The pressure to deliver a good comedy movie if you were involved with a previous classic must be quite something. Ben Stiller knows that better than most – he was the face of some iconic comedies in the 1990s and 2000s, but now is generally associated with more serious fare like Severance. His new movie for Apple TV, though, suggests that he's going back to the old ways, at least temporarily.

The Dink stars Jake Johnson of New Girl fame (or, at least, that's where I know and love him from), in a sports-themed comedy movie that not only calls Dodgeball to mind, but in fact deliberately invokes that genre classic in its trailer. The film will hit Apple TV on 24 July, making it a potential summer crowd-pleaser.

To be honest, the trailer actually makes the movie look like the sort of thing that Netflix normally pumps out – low-quality fare that nonetheless will do big numbers because people undeniably do love an easy watch on a summer evening. That might be me doing it a disservice, though, and Stiller has clearly shown that he can create a properly interesting project.

He's producing the movie this time, but he also cameos in the trailer. He's a doctor who tells Johnson's character Dusty, a past-his-prime tennis semi-pro, that the best way to rehabilitate an injured wrist is to swap to pickleball. Dusty just so happens to despise the sport as a bastardised version of tennis for the old and weak, but perhaps being forced to play it could change his mind?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to estimate how the movie might unfold from this premise, with Dusty coming to grudgingly love the pickleball community he's been vilifying for so long, before realising that he could be a way bigger star in this nascent sport than he ever was in tennis. Sprinkled along the way are some other fun cameos, not least from Andy Roddick – and Ed Harris seems to have been roped in as a fuddy-duddy tennis defender.

The Dink looks like a movie that might divide audiences. If you know ahead of time that it's not shooting for the moon, it could end up being a really fun and self-contained little oasis of amusement during what'll probably be a hot and sticky late July. If you don't, then it might disappoint – but we'll get a better sense of that risk when it comes out in around a month's time.

There's been no shortage of news from Apple recently, from showcasing what Siri AI will do, through to the changes that will come with iOS 27. One of those changes will have an impact on Apple TV too.

It's a minor thing, but it's really important, because iOS 27 will allow Apple TV to be updated from the Home app on your iPhone. That means that if there's a critical tvOS update, you can make that happen from your iPhone.

Previously, you'd have to turn on the Apple TV and run the update from there, which is an extra step that some might find inconvenient.

Of course, Apple TV also offers automatic updates (if you turn the option on), but often if you want the new software immediately, it's better to find the option to install it manually.

So why are updates important? The biggest thing that most will probably point to is the latest features, but that's not at the top of my list. Instead, this is important for security.

It's critical for device security to be running the latest software, even if you're not currently using the device – especially if it's online. If there's a vulnerability that needs to be patched, then hackers could use that to hijack devices.

I'd see that as the more important thing here – and via the Home app you will be able to just check and push the software to your devices, just as you can with HomePod.

The new functionality was shared by Aaron on X (via 9to5Mac) which shows the update screen for Apple TV in the home app.

What else is new in iOS 27?

There's a lot coming with iOS 27, which is expected to be pushed to devices back to iPhone 11 in September around the time of the iPhone 18 Pro launch.

We've spent some time with iOS 27, highlighting Siri AI (for iPhone 15 Pro and newer), the new photo editing tools, context-aware suggestions, password fixing and more Liquid Glass customisations as features to look out for.

Then there are child features, faster AirDrop and new Apple Intelligence features, but I suspect that most will be bowled over by Siri AI's app and the range of features that will offer.

Thankfully, beyond the headlines, things like easier updates for Apple TV adds convenience and protection.

Silo isn't just one of the best Sci-Fi shows on Apple TV, it's based on one of the best Science Fiction novels in recent years. The original trilogy was written by Hugh Howey, beginning with a series of short stories titled Wool, followed by Shift and Dust.

Having watched the first season, reimagined for Apple TV, I devoured the full collection of books and even moved on to the additional short stories and connected works. There are differences between the books and the TV show, but it doesn't take away from this excellent story.

Season 2 deviated significantly from the book's order but still primarily covers elements from Wool, the first book. Season 3 sees a move to book two, Shift, which is where we discover how and why the Silo happened.

Though the first book is incredible as a self-contained dystopian mystery, it's the back story in the second book that's really fascinating. We see a teaser of this at the end of season two, with a scene that looks like Capitol Hill in Washington. From the new trailers for season three, it seems we will get the full story, as we do in the books (no spoilers).

While there are just three main books for the series, there are planned to be four seasons of the TV show, so season three is expected to keep to the second book, with season four taking care of the last one.

The order will likely be different, and some of the characters will change, but if Silo Season 3 even keeps roughly to the story arc of Shift, then it's going to be a wild ride.

Apple is releasing the first episode of Silo Season 3 on 3 July 2026, with new episodes launched weekly. I'm tempted to hold off to allow for a full binge session – also giving me time to rewatch season 2) but I'm not sure I can wait.

I'm a big fan of Apple TV – there's a list of reasons why it's been sitting pretty for a long while at the top of our list of the best streaming services, and one of the biggest is the boldness of its commissioning decisions. Sure, you get some interesting series coming to Netflix and Prime Video, but not with the hit rate that Apple boasts.

It seems like every month it has something new to offer that does things genuinely differently, and not just if you consider how many cultish shows it develops, whether they're sci-fi inflected or just a little paranormal. It has traditional thrillers and crime dramas, too, but I just love how willing Apple seems to be to take punts on edgier, more niche material.

That approach has brought it huge hits like Severance, and also some more modest successes, which is how I'd describe Widow's Peak, which is on the cusp of its first season's finale right now (it airs on 16 June). The show stars Matthew Rhys as the beleaguered mayor of a small coastal town, but its trailers really underplayed how weird the show actually is.

Now it's getting a second season, which is great news, and which has been confirmed by a short trailer making the announcement:

It's brief, and obviously contains no actual new footage, instead cleverly reworking a moment from the show, but it's still great news for those who've been enjoying its weird, paranormal mix of genres. I've seen some people saying it's a bit like if Twin Peaks had a kid with Parks & Recreation, which is quite the enticement, and its mixture of scary thrills with deadpan black comedy has been a word-of-mouth hit.

Crucially (from Apple's point of view, you'd imagine), the show's also gone down really well with critics, who have left it sitting on a Rotten Tomatoes score of 97%. While audiences haven't quite matched that, 93% on that front is still an excellent showing, and the two scores together suggest that people who take a gamble on the show almost certainly enjoy it a lot.

We'll find out if Apple can convert that into a proper fanbase with a second season in due course, although don't hold your breath for it to arrive any time before late 2027 if we're being optimistic.

It's a largely open secret that a new Apple TV 4K box will arrive later this year – most likely in September – but existing models are getting updates, too. The only issue is, which ones.

Although Apple mostly swerved from mentioning the Apple TV 4K and tvOS 27 during its WWDC keynote on Monday, it did release the first beta for developers. And there are a few new features coming in later builds.

However, it also turns out that there's some less than welcome news for owners of older Apple TV streaming devices – your boxes will not be supported.

Indeed, it looks like pretty much all of the existing models will be exempt from some of the best new features, such as Siri AI and the new Apple Intelligence add-ons. That's because even the 2022 Apple TV 4K runs on a chip – the A15 Bionic – that is unlikely to be compatible.

But it will still get a range of additional new tricks coming with tvOS 27, such as smart downloads, a redesigned podcasts app, faster AirPlay connections, the ability to change the text size, and a more responsive Control Centre.

That's more than its predecessors, which won't be getting the latest software at all.

According to MacRumors' analyst Aaron Perris (via 9to5Mac), tvOS 27 will not be coming to the Apple TV HD or Apple TV 4K (1st gen).

The HD model was released in 2015, while the first Apple TV 4K followed in 2017. We've had two additional 4K boxes since then, which will be supported, it seems, but nothing since 2022.

That's why a new model is expected – it'll be the first compatible with Apple Intelligence and the new Siri AI.

We'll find out more in the coming months, and we'll keep you informed whenever there are additional details to share.

I've been flying this flag for a couple of years now – if you haven't already grabbed yourself an Apple TV subscription so that you can check out its frankly unbelievable slate of sci-fi shows and movies, you really need to. One of the jewels in that crown, in my opinion, is Silo, which takes a more subdued and pared-back approach to the genre, and makes it work brilliantly.

The show's just about to start its third season (on 3 July), and now we've got a proper trailer running through some of what we can expect to see. It confirms that Juliette will be back in the main silo again, but also that she'll be dealing with a very new challenge – getting her memories back. I've embedded that trailer below for you to check out.

Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) is back in the silo, then, and has semi-pariah, semi-blessed status as the first person to ever go out and come back in alive – after a brush with an incinerator. She's lost her memory of that outing, though, which is fairly crucial since she learnt more than one thing that would change her underground society's understanding of itself.

Meanwhile, as she struggles to get a grip on what happened to her, the situation in the silo is getting more heated. We've seen more than one uprising be quelled at this point, but there's got to be a threshold where the people's demands for answers start to break through. We're poised to learn more about the secret design of the silo's surveillance project and governors.

Meanwhile, we'll also get more and more insight into how the world actually got to the point where its only survivors are living in underground vaults. The flashback sequences in the second season were fascinating but perhaps a little underexplored – now we're clearly going to get more, and I'm gagging to find out some of the politics behind this particular apocalypse.

Some people felt (fairly) that Silo's second season dragged a little, especially with Juliette taken off into her own little slow-moving side story, and I'm hoping this new run of episodes will have taken that feedback into account. If we can get into revelations a little more quickly, we could be heading into one of the best sci-fi seasons in recent memory.

Apple TV knows how the game is played, and in the world of streaming the biggest way to secure success is to reel in some big stars. Apple already had some sort of good relationship going with Anya Taylor-Joy after last year's The Gorge, which did some seriously striking numbers. Now they're teaming up again, on Lucky, which got its first proper trailer this week.

After my first watch of that trailer, which I've embedded below, I would have fairly confidently bet on the project being a movie, since it looks really high-budget and interesting visually, but we're in lucky. It's actually a series, which means we'll get way more runtime to enjoy if it ends up being a hit when it arrives on 15 July.

Taylor-Joy looks like she's very much the star at the centre of this show, rather than it being more of an ensemble piece. She plays Lucky, who's grown up in a fairly unconventional way, being trained up by her father (Timothy Olyphant) to run cons and get away with some seriously big scores.

She isn't all that keen on keeping up a life of crime, and might even be tempted to get out and go straight, but that wish gets a lot more complicated when she wakes up one morning to find her husband missing, and their latest batch of cash missing. That husband's mother just happens to be a crime boss in her own right, played by Annette Bening, and she seems not to be too fond of Lucky.

It's fairly clear from the way the trailer unfolds that this will all add up to Lucky going on the run, whether she's just trying to keep her head above water, or whether she's got a plan to get the money she lost back, and find her husband at the same time. With the FBI on her tail as well as the mob, she's got a lot to juggle.

Luckily, Taylor-Joy looks like she's putting in another highly committed performance, and it seems quite action-packed too. We see car chases, foot chases, gunfights and more. That makes me hope this could be a proper hit for Apple TV, at a time when there's not actually all that much to watch.

When the first season of Sugar ended on Apple TV, I wouldn't really have guessed that we'd be getting any more of Colin Farrell's disturbed private investigator. While the show was a really interesting one, and Farrell's commitment was pretty clear, it didn't do all that well critically. Still, it must have got the numbers Apple was hoping for, because we're about to get a second season after all.

A new trailer came out this week ahead of a premiere date of 19 June, and it looks like potentially a slightly more tied-down season than the last, focusing a little less on Sugar's own ongoing crisis and a little more on the case he's working on. It's a classic missing person mystery, with some fun details to explore.

Sugar's looking into the disappearance of the brother of a promising young boxer making his way through bouts, and it looks a little like that brother might not actually want to be found. Given that Sugar's also trying to locate his own missing sister, there are clearly parallels to be explored here.

He's going to have to dive into gang-run underbellies to get closer to figuring out what's happening; that much is clear. The show continues to have a really fun visual identity, too, with a pulpish commitment to looking grimy and sun-baked, fitting given its LA setting.

This time we'll also clearly get more time looking into dirty cops, which again is growing into a theme for the show. As Sugar gets closer to the truth, he'll almost certainly get into more and more potential trouble with police officers who're heavily incentivised to keep him off the scent.

If you never checked out Sugar, I think this is probably a pretty good prompt to do so, and it's another example of how Apple seems to be pretty far-sighted and patient when it commissions shows. While viewer numbers are likely the ultimate guide, its willingness to renew flawed shows like this one is heartening.

It feels like we've been writing about new Apple TV and HomePod mini models for years – after all, the last Apple TV 4K hit stores in 2022. However, we might finally be in the last stretch, as there's a strong indication they could arrive around the same time as new iPhone models.

After numerous delays, it looks like Apple's positive progress with the new, AI-powered Siri will result in new devices this year – with Apple TV and HomePod finally on the cards for upgrades.

According to Apple expert Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, Apple has been holding off from refreshing each product line until the new version of Apple Intelligence was ready. And now that it is on the immediate horizon, so too are the new models.

"These refreshes have been held back for many, many months because they were designed to launch in tandem with the new Siri and Apple Intelligence updates," wrote Gurman in his latest PowerOn newsletter.

"That software is now scheduled for this fall, following numerous delays."

That suggests the new Apple TV 4K and HomePod mini will also arrive in the fall (autumn).

The only issue is that Gurman doesn't think the Apple TV upgrade will be that extensive: "In terms of new features, don’t expect much from the Apple TV box other than an updated chip," he added.

While that's a shame, it's understandable. The current Apple TV 4K is still one of the best streaming devices on the market – if not THE best. And although the hardware hasn't been renewed in the last four years, Apple has released regular software improvements.

