For our summer video series, we asked Inkoo Kang, the New Yorker’s television critic, to name three of the best shows of 2026. Check out her answers, edited and condensed, below. Or watch her respond on Instagram or YouTube.“The Comeback” Where to watch: HBOMy first choice is “The Comeback.” It first débuted in 2005. It came back, in 2014, for its second season, and its third season is out now. It stars Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish. When we first check in with her, she is kind of dabbling in reality TV. In the second season, she is trying to remake herself as a prestige actress. In the third season, it’s sort of Valerie versus A.I. I think that there is something incredibly special about being able to follow a character for twenty years, as the industry constantly changes around her—as the nature of fame constantly changes around you.“DTF St. Louis” Where to watch: HBOMy second pick is “DTF St. Louis.” This is a year in which we have been hearing a lot about the masculinity crisis, and I think that this is a really wonderful show that channels those anxieties. It’s a midlife-crisis drama about two men, played by Jason Bateman and David Harbour. They meet at work, and decide to go on an app to find hookups. I guess that is what straight guys do with each other. I don’t know anything about that. It’s not a straightforwardly feel-good story. But I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a male friendship like theirs on TV before. It sort of exists in this, like, weird liminal space. It allows them to get incredibly close. Perhaps too close.“Beef” Where to watch: NetflixMy third pick is the second season of “Beef.” The show’s story starts at a Montecito country club. The manager is played by Oscar Isaac, and his character is married to Carey Mulligan. When they’re at the club, they are surrounded by people who have more money than God. A Gen Z couple, played by Cailee Spaeny and Charles Melton, freshly affianced and working at the club, think that they can blackmail their boss into a sturdier financial footing for themselves. I think that the millennial-versus-Zoomer-feud angle is a really fun one, but, in the end, both generations are kind of financially screwed. I love that the season stayed unpredictable and intense and messy, in a good way, all the way to the very end.For more: Read Kang on the age of broke TV.Photograph by Etinosa Yvonne for The New Yorker