May 2026: The best of streaming, TV and cinema this month
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May 2026: The best of streaming, TV and cinema this monthMay 2026: The best of streaming, TV and cinema this month
Image / Living / Culture

May 2026: The best of streaming, TV and cinema this month


by Edaein OConnell
01st May 2026

It's a champagne-filled month for TV with the second season of Rivals returning to our screens, while Nicholas Cage stars in the cinematic Spider-Noir and the beloved Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler show us their new life in the Yellowstone spin-off Dutton Ranch. Here is what to watch this month.

May 1

The Devil Wears Prada 2, cinemas everywhere

In this much-anticipated sequel, Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) returns to Runway as Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) navigates a new media landscape and Runway‘s position within it. They reconnect with another former assistant, Emily (Emily Blunt), who is now the head of a luxury brand that possesses funding which could ensure Runway‘s survival.

May 7

Legends, Netflix

Set against the gritty backdrop of the 1990s, this high-octane thriller draws on an extraordinary true story. A group of ordinary customs agents are thrust into the deep end of undercover work, recruited with minimal training to infiltrate ruthless drug-smuggling networks operating across the UK. Steve Coogan leads the cast as the orchestrator of the operation, tasking recruits – played by Tom Burke (CB Strike) and Hayley Squires (The Night Manager) – with crafting entirely new personas, or “legends,” and stepping into dangerously unpredictable territory.

May 13

Off Campus, Prime Video

Based on The Deal (2015), the first instalment in Elle Kennedy’s bestselling Briar University series, this campus-set romance leans into the irresistible charm of opposites attracting. Hannah (Ella Bright), a fiercely independent music major with zero interest in hockey culture, finds herself entangled with Garrett (Belmont Cameli), the university’s golden-boy athlete whose future on the ice is threatened by failing grades. Their arrangement is purely strategic – at least at first. She agrees to tutor him; he agrees to pose as her boyfriend, helping to spark jealousy in the direction of her long-time crush. But as their carefully constructed “relationship” begins to blur at the edges, what starts as a mutually beneficial deal soon gives way to something far less predictable.

May 15

Rivals, Disney+

Few recent dramas have embraced sheer indulgence with quite the same gusto as this high-gloss return to Rutshire Chronicles territory, a world where ambition is as abundant as the champagne and discretion is in desperately short supply. The first season thrived on its knowingly over-the-top tone, powered in large part by David Tennant, who played the ruthlessly opportunistic Lord Tony Baddingham. Against all expectations, Baddingham is back in circulation, re-entering the fray in a hyper-stylised vision of the Cotswolds where grudges never fade – they just get better dressed. Waiting for him are two familiar adversaries: media heavyweight Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), all smouldering authority, and the irrepressibly wayward Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), whose charm remains as dangerous as ever. Around them swirls a cast of schemers, romantics and survivors, including Katherine Parkinson’s sharp-tongued novelist Lizzie, Claire Rushbrook’s long-suffering Monica, and Bella Maclean’s Taggie, still navigating the consequences of a particularly ill-advised entanglement. Six episodes will drop first, followed by the rest later in the year.

Dutton Ranch, Paramount+

This latest, hotly anticipated spin-off of the beloved Yellowstone turns its focus squarely on the franchise’s most magnetic pairing: Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler. Kelly Reilly returns as Beth, the ferociously sharp-edged former wild child and daughter of the late patriarch John Dutton, once played by Kevin Costner. Alongside her is Cole Hauser as Rip Wheeler, the stoic ranch foreman whose very name feels carved from the mythology of the American West. Together, they’ve traded the plains of Montana for a new life in Texas, though peace, predictably, is not part of the relocation package.

May 20

Maximum Pleasure Guaranteed, Apple TV

Tatiana Maslany (Tatiana Maslany) stars as Paula, a recently divorced fact-checker juggling a custody battle with her ex-husband (Jake Johnson) and an increasingly messy personal life in this dark comic thriller. What begins as an ordinary, if stressful, routine shifts after she connects online with Trevor (Brandon Flynn), a young sex-cam performer. When Paula believes she witnesses a crime, she is drawn into amateur detective work that quickly spirals into a dangerous web of blackmail and murder.

May 21

The Boroughs, Netflix

From the creators of Stranger Things, this new series is set in a quiet retirement community known as The Boroughs and follows Sam (Alfred Molina), a recent widower adjusting to his new life among an eclectic group of residents played by Geena Davis, Alfre Woodard, Bill Pullman and Denis O’Hare. What begins as the quiet rhythms of retirement soon curdles into something far stranger. Sam starts noticing unsettling anomalies, among them inexplicable, claw-like intrusions into everyday reality. Convinced something is deeply wrong, he recruits his new neighbours to investigate. Together, this unlikely group of retirees finds themselves pulled into a growing supernatural mystery that threatens not just their community, but the world beyond it.

May 22

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, cinemas everywhere

The evil Empire has fallen, but Imperial warlords remain scattered throughout the galaxy. As the fledgling New Republic works to protect everything the Rebellion fought for, they enlist the help of legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his young apprentice Grogu.

May 27

Spider-Noir, Prime Video

Offered in both stark black-and-white and full colour, this stylised noir stands out less for its aesthetic experiment than for its unlikely lead: Nicolas Cage as Ben Reilly, a world-weary private investigator operating in the 1930s. Reilly is no ordinary gumshoe; he possesses Spider-Man-like abilities, but crucially, he is not Peter Parker. Instead, he’s a hero from an alternate universe, stranded in a grimier, more cynical reality where superhuman gifts complicate rather than simplify his work. Also starring Brendan Gleeson.

May 28

The Four Seasons, Netflix

Starring and co-created by Tina Fey, this gentle ensemble comedy returns for a second season, following a group of middle-aged friends who take four trips a year together, each one quietly exposing the cracks in their relationships. Fey and Will Forte play a long-married couple, while Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani return as partners navigating their own evolving bond. The absence of Steve Carell is felt after his character’s death, with the group now including his estranged wife (Kerri Kenney-Silver) and pregnant girlfriend (Erika Henningsen), whose arrival adds fresh tension – and unpredictability – to their travels.

May 29

Star City, Apple TV

A spin-off of the alternate-history drama For All Mankind, this new series replays the space race through a radically different lens: the Soviet Union’s. While the original show – now in its fifth season – imagines a world where international cooperation leads to the colonisation of Mars, this companion story rewinds to the start of the competition for the Moon and retells it from the USSR’s perspective. By reframing familiar milestones through Soviet eyes, the series offers a parallel version of the same pivotal era, re-examining ambition, ideology and technological rivalry at the height of the Cold War.

Images courtesy of Paramount+, Disney+ and 20th Century Studio

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