It's likely the chip inside the new model will be upgraded purely to copy better with the new Apple Intelligence features. However, we might also find that the new capabilities won't run on the existing box – it runs on the A15 Bionic chipset and that's not compatible with current Apple Intelligence features, let alone new ones.

So it could be argued that the new model will be a fairly significant upgrade anyway. Also, Gurman claims the included Siri remote could be fully refreshed, albeit inside rather than its overall design.

As for the new HomePod mini, we shouldn't expect much to change in terms of design, but the S5 chip inside will similarly be swapped for one that's compatible with the all-new AI features.

Hopefully, all will become clear next week when Apple's annual developer conference kicks off. The main WWDC 26 keynote will take place on Monday 8 June and we'll be covering it all live, both from a UK perspective and from Cupertino in the States, too.

Apple's annual developer conference, WWDC, is a couple of weeks away and we're therefore close to finding out all the new features and capabilities coming to our devices.

That includes iPhone, Mac and iPad, of course, but also the likes of the Vision Pro and Apple TV 4K. Indeed, Apple isn't even waiting until WWDC 26 to reveal one new feature it'll be adding to its streaming box later this year – it's announced details already.

In lieu of a new Apple TV 4K model, which may or may not debut in the coming months, at least existing versions will be getting a neat new trick.

Coming as part of tvOS 27 – likely this September – will be a new larger text feature. This will give you the ability to increase the onscreen text size to make it easier to read. It will affect all aspects of the Apple TV 4K experience – at least when it comes to Apple's own apps and services.

Some third-party apps may adopt it too.

As someone whose sight is gradually getting worse as I get older, this is a godsend. And I'm far from alone.

You will be able to increase and decrease the onscreen text size to your own preferences, thanks to a new slider bar in the settings. This will be particularly helpful for those who have smaller TVs and/or failing eyesight, and you can adjust the setting further as needed over time.

The new feature will be part of additional accessibility options being added across Apple devices. These include new measures to help reduce motion sickness when wearing Vision Pro in a vehicle, touch accommodations in iOS and iPadOS, and better compatibility with hearing aids.

There will be plenty of other new features too, some of which we should find out about during the WWDC 26 keynote address on Monday 8 June – Tim Cook's last as CEO.

We'll bring you all the news as it happens.

Apple will soon detail a whole host of new features and capabilities coming to all of its devices, including iPhone, iPad, Mac and Apple TV, but before WWDC 26 kicks off and iOS 27 is revealed, there's been time for another big software update across the board.

Along with the public release of the likes of iOS 26.5 and iPadOS 26.5, Apple TV boxes have been delivered tvOS 26.5 – the latest iteration of the system software. And it does bring with it a few tweaks here and there. You can't help but feel the best is still to come, however.

There are persistent rumours that a new Apple TV 4K box is coming, for starters. And even if not, tvOS 27 is likely to add a suite of Siri-powered AI improvements to existing devices. We'll certainly be keeping a beady eye on the WWDC keynote on 8 June 2026 to find out more.

In the meantime, the latest build has delivered "performance and stability improvements", according to Apple's release notes. There's little else for now, with some bigger new features having arrived at the end of March.

What new features did Apple TV get recently?

Apple's tvOS 26.4 update added Genius Browse, which introduced a new rail to the Apple TV app. This presents content recommendations around different categories, such as "binge-worthy shows" and "a rush of adrenaline", and has proved rather handy if you don't know what to watch next.

We also got the "continuous audio connection" feature in the settings, which is particularly useful for Sonos speaker owners who run their third-party audio setup through an AV receiver or amp.

And there were new options for subtitles users, too.

However, these will hopefully be greatly overshadowed by the announcements coming soon. Fingers crossed we'll get a new Apple TV box at last – after all, the current model is four years old now. But failing that, the new AI centric abilities should take the platform in a new direction.

I watch a whole heap of trailers in my working week, as part of keeping on top of everything coming to the best streaming services on the market, and few of those trailers make particularly lasting impressions. When they do, though, it tends to mean that the streamer in question is doing something right.

So, when I say that Cape Fear on Apple TV has one of the most chilling trailers you'll see this year, trust me on it. This is a show that looks like it oozes with menace, with twists and turns aplenty and some imagery that seems really striking and memorable. After a shorter teaser a few weeks back, now it has a proper trailer ahead of its arrival in June.

The show stars Javier Bardem in the main role, playing the frankly terrifying Max Cady, a longtime criminal who's spent years behind bars for a murder that he (surprisingly) didn't commit. He knows exactly why he was convicted, too, even if the audience is a little more in the dark, and it clearly involves his old lawyers, played by Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson.

When Max manages to get out of prison for presumably good behaviour, he starts to make good on years of promises to himself by terrorising the now established family of his lawyers. He doesn't leap straight to violence, though, choosing a scarier route instead by simply showing them that he's around and that he knows what they did to him. He even looks like he'll get close to their kids.

Throughout the trailer, we get glimpses of the violence that Max is capable of, but also the sins that others might have in their pasts, too. It's creepy stuff, with an equally unsettling soundtrack and a really careful use of green lighting and colours to give the whole thing a yucky, skin-crawling feeling.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be a hit for Apple TV, with a cheesy bit of gory fun being just about the worst it could be. We'll know more when it starts on 5 June, though, ahead of a weekly release schedule that could see it become a sleeper hit.

When you think sci-fi, there's a very good chance you think Star Wars. You'd be right, too – George Lucas' creation has become one of the biggest franchises in the world, and certainly one of the most influential science fiction universes ever created, shaping the imaginations of a few generations of kids.

Still, while there's more Star Wars than ever to enjoy on Disney+, at a time like Star Wars Day (every 4 May), you might be looking for a palate cleanser. While everyone and their nan's trying to remind you of where to watch Star Wars, we thought we'd instead point you towards some sci-fi streaming shows you might not have tried yet.

These are space-faring shows that have perhaps been a little underrated, and might scratch that Star Wars itch while still giving you something new.

The Expanse

• Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video

This show had a fairly classic streaming-era trajectory, in that it started as a Netflix original but got canned a few seasons into its run, before fan outcry led Amazon to pick it up for Prime Video, where you can now watch the whole series in most regions. It has six seasons in total, and adapts about two-thirds of an excellent series of source novels (all of which I've read).

Don't worry, though, that doesn't mean it ends on a cliffhanger. The showrunners knew they were likely to bow out after the sixth season, so things are tied up really nicely while leaving a bit of wiggle room in case it's ever revived. This is crunchier sci-fi than Star Wars, set in a version of reality much closer to our own, and looks at what human civilisation might look like after we spread through our own solar system, but no further (at least when the show opens). With fun, fast-paced mystery plotting and some great characters, The Expanse is a must-sample for any sci-fi fan.

Foundation

• Streaming on: Apple TV

If you're more into the grand, sweeping style of sci-fi than gritter fare, then Foundation is almost certainly something to check out. Based on Isaac Asimov's frankly incredible novels, it tells a story of the far-flung future, full of philosophical themes. In a semi-utopian time, if a branch of academics figured out how to foresee the future with near-total accuracy, what would actually happen?

That's the question Foundation poses, interrogated how an autocratic leader would choose to react, how the populace would approach the matter, and how those very academics would plan for a future in which even catastrophic collapses don't lead to the end of humanity. It's stirring stuff, but most crucially it's beautiful to look at, thanks to Apple TV's production values, which really are the best in the streaming business.

Dune: Prophecy

• Streaming on: HBO Max

The most recently-launched show in this showcase, Dune: Prophecy hoped to piggyback a little on the massive success of Denis Villeneuve's mainline Dune movie adaptations, which are simply fantastic. This is a prequel series, taking a look at how the witches of the Bene Gesserit order actually managed to line things up to ensure the arrival of Paul Atreides centuries later.

That's quite a grand description, but the show itself therefore concerns itself more with space politics and manoeuvring in a way that makes it more like Game of Thrones than some other more action-packed shows. There are still big moments, but this is classic HBO stuff, making for a slower pace and a more thoughtful approach than you might expect. With another season on the way, Star Wars Day might be a great opportunity to see if Dune: Prophecy is up your street.

Over the last few years, Apple TV has built itself up into the undisputed monarch of the sci-fi genre on streaming. While other platforms like Netflix do have occasional big hitters (like Stranger Things), no other streamer seems to be making as many high-quality sci-fi shows, or anything even close to what Apple TV is managing.

Its most long-running sci-fi show has been For All Mankind, which has attracted plenty of fans over the course of its five seasons and counting, and it's now getting a spin-off to underline how highly Apple rates it. Star City rewinds the clock back to the start of For All Mankind, showing us an alternate version of history where the US and Russia are competing to build a moon base first.

Having seen the American side of this story in the first season of For All Mankind, we're now going to get the Soviet version, and it looks like it'll be a lot grittier for it. The show will be set in 1969 in a version of history where the Soviets have stolen a march on the US and have advanced plans for a moon base, but also a paranoid attitude to the risk of leaks and spying.

It looks like the show will star Rhys Ifans as the lead architect of Russia's plans, but also Anna Maxwell-Martin as a military enforcer trying to keep his base secure, and happy to use brutal tactics to do so. The tug of war between Moscow and its scientists promises plenty of tension, and the show looks like it might be quite a lot darker than For All Mankind.

Another interesting and crucial difference between the shows comes in terms of pacing and time skips. For All Mankind has leapt forward in time between each of its seasons, bringing us back to broadly the same cast of characters but showing us how things have changed years down the line.

Star City will not follow the same approach, possibly because the existence of For All Mankind would preclude it from having many plot twists in store. Rather, its second season, as currently planned, would pick up directly from the first and continue in the same time period. That means it could end up being a more traditional show, and also that there won't be an easy escape from the tension of its setting.

The first season, though, starts on 29 May on Apple TV, and if you're a sci-fi fan it's probably one to check out.

Apple TV is the undisputed monarch when it comes to sci-fi streaming. It can't seem to stop announcing and releasing new sci-fi projects, and more importantly the average quality of those projects is bafflingly impressive, from Severance to For All Mankind and a host of others. Neither of those is my favourite from its lineup, though.

That honour goes to Silo, which really grabbed me with a first season that had me genuinely thinking about the show all the time between episodes, which is pretty rare for me. It's like a grittier and more serious version of Fallout, and now it's coming back for a third season that I've been waiting ages for, as confirmed by a tiny new teaser trailer.

The trailer shows us a quick look at main character Juliette, played by the ever-excellent Rebecca Ferguson, as she stares into the camera and intones a short speech about not being able to understand the underground silo system that gives the show its name, unless the characters understand why the silos were built in the first place.

The show, after all, is set in a closed-off community that has basically had to write its own version of history after generations spent underground with no outside contact, or even any knowledge of what's going on above-ground. There's a whole cast of characters curious to know what truly happened to leave them so isolated, but only Juliette has actually left the Silo successfully to find out.

There's almost no new footage in the teaser at all, other than a quick glimpse of a flashback showing us the Silo area, with all of the many other underground shelters surrounding the one we've seen so much of, in grassier, sunnier times. This makes it clear that we're going to get more of the split timeline that we saw in some sequences last season.

This will explore why the government of the time built the shelters, and why they went to such lengths to make them self-sustaining not just from a supply point of view, but also from a cultural one, with arcane rules and secret societies keeping an eye on citizens.

Crucially, the trailer confirms one massive detail – when the show's coming back. The second season came out in late 2024, but we're going to be able to sink our teeth into Season 3 from 3 July 2026, so there's a couple of months to go before it starts releasing on a weekly basis. I can't wait, and I know I'm not the only one on that front.

If you're not enjoying the experience of your Google TV, you're not stuck with the interface, you can change it. Thanks to a new launcher called Arc, you can now get an interface that looks a lot more like Apple TV.

Android has always been about flexibility and that doesn't just apply to phones and tablets - there are also freedoms within other Android platforms to switch things around, including on Google TV.

Whether you're using the Google TV Streamer or a TV that runs Google TV, changing the launcher is an option.

The advantage of switching to a new launcher is that you can fully customise it to your preferences, it can be completely personalised, avoiding adverts and recommendations that come from Google.

The most popular of these is Projectivity Launcher, which can be found by searching on Google TV and then installing the app from Google Play. However, if you fancy something that looks like Apple TV, then Arc might be a better bet (via Android Authority).

This option isn't as advanced as Projectivity in that it's not an app in Google Play, so you'll need to be a little more advanced to get everything going. However, it's freely available on Github, which also points out some of the things that don't work and gives advice on button mapping to get Arc to launch.

The result is a cleaner interface that uses less RAM than the standard launcher (so it feels faster) and it looks like the frontend of Apple TV 4K.

The developer says that it was tested on Chromecast with Google TV (so install it at your own risk) and that in future it's looking at video wallpapers, channel support and more.

It isn't the full Apple TV 4K experience, of course, so while you can have the Apple TV app (which again has a cleaner design) you won't get all the features that Apple TV itself offers.

Currently, Apple's TV box is over three years old and while there haven't been many changes in the TV industry to warrant an update, it's still a little long in the tooth.

It's rumoured that there could be an Apple TV 4K update in 2026, with a faster chip and new Siri powers, although the slow roll-out of Apple's advanced AI could have put the brakes on a new box. Still, if you don't want to wait, you can make your Google device look like it instead.

Although it can be a little complicated to choose between the many, many subscriptions and tiers on the market, when you take in the whole picture, it's fair to argue that we're in the golden age of streaming right now. We've written a few times here at T3 about how that's doubly true for sci-fi fans, but luckily, the eating is also good for lovers of fantasy.

It's a genre that has scaled the highest heights of popularity thanks to shows like Game of Thrones, and while there aren't quite as many fantasy shows coming down the immediate pike compared to the upcoming slate of sci-fi additions, there are still some massive projects for you to look forward to.

