Here's what's worth streaming in March 2026 on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and more

MW Here's what's worth streaming in March 2026 on Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max and more

By Mike Murphy

Shows like HBO's 'DTF St. Louis' and 'Rooster,' Paramount's 'The Madison' and Netflix's 'Peaky Blinders' movie jump out of the gate as Emmy season gets underway

From left: Jason Bateman, Linda Cardellini and David Harbour star in HBO's "DTF St. Louis."

While much of the country is still digging out from snow, it's springtime in the streaming world, with an impressive-looking crop of new series poised to compete for viewers' eyeballs.

March marks the beginning of Emmy season (episodes need to air before May 31 to be award-eligible), as networks and streaming services like to release many of their (hopefully) best shows in the spring, so they'll be fresh in mind when awards voters cast their ballots.

In addition to ongoing hits like "The Pitt" and "Paradise," the coming month will see the premieres of HBO Max's "DTF St. Louis" and "Rooster," Netflix's "Peaky Blinders" movie, Paramount's