New TV and Streaming This Week 5 – 11 October 2026
A prison drama, a Stephen King remake, a sea monster and a very bad birthday party: what’s new across UK TV and streaming.
October is when British television really gets going again, and next week is a busy one. Between Monday 5 and Sunday 11 October, there are new dramas on the main channels and big new series on the streaming services, and two heavyweight dramas end up head-to-head on Sunday night. Here are the six new series worth your time, followed by a round-up of what else is arriving or returning across Disney+, Paramount+, NOW and Channel 5.
Pierre
Channel 4 and Channel4.com | Monday 5 October, 9pm | Six episodes
David Harewood takes his first leading role in a British series as Pierre, a formidable duty solicitor working the police stations of West London. The story begins with what looks like a routine job: a young Black client arrested for stealing a car insists that he has been targeted by biased officers. Then the client is murdered, and Pierre refuses to let the matter rest.
Written by Roy Williams and John Donnelly, the TV and streaming drama works on two levels. Each episode gives Pierre a fresh case to fight, while the larger mystery of his client’s death draws him into what the series calls a chilling web of institutional corruption. Michele Austin, Jason Flemyng and Dean-Charles Chapman lead a strong supporting cast. The whole series is available as a box set on Channel4.com from launch, so you can binge it or keep to the weekly slot.
Carrie
Prime Video | Wednesday 7 October | All eight episodes at once
Mike Flanagan, the TV and streaming horror specialist behind The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass, turns to Stephen King’s first novel. This version updates the story for the smartphone age. After her father’s death, sheltered teenager Carrie White is forced out of home schooling and into a public high school, where a viral bullying scandal tears through the community just as her telekinetic powers begin to surface.
Newcomer Summer H. Howell, chosen from more than a thousand hopefuls, plays Carrie. Samantha Sloyan is her fiercely religious mother Margaret, and Matthew Lillard and Amber Midthunder play school staff. Flanagan wrote the series, directed four episodes and ran the show, with King as an executive producer. It promises to be the week’s big binge, and a fitting start to the Halloween season.
Inside the Circle
Netflix | Wednesday 7 October
Netflix’s latest Spanish-language thriller comes from Mexico. A leaked video drags four lifelong friends into a dangerous web of blackmail, and as the pressure builds, the secrets they have kept from one another start to come out. The premise will appeal to fans of Elite or Who Killed Sara?, and it looks like a good Wednesday-night discovery for anyone happy to watch with subtitles.
Below
Netflix | Thursday 8 October | Six-part limited series
Josh Hartnett plays Calvin Penney, a troubled fisherman in a small coastal town in Newfoundland who is still haunted by his father’s mysterious death. When something huge and hostile starts attacking from the deep, Calvin has to rally his struggling community and team up with marine researcher Fonda Howander (Mackenzie Davis) to face the creature and uncover the island’s buried secrets.
Charlie Heaton of Stranger Things plays Calvin’s brother Wade. Creator Jesse McKeown, a writer on The Umbrella Academy, describes the show as a story about family, community and change, but the trailers suggest it is also a properly atmospheric creature feature. Think Jaws meets a windswept family saga in this TV and streaming show.
Time (Series 3)
BBC One and BBC iPlayer | Sunday 11 October, 9pm | Three episodes
Jimmy McGovern’s prison drama returns, and this time it moves to a Young Offenders Institution. David Tennant plays Bobby Bailey, a veteran custodial manager trying to hold the place together through a crisis while hiding what he knows about a tragedy. Siobhan Finneran plays Marie-Louise O’Dell, a prison chaplain who has lost her faith.
At the heart of the story are two teenagers, played by Louis McCartney and Ollie McNulty, who are coming to terms with their first days inside. One of them has to decide whether to confess his part in an innocent person’s death. Earlier series of Time won BAFTAs for their unflinching honesty, and with only three hour-long episodes this one is likely to be the most talked-about British drama of the autumn.
The Party
ITV1, STV and ITVX | Sunday 11 October, 9pm | Five episodes
Head-to-head with Time is ITV’s adaptation of Elizabeth Day’s bestselling 2017 novel. Luke Evans plays Martin and Tom Cullen plays Ben, two men who have been inseparable since they met at an elite boarding school. Thirty years on, they reunite at Ben’s lavish birthday party. A possible political leadership announcement threatens to dredge up the secrets of their past, with tragic consequences.
Sarah Solemani, who adapted Ridley Road for the BBC, wrote the scripts and also appears as Lucy. Lindsay Duncan, Douglas Hodge, Lydia Leonard and Joanna Scanlan complete a cast that is strong from top to bottom. Expect a sharp study of privilege, class and loyalty. Because of the clash with Time, ITVX is the easy way to catch up on whichever you miss.
Also worth knowing about
Paramount+: The second series of Marshals: A Yellowstone Story launches this weekend and runs weekly until late November. Luke Grimes returns as Kayce Dutton, now hunting dangerous criminals with an elite unit of US Marshals in Montana while trying to hold his family together. It runs to eight episodes, with Logan Marshall-Green, Arielle Kebbel and Gil Birmingham also in the cast.
Disney+: The revived Scrubs continues its second season, with episode three arriving on Wednesday 7 October. Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke are back at Sacred Heart, where J.D. and Turk are learning to work with a new generation of doctors and the demands of modern medicine.
Sky and NOW: There are no brand-new Sky originals in the week itself, but George Kay’s legal thriller War, which started on 2 October, continues weekly on Sky Atlantic. Dominic West and Sienna Miller play a tech mogul and a film star whose divorce becomes the case of the century for two rival London law firms. For binge-watchers, all four series of Fargo arrive as box sets, with the first two series from 4 October and the next two from 11 October.
Channel 5: There are no major new launches next week, but there is change on the way. On 21 October, 5Drama replaces 5Select. It is a dedicated drama channel with All Creatures Great and Small, The Madame Blanc Mysteries, Gilmore Girls and every episode of Home and Away from the very first one in 1988.
The verdict
If you only watch one thing on TV and streaming, make it Time. Jimmy McGovern rarely misses, and David Tennant and Siobhan Finneran are a formidable pairing. Pierre is the strongest start to the week, and Carrie is the best binge for a cold October weekend. Sunday’s clash between Time and The Party is the main scheduling headache: watch one live and catch up on the other on iPlayer or ITVX.