I've gathered some of the ones you should care about most, right here, with information about when to expect them all – so keep reading to see what massive fantasy shows you should know about. No new seasons or shows that already exist, just new projects!

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone

• Coming to HBO Max – Christmas 2026

Rumoured to be perhaps the most expensive TV production of all time (at some $100 million per episode, not per season), the HBO version of Harry Potter has been the topic of intense debate and interest – with J K Rowling's insane political views doing its stars no favours at all.

Still, regardless of that furore, you can probably put safe money on this being one of the biggest TV launches in history for HBO, tapping into a franchise that's already spawned two enormous film series and shows no signs of losing fans. After Hogwarts Legacy became a gargantuan hit in the gaming world, brace for another bout of Pottermania when the show arrives at the end of this year.

God of War

• Coming to Amazon Prime Video – no date announced

Don't be shocked if we get a teaser for this one sometime this summer – even if Amazon is playing its cards close to its chest in terms of the show's timings. 2016's reboot-slash-sequel to the God of War series was noticeably cinematic in its style, full of interesting camera work and a more introspective attitude to Kratos' unbridled fury, now that he's a father.

Navigating through the world of Norse gods and goddesses, this should be an enticing adaptation of one of the most celebrated games of the last decade, and it'll be really interesting to see how close of an adaptation it is. Given its very solid work on the Fallout show, Amazon seems like a relatively safe pair of hands for this fantastical but presumably violent journey.

Fourth Wing

• Coming to Amazon Prime Video – no date announced

So many of the biggest fantasy series and movies of all times come from one clear source – novels. There's a huge canon of staggering fantasy literature out there, from historic greats like The Lord of the Rings to more recent fare, and this series is going to tap into one of the most current obsessions: romantasy.

This subgenre is focussed a little harder on love affairs, but in interesting and innovative settings, perfectly encapsulated by Fourth Wing, which is being adapted by Prime Video from Rebecca Yaros' novels. This could be a huge moment for a book genre that has become absolutely massive, if it can break out and become an equally big show, but the asterisk is that we don't have any information about when it might move into production.

The Stormlight Archive

• Coming to Apple TV – no date announced

If you had to pick the biggest fantasy author on the planet right now, it would be quite a short contest. No one seems to shift books quite like Brandon Sanderson, both in terms of how many he sells and how many he writes – he's a machine, but has carefully guarded the rights to his stories over the years. That's finally resulted in a major partnership with Apple TV, though.

He'll help the streamer develop Mistborn into a movie franchise, but the TV project will be The Stormlight Archive, which promises to be longer and more sprawling. Fans adore this series of books, and Apple is the best streaming service on the planet, in my opinion, so this might be the strongest prospect of the whole lot on this list.

Powerless

• Coming to Amazon Prime Video – no date announced

The last project I'm shining a spotlight on is another really interesting one from a strategic point of view, since it indicates that Prime Video is in the process of preparing to bet big on romantasy. As well as Fourth Wing, it's also acquired the rights to the Powerless trilogy, which is similarly beloved by its ultra-fans and similarly purple in terms of its subject matter.

With a perhaps slightly more traditional world of magic, the books are also noteworthy because they're arguably aimed at slightly younger readers than some others, making them young adult fiction. That might make this even more commercially viable, but it could also limit the series' appeal, something that Amazon will have to finesse if it does manage to bring this one to full production at some point in the next couple of years.

I've made no secret of my admiration for Apple TV's commissioning team over the last half-decade or so. That group of people, whoever they might be, have taken the streaming platform from an interesting but small option to, according to not just me but T3 as a whole, the best streaming service you can pay for today. That commissioning team have a very interesting new project to show off now, in the form of Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed.

The show just got its first teaser trailer, and it's one of the most tonally discordant and eclectic teasers I've seen in ages, full of different moments that seem to run the gamut from slapstick comedy all the way to potentially some horror, making it immediately shoot up my watchlist ahead of it starting streaming on 20 April.

As you can see in the above embed, the show stars Tatiana Maslany in the lead role as Paula, a newly-divorced mum who may or may not be struggling to stay afloat in more than one way. She's juggling parenting responsibilities with what could be termed a bit of a breakdown, and things get even more complicated when she thinks she witnesses a crime.

Apple's blurb says she'll launch an investigation despite people in her life being more than a little sceptical of what she thinks she's seen – and that'll take her down a rabbit hole of blackmail and threats. There's a fun supporting cast to check out, including a personal favourite, Jake Johnson (who made New Girl what it was).

Maslany herself is getting plenty of positive attention, though, as one of the more fun actors working in TV today. She was great in the title role of She-Hulk: : Attorney at Law on Disney+, but we don't have much of an indication about whether the character will be an actual recurring part of the MCU moving forward.

Since it hasn't had a new season since its first in 2022, with no news on that front either, this ribald show from Apple TV is clearly your best way to see Maslany act right now, so that's just another reason why it might be a hit when it comes out later this month.

The biggest and best streaming services in the world tend to have a sort of hivemind approach to content decisions, even if they don't actually know it at the time. Just as Netflix prepares to give people a remade version of a cult favourite movie (Man on Fire), changing it to a series and recasting the iconic Denzel Washington, Apple TV is planning a very similar move with a different movie.

It's remade Cape Fear, the Scorcese movie from 1991 based on a novel from decades earlier, and given one lucky fellow the job of replacing none other than Robert De Niro in the main role. This time around, Max will be played by Javier Bardem, in what's already looking like some inspired casting in the first teaser trailer, embedded below.

Max, Bardem's character, has just managed to get out of prison (exactly how that's happened is probably a major plot point), and he's out for revenge. On whom? Why, the defence lawyers who failed to get him out of the sentence in the first place – because they may or may not have declined to use evidence that could have saved him.

It's a classic setup that sees Max stalking and terrorising this pair of successful professionals, letting them slowly figure out who he is and what he knows about their pasts. To round out the main cast, they're played by the always excellent Amy Adams and Patrick Wilson.

So, the casting seems absolutely on point, but what I'm most impressed by at this point is the editing of this trailer. It's a screamer, to be honest, full of unsettling cuts and contrasts, and with a soundtrack that would put you on edge even if you knew nothing else about the show at all.

It has me hoping that this could be a real hit for Apple TV, which can also boast the movie's director, Martin Scorsese and another legend, Steven Spielberg, as executive producers, which is quite the power pair. Scorsese's involvement also indicates he's in a real lovey-dovey phase with Apple, for whom he's now filmed a couple of cameos in recent years.

Cape Fear will start on 5 June, so we'll doubtless learn more about it in the next couple of months.

There’s little more frustrating than finishing a great TV series and then trying to find your next binge watch. It’s a first-world problem, of course, but there is a lot to be said for having a show that you can relax to every evening when you finish work.

The problem is, there is so much choice out there across the various streaming services that finding one you can get really stuck into can be tricky.

Most streaming platforms offer an algorithm that pulls together recommendations based on what you have previously watched and might like to see more of, but it looks like Apple TV could take content discovery one step further.

What is Genius Browse and what does it do?

According to 9to5Mac, there's a new search feature called "Genius Browse" in the Apple TV app on tvOS 26.4 beta. It appears as a row on the Home tab of the app and presents you with several categories to choose from.

Examples shared by 9to5Mac include "Daring Fantasy Adventures", "Clever Capers", "Thrilling", "Sports Stories", "Good for Date Night", "Based on a Book", and "Action-Packed Sci-Fi". Selecting a category then gives you some title recommendations, while tapping on the recommendation will then give you a row of more related titles below.

It's also said that the Genius Browse feature can be personalised for user profiles on Apple TV and restricted to show only certain genres.

But the part that makes this even better is that the Apple TV app doesn’t just present Apple TV content but content from third party services too. These include HBO Max, Prime Video and Disney+, so you should see plenty of content served up within the feature.

Unfortunately, Netflix isn’t one of them still. So, if that’s the streaming service you primarily use, the Genius Browse feature won’t be that useful.

For everyone else though, it might take the pain out of what to watch next.

I'd been waiting for this – it's been a couple of months since Apple TV told us about Jonah Hill's upcoming movie for the streaming service, Outcome, and the film was looking extremely enigmatic based on just as few teaser images. Now it finally has a full trailer, and it answers a lot of questions, and makes a big point of its own style.

Outcome stars Keanue Reeves as Reef Hawk, a somewhat faded but still hugely famous movie star who's been out of the limelight for a few years while battling drug addiction, as the opening of the trailer confirms. He's about to go on a journey of self-discovery again, though, when he's forced to hunt down an old video of himself.

We don't get told exactly what's on that video in the trailer, but it's clear that it's a career-threatening one, if it's even real, and on the advice of his team Hawk will set off to track down people who might hold a grudge against him in the hopes of getting to the bottom of things.

That'll take him on quite an odyssey, and he'll touch base with some very famous faces throughout. In a quite big role each there's Cameron Diaz and Jonah Hill himself (completely unrecognisable with a bald head and grey hair), but cameos are clearly going to be coming out of Hawk's hair, with Martin Scorsese one famous face lending himself to another Apple project after The Studio last year.

What really caught my eye throughout the trailer, though, was the colour palette being used. Hill is clearly going big with his vision of a slightly otherworldly LA and Hollywood world, where everything is hyper-saturated and almost painted in colour. It's sun-drenched to the extreme, and certainly looks like it'll have a memorable visual presentation.

It might also, therefore, be an interesting test of whether or not Apple TV's bitrate is up to scratch, as someone who agrees with our Tech Editor Mike Lowe's complaints about checkerboarding on this and other streaming services. The more bold a film looks, the more it's arguably prone to these issues, after all.

After months of buildup, here we are – the Oscars have happened, and now the digestion begins. Expect many a think-piece about Timothee Chalamet's ultimately fruitless campaigning for Marty Supreme, some interesting decisions in the best supporting actor and actress categories, and a whole heap of jubilation about the crowning of One Battle After Another.

If you're itching to rewatch some of the award-winners that you managed to catch in cinemas, or you feel embarrassed to have completely missed more than a couple, I'm here to make your life easier. If you're here in the UK, almost all of the films that won awards at the 2026 Oscars can be accessed relatively straightforwardly, so here's how you can watch all the biggest and most noteworthy ones.

One Battle After Another

• Oscar wins: Best picture, best director, best supporting actor, best film editing, best casting
• Where to stream: Rent or buy on Apple TV, Sky Store or Prime Video

There's nowhere else to start – Paul Thomas Anderson's magnificent film about ageing revolutionaries and the next generation had a triumphant night at the Oscars, as many expected, including the long-awaited best director award that PTA has clearly merited for a couple of decades.

A film this successful is a classic example of one that might take some time to come to a streaming subscription near you. As of now, you can either buy it on physical disc (as I'd recommend), or get it digitally through your platform of choice, from Apple TV to the Sky Store or Amazon Prime Video.

Sinners

• Oscar wins: Best actor, best original screenplay, best original score, best cinematography
• Where to stream: Watch on Now

Sinners was probably the other biggest story of the night at the 2026 Oscars, swooping in to make good on a historic number of nominations by taking home four awards. Michael B. Jordan's win in for best actor was a superb moment that bucked months of predictions, too.

Another film that easily merits you buying it on 4K Blu-ray, if you're a Now subscriber with an Entertainment pass, you're in luck – it's included in that subscription right now, so you can watch it at no extra cost. That's pretty stunning, since this is one of the best-looking and best-sounding films of the last couple of years.

Hamnet

• Oscar wins: Best actress
• Where to stream: Rent or buy on Apple TV, Sky Store, Prime Video or others

It might have only taken home one Oscar, but Hamnet was beloved on release and is one of the more recent winners to come out in the UK, which makes it a little harder to know where to look for it. The film gravitates around Jessie Buckley's winning central performance as William Shakespeare's wife.

It's a deeply tragic tale, though, about the loss of her son Hamnet, and that means the second half of the movie is pretty inescapably bleak, so bear that in mind if you're lining up a movie night sometime soon and fancy picking it up through one of the platforms linked above.

Weapons

• Oscar wins: Best supporting actress
• Where to stream: Rent or buy on Apple TV, Sky Store, Prime Video or others

This one I really didn't see coming – I thought Amy Madigan's nomination for her extraordinarily committed performance as a downright crazy aunt in Weapons, a pure horror movie, was just a nice gesture. I never expected her to win, which shows what I know about the Academy.

Weapons is glorious fun, to be fair. It's willing to go further than you'd ever imagine as its story of disappeared children and witchcraft winds its way to a violent and inevitable conclusion. It's also one of the cheapest films on this list to rent right now, having been out for ages in the UK.

Sentimental Value

• Oscar wins: Best international feature
• Where to stream: Watch on Mubi

My biggest disappointment of the 2026 Oscars is hinted at in my paragraphs about Weapons, above – I cannot believe that no performances from Sentimental Value were rewarded with gongs. It still came away with the prestigious best international feature award, but deserved so much more from its four acting nominations.

All four deserved their respective awards, in my view, despite two being in the same category (best supporting actress), and you'll have to watch to see why. This is one of the most sophisticated films of the year, and one that'll have you thinking about the family dynamics it lays out for weeks after it ends.

Frankenstein

• Oscar wins: Best production design, best make-up and hairstyling, best costume design
• Where to stream: Netflix

It's always nice and easy when Netflix or one of the other big streaming platforms wins an Oscar or two - its movies are the simplest ones to find, since they're just sat on Netflix in every territory you could care to name. So, if you want to catch up on the gothic majesty of Guillermo Del Toro's Frankenstein, there's only one place to go.

The film might not have been massively fancied when it released to positive but not outstanding reviews (and I write as someone who went to see it in a cinema), but it bucked those expectations by coming home with three gongs. All three reflect the astonishing sets, costumes and make-up that the film manages, and they're well deserved.

