(aka How I Learned to Stop Doomscrolling and Just Pick Something)
Somewhere around March, I made a rule: no scrolling the Netflix homepage for more than four minutes before picking something. I broke that rule almost immediately. Four minutes became eleven. Eleven became “I’ll just read the synopsis of one more thing.” That’s the version of me writing this — a guy who has, at this point, read more loglines than actual scripts this year.
Was the rule a bad idea? No. I just underestimated how much Netflix was about to throw at us in 2026.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about a “big content year”: it doesn’t feel big while you’re in it. It feels like a slow drip. A trailer here. A cast announcement there. Then one day you look at your watchlist and it’s forty titles deep and you genuinely don’t remember adding half of them. That’s roughly where I’m at. So consider this less a definitive ranking and more a guy thinking out loud about what’s actually worth clearing a Saturday for.
The one everyone’s already arguing about: Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man
I wasn’t going to lead with this. I told myself I’d save the “obvious pick” for later in the list, be a little contrarian. Then I actually sat with the premise and — no, this has to go first. Cillian Murphy is back as Tommy Shelby, pulled out of self-imposed exile after his son gets tangled in a Nazi plot, in a film that’s billed as one last ride for the Oscar winner and the BAFTA-winning team behind the original series. It’s in select theaters in early March before landing on Netflix.
I’ve watched Peaky Blinders start to finish twice. I have no defense for this. The show ended with Tommy in the wind, and honestly, that ambiguity was fine by me — some stories don’t need a bow on top. But apparently the creators disagreed, because The Immortal Man exists specifically to give Tommy the kind of reckoning the six-season run never did. I keep telling myself I’ll go in with tempered expectations. I will not go in with tempered expectations.
The one I didn’t expect to care about: Enola Holmes 3
I watched the first Enola Holmes because my sister made me. I watched the second because, fine, I’d become invested. So I guess I’m three-for-three now, because Enola Holmes 3 is taking a darker turn as Millie Bobby Brown’s Enola heads to Malta to rescue a kidnapped Sherlock, right as her own wedding to Lord Tewkesbury is about to happen. There’s something almost too on-the-nose about a movie where the plot is “your personal life falls apart the second work life demands your attention” — but maybe that’s just where my head’s at these days.
You May Also Read: Enola Holmes 3 Review: I Went In Ready to Defend It, Then the Mystery Lost Me
The blockbuster my inner action-movie kid can’t stop thinking about: The Rip
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, together again, this time as cops instead of the usual buddy-comedy energy. The film reunites the two in a pulse-pounding action thriller, and one reviewer called it one of the decade’s more entertaining law-enforcement crime thrillers — the kind of genre throwback that doesn’t feel like it’s chasing an award, just chasing a good time. I don’t need every movie to mean something. Sometimes I just want two guys my dad’s age yelling at each other in a car.
The one that snuck up on me: War Machine
I’ll be honest, I almost skipped this one when I was making my list — action-thriller fatigue is real. But War Machine follows an elite Army Ranger team whose final selection exercise turns into a fight for survival against something they never trained for, and it’s got Alan Ritchson and Dennis Quaid, which is enough star power that I stopped scrolling past it. There’s a version of this movie that’s forgettable. There’s a version that’s genuinely great. I don’t know which one we’re getting, and that uncertainty is, weirdly, part of the appeal.
The comfort-watch category, because I need those too
Not everything on my list is prestige or adrenaline. Sometimes you just want the TV equivalent of a worn-in sweater. For that, I’ve got my eye on the return of Sweet Magnolias for a fifth season set in Serenity, South Carolina, and the continuation of Avatar: The Last Airbender’s live-action run, which one first-look piece promised would push audiences to tears in its more grown-up second season. I don’t always trust marketing copy that promises tears. But I’ve been wrong before.
The one I’m most nervous about: Little House on the Prairie
This is the two-thread part of the essay, if you’re keeping track. Thread one: I’m genuinely excited about most of what’s coming. Thread two: I’m a little wary of this one, precisely because I care about it. Rebecca Sonnenshine’s new adaptation follows Laura Ingalls Wilder’s pioneers as they navigate the triumphs and struggles of shaping the American frontier, and it’s clearly positioned as a tentpole for the back half of the year. Adaptations of things I grew up on always carry this specific risk — not that they’ll be bad, but that they’ll be fine, and fine somehow stings more than bad does.
The comedy I didn’t know I needed: The Hawk
Will Ferrell playing a washed-up golf legend attempting one last Grand Slam run is, on paper, exactly the kind of premise that could go either way. But it’s Ferrell’s first major television comedy series, and the anticipation around it has been building since the trailer dropped in May. I’m not proud of how much I’m looking forward to watching a grown man have a golf-related meltdown on screen. I contain multitudes, apparently.
And the ones I’m just quietly tracking
A few others sitting in my back pocket, not because I’ve fully sold myself on them yet, but because the premise alone earned a spot on the list: Charlize Theron, Taron Egerton, and Eric Bana headlining the action thriller APEX; the Money Heist spin-off Berlin returning for a second season; and a new sci-fi crime thriller co-production with Toho Studios reviving a classic 1960 tokusatsu property, which — I’ll admit — I only added because the trailer’s visual effects work reportedly came from the same team behind Godzilla Minus One.
Here’s where I land, and it’s not exactly a conclusion. I don’t think 2026 is Netflix’s best year on paper — I’ve seen bigger, more coherent slates. But it might be its most me year, if that makes sense. A little bit of everything: the prestige crime drama, the returning comfort show, the comedy I’ll pretend I’m watching ironically, the adaptation I’m scared to be disappointed by. Maybe that’s just what “anticipated” means once you stop pretending you have refined taste and admit you just want good television.
I still haven’t fixed the four-minute rule. I don’t think I’m going to.
