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When speaking to Den of Geek about compiling the entertainment roster for the 2026 South by Southwest festival, SXSW Vice President of Film & TV Claudette Godfrey admitted that television usually presents a unique challenge.
“It’s harder to program TV because they get finished later and they are moving their dates even more wildly than the film release schedule.”
As someone who maintains this website’s TV premiere dates article, I certainly empathize with Godfrey’s logistical TV woes. And yet, she and her team have defied the odds by bringing some honest-to-goodness bangers to the fold this year. While Apple TV’s star-studded Margo’s Got Money Troubles and HBO’s triumphant return of Valerie Cherish with The Comeback season 3 are the undeniable headliners, 2026 is also playing host to plenty of other compelling TV projects.
Here is every TV show making its debut at the 2026 SXSW Film & TV Festival.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles
Margo’s Got Money Troubles represents the confluence of some very powerful forces in the entertainment industry. Produced by premier indie studio A24 and set to be released on prestige streamer Apple TV, the series is created by TV legend David E. Kelley (Ally McBeal, Big Little Lies) and based on Rufi Thorpe’s best-selling novel of the same name. Add in the acting talents of Elle Fanning, Nicole Kidman, Michelle Pfeiffer, Nick Offerman, and Greg Kinnear, and you’ve got all the ingredients for a creative behemoth.
So what attracted all these heavy hitters to a TV series with a charmingly mundane title? Probably the fact that the premise sounds great! Fanning stars as the titular Margo Millet, the disaffected daughter of a Hooter’s waitress and former wrestler. After getting pregnant from an affair with her English professor, Margo begins to experience, you guessed it, money troubles. Margo starts an OnlyFans account, decides to get creative with it, and heartwarming comedy-drama ensues.
The Comeback Season 3
While Friends might be the biggest television series of all time, real TV-heads know that the NBC sitcom was a mere warmup for Lisa Kudrow’s true episodic masterpiece: The Comeback. After premiering with a single season in 2005 and returning for a follow-up in 2014, the Kudrow-created and starring HBO comedy is set to come back for its third and final bow in 2026.
As embodied by Kudrow, Valerie Cherish is an aging B-list sitcom veteran who continually tries to find a fresh foothold in a Hollywood that has long passed her by… all while documentary cameras film the futile attempts. Armed with only her bright smile and immaculately constructed hair, the guileless Valerie will get to work on her biggest challenge yet in season 3: acting in an AI-written sitcom.
The Audacity
SXSW isn’t just the best place to experience the latest and greatest in tech innovation; it’s also the best place to satirize it. Created by writer Jonathan Glatzer (who knows a thing or two about the rich and powerful thanks to his time on Succession), The Audacity examines the… well, the audacity of our Silicon Valley overlords. Billy Magnussen stars as Duncan Park, an ambitious tech CEO who with a chip on his shoulder and a questionable plan to harvest people’s personal data. In addition to the magnetic Magnussen, The Audacity boasts a cast of TV all-stars like Sarah Goldberg (Barry), Rob Corddry (Children’s Hospital), and Simon Helberg (The Big Bang Theory), and is set to premiere on AMC on April 12.
Monsters of God
After uncovering the dark side of the exotic animal trade with hit docuseries Tiger King and Chimp Crazy, director Eric Goode returns to his first love: creepy crawlies. Monsters of God follows smugglers Hank Molt and Tommy Crutchfield as they launch a billion-dollar criminal enterprise by selling some of the world’s rarest reptiles to zoos. The only thing more grim than the smuggling empire’s beginning, however, is its end, with the feature-length doc set to venture into Tiger King-esque true crime territory as well.
Are We Still Married?
Does “till death do us part” apply to undeath as well? That’s the question facing Laura (Taylor Misiak) in Are We Still Married? as she ponders whether to let the right one in when her newly vamp-ified husband Jack (Dustin Milligan) comes knocking. The indie pilot is created by Kit Steinkellner and produced by Barry Galperin.
Birth Is for P*ssies
Inspired by creator and star Hannah Shealy’s experiences as a birth doula, Birth Is for P*ssies sounds likeThe Pitt for pregnancy. The 13-minute pilot follows a rookie doula (Shealy) through her very hectic first day on a job filled with at-home IUD removal, cervical dilations, and extended labor. Through it all, she’ll gain an appreciation for life’s beautiful, messy beginnings.
In My Blood
Baseball has a long and storied history on film, but when it comes to television, there’s really only Jim Brockmire, Ken Burns, and little else to represent America’s pastime. Perhaps the Alex Bendo-created In My Blood can change that. Daniel Diemer stars as a minor leaguer desperate to make his father proud, even if it means poisoning his blood with performance-enhancing drugs.
Cold Call
Ever wonder what kind of person tries to steal someone’s credit card info? Cold Call, from showrunners Emma Lenderman and Elise Kibler, posits that the hypothetical scammer might not be a person at all. This pilot follows the Ergons, a cult of potentially extraterrestrial office workers trying to return to their home planet the only way they know how: by cold calling and scamming people.
Codependent
Hailing from twin creators Wade and Weston McElhaney (no relation to AFC Wrexham owner Rob Mac), Codependent follows dysfunctional brothers Tristan and Max (the McElhaneys) as they move to New York after accidentally applying for the same job. It’s a shame the codependent duo can’t just share the role, unless…wait a minute, they’re identical!
Son of a Bikram
In Son of a Bikram, hot yoga enthusiast Raag is devastated to discover that his hero, yoga guru Bikram Choudhury, is the subject of numerous sexual assault claims. He’s then even more devastated to discover that Bikram Choudhury is his literal father. How Raag responds to this unwelcome news is up to him (and Son of a Bikram showrunners Ash T and Johnny Rey Diaz).
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