KPop Demon Hunters

• Oscar wins: Best animated feature, best original song
• Where to stream: Netflix

If I'd been forced to bet my entire mortgage on one award ahead of this year's Oscars, there's a pretty good chance I'd have gone for K-Pop Demon Hunters taking home Best original song. If Golden hadn't won there probably would have been riots in the streets of LA, so it's lucky it did.

This is another one of Netflix's films, and in fact one of its most successful ever, so you could very much follow up Frankenstein by queuing this for a more light-hearted way to come back to the real world. It's a delight, and those songs really do belong in a class of their own.

Avatar: Fire and Ash

• Oscar wins: Best visual effects
• Where to stream: Not available in the UK

Here's a weird one – despite coming out months ago, Fire and Ash still isn't available to buy or rent in the UK on any streaming platform, with its studio committed instead to re-runs in cinemas. That means you might get a chance to see it on the big screen, but it's a might weird tactic at a time like this.

It's not even out on disc, either, so there's no real recourse right now if you want to see the visual effects that landed James Cameron and his team yet another Oscar to go with his massive collection.

F1

• Oscar wins: Best sound
• Where to stream: Watch on Apple TV

It didn't do all that well with critics, but there was no denying that Apple TV's original F1 did a great job of translating the raw speed of Formula 1 racing on to the screen. A big part of that was down to its rip-roaring sound, which will really have you feeling like you're on the track if you have a good surround system.

The film's formulaic in some ways, but it's made with such complete competence that you'll be carried along nicely, and the fact that it's included in an Apple TV subscription is nothing to sniff at.

Mr Nobody Against Putin

• Oscar wins: Best documentary feature
• Where to stream: Watch on BBC iPlayer

Last but not least, the award for best documentary is always a great place to head if you want to learn more about the world you're living in, and this year's is a particularly risky film in literal terms. Filming illicitly, this movie by a teacher in Russia showcases just what it's like to live under Putin's regime.

It's been widely lauded, and unlike basically every other film on this list, you don't have to pay a penny to watch it (if you don't count the licence fee). It's on BBC iPlayer right now since it was licensed under the Storyville brand, which means you can check it out whenever you like.

The last few years have proven beyond any doubt that the biggest and best streaming services in the world can't afford to stay entirely family-friendly. With millions of adults now subscribing to a variety of services, each one has to provide a proper range of shows and movies, which means some of those are going to have to be a little more, shall we say, adult.

Apple TV clearly got the memo, too – its latest show takes a look at the explosion of OnlyFans, adapting a popular novel about a young mother struggling to make ends meet when her baby effectively ends her chances of going to college. She turns to the best revenue stream available to her by starting an OnlyFans account, and from there the story unfolds quirkily.

As you can see above, the show now has a full trailer (after we got a teaser some time ago), and it underlines the fact that Apple TV has done its typical thing, in putting together a pretty darn impressive cast. Elle Fanning is in the lead part as Margo, with an Oscar nomination to be determined literally this weekend.

She's joined by Nick Offerman as her slightly emotionally-repressed ex-wrestler father, Michelle Pfeiffer as her frankly scary cougarish mum, and even Nicole Kidman as her eventual custody lawyer, as the trailer teases. That hints at the fact that the father of Margo's child, her ex-professor, isn't exactly going to be the simplest of presences in the show.

All of this is to talk around the fact that Margo's going to be making money with her body on the internet – a topic that's still fairly taboo in media despite the enormous scale of OnlyFan's business at this point. From the trailer, it's not actually all that likely that the show gets too explicit on this front, but the topic is inescapably adult and raunchy.

It'll be fascinating to see how it resonates at a time when these adult platforms are doing bigger numbers than ever. From Apple TV's point of view, it's not that big a gamble, though – with a cast like that, surely the show has to find an audience. We'll know when it starts on 15 April.

Apple TV recently revealed that Ted Lasso will return to the streaming service this summer, and confirmed that Season 4 will switch its attention to women's football as the much-loved manager takes on Richmond's second division team.

This was accompanied by a batch of "first-look" images from the new show, including one of Jason Sudeikis as Ted and Hannah Waddingham's Rebecca Welton meeting at an airport. However, the latter of the two might not be quite as welcome among the halls of Apple at the minute – she's just spilled the beans on the show's release date.

Speaking on the red carpet during this weekend's BAFTA Film Awards, Waddingham told Deadline when Ted Lasso will return: "August, I think! Am I allowed to say August?" she said while looking around nervously.

However, that was the only major revelation, she admitted that she doesn't know if there will be a fifth season.

Deadline posted its interview on X, so you can also watch it for yourself.

We don't a definitive date (ie. a day it will premiere) but the fact that the show is coming back in August will be enough for most – for now, at least. It also raises one big question – why has Apple decided to show it AFTER the FIFA World Cup when interest in football (soccer) is at its peak?

Why debut Ted Lasso Season 4 in August?

It seems crazy that Apple is seemingly avoiding the world's biggest football tournament, which ends with the final on 19 July. By coming along just a few weeks later, viewers could be a tad football fatigued.

That being said, maybe the service didn't want to clash with important matches – after all, the majority of matches during this year's tournament are being held in the US. And that's surely its number one market.

In addition, the new Premier League season kicks off on 22 August in the UK, which is roughly when other major European leagues begin again too. So, maybe an August release doesn't seem so crazy after all.

Either way, I'll be looking forward to Lasso's return whenever it comes. The first three seasons (which are available to stream on Apple TV now) are among the best comedy dramas we've had in a decade.

Look, we're not going to lie to you – most of the time, when a big streaming series comes to one of the best streaming services on the planet, the story of how it got made doesn't contain much drama. Sure, you get the odd passion project or funding situation, but it's normally a bit uninteresting to normal folks.

Things are way more complicated and intriguing for upcoming Apple TV series The Hunt, a French-language show about a group of hunters who get targeted by other gunmen while out in the wild. It was originally meant to come out back in December 2025, but got put on hold at the last moment when allegations of plagiarism started to swirl. Now it's back with a new trailer and release date.

You see, some students of film history noticed a pretty huge issue when they first got wind of The Hunt; namely, that its plot was incredibly similar to a 1973 novel by Douglas Fairbairn called Shoot, and a film made with the same title three years later. When this was pointed out by French journalists, the French production house behind the series, Gaumont, pulled it from release and started an internal investigation into what had gone on.

That investigation is seemingly now finished, and perhaps unsurprisingly has ended with the production getting the right permissions and authorisations for the rights holders of Shoot (although we don't know whether that means a buy-out or not). This means the series is back up for release, and will come to Apple TV on 4 March.

Gaumont's statement on the matter is pretty interesting:

"Originally scheduled for December 2025, The Hunt‘s release was postponed after it was identified in November 2025 that the project, presented as an original work, was based on an existing work, Douglas Fairbairn’s Shoot.

As soon as this information came to its attention, Gaumont, the series’ producer, immediately took the necessary steps to identify the rights holders, and obtain the required authorizations.

Respect for works and authors’ rights is a fundamental principle for Gaumont, which can only be exercised with the trust and transparency of creative artists."

That suggests it's not best pleased with how this played out, and while the series looks like it could be a taut and tense bit of work, we're imagining there's been some tension between its creators and the sources of money they used to make it. It's way more behind-the-scenes drama than you normally get, that's for sure.

So, will the show itself live up to the interest it's attracted? The trailer looks pretty great, so if you're into your European crime capers, it's sure to have plenty of twists and turns on its way to a stressful ending.

There's a big genre in TV right now that's a little hard to name – the relationship-murder-drama-thriller, perhaps? Think Big Little Lies for the most famous example, although shows like The White Lotus also edge into this territory at times. Take a cast of beautiful people, make something terrible happen, then slowly peel back the layers to show us how messed-up they've all been from the start.

If that sounds derisive, dismiss my tone, because these shows can be enormous fun when they're executed right, and a lot tends to come down to the main cast. In the case of Apple TV's latest thriller, Imperfect Women, it's got quite a triumvirate at its heart: Kerry Washington, Elizabeth Moss and Kate Mara, playing a trio of seemingly happy friends.

Well, once you've taken in what is a fairly spoiler-heavy trailer (as they go), you'll know that Kate Mara's character isn't long for this world. After a seemingly somewhat heavy heart-to-heart with her two friends, she's going to wind up dead, and it's not at all clear how that might have happened.

With husbands and partners entering the frame with suspect motivations and loyalties, it seems like both Washington and Moss' characters will have their own driving forces. The trailer seems to suggest Washington has something major to hide, while Moss is positioned more as an innocent who's desperate to find out the truth about her friend's life and death.

Of course, the best shows in this genre tend to have more than a few twists up their sleeve, so don't be surprised to find that Moss in fact has plenty of her own skeletons in the closet (after all, she's one of the "imperfect" women in the title). I'm all but certain that there'll be plenty of dirt to uncover on all three of them and their families.

One commenter under the YouTube upload is similarly keen, saying simply: "Can't arrive soon enough". That's a sentiment I can get behind, and thankfully the show starts on 18 March, so there's only around a month to wait.

Apple TV is giving all football (soccer) fans a treat this week, as it starts to show the new season of the MLS for free.

Previously a paid service – costing $99 per season as an add-on – all MLS matches of the 2026 season will be streamed live at no extra cost for Apple TV subscribers.

That means you can catch the season opener – St Louis vs Charlotte – this Saturday 21 February without needing any additional pass. Just head to the section on your Apple TV box or through the app and away you go.

This includes territories outside the US, including the UK. All matches throughout the entire 2026 MLS season will be included in your existing subscription.

F1 on Apple TV

In addition to the MLS, Apple TV will also be the home of Formula One in the US from this coming season. Every race and extra broadcasts will also be available as part of an Apple TV subscription – no further costs will be needed.

The only catch is that this is exclusive to the United States. Individual broadcast rights around the world remain, so you will have to watch the new F1 season on Sky in the UK, for example, which is part of a Sky Sports subscription – either on Sky Q, Sky Glass, Sky Stream or through Now.

Indeed, you can still watch F1 races on an Apple TV box using the Now app, but it will cost you extra for the Sky Sports pass.

If you're in the US though, you can watch the Australian Grand Prix from practice on 13 March through the full race itself on 15 March using Apple TV.

If you're the kind of person who meticulously remembers every detail, you may recall a feature slated for Apple CarPlay at the advent of iOS 26. That suggested that support for watching videos in a parked car was coming.

However, while the other slated features arrived pretty swiftly, this one didn't. Now, we might have some news about the arrival of that one, which will offer something to look forward to for fans of Apple TV.

That's because the feature looks set to arrive as part of iOS 26.4, according to a string of backend code spotted by a user on Twitter. That string simply reads, "When you're not driving, sign in to Apple TV on iPhone."

If that proves true, it'll be a handy addition to the offering. It's certainly not the first instance of such technology, with many automotive manufacturers offering the opportunity to enjoy some entertainment while the car is parked – something led by EV manufacturers to enjoy while charging.

It's worth saying, of course, that this isn't a cast-iron guarantee that the features will arrive in a new update, though it is a good sign. However, there could still be a further stumbling block for those eager to use the feature in the near future.

As reported by 9to5Mac, the feature will need to be enabled by automotive manufacturers before it works. That could mean only some cars support the feature right away, with others having to wait for the switch to be flicked.

There's also nothing to suggest that other apps will be supported at this point. Things like Netflix, Disney Plus and Prime Video are more commonplace than Apple TV, though it's entirely possible that they'll gain support down the line.

If that does happen, I think it could be a really big moment. While other car manufacturers have done their own thing, this would affect every user of an iPhone and a car with a CarPlay unit, which is much more wide-reaching.

Let's be real – it's no surprise to see confirmation that Apple is hugely enamoured with one of its biggest shows, Severance. The production has brought it a slew of awards and is one of the most talked-about series out there, especially when it's actually airing, telling a twisty story with a great sci-fi premise.

Still, you don't always get the most obvious confirmation from the best streaming services that they love the production companies helping to make the series that people subscribe for. Apple bucked that trend, though, by going and literally buying the whole show.

Severance was owned and produced by Fifth Season, and Apple had paid to be the show's home, but a deal finalised at the end of 2025 and now reported by Deadline has brought Apple the full IP and all rights to the show. As a result, it'll apparently be produced by Apple Studios moving forward, with Fifth Season as an executive producer.

This isn't the first time Apple has followed this model, either, as pointed out by Deadline – it also trod this path with Silo, another high-concept sci-fi show that was an external production for its first season before coming in-house from that point onwards.

In fact, this is a pretty tried-and-true method for streamers like Apple TV, letting production houses take creative risks before accepting a higher price to buy the rights to a show once it's proven worth the risk.

This move also comes as even more of an underline for the fact that Apple is betting big on Severance. We already know it's getting a third season, and a fourth is apparently almost guaranteed to continue (and most likely end) its story after that, but this might mean an expansion of its world is also in the planning.

After all, would you spend what's presumably a whole lot of money to acquire the full rights with only a couple of seasons in the offing? Given that Severance reportedly costs as much as $20 million to make per episode, this all suggests that Apple has more plans in the works.

That's good news for those of us enjoying the show's weird, off-beat take on cerebral sci-fi – hopefully it can help speed up the wait for Season 3, too, which is already starting to feel taxing.

If sometimes feels like the age of streaming has a constant throughline to it – every major streaming platform keeping an eye out for mega-franchises that it can sign on to adapt, in the hopes of drawing in fans and newcomers alike. From Game of Thrones to Fallout, if you can nab a major brand, there's every chance you could create a massive hit with some pre-existing goodwill.

I'd argue that, Thrones aside, it's a little easier to find success on that front with sci-fi adaptations than with fantasy ones. Sure, they're all broadly speculative fiction, but it feels like there have been fewer huge, breakout fantasy shows – perhaps the likes of Outlander count, but only somewhat.

