Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jun 15
New York Times Picks 2026's Best TV Shows, Highlighting The Comeback's Season 3
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · Jun 15

New York Times Picks 2026's Best TV Shows, Highlighting The Comeback's Season 3

1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 15

Summary

  • The New York Times included “The Comeback” Season 3 in its midyear list of the best TV shows of 2026, calling the HBO Max revival one of the year’s standout series.
  • Season 3 arrives 21 years after the show began and uses Lisa Kudrow’s Valerie Cherish to satirize a third Hollywood era, this time centering on artificial intelligence as a threat to the creative class.
  • The paper said 2026 has produced breakout hits such as “Love Story” and “Summer House,” but not yet a single culture-dominating series on the scale of “Adolescence” in 2025 or “Severance” in 2022.
  • Its assessment framed the year so far as one of pleasant surprises and strong returning seasons rather than one seismic TV phenomenon.

Insights

In a year without a seismic TV hit, have we lost our shared cultural campfire for good?
As Hollywood turns to AI for scripts, are human storytellers facing their final curtain call?