It’s back-to-school time, and you know what that means: It’s back to your TV screens as well to decompress after a long day of book learnin’. And lucky you, there’s a ton of great TV (and movies) coming to streaming this month for September 2026, so let’s break down some of the highlights.
Fan of Prime Video’s Reacher? While the fourth season of the series is ending this month (and there’s a fifth in the works), you’ve also got a brand new spin-off dropping all in the same day to enjoy. How about space stuff? Strange New Worlds is ending with an intriguing sounding finale that sets up the final season of that series. And if you prefer comedies or true crime? We’ve got that too.
Okay, enough set-up — let’s get into the list. Here are our 10 most anticipated shows and movies streaming in September. And don’t forget, kids: Study hard and stay in school… or watch TV, do whatever you want.
(Note: This list is presented in release date order.)
Mayday (September 4)
Ryan Reynolds pretty much doesn’t miss and Kenneth Branagh is a reliable star as well. But the biggest selling point for this throwback action adventure on Apple TV? Writers and directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley. While they wrote Spider-Man: Homecoming, the real sell here is that they’re the team behind the superb Game Night, the transcendently hilarious Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and the highly underrated but also hilarious Vacation remake.
With Mayday, the duo take on the sort of Cold War comedies that pervaded the ’80s — think Spies Like Us — as Reynolds plays an American pilot crash-landed in Soviet Russia, forced to team up with an ex-KGB/America aficionado played by Branagh who wants to defect to the good ol’ US of A. It’s an across-the-plate premise that in lesser hands might be the umpteenth disposable action movie on a streaming service this month, but in the hands of Goldstein and Daley, you know this is gonna get weirder and wilder than expected. (Read our Mayday review.)
The Paper Season 2 (September 9)
A lot of all-timer comedies took the first season to figure themselves out. Think The Office, Parks & Recreation; even Brooklyn Nine-Nine had to spend several episodes hashing out the character dynamics and rhythms. So will Peacock’s The Paper be the same?
The first season had a great cast, including Domhnall Gleeson as Ned, the eternally optimistic new Editor-in-Chief of the Toledo Truth Teller running a staff of mostly zero-experience news writers while clashing with the digital-first Esmerelda (Sabrina Impacciatore) and sparking a “will-they won’t-they” romance with the only good news reporter, Mare (Chelsea Frei). But it mostly couldn’t quite figure out what it wanted to be until the excellent final episode of the season.
So will the presses be running for The Paper Season 2? The good news (you get it) is this is an Office spin-off, so it’s got a great model to work from when it comes to the second season of a series. Ensembles take time, comedy takes time, and here’s hoping the Toledo Truth Teller has the ink to make a stink in Season 2… by which we mean, “get people talking.” That’s what that meant. (Read our The Paper Season 2 review.)
Slow Horses Season 6 (September 16)
The best spy show on TV is back for the next yearly installment of six episodes on Apple TV, which definitely isn’t enough… but we’ll take what we can get. Starring Gary Oldman as the disgusting, farting head of Slough House — basically where MI5 sticks the spies they don’t want anymore — the latest season is based on two of Mick Herron’s novels: Joe Country and Slough House.
The headline for this season of Slow Horses is a new showrunner. Show creator Will Smith departed with Season 5, and Gaby Chiappe took over as head writer (Ben Vanstone is taking over for Season 7, which will likely debut next year). Don’t worry, though; Chiappe is a pro, having written dozens of episodes of TV since 1997 as well as several films.
And beyond Oldman, the rest of the cast is back too, with Kristin Scott Thomas’s Diana Taverner finally First Desk (aka head of MI5) and Jack Lowden’s River Cartwright dealing with a devastating loss. There’s also the return of a few familiar faces (no spoilers here, though Apple put one of the big spoilers right in the trailer). The show is funny and smart with some great action and excellent character dynamics, so trot over to your TV and get caught up for Slow Horses Season 6 right now.
South Park Season 29 (September 16)
What is there to be said about South Park, the nearly 30-year-old animated series, at this point that we don’t already know? It’s ostensibly about a bunch of kids living in the small town of South Park, Colorado, but really, it’s a chance for creators/billionaires Trey Parker and Matt Stone to say whatever they want about society and the US government in particular.
So what will happen in the upcoming 29th season? Pick up a newspaper or click on over to your fave news website (IGN of course), and whatever is a hot button issue this week will surely make it onto the series later in the week. After a renewed cultural relevance with Season 28 and a contentious upcoming midterms election, chances are that Parker and Stone will go for the jugular once again.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story (September 17)
Despite frequent accusations of front-loading the killers and diminishing the stories of victims, Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s monster (sorry) hit Netflix anthology is back with a new installment. In a resounding girl boss move, it’s turning the lens to female killers; heck yeah — you go girl!
Specifically, the show is focusing on famous axe murderer Lizzie Borden, who reportedly gave her mother forty whacks and then her father forty-one. But this will likely be a more grounded version of the classic nursery rhyme, featuring an as-usual-for-a-Murphy-production all-star cast: Ella Beatty (previously of Murphy’s Feud) stars as Lizzie Borden alongside Charlie Hunnam, Rebecca Hall, Sarah Paulson, Billie Lourd, and more.