Amazon's a great example; when it announced a glossy adaptation of the huge The Wheel of Time novel series, people were immediately wary that it might not be committed enough to get through the whole thing, and they proved right. After three seasons, it's been unceremoniously cancelled.

The Rings of Power, arguably something that stole the limelight from The Wheel of Time, is more likely to limp on to its conclusion in a few years, but it's only had two seasons so far, and both have been extremely underwhelming – although Amazon's adamant it's happy with the viewership of the show.

So, the fact that Apple just announced a huge fantasy partnership for its streaming platform should make people pay attention, for a few reasons. Firstly, the fact that it's teaming up with novelist Brandon Sanderson puts it in a partnership with a writer who habitually resides in the best-seller charts, and who's massively prolific.

The agreement pertains to the Cosmere, one of his fictional universes and the setting for two of his most popular series: Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive. The first will be a movie series, apparently, and come first, while the second will be a TV show that takes a little more time to cook up.

Crucially, Sanderson says that Apple is fine for him to be a truly controlling element of the fictional universe – he has final approval for seemingly everything, and will be part of the writing and production process rather than just credited as a creator or source. So, first up, he'll be writing the script for Mistborn, rather than handing it over to someone else.

That comes with some major risks (a good, best-selling novelist is not automatically a great scriptwriter), but Apple clearly considers it all worthwhile given Sanderson's audience. From his point of view, meanwhile, he's clearly had suitors before that haven't passed muster. After all, he co-authored the final novels of The Wheel of Time, so he knows full well how frustrating an aborted adaptation can be.

This all makes for a really interesting situation, and it's one that will clearly take at least a few years before any of us get to see any outcome. Once Sanderson's written the movie that'll open the deal, it'll need to be shot, finished and then released, so don't brace yourself for any of that to happen imminently.

If everyone involved can thread the needle, though, this could be an opportunity for Apple TV to do what Prime Video never managed – to make a truly great fantasy streaming franchise that also gets the viewership needed to run and run.

It's a cavalcade of Apple TV news this week – Apple held an event midweek to announce the slate of new projects it's been working on, and there are some pretty huge additions coming to what we at T3 think is the best streaming service on the planet right now. Nestled in among all the trailers are some shows that, for now, only get teaser images.

One of the most eye-catching is Outcome, which boasts one absolutely huge and totally beloved star, in the form of Keanu Reeves, but also has depth to its bench. He's opposite Cameron Diaz, and supported by none other than Jonah Hill, who's also co-writer and director for the series.

That makes it arguably more of a Jonah Hill show than a Keanu one, albeit the latter is in the main role. Fascinatingly, we can only see Hill in one promo shot, the one at the top of this article, and he's completely unrecognisable thanks to a shaved bald head and thoroughly grey beard.

Rewinding a little, Reeves will play the outrageously named Reef Hawk, a Hollywood star who finds himself in a major crisis when blackmailers get hold of a tape he thought was dead and buried. He turns to his best friends for help: Kyle (Cameron Diaz) and Xander (Matt Bomer).

They're only part of the equation, though, with Hill playing Hawk's crisis lawyer Ira, and presumably helping to try to steer him through a potentially image-destroying career moment. Apparently, it'll all involve Hawk going on a journey of self-discovery as he makes amends with people he's wronged over the years, in the hopes of finding out who's targeting him.

It sounds really fun, and with that cast, it's basically an automatic watchlist addition, but this is also a classic case of "wait for the trailer". From the description and these images, it's possible to form an impression of what the show will be like, but until we see that first bit of footage, it'll remain a bit of an enigma.

Of course, if Apple TV teases the show like it did Pluribus, it'll remain an enigma for some time after that, but either way, we're keen to learn more about it.

Apple TV is on a genuine tear, having held a big event this past week to unveil much of its 2026 slate of releases – and that's made for an avalanche of streaming news, arguably making it a little harder to know what you should care about in the coming months. Well, I think one smaller announcement that bears a second look is Margo's Got Money Troubles.

The new series, based on a hugely well-liked book of the same name, is coming to Apple TV on 15 April, so it's a couple of months away, but we've now got a first trailer, and it showcases what to expect. That is, a really heartfelt story about maternal troubles, with an eye for realism and an acceptance of modern raunchiness.

The show stars Elle Fanning, who just got a very deserved Oscar nomination for her touching work in Sentimental Value. She plays Margo, who wants desperately to be a writer but keeps finding that life gets in the way. That goes to the next level when she gets pregnant and starts running out of ways to keep up with her bills.

Once she has her baby, it's pretty clear from the trailer that she's likely to turn to alternative ways to make money online (and I'm being euphemistic here), all while trying to keep things cordial with her somewhat difficult mother, played by Michelle Pfeiffer.

It all looks really richly detailed and actually quite fun, and it seems like the show (matching the book it's based on) will be wholly non-judgemental about how people need to find ways to make money any way they can in some circumstances. The societal situation that puts them in that corner, of course, might come in for a little more scrutiny.

With supporting work from Nick Offerman and, shockingly, Nicole Kidman, this show can also boast one of the most impressive A-list casts that Apple TV has assembled recently, which is saying something. It looks like it could be a boon for what's already the best streaming service out there, so keep an eye on it ahead of early April.

When Apple released the first season of Your Friends & Neighbors back in April of last year, it probably didn't anticipate one little scene from it becoming a viral sensation months after it was first available to view, but that's just what happened. In recent months, a scene of Jon Hamm's main character Coop dancing some of his woes away has become iconic.

It's generally had its music replaced with a poppier club tune, but people have latched onto the scene as somehow emblematic of what millennials really feel they need – the chance to unwind without any judgment from people around them. Well, now we're faced with the interesting question of whether that virality actually means better prospects for the show's second season, which now has its first proper trailer.

The show looks like it's going to pick up Coop's story pretty directly from the events of last season, and he doesn't seem to have learned his lesson – high-end thievery still seems to be very much on the cards. In fact, we see him exploring a neighbor's house during a party and clearly being tempted to case the joint.

Meanwhile his wife, played by Olivia Munn, continues to deal with the social fallout of their new status as arguably financial has-beens, and all the cattiness from supposed friends that comes with it. The big drama, though, is going to be provided by a new arrival – James Marsden as a brand new neighbour who might just have a sense of what Coop's been up to.

Whether he's an existential threat to Coop's freedom and liberty, a co-conspirator or even some competition, we'll have to wait to find out. Apple's bringing the new season to small screens from 3 April, and we'll doubtless have to wait on tenterhooks for weekly episodes, since Apple TV's been using that system really well for a few years now.

The big question on the lips of every TikTok user, of course, will be whether the show serves up another escapist dance number for Hamm. I wouldn't bet against it, in the social-media influenced world of modern TV production.

There’s a secret to Apple TV’s success right now that comes down to not just the choice of shows it’s commissioning but its faith in them for the long run. Those big-hitting series like Ted Lasso, The Morning Show, Slow Horses and For All Mankind are running to multiple series.

This targeted approach to building content is at odds with the more scattergun approach we’ve seen from other streaming sites, and it’s one that maybe they could all learn from. So many great series have been cut down in their prime, leaving audiences disappointed. That’s rarely happening on Apple TV.

Case in point, Shrinking, the gentle comedy starring Emmy Award nominee Jason Segel and multi-award winner Harrison Ford. The show, created by Segel, along with Bill Lawrence and Brett Goldstein (yes, him from Ted Lasso), released the first episode of Season 3 on 28 January 2026, and has already been confirmed for Season 4.

The show sits somewhere between How I Met Your Mother and My Family for me. Wholesome, yet dark and hilarious in places. If you haven’t seen it, it follows Segel, a therapist who has recently lost his wife in a car accident and sees how his relationship with his daughter, work colleagues and friends have their ups and downs.

Segel and Ford are, of course, excellent, but it’s stand-out performances from Christa Miller (as Liz the neighbour), Michael Urie (as Brian) and Jessica Williams (as Gaby) that really make it for me.

New episodes of season 3 are debuting every Wednesday from 28 January until 8 April 2026, with the season finale. The best thing is that now you can watch it safe in the knowledge that it won’t be the last. Dates for season 4 are still to be confirmed.

Fans of the Formula 1 series will be anxiously awaiting the start of the new season right now. The glitz and glamour of the beloved motorsport franchise is intoxicating, but in the midst of the off-season, there's little to get your teeth into.

Or at least, there wasn't. This year, fans in the USA are being treated to a new broadcast partner in Apple TV, and the app has just gone live with a suite of content to keep you entertained before the first flag drops.

As reported by 9to5Mac, the app contains a host of content designed to keep fans engaged. That includes videos about Red Bull's livery reveal, the 2026 rule changes, the 2025 season in review and much more.

Everything is available in the Apple TV app, and should give users enough to watch as they wait for the action to kick off properly. The first race of the season is takes place in Australia in March, though testing weekends throughout February should also give fans something to talk about.

How to watch Formula 1 for free

The new deal with Apple TV means that users in the USA will gain access to all of the action over the course of the season. The content is free to anyone who subscribes to the platform – no additional fees required.

As a fan from the UK, that all sounds like heaven. While those of us across the pond used to be able to watch for free as well, it has more recently become an exclusive part of the Sky Sports franchise.

Personally, I'm a big fan of the moves Apple TV is making in its sporting coverage. The MLS Season Pass has proven it can offer a comprehensive package of content in one place, and now it's doing the same for Formula 1.

I hope it can be successful over the next few years – then, who knows? Perhaps Apple might even buy the rights for a wider audience to enjoy.

If you've never subscribed to Apple TV before, you don't know what you're missing.

It's arguably the best streaming service for original shows and movies, especially if you like thrillers and sci-fi. And you won't find any of its programmes available on other platforms.

Thankfully, you can try it out for yourself for free, with a 7-day trial period available for all new members. That is extended to 3 months if you happen to have bought a new Apple device – such as an iPhone 17 or Apple TV 4K box.

That means you can check out some of the best series and films it has to offer without paying a penny – then come back for further seasons if they've tickled your fancy.

Here are three superb shows and movies to binge-watch first – all of which can be crammed into your free week.

Hijack

Hijack is very clearly a British TV show – the first season is a beautifully binge-able six episodes, for starters. But add a bigger budget afforded by being on a streaming giant, and you have something extra special.

Idris Elba plays Sam Nelson, an expert negotiator who gets caught up in a plane hijack (hence the name) and realises that his skills might be of use. However, the thriller takes twists and turns you probably won't see coming, and it turns into something far more than a Die Hard clone.

A second season has recently started on Apple TV too, so this is an ideal time to catch up on the first to see if you fancy extending your membership to carry on the story.

F1 The Movie

Having secured a nomination for Best Picture at the 2026 Oscars, F1 The Movie (or just F1 in some regions) should get a new wave of attention. And rightfully so.

While the plot is stock Top Gun / Days of Thunder fare, and there's a highly relaxed take on the rules of Formula One, Brad Pitt shows just how much he's finely maturing into an old school Hollywood great – by playing an old school motor racing great. To great effect.

The racing sequences are also incredible to watch – with some real heart-in-your-mouth moments. You might cringe over certain aspects (whatever happened to practice and qualifying days?) but if you want to want a perfect piece of popcorn cinema, this should be high on your list.

Severance

Even though Pluribus is the sci-fi show on everyone's lips right now, we mustn't forget the brilliance of Severance's first season.

Confusing, comedic and compelling in equal measure, the nine episodes in season 1 are among the best in TV history – not just for its genre.

Centred on a group of employees who have volunteered to have two personalities – one for work, the other for outside the building – the show's layers are slowly peeled back to expose the science fiction thriller lurking beneath.

It is arguably the best thing on Apple TV still today and although each episode is between 40 minutes and an hour long, you'll find yourself wanting to whip your way through them in no time.

As the weekend draws near, you might be wondering what it holds for you in the world of streaming – with those precious weekend slots generally being when most of us do out binge-watching. If you're anything like us here at T3, you've probably got more than one streaming subscription on the go, too.

So, I've taken a wide look at what's coming to all the best streaming services out there right now, to bring you some of the highlights of the next week. This covers some huge shows but also some much less well-known ones, too, so be sure to check through the whole list to get some inspiration for what you could watch in the next seven days.

Hijack Season 2

• Streaming on: Apple TV weekly

The second season of Hijack was a long time coming, but it's in progress now, and thanks to Apple TV's weekly release schedule you'll be able to watch the show's latest episode on Wednesday, 21 January (and then every Wednesday onwards until it ends). Idris Elba is back for another locked-down high-stakes situation.

This time, rather than being locked on a plane journey that's been taken over, he's on a high-speed train, which means that the writers an come up with a whole heap of new ways for him to try to rope people into helping him thwart a load of baddies.

Steal

• Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video from 21 January

Sophie Turner is about to have a very big year, much of it with the help of Prime Video, for whom she's about to start filming a new series as the iconic Lara Croft, otherwise known as Tomb Raider. Before then, though, she has a new thriller series coming out, which looks like a great showcase for her talents.

She'll play Zara, a financial worker who gets tied up in all sorts of murky dealings when criminals seemingly force her to send them billions of pounds, untraceably. She might know more than it first seems, though, and the show seems to be about exploring whether she can get away without being offed by either those same criminals or law enforcement.

The Big Fake

• Streaming on: Netflix from 23 January

Some of Netflix's best content isn't in the English language, as proven by the excitement building around this super fun-looking Italian series. It tells the morally questionable rags-to-riches story of one Toni Chichiarelli, making his way through Rome in the 1970s.

The costumes look amazing, the mob mentality is clearly going to play a big role, and the whole thing has a slightly playful, knowingly sexy tone that could make it a real hit. Plus, there's every chance it'll have a soundtrack to die for. Don't bet against it all ending very badly for Toni, though.

