion of the by-the-book Feds with maverick spy types turns out to be far from easy.
As that implies, the show does a great line in genre cliches to set the scene. One of Glass’s colleagues tells us that, in the CIA, ‘we don’t see colour, everything we do is grey’ and it all bowls along at a good old pace, giving us the same kind of procedural action as FBI and co, but with the added spice of espionage on top, not to mention Ellis’s naturally cheeky charm in the lead – but just a sliver, because the character is pretty serious. Glass is US-born but British-raised though, so Ellis gets to keep his native accent, which helps a lot.
Still, it’s a good cocktail of characters, formula and plot, and has already been renewed for a second series in the US. (12 episodes)
The Five-Star Weekend
Jennifer Garner stars in a drama about women finding their true selves on Nantucket
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
When high-flying food blogger Hollis Shaw (Jennifer Garner) loses her husband, her world seems to fall apart – and all she wants is a distraction. That distraction comes in the form of a weekend away with friends from different parts of her life, at a fancy house in Nantucket, and that weekend is the basis of this eight-part drama based on the novel by Elin Hilderbrand.
Hilderbrand also wrote The Perfect Couple, which was also set in Nantucket. That was a murder mystery adapted with some style for Netflix and starring Nicole Kidman, but The Five-Star Weekend is much more of a drama about women coming to terms with where they are in their lives. It’s no less moreish, though.
The cast is top drawer, and includes Chloe Sevigny as the understandably bitter Tatum, Regina Hall as Dru-Ann, a woman with work issues, D’Arcy Carden as Brooke – whose husband is asking a lot of her – and Gemma Chan as Gigi, a more recent associate of Hollis. The result is a show that is so easy to watch you barely notice the episodes slip by, in between the quality of the cast and the loveliness of the setting. (Eight episodes)
Ride Or Die
Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer star in an odd-couple action comedy
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Judith (Hannah Waddingham) and Debbie (Octavia Spencer) have been friends for 20 years. They get on like a house on fire but Judith has been keeping a secret from her closest pal all this time – she’s an assassin. That all changes one night, when the two of them end up involved in a running gun battle and Judith has to come clean. Then Debbie has to go into hiding and Judith finds herself on a road that may force her to choose between her friend and her job.
Waddingham and Spencer are very different in all senses of the word, and they make for a fun odd-couple pairing at the centre of this eight-part action comedy. There’s decent support, too, from Bill Nighy as Judith’s paymaster, and the script has a wry British voice courtesy of its creator – Tessa Coates, a long-time figure on the British comedy scene known for her sketch group Massive Dad and solo stand-up. It’s nice to see her getting a global platform with this Amazon show. (Eight episodes)
Lucky (2026 series)
Anya Taylor-Joy stars in a seven-part crime thriller about a heist gone wrong
Year: 2026
Certificate: 15
Anya Taylor-Joy stars in a seven-part crime thriller that starts in high gear and stays there. Adapted from Marissa Stapley’s novel by Jonathan Tropper (also the man behind Apple’s Your Friends & Neighbours), Lucky is the story of a couple who pull off a daring heist, only for something to go wrong – leaving Lucky Armstrong (Taylor-Joy) on the run from both the law and outlaws in Las Vegas.
Sporting various haircuts and colours as the show pushes on and with her character caught somewhere between victim and action hero, Taylor-Joy is a compelling presence at the centre of this twisting tale. The wider cast also features Justified’s Timothy Olyphant as her jailbird dad and the great Annette Bening as a pivotal character whose nature we won’t reveal here. Rest assured you won’t miss her when she turns up, though.
Taken as a whole, the series manages to feel both gritty and glossy, familiar and different – like Lucky herself, its style sits somewhere between pulp fiction and class act, but the one thing that’s certain is that it’ll pull you eagerly from one episode to the next.
To learn more about the series, read our Inside Story here. (Seven episodes)
Holly Willoughby Together
The former This Morning star embarks on her own solo YouTube lifestyle show
Year: 2026
Having put those years on This Morning firmly in the past, Holly Willoughby embarks on a lifestyle series that’s designed entirely around her. ‘Holly Willoughby Together’ promises to be an unfiltered outlet for its host and certainly features more swearing than we’re used to from the daytime doyenne, as she delves into extraordinary stories about real people, cooks in the kitchen with celebrities and delivers advice on fashion, beauty and health.
Celebrity guests include Emma Bunton, Katherine Ryan and Nicole Appleton, all of whom visit Willoughby in a home-like studio that boasts a working kitchen and plush seating space.
Visitor number one is Stanley Tucci, and the pair trade quips and quaff booze as he guides her through cooking a courgette pasta. During their chat (which makes up most of the 50-minute episode) the suave actor registers his horror at British approaches to pasta – particularly to the spaghetti-cooking habits of Willoughby’s husband, who is off-camera – but also talks about his love of pork pies and pork scratchings, and offers his honest opinion on Greggs sausage rolls. Each episode is built around a single guest, as here with Tucci, but along a different theme. Episode two, with Katherine Ryan, is more of a straight chinwag.
The production standards for Together are considerably less glossy than This Morning, but could this more guerrilla operation go viral for Willoughby, and for the right reasons? The feel of it is less like watching a show, more like walking into someone’s house and watching them talk. Time will tell if that will be enough but, for now, two episodes arrive every week – on Tuesdays and Fridays at 7am.
Read Jan Moir’s review here.