At the very least, moving the action to 1892 should probably make it harder for any of Borden’s victims’ families to complain versus previous seasons of Monster. But hey, we haven’t encountered a Murphy production yet that didn’t cross a line somewhere!
Brothers (September 23)
Not to be confused with 2009’s Brothers (starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Tobey Maguire), 2024’s Brothers (starring Josh Brolin and Peter Dinklage), or Brothers from 1977, 2004, 2023, or the other Brothers from 2009 (starring Michael Strahan and Carl Weathers), Brothers stars Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey in the roles they were born to play: Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey.
The Apple TV series pivots on how everyone always joked they were like brothers, then continued to joke about that when they were on True Detective, and then discovered via a dive into their family history that they may indeed be half-brothers. Maybe. What Brothers (2026) presupposes is: What if they were brothers? The show takes a metafictional approach to that narrative, with the duo playing semi-fictionalized versions of themselves.
Confused? Don’t be, as the show is essentially Yellowstone but with Harrelson and McConaughey trying to unravel their (fictional) shared family history. Alright? Alright. Alright.
Neagley (September 16)
The hierarchy of power in the Reacher Cinematic Universe is about to change. The same day that the fourth season of the Large Man Series wraps up on Prime Video, the streamer will launch spin-off Neagley, which front-loads Maria Sten’s title character as she investigates a mystery of her own.
Unlike the fathership show, which rolls out semi-weekly episodes, Neagley will premiere all episodes on the same day… so just like Reacher himself, you’ll have an oversized nine hours of TV to watch (the Reacher Season 4 finale plus eight episodes of Neagley).
Alongside Sten, the show also stars Adeline Rudolph and Greyston Holt, with Alan Ritchson guest-starring as Reacher for Maximum Spinoff Potential.
Strange New Worlds Season Finale – “Tomorrow’s Enterprise” (September 24)
While the fourth season of Paramount+’s Star Trek: Strange New Worlds has mostly been done-in-one adventures, the season finale has an extremely intriguing title, particularly given Season 5 will be an abbreviated final season of the series: “Tomorrow’s Enterprise.”
Even without context, those words could make your ears perk up higher than Spock’s (Ethan Peck) as the well-received prequel series heads towards the end/beginning, with Captain Kirk (Paul Wesley) taking over from Captain Pike (Ethan Peck). So certainly this title could merely refer to the eventuality of the events of the Original Series picking up where Strange New Worlds leaves off.
But! The Next Generation episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise” found the crew of the Enterprise-D encountering the presumed destroyed Enterprise-C thanks to what is scientifically known as “shenanigans.” The Next Gen folks ended up changing time by the end of that episode to save yesterday’s Enterprise; could a similar scenario play out in this upcoming Strange New Worlds episode? Could Kirk’s Enterprise end up back in time, encountering Pike’s Enterprise and showing them a glimpse of the future (something an intrepid, probably time-traveling Reddit user called four years ago)?
Or even more intriguingly; What if we skip Kirk entirely and go all the way forward to the Enterprise-G as seen at the end of Picard Season 3, captained by Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan)?
Adding fuel to any of these theories: September 8 is the official 60th anniversary of Star Trek. While this episode doesn’t quite line up, what better way to pay tribute to the franchise than with the current flagship show meeting the future… quite literally?
A Different World (September 24)
A different world? Not more multiverse stuff. Do we really have to do — oh wait, we’re being told this is actually a revival of the iconic sitcom/spinoff of The Cosby Show, now back as a legacy sequel with returning and new cast.
Set at Hillman College (an HBCU), the daughter of the original series’ Whitley (Jasmine Guy) and Dwayne (Kadeem Hardison) heads into her first year only to find herself living in the shadow of her parents’ legacy while also trying to find time to balance studies, partying, and likely social issues (a la the purview of the original).
The big difference? While episodes are still half an hour-ish, this is a single camera comedy and not a three-camera comedy like the OG sitcom. Still, it’ll include plenty of the original cast members making their return from the groundbreaking series 39 years later.
Unabomber (September 25)
If you’re Netflix and looking to dramatize the life of the Unabomber, aka Ted Kaczynski, the natural choice is — of course — child star Jacob Tremblay.
We’re joking, but Tremblay has been a standout ever since his award-winning performance in Room. Now 19, he’ll play the infamous serial bomber in two timelines — one set during the manhunt that tried to track him down, and one during his time at Harvard University leading up to his stint as the mysterious hooded, sunglasses-wearing criminal.
While this is far from the first time the events surrounding Kaczynski have been dramatized, this movie does sport a great cast including Russell Crowe, Shailene Woodley, Annabelle Wallis, Steven Ogg, and more. It’s directed by Janus Metz Pedersen, who also directed three episodes of Andor Season 2 — the episode leading to, including, and dealing with the fallout from the Ghorman Massacre — to give you a sense of what might be in store.
Will you be watching any of these this month? What else are you looking forward to that we didn’t get to? Vote in our poll and let’s discuss in the comments!
You can chat with Alex Zalben on BlueSky @azalben.bsky.social, or find him regularly yapping on the Comic Book Club podcast.