Drops of God Season 2

• Streaming on: Apple TV from 21 January

This is one of the most unique shows that Apple TV has ever made, but it might well have flown completely under your radar. Its first season told a super interesting story – as main character Camille flew to Japan under the instructions of her now-dead father's will. He was a world-renowned wine expert, and she was forced to complete a series of tests against his best student, Issei, to earn her inheritance.

Without spoiling how that ended, the second season will seemingly pick up with both characters taking on a new challenge, as they try to figure out where the world's greatest wine actually came from. It looks like another sumptuous and touching journey, and might be a great lesser-known option.

UEFA Champions League Matchday 7

• Streaming on: Amazon Prime Video on 20 January

It's been a while now since Amazon became a part-time player in the world of big football rights, and it currently gets the pick of each round of UEFA Champions League games here in the UK, taking that game on Tuesday of each gameweek.

So, if you're a lover of the game, you'll want to be seated on 20 January for Inter Milan v Arsenal, which is a simply huge game. Arsenal are surging in this year's league phase, and Internazionale remain one of the biggest names in the game, so this should be a tactically interesting test for the Gunners.

Cosmic Princess Kaguya!

• Streaming on: Netflix from 22 January

There's never a bad time to watch a charming anime movie, and this one looks utterly delightful, telling a story that some people might know from Studio Ghibli's sumptuous The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. This is a far more modern version of the tale, though, transposing things into the idol scene with a whole heap of music.

That might make it more of an acquired taste, to be fair, and you'll probably know whether it's up your street from just a 30-second sampling of the trailer that I've embedded above. That's all good, though, since there's so much coming out this week regardless.

Undercover Miss Hong

• Streaming on: Netflix from 17 January

K-dramas have gone from something a little less well-known in recent years to being some of the biggest streaming hits you could possibly find, with Squid Game having really led the charge on that front. This is a far more light-hearted affair, though, focusing on a hilarious workplace scenario.

Main character Hong Keum-bo will go undercover to investigate potential financial irregularities at a big company, but will need to dice with how she comes to be friends with fake colleagues. More to the point, she's also got a very personal connection to the company's CEO, and it might well be romantic. This looks like a lovely light treat.

It's been a bit of a theme of my 2025 that I've gone from something of a sceptic about physical media to a full-blown convert, scouring my local CEX for Blu-rays and proselytising about the benefits of actually owning your media to all and sundry. Still, there's no escaping one fatal flaw at the heart of even the best 4K discs and Blu-rays – they're still discs.

So, while you can keep those sets you buy new in great condition with only a little care, if you buy used ones like I often do, there's always a chance that even a microscopic little scratch can be the end of your viewing session midway through a film.

That happened to me just this week, watching a second-hand copy of Star Trek: Into Darkness (£1.50, thanks for nothing CEX). I'm not going to bat for what is a pretty mediocre sci-fi movie all in all, but that didn't mean I was chill when the whole thing ground to a halt just over an hour into the film.

I already knew something was up, since my PS5 Pro failed to read the disc about three times, even with polishing in between, but once it started up, I thought I was out of the woods. That made it super grating when it died halfway through with no amount of cleaning getting it working.

The only option was to hop over and rent the movie (another £3.50, cheers CEX) so we could finish it – but little did I know that this would be a perfect testing ground for my girlfriend. She's been extremely polite about my physical media obsession, it's fair to say, but outside of rapturously enjoying the 4K re-releases of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, she never necessarily bought into the hype as I do.

Going directly from the disc (1080p with 7.1 Dolby Digital audio) to a streaming version from Apple TV's app, marked as 4K with Dolby Atmos confirmed in my Sonos app, though, was a perfect test – and the disc won. It's not necessarily a matter of sharpness, exactly, although that is a factor, but when it comes to vibrancy of colour and clarity of sound, there was really no contest.

In fact, I only lasted a couple of minutes before pausing the movie again to check whether she'd noticed the difference, and she confirmed that she very much had. Starfleet uniforms that had previously popped off the screen were now a little more muted, and the whole film had a slightly fuzzier look that felt like a clear step down compared to how we'd watched the first half.

That doesn't change the fact that a disc failing is a huge inconvenience, and a clear long-standing issue with the format that won't go away any time soon. Still, it's refreshing for me to confirm that I'm not just imagining the difference that a proper physical source makes for movie-watching.

Now, though, I can't help but feel like I need to get a better setup than my current one in terms of a disc player. I move my PS5 Pro from my office to our living room whenever we want to use a disc, which is a pretty major faff, and it's far from the quietest disc player out there in terms of spinning noises. It's always nice to have a pipe dream, after all.

As we start 2026, it's basically time to prepare for a big streaming war – as all the best streaming services compete to get your eyeballs at the start of the year. Apple TV might not be the biggest player, but it's my favourite of them all, and it dropped a really tasty teaser to round out the end of last year that you might have missed.

As I try to compile a quick list in my head of the shows I've most enjoyed on Apple TV since I became a subscriber a couple of years ago, it's actually not all that easy – there have been plenty. Still, Shrinking is definitely on the list, especially in relation to its extremely strong first season. Now, it's getting a third, and there's a full trailer to enjoy.

The show's going to pick up after the undeniably dramatic ending to the previous season (spoilers ahead). It saw Jimmy (Jason Segel) make a last-second intervention to save the life of Louis, the man who accidentally killed his wife – played by series co-writer Brett Goldstein.

Now, from the looks of things, they'll be catching up more regularly as Jimmy continues to come to terms with what happened, and with the deep guilt that Louis still feels about what he did. Meanwhile, the huge name that likely got the show greenlit is back again – Harrison Ford, as Paul, Jimmy's mentor, who's dealing with his ongoing Parkinson's diagnosis.

In fact, probably the most eye-catching moment in the trailer is a brief glimpse of a cameo from none other than Michael J Fox, the star of the Back to the Future films. He's one of the most high-profile Parkinson's patients ever, and has a huge amount of activism about the subject to fall back on, so his inclusion is super heartening to see.

It all looks like more charming fun, and there will doubtless be subplots and comedic undertows to enjoy as the main stories unfold. I found the second season of the show a little more unbalanced than what came before, so my fingers are crossed for the new episodes when they start on 28 January.

As the year comes to an end, it must be said that 2025 has been particularly outstanding for lavish, bold and ground breaking television.

It's been year in which we have had more streaming service options than ever before, and we've been pretty much spoiled for choice on a month by month basis. Indeed, there has never been a better time to be a couch potato – with so much available to watch that it's a wonder any of us have managed to leave the house.

Here then (in no particular order) is our list of the best 25 shows of the year – each available to stream on the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Now and more. There should be something for everyone here.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story (Netflix)

Charlie Hunnam stars as the notorious and influential serial killer Ed Gein in the latest instalment of Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology franchise.

It's a show that has divided audiences, and will likely shock, upset and leave you wondering why we're all obsessed with creepy guys who like to eat people..

But when something is this well made, there's actually a simple answer.

Chad Powers (Disney+)

Based on the YouTube prank shorts from Eli Manning, Chad Powers stars Glen Powell as disgraced college quarterback Russ Holliday who decides to don a disguise to re-enter the league under a new persona.

It's like Mrs Doubtfire but with more American football and fewer weird Scottish accents.

The Studio (Apple TV)

Seth Rogan stars as Matt Remick, a high level movie studio executive who must navigate the cut throat and, at times, ludicrous movie industry.

Feeling like a bigger budget Curb Your Enthusiasm at times, The Studio hilariously exposes the world of expanding media and declining audiences.

It's honest, awkward and, most importantly, very, very funny. And it's a truly great show that's absolutely worth a watch.

Dept. Q (Netflix)

Painfully overlooked by many Netflix viewers, Dept. Q is a fantastic police thriller series following Carl – a detective relegated to a new cold case agency following an attack that almost killed him.

Amazing performances, razor sharp script work, and a genuinely intriguing main case makes this absolute binge-worthy television.

Task (Now / Sky)

The new series from writer/creator Brad Ingelsby (Mare Of Easttown), Task follows FBI agent Tom Brandis (an on-form Mark Ruffalo) as he investigates a string of violent robberies in the rural suburbs of Philadelphia.

It's gritty, raw and unrelenting, with real emotional punch – and it wholly deserves to be on your list this year.

Alien: Earth (Disney+)

The first live action TV series based in the Alien universe, Alien: Earth is set two years before the events of the first movie and introduces us not only to a new raft of xenomorph creatures, but also to a world of rival corporations at war.

Earth's corporations are desperate to get their hands on Alien tech no matter the cost, and that provides a backdrop to one of the best Alien outings in many years.

We get all new characters and a second season has been rightfully confirmed.

The Assassin (Amazon Prime Video)

The always superb Keeley Hawes stars as Julie in this six episode Prime Video series about a retired killer forced to go on the run with her estranged son, after her deadly past finally catches up with her.

Cue a load of shoot outs, some really solid fight scenes, and a whole bunch of beautiful locations.

It's popcorn television at its best – entertaining albeit instantly forgettable.

Mobland (Paramount+)

There is no-one better than Tom Hardy for whispery, mumbling London gangster, and when you add Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and Paddy Considine to the mix, you've got a Guy Ritchie classic.

As with most of Ritchie's back catalogue, Mobland is quite ridiculous but outrageously entertaining. Things blow up, people get killed in horrible ways, and everyone seems to have swallowed the script from Snatch.

That could well be your cup of Rosie Lee.

A Thousand Blows (Disney+)

Stephen Graham and James Nelson-Joyce’s take over of television in 2025 began in February this year with Disney’s A Thousand Blows.

It follows the fortunes of Hezekiah and Alec, two best friends from Jamaica as they fight for survival on the violent streets of Victorian London’s East-End, and is beautifully shot.

It also features some absolute stand out performances from Graham, Malachi Kirby and Erin Doherty.

Wayward (Netflix)

A glimpse into the world of the troubled teen industry, Wayward explores a town with a sinister underbelly. It deals with the intricacies of teens, their struggle to find a place in the world.

In all honesty though, the whole show is just a vehicle to showcase the powerhouse that is Toni Collete and we are fine with that. More Collette is always a good thing.

It's a weird, creepy show and perfect for the dark nights.

Murderbot (Apple TV)

This amazing Apple TV sci-fi show was largely ignored when released and that's surely a crime.

Alexander Skarsgard stars as Murderbot, a self-named (not the best choice) security android struggling with new found emotions and free will while trying to keep the humans under his care alive on a dangerous and hostile planet.

Skarsgard is amazing, David Dastmalchian is amazing – but nobody watched the show. You should all be ashamed of yourselves because it's fantastic.

Adolescence (Netflix)

Netflix’s biggest TV success of 2025 is a show that became a political and social talking point.

Adolescence is a show that has transcended entertainment, having been studied and examined by pretty much every group dedicated to social change as an insight into a hidden and growing problem.

Stephen Graham once again delivers a stunning performance as a dad dealing with the aftermath of a shocking family event, while trying to continue to live a semi-normal life.

Some TV shows are important and will be remembered – this is the very definition of that.

Mix Tape (iPlayer)

This is a soft and fluffy romantic comedy series to watch for free on BBC iPlayer, and is perfect for those of us who spent hours of their lives desperately trying to create the ultimate mix tape for someone we fancied. Or so I'm told…

It's funny, relevant, warm, and will absolutely resonate with many of us of a certain age in the best of ways.

I made loads of tapes in the end. Spotify playlists just aren't the same.

The Bondsman (Amazon Prime Video)

Sometimes you just need a TV show that is big, stupid, gory fun. And this is it.

The legendary Kevin Bacon stars as Hub Halloran, a bounty hunter resurrected after his murder and given a second chance at life on the understanding that he hunts demons, monsters and other creepy horrible things.

It's loud, shooty and isn't afraid to get bloody. The Bondsman will never win an Emmy award but it will fill an afternoon.

Marvel Zombies (Disney+)

More Marvel, more animation, more MCU plot development. This new animated series follows that renowned comic books of the same name and fits into Marvel’s What If universe.

In it, you can expect Marvel heroes and humans battling not only hordes of undead but also fellow superheroes, such as The Hulk who have become zombies – and with their associated powers.

It's a cartoon series, but adult in nature. And it's very gory, but a load of fun.

Down Cemetery Road (Apple TV)

Another huge Apple TV release sees Ruth Wilson and Emma Thompson team up as investigators into crime, conspiracy and a government cover up.

As with Slow Horses, Down Cemetery Road is based on a novel written by the amazing Mick Herron, and so the show is very similar in terms of tone, script work and character development.

It has a great cast, a superb script, and is generally brilliant. Get a free Apple subscription and binge this one.

Untamed (Netflix)

Eric Bana plays Kyle Turner, a grief stricken National Parks service agent investigating a brutal death at Yosemite National Park.

The investigation sends him on a collision course with dark secrets inside the park as well as in his own past, resulting in a beautiful looking show that really uses the setting to its advantage.

Untamed is tense, well written, and well worth a watch.

Black Rabbit (Netflix)

Black Rabbit stars Jude Law and Jason Bateman as New York-based brothers desperately trying to survive and keep hold of their city hotspot in a world of crime, fame and murder.

Law is the dependable one, while Bateman is turbulent and foolhardy, which makes for a fantastic drama that is constantly tense and unforgiving.

The characters are fleshed out and realistic, and the locations are gritty, run down and tangible.

For me, Black Rabbit is THE hidden gem of 2025.

Your Friends & Neighbours (Apple TV)

John Hamm (Mad Men) plays Andrew "Coop" Cooper, a hedge fund manager who resorts to burglary after losing his job and a crippling divorce.

Targeting his own wealthy neighbours to fund and maintain his family’s lifestyle, he makes a fateful mistake and breaks into the wrong home.

