Patrick Freyne: Lola Petticrew, a bearded grump and Siobhán McSweeney’s sneaky Irish: My top TV shows of 2026 so far

When I was a boy, they had not yet fully eradicated smallpox, and we would spend our time, as a family, watching the cube in the corner (a television, not my brother David). Now, we have our own portable viewing machines, and none of us has shared a livingroom in years. Nonetheless, we still have television “shows” in which Americans, Britons and worse (Dubliners) dramatise reality for us, which we then harvest from the sky using the arcane magic of our enchanted pocket rectangles. Indeed, as an old Elizabethan, I still like to watch these oldfangled entertainments despite the fact that most people prefer Instagram microdramas, having anxiety and recreational laughing gas. Here are my favourite programmes so far from the year of our Lord 2026.The PittTwo seasons into The Pitt (Sky and Now) and I’m pretty sure I can do operations now. I’ve bought my own scrubs and scalpel. You’ll often find me down at A&E, asking the nurses if I can “have a go”. (They’re pretty understaffed, so they often let me.)READ MOREThe Pitt differs from its medical-drama predecessors (including ER, in which Noah Wyle, its star and executive producer, once featured) in its hyperrealistic real-time depiction of an over-run Pittsburgh emergency room. It prioritises this over medical love affairs or dramatically obscure ailments. You see a lot of close-up operations on necks and heads and eyes and guts. The characters are great, the politics of US medical funding are presented in all their grotesquerie, the pace is frenetic and the operations are really easy I reckon, and I should definitely be allowed to do them. Just give me a go.Rivals and Heated RivalryI tuned into these popular dramas on Disney+ and Now to learn about (a) the economics of regional TV broadcasting in the 1980s, and (b) ice hockey, because I am, as you’ll know from the previous paragraph, a gifted polymath. I was shocked and appalled to learn that the attractive characters/actors in both shows spend much of their time engaged, not in regional TV broadcasting/ice hockey, but in rumpy-pumpy, jiggery-pokery, the Chatt-awooga Choo-Choo, Mammy and Daddy’s special bedtime exercises, the fishwife’s prerogative, Dr Feelgood’s Goodtime Remedy and, also, riding. I’m speaking euphemistically because of The Irish Times’ large child readership. Both shows are heartfelt filth. 10 out of 10.[ The Great British Bake Off review: Nigella Lawson brings danger and charm. Even Paul Hollywood looks humbledOpens in new window ]The Muppet ShowWe all love teensy freaks with squeaky voices and mad hair. But enough about guest star Sabrina Carpenter. I can’t believe Disney+ only brought The Muppet Show back for one special episode. It should have inaugurated it as a weekly happening, ideally instead of the news. The revived show was overseen by the Fraggle-voiced human Muppet Seth Rogen, and Carpenter, the Carry On sex poppet, was an ideal choice to bounce off Miss Piggy, the programme’s resident amphibian amorist. Indeed, there were times I looked from starlet to Muppet and Muppet to starlet and couldn’t tell which was which.Small ProphetsA bearded grump who’s up to something in his suburban shed? I’m a bearded grump! I have a suburban shed! I’m often up to something! Mackenzie Crook’s gentle BBC comedy features tiny weird humanoids, much like The Muppet Show, except these are intricately animated, kept in big jars and can prophesise the future. This is a fantastically mundane, and mundanely fantastical story about grief, love, magic and friendship. I love it. It’s funny and odd and beautiful. Another series is coming soon. The LowdownIt’s clearly the season of messy, bearded old weirdos. (We have so little and we give so much.) This Disney+ series stars Ethan Hawke as a crusty old investigative journalist/bookshop owner who gets lured into an investigation linked to historical injustice and contemporary racism in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s dark and funny, and it comes from the pen and camera of Sterlin Harjo, the creator of Reservation Dogs. It somehow manages to be an uncynical sunlit noir, which kind of defeats the point of noir, I guess, but I’m too dazzled by Hawke’s excellent cowboy shirts to care.The Traitors IrelandI’m just happy to see Siobhán McSweeney flounce magnificently around a castle flanked by Irish wolfhounds. In my view, giving her a castle is a form of reparations for what was done to Cork by its ancient enemy (Dublin), and everything else is just a bonus. [ The Traitors Ireland: What makes this intoxicating show so utterly gripping?Opens in new window ]She is also here to oversee the native Irish, freed of the shackles of the capital, all engaged in their favourite pastimes: gossiping and rooting out traitors. I believe there’s a row of shallow graves out back. RTÉ’s version is better than the BBC’s, because being a colonised people makes you sneakier.The Other Bennet SisterIt’s about time Mary Bennet from Pride and Prejudice got a spin-off. It has only been 213 years, and Mary is the most overlooked and least man-crazy of Jane Austen’s Bennet sisters. (Pride and Prejudice was originally called Man Crazy.) Other minor characters from other franchises were given a go long ago: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, from Hamlet; Velma, from Scooby-Doo; Robert F Kennedy jnr, from the Kennedy family; the more sluggish Kardashians. Based on a novel by Janet Hadlow, and starring the excellent Ella Bruccoleri and talented Corkonian hunk Dónal Finn, The Other Bennet Sister is a moving, funny and triumphant celebration of eccentricity and difference.Widow's Bay: Stephen Root, Matthew Rhys and Kate O'Flynn. Photograph: Apple TV Widow’s BayA weird town of insular, closed-minded busybodies besieged by arcane customs, eccentric shut-ins and grotesque freaks. And now I’m homesick. Widow’s Bay is a bit like Eerie, Indiana or Gravity Falls in that it’s about a small, isolated community experiencing unexplained paranormal phenomena, except, unlike those excellent shows, this Apple TV series is aimed at adults and has a prestige-TV budget. It somehow transcends the horror tropes it very successfully pastiches to become legitimately scary on its own terms. It’s also very funny and charming. It deservedly won loads of Emmys, including one for the British actor Kate O’Flynn, who is brilliant and should be in everything. Room to ImproveI will have nothing said against my adult architectural son, Dermot Bannon. His quest for the perfectly transparent house continues. Its completion will signal that end-times are upon us. FuriousElizabeth Meriwether’s Disney crime drama is the best show of the year. Emmy Rossum, Quincy Tyler Bernstine and Scoot McNairy (just a normal US name) all play differently damaged lawfolk on the trail of a trafficked girl turned serial killer played by the brilliant Irish actor Lola Petticrew (just a normal Irish name). It’s more than a crime caper. It’s also a story about institutional callousness and deficits in care, and it is, most importantly, a show about consequential female rage (hence the title). It is dark, complex and thought-provoking, and despite this, it’s also often funny and humane. I will be furious if it is not renewed.*(*It actually has been renewed.)