Three series tie for the strongest critic consensus of 2026: Widow’s Bay, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and Reggie Dinkins, each on 7 of 8 lists

A consensus shortlist built from eight major best-of-2026 TV lists — Rolling Stone, The Guardian, IndieWire, Variety, Metacritic, Vulture, TheWrap and TIME — covering 40 series, current through 1 September 2026. A show’s score is how many of the eight lists include it: inclusion consensus, not a single objective winner, and the year is not over.

Method: 40 series scraped from eight editorial best-of-2026 TV lists (Rolling Stone, The Guardian, IndieWire, Variety, Metacritic, Vulture, TheWrap, TIME), current through 2026-09-01. A series’ number is the count of lists naming it; ties are ordered alphabetically. Some returning-series season labels remain in titles; platform, genre and premiere details were gathered from live web results and can vary by region. 20 series on 2 lists were cut for space from the table.