This is another huge and lavish Apple TV production with the always reliable Hamm at the helm.

Lazarus (Amazon Prime Video)

Some shows are subtle, grounded and well thought through, others are just a bit mental and make no real sense. Lazarus is definitely in the latter category, but still worth a watch.

Sam Claflin plays a therapist who after experiencing a personal loss, begins having disturbing experiences that can't be explained.

Admittedly, performances are all over the place, it's riddled with plot holes and in many cases, makes no real sense. However, it's perfect for a hungover afternoon on the sofa when there is nothing else to fill your time.

Dying For Sex (Disney+)

Based on the Wondery Podcast of the same name about Molly Kochan, Dying For Sex tells the tragic story of a woman diagnosed with terminal, metastatic breast cancer who abandons her husband and begins to fully explore her sexuality.

Criticised by some for its attitude towards relationships, the show presents a bold statement on personal choice and living life by your own rules.

House Of Guinness (Netflix)

Created by Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, A Thousand Blows), House Of Guinness follows the aftermath of the death of real-life brewery mogul, Sir Benjamin Guinness and the impact of his will on his four adult children.

It mixes beautifully shot period drama with the violent elements from Blinders, and so feels very similar. Peaky fans will love it.

Smoke (Apple TV)

Smoke is further testament to the sheer power and money behind Apple's TV platform.

Taron Egerton plays Dave Gudsen, a troubled detective and arson investigator on the hunt for two serial arsonists who always seem to be one step ahead. It's a strange show with a lot of twists and turns, but absolutely stands out as well worth a watch.

Victoria Beckham (Netflix)

After the success of Beckham, focusing on hubby David, this 2025 fly on the wall docu-series makes a lot of sense. It follows the former Spice Girl’s journey to fashion designer and mother of four, and tells her side of the story.

It's a literal who’s who of A-list celebs, musicians, movie stars, models, and fashion designers. Victoria also comes across well and David continues to be... well... David.

Give this a watch if you want a glimpse into a life you will probably never have. And might never actually want.

Paradise (Disney+)

This post apocalyptic 10 part drama series came out of nowhere but became a sleeper hit.

It stars Sterling K Brown as Xavier Collins, a secret service agent tasked with protecting the president before and after the end of the world. And not only does it centre on a great premise and setting, it has a really solid script to boot.

Paradise is genuinely interesting and features plenty of twists and turns.

It was really striking to me, as someone who covers a whole heap of streaming trailers each and every week here at T3, that when Apple started to tease its massive new sci-fi hit Pluribus, it did so with just about the most patient and restrained teaser campaign I've seen in ages. For weeks and weeks, all we got were drip-fed micro-teasers showing the barest glimpses of scenes, without any real explanation of what was going on or what the show would be about.

Now, it looks like Apple might be taking that lesson forward, since Pluribus has debuted to the streaming service's highest ever viewership for a new show, and is a hit with critics and audiences alike. Maybe these super-restrained teasers, culminating in a still carefully-edited trailer just before the show launches, were part of its success?

Well, if so then brace yourself for another campaign, this time for next year's Widow's Bay.

The first teaser is incredibly short. It shows a local bar in New England shutting down, with people walking home and the lights turning off one by one. Then we see Matthew Rhys, the show's star, sitting at a dimly lit table looking more than a little haggard. That's it! That's all we get, other than the title card and confirmation that the show will start on 29 April 2026.

From the brief blurb Apple has published, though, we know that Rhys is probably playing the mayor of this town, Tom Loftis (not a disaffected barkeep), and that he's under the cosh trying to convince everyone else in the town that it's not cursed. That, again, is all we have to go on, but it's a pretty interesting premise.

The question now is how long we'll have to wait to get another look at the show, and how brief that glimpse will be, in turn. The way Pluribus was teased was almost infuriating, but there's no denying the efficacy of the campaign, and I wouldn't be against Apple taking a new approach and keeping the twists and plots of shows more secretive before they start.

After all, few things are more annoying than a big-budget trailer that runs you through the entire plot of a movie or show as it tries to win you over. It tends to do the reverse to me, so Widow's Bay definitely has my attention if only for avoiding that pitfall.

Apple has added a surprise feature to the Apple TV app on Android, allowing Google Cast. This will make it much easier for Android users to watch Apple TV on the big screen, sending the content from their phone to a different device.

Google Cast was all the rage in the 2010s, with Google allowing diverse methods for sharing and controlling content on other devices using its casting protocol. Originally facilitated by the Chromecast, Google Cast was adopted by a number of platforms and remains an inherent part of Google devices.

With that, it's possible to cast content to Google TV Streamer and televisions that use the Google TV platform, like Sony TVs, but it's also supported by webOS on LG TVs, as well as a range of streaming devices.

While this is a great addition for Android users, the sting in the tail is that it's not included in the iOS version, so iPhone users won’t be able to take advantage of the tech. Apple probably assumes that iPhone users will want to use AirPlay instead, which is also widely supported on modern televisions and streaming devices.

Google Cast is a good technology, because it's not sending the content peer to peer. Instead, it's a control signal that tells the receiver device where to stream the content from. It allows the mobile device to remain in control, but if that device goes offline or the owner leaves the house, the content will still be playing on the receiver device.

For Google Cast to work, both devices need to be signed into the same Wi-Fi network. In most cases, it will open the relevant app on the device, rather than just firing in the content as it would in a screen mirroring situation.

The addition to Apple TV on Android devices comes as something of a surprise, but while Google Cast enjoyed its heyday about a decade ago, it's less relevant than it once was. With the proliferation of devices – and most supporting the Apple TV app – it's likely that most users will be able to watch using a native app rather than relying on Google Cast.

Ironically, the addition of Google Cast comes just as Netflix has removed support for casting through its app. Netflix was an early adopter of casting technology, again allowing remote control of a device through the app on a smartphone. Now, users will have to use the native app on the device they are watching on instead.

That's perhaps an indicator of how relevant this technology now is. Having been a big user of casting in the early days, with every TV now being smart, voice searching common and smooth apps, I haven't used Google Cast for a number of years.

It's a great addition from Apple, but there's a chance that most people won't ever need to use it.

It seems like there's a new twist in the Warner Bros Discovery sale each day, with Paramount Skydance now having launched a hostile takeover. It was only 48 hours ago that it was being widely reported Netflix was to be the new owner of most of its operations.

Then of course, the US president piped up saying he wants to get involved, too – warning that a sale to Netflix would give the streaming service too big an advantage.

So it's all really up in the air still, with a likely resolution some way off. One thing we have learned though is that if Netflix does end up being the steward of Warner Bros' studios and streaming properties, it will continue to supply rivals with programming.

According to Deadline, in the result of a successful acquisition, Netflix boss Ted Sarandos has vowed to keep Warner-made shows like Ted Lasso and Shrinking on their respective services – in this case, Apple TV.

"[Warner] produces and licenses content to third parties. We were never in that business. We are now," he is reported to have said during the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference.

"Now in this transaction we own that business, and Channing [Dungey] and that group do a phenomenal job. We want them to continue to do that phenomenal job."

Channing Dungey is the current chairman and CEO of the Warner Television Group.

But this is all dependent on Netflix having its purchase ratified both by shareholders and US regulators. Paramount has really thrown a spanner in the works, by offering even more money to buy the entirety of Warner Bros Discovery.

It values the company at $108.4bn (£81.22bn), while Netflix plans to pay $82.7bn for the studios and streaming networks alone. In the latter case, ancillary companies will be spun off into separate properties.

It seems like the battle has only just begun.

If you're a Formula 1 fan, the culmination of the 2025 season yesterday will have left a hole in your soul. With the off-season now underway, it's going to be a long few months before things get underway once more.

For some, that new season is also going to have a new look, as the franchise has been snapped up by Apple TV. That follows the success of the brand's efforts in football, with the MLS Season Pass proving to be a popular offering.

In a 50-second advert shared on Twitter, the brand showed off some footage of the racing, but also gave us a glimpse of what the new format will look like. And there's a lot of good news to be unpicked.

First things first, we see a multi-view screen with a pair of driver cams on the side of the display alongside the main action. It seems that each of the drivers will have their own live view, which can be selected within the menu, allowing you to follow your favourite driver all race.

It also shows a new live activity on the iPhone which shows key information about each race. We see the lap count at the top, with the top three shown with their gaps in between.

That tops a button which takes you to Apple TV to watch the race, along with some kind of timer function. Beneath that is a full leaderboard for the race, which actually makes this a really comprehensive way to follow along if you're unable to watch live.

All in all, it's just about exactly what you'd expect from Apple. Everything looks clean and well implemented, similar to how I felt about the MLS Season Pass when using that.

With the new Formula 1 season set to start in March with the Australian Grand Prix, there's not too long left until the action will be unveiled. It's worth noting that there's no additional subscription required to view – the action will be part of the base Apple TV subscription.

As streaming services have grown to be even more important in our lives over the last year, it's great to see that cinemas have also seen some resurgence.

That's largely thanks to some of the major studios supporting theatres and releasing their biggest blockbusters in cinemas first. So it's been a great year to watch a movie with a bucket of popcorn and a bunch of strangers.

And with the same films hitting streaming a few months later, those who'd prefer to curl up on the sofa (or even watch on a smartphone) are catered for too.

So, in alphabetical order, here are 25 great examples of films from 2025 available to stream right now and where you can watch them.

A House Of Dynamite (Netflix)

The director of Point Break and The Hurt Locker, Kathryn Bigelow, returned to the director's chair after an almost nine year break with this tense and claustrophobic story about a single, unattributed nuclear missile being launched at the United States.

Dripping with the signature realism that Bigelow brings to her films, A House Of Dynamite is as divisive as it is impressive.

It's definitely not for everyone and garners criticism in equal measure to praise, but it's a film that's absolutely worth a watch.

All Of You (Apple TV)

I'm not crying, you're crying! You certainly will be at this amazing romantic drama written by Brett Goldstein (Ted Lasso) and William Bridges (Stranger Things).

Goldstein and Imogen Poots play Simon and Laura, best friends since University who in later life find themselves battling the feelings they have towards each other while navigating their individual relationships.

Unrequited love, fate and integrity are each explored in this absolutely beautiful and heartbreaking film.

It truly is one of the best of the year and once again reminds us what a national treasure Brett Goldstein is.

Ballad Of A Small Player (Netflix)

With a limited cinematic release and therefore quick turnaround onto Netflix, Colin Farrell’s Ballad Of A Small Player is the very definition of a hidden gem.

With his past and gambling debts rapidly catching up with him, Farrell’s Lord Doyle goes on the run to Macau to lay low. While there he meets a kindred spirit who might be his salvation.

It's a stunning, stylish and visually striking film that makes up for its small budget and lack of promotion by just being really good. Find it and give it a watch.

Echo Valley (Apple TV)

Kate (Julianne Moore) is dealing with a personal tragedy while owning and training horses in the isolated and picturesque Echo Valley. But the quiet is disrupted when her daughter, Claire (Sydney Sweeney), arrives at her doorstep, frightened, trembling and covered in someone else's blood.

Here begins thoughtful thriller that looks at the concept of victimhood, abuse and the strength to rise above it all.

Solid central performances set Echo Valley above many of its type and the film is ultimately a rewarding watch.

Eden (Amazon Prime Video)

Based on a factual account, Eden deals with a group of outsiders who settle on a remote island only to discover their greatest threat isn't the brutal climate or deadly wildlife, but each other,

It features an all-star cast, including Jude Law, Ana De Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Bruhl and Sydney Sweeney, while legendary director Ron Howard steers the ship.

It looks beautiful and due to being based on real events, is as shocking as you might imagine.

Eenie Meenie (Disney+)

With a tiny budget, zero publicity and a release almost hidden by Disney, this solid little crime thriller has largely fallen under the radar.

Samara Weaving plays Edie, a reformed teenage getaway driver dragged back into her criminal past when offered a way to save the life of her unreliable ex-boyfriend.

It has a great script, great action sequences and solid performances, so is a film well worth catching.

F1 The Movie (Apple TV)

A film that started life as Days Of Thunder 2 (until Tom Cruise pulled out), F1 The Movie is nothing short of car porn.

Brad Pitt is as handsome as ever, everything is shiny and oversaturated, at no point is there anything not going fast or making noise. The race sequences are as close to the real thing as you can get.

I believe there is some kind of story and plot involved somewhere, but I'm not sure that's important really.

Frankenstein (Netflix)

To date, there must have been over 400 feature films based on Frankenstein’s monster. And with this in mind, it seems mildly pointless to get excited about yet another one.

However, this version is directed by Guilermo Del Toro, has an all star cast and is seen by Del Toro himself to be his magnum opus.

Oscar Issac plays Victor Frankenstein, the doctor obsessed with defeating the concept of death itself, and Jacob Elordi is his creation.

Visually stunning, bold and lavish, the film is a masterpiece in filmmaking and could well become known as Del Toro’s finest work. It's superb and needs to be seen.

Happy Gilmore 2 (Netflix)

It took 29 years to get Happy Gilmore 2 to our screens. Why? Well that's a huge question, but let's just be happy (pun intended) that we got it in our generation.

This is a direct sequel to Adam Sandler's iconic 1996 comedy, and we see our hero Happy a lot older but still not any wiser.

Circumstances have lead him back to golf, and once more there are bad guys, good guys, a vast array of cameos and a tournament that has to be won.

It's certainly not groundbreaking, but it is a solid slice of fun that those of us with long memories will enjoy purely for the nostalgia.

Hedda (Prime Video)

A reimagining of Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 stage drama stars Tessa Thomspon as the titular Hedda Gabler.

It's a lavishly told, cinematic and highly modernised tale of a woman unhappy with her lot in life, although the Prime Video adaptation has split critics with some praising and some condemning.

Check it out for yourself though, as it's certainly bold movie.

Highest 2 Lowest (Apple TV)

After a five year break from film making, Spike Lee is back, with Denzel Washington and Jeffrey Wright in tow.

Highest 2 Lowest is a story of power, morality, art and responsibility. Washington stars as David King, a music mogul who finds himself in the middle of a targeted ransom plot that descends into a life or death moral dilemma.

It's a film that drips Spike Lee from every pore and reminds us of why he became so adored in the first place. Just do yourself a favour and watch with the sound down as the soundtrack is an "interesting choice" to say the least. You have been warned.

I Like Me (Prime Video)

Those of us of a certain age will have grown up with the comedy legend that was John Candy.

From Planes, Trains And Automobiles to Uncle Buck, Candy was by far the greatest comedy actor of his time and when he died in 1994 at the painfully young age of 43, we all lost a huge talent.

I Like Me is a beautifully crafted and sensitive biopic that is clearly produced by real fans of the actor. It's funny, heartbreaking, life affirming, and is a lovely and gentle watch.

KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix)

Directed by Maggie Kang and inspired by her own Korean heritage, KPop Demon Hunters seemingly came from nowhere to become one of the biggest hits of 2025.

It was certainly Netflix’s biggest hit of the year and a franchise that will no doubt spawn a thousand spinoffs and adaptations.

The film has crossed generational as well as cultural boundaries too, to become something really special. Not many straight to streaming movies get dragged into cinemas after release and get a singalong version made!

Nickel Boys (Prime Video)

Nickel Boys is a strikingly assured and ambitious debut fiction-feature from director RaMell Ross.

It is composed almost entirely of point-of-view (POV) shots, and while that's been tried a handful of times on film before (such as in the 40s noir The Lady of the Lake), it's never been pulled off so intricately and effectively as here.

Bi-perspectival, we experience the gazes of two different characters, Elwood and Turner (Ethan Herisse and Brandon Wilson), teenagers incarcerated in a Jim Crowe-era juvenile detention centre that amounts to a borderline death-camp for its Black prisoners.

The film is brutal, raw and can be a difficult watch, but boy is it worthwhile.

Predator: Killer Of KIllers (Disney+)

An animated instalment of the long running Predator series, Killer Of Killers is a three-story anthology piece charting the Predators' battles against worthy humans across the ages.

With stunning animation, gory and adult aimed content and some genuinely great set piece battles, the film is every part of the franchise and breathes new life into it.

Stay until the end of the credits too, for a classic Predator easter egg.

Steve (Netflix)

For every ‘Fast And Furious’ and for every Marvel style CGI action blockbuster there is a ‘Steve’. Following Cillian Murphy’s titular character ‘Steve’ the film shows the daily struggle of a headteacher tasked with dealing with young adults deemed problematic and unfit for mainstream schooling. The absolute victory in ‘Steve’ is the central performance by Cillian Murphy which is nothing short of outstanding. Honest, raw, nuanced and naturalistic, truly special and award worthy.

The Accountant 2 (Amazon Prime Video)

After the surprise success of the first Accountant film, it seemed only a matter of time before Ben Affleck was brought back for a second.

This time it's a buddy cop-style film with equal emphasis on John Bernthal's brother character. So double the action, double the mayhem and half the actual plot.

It's to do with missing people or something, but that's not really important. The two brothers shoot a load of people with big guns, in cool ways – that's enough really.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps (Disney+)

Marvel finally introduced the legendary Fantastic Four to the ongoing MCU this year, and quite some style.

With an all star cast, including Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach and Joseph Quinn, Marvel’s "first family" came to our screens in a huge, bright, flashy and retro styled alternative universe. And considering that they spend time under attack from the iconic Silver Surfer and the pretty huge Galactus, it's a whole lot of fun, to boot.

The film certainly saw a departure from the previous bleak and depressing MCU movies and shows, and was all the better for it.

The Gorge (Apple TV)

There is a huge Gorge somewhere in the world and down at the bottom there are monsters and all kinds of bad stuff that wants to get up.

And for plot reasons, instead of closing it over or siting thousands of soldiers and tanks around it, the world has put its faith in Miles Teller and Anna Taylor-Joy to defend literally miles of ground on their own.

It's a film that can be enjoyed without having your brain switched on, even with the huge gaping plotholes as wide as the gorge itself. It's stupid CGI riddled fun.

The Roses (Amazon Prime Video)

This is a satirical black comedy based on the classic 1989 film The War Of The Roses, and sees Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Coleman as a married couple who over time drift apart and begin a campaign of escalating cruelty towards each other.

There are great central performances from the two British icons, and they set this one apart from others of its type to make it well worth a watch.

The Thursday Murder Club (Netflix)

Based on the international best selling novels by Richard Osman, The Thursday Murder Club is the first in what we can only imagine will be a string of films and TV adaptations.

Directed by the legendary Chris Columbus and with an all star cast of British film legends, this faithful adaptation was partly written by Osman himself has been a huge success for Netflix.

It's surely a must see for all fans of "cozy crime", just don't expect shootouts and explosions – it's more cake and bus passes.

The Woman In Cabin 10 (Netflix)

Keira Knightley stars in this straight to streaming Netflix mystery thriller about a travel writer who discovers a gruesome secret while travelling aboard a luxury cruise ship.

It was released with practically no promotion, but is a solid and functional thriller with a strong central performance.

The Woman In Cabin 10 does exactly what it sets out to do and a decent watch.

The Woman In The Yard (Now / Sky)

In this 2025 Blumhouse original film, a mysterious woman repeatedly appears in a family's front yard, often delivering chilling warnings and unsettling messages. This leaves them to question her identity, motives and the potential danger she might pose.

It's a solid mystery thriller with horror elements, and is lavish and visually striking. It also holds enough twists and turns to keep your attention.

It's not the scariest movie of all time, but a good entry point into the genre.

Thunderbolts* (Disney+)

The only Marvel movie in the current phase that didn't cost over $200 million to make is also considered one of the best in years.

Thunderbolts* carries on the ongoing saga of the MCU with the focus on some of the franchise’s lesser known, arguably peripheral characters.

It's darker and perhaps more thoughtful than previous instalments too, and seems more focused on the emotional and human elements of the characters than all out CGI battles. It's all the better for it.

Warfare (Amazon Prime Video)

When it comes to brutal reality in film, there is currently nobody quite like Alex Garland. Straight from helming his hit Civil War, he brought us Warfare.

Written by Garland and real life Iraq war veteran Ray Mendoza, the movie is based on the latter's own experiences, so is a brutal, violent and visceral glimpse into the terror and panic of modern infantry combat.

It's loud, shocking, and at no point willing to allow its audience respite. Raw honesty at its most cinematic.

We're coming to the end of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, so you only have a few hours to ensure you get the best bargains. And that includes the amazing deals on streaming services.

Apple TV, Paramount+, and the Sky-owned Now are still running 50% off deals, but not for much longer, while Amazon will soon end its cut-price subscriptions to Prime Video channels, like MGM+ and Shudder.

Also if you want to watch your own content streamed around the home – and anywhere else you have a Wi-Fi connection – Plex's deal only has a short time left.

So if you want to pay less for months' worth of viewing, you'd best grab these quickly.

Best UK streaming deals for Cyber Monday 2025

• Apple TV: now £4.99 per month
• Paramount Plus: from £3.99 per month
• Now: from £4.99 per month
• MGM Plus (via Prime Video): now 99p per month
• Shudder (via Prime Video): now £2.49 per month
• Crunchyroll (via Prime Video): now £2.49 per month
• Plex Pass Premium: now £2.99 per month

How to get the UK's best Cyber Monday streaming deals

Here are all the best streaming deals available in the UK today, and how to get them.

We are still hunting for additional streaming services deals, as well as the best deals on streaming devices.

There are a number of smaller streaming services we can recommend too – such as the superb StudioCanal Presents, and Arrow Player. Both are jam packed with the best cult hits, many of which you won't be able to find anywhere else (I'm a subscriber to each of them myself, so they come highly recommended).

And you can catch up with all our biggest Black Friday / Cyber Monday bargain finds right here.

Just the other week, my colleague wrote about how an element of Apple TV's subscription would be free from next year – the MLS Season Pass is to be ditched in favour of including content with a regular subscription.

But that got me thinking: ignoring the short-term free trial for new subscribers, is there a way to get a full Apple TV subscription for free? The answer, as it turns out, is yes – but you'll need to fulfil some lofty requirements to be eligible.

Barclays Bank offers a sign-up service to its customers called Barclays Blue Rewards. However, that costs £5 per month (once you're a customer), but it does net you an Apple TV subscription at no further cost – so it does represent a saving for the streaming service.

'But that's not free,' I hear you cry. True! But another of Barclays' services, called Barclays Premier, does offer the Apple TV subscription without you needing to hand over anything further.

Premier, however, is reserved for banking customers who hold a Barclays current account and "either pay in a gross annual income of at least £75,000 – or have a total balance of at least £100,000 in savings in eligible investments."

Ah, well that seems like a rather high bar in which to net an Apple TV subscription 'for free'. But hey, here we are, so if you're well-to-do and need to save a further £119.88 per year, then Premier could be for you – there's even a £400 current account switch incentive.

This may not be the dream answer many of you were hoping for, but even if it's for the sake of trivia – now you know that Barclays Premier customers can obtain a free Apple TV subscription in the UK. Not a trial either, but the full-blown ongoing subscription for as long as they keep the cash flowing.

Widely regarded as one of if not the best streaming service for original content, especially when it comes to sci-fi TV, Apple TV is starting to ramp up for a cracking few months.

The 98% rated Pluribus has only recent started on the platform, the F1 movie will arrive on 12 December, and we've recently had an announcement that MLS football will be free to all subscribers from next season.

Now, thanks to a rare Black Friday treat from Apple, you can watch all these and a whole lot more for half price – and for the next six months, to boot.

An Apple TV subscription now costs just £4.99 / $5.99 per month for half a year. The only catch is that you need to be a new subscriber.

As well as being limited to new subscribers, it's worth noting that this deal will only be available until the end of play on 1 December – next Monday (Cyber Monday). So you'll need to be quick to make sure you sign up in time.

The six months will start from the date you do, so will also cover things like the start of the next Formula One season in March. That will be exclusively live on Apple TV for all US subscribers.

You can also watch the final MLS Cup playoff matches, with both conference finals taking place this Saturday (29 November) and Sunday (30 November).

The final of the MLS Cup will take place on Saturday 6 December and like all the other playoff matches, it'll be streamed live at no extra cost on Apple TV.

Apple will also be offering gift cards up to £200 / $250 with purchases on its store through the Black Friday sales period – 28 November to 1 December. Just check out Apple.com for more details.

We've said it to the point of going blue in the face over the last few years – Apple TV has become by far the default destination for sci-fi fans looking for a streaming fix. It's got a huge roster of high-concept shows, from overtly space-themed (like Foundation) to more mind-bending (like Severance or Pluribus).

In the category of more obviously sci-fi, rather than subtly, you can very much slot Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, which got its first season back in 2023, telling some of the backstory of how big beasties like Godzilla, King Kong and various Kaiju actually started to first be discovered.

It's fair to say that Monarch's first season didn't quite live up to the pedigree that Apple TV has been developing – it was a little oddly paced and took quite a while to actually get to the monsters, which left it with middling scores from critics. It's getting a second shot at convincing audiences, though, with a new season starting next year, as confirmed by a brief new teaser.

The show will start on 27 February 2026, making this quite an advanced tease from Apple, but the brief runtime of the trailer does still confirm a few key details for us. Namely, the biggest cast members all seem to be returning, along with the split timeline that it used to tell its story last time out.

Anna Sawai anchors the modern-day segment, in a world that seems constantly beset by attacks from huge monsters, as she tries to piece together how her parents were involved with their discovery. Wyatt Russell, meanwhile, helms flashback sequences that explain just what went down (with his dad Kurt playing his older self in the timeline).

It's a setup that few shows have been ambitious enough to try (especially with a real-life father and son playing the same character in different times), but whether it'll work better this time out is anyone's guess. What we do know, though, is that some big monsters will also be central this time around, with Kong clearly a star turn to draw in the masses.

He's looking even more angry than usual, it must be said, right down to some scary glowing-red eyes, so you can pretty much bet your mortgage on some big fight scenes between him and other ginormous critters at some point.

All of this continues to confirm that Apple TV is the best streaming service for sci-fi fans, and I don't see that changing any time soon.

Apple has made some major changes to its streaming service in recent times, including a refresh of the mobile app and ditching the plus from Apple TV+.

Now just called Apple TV, it even has a redesigned logo and on iPhone at least, a swanky new Liquid Glass look. But those are all cosmetic – arguably the biggest changes are set to come.

Not only will Apple TV be the new home of Formula One racing in the US from next year, the paid MLS Season Pass is set to be scrapped. MLS matches will continue to be broadcast live, but instead of costing an additional $79 / £79 / €149.99 per year it'll be free to all Apple TV subscribers.

This follows the recent decision to stream all playoff matches for free this season too. You can watch the continuation of the playoffs on Apple TV from 22 November, with Thomas Müller's Vancouver Whitecaps taking on Son Heung-Min's Los Angeles FC.

Lionel Messi's Inter Miami will also be facing Cincinnati the day after.

All of this is viewable as part of regular Apple TV membership – currently priced at £9.99 / $12.99 / €9.99 per month. It should give you a taste of what to expect when the new season starts and all matches and MLS content is free to watch.

The move should also boost the popularity of the league outside of the US. It is estimated that Apple reached between one and two million viewers who paid for the Season Pass, but by removing the subscription fee, approximately 50 million will gain access.

And with more and more seasoned stars heading to the MLS to play each year, the standard of football played is improving all the time. I've already caught the bug, maybe you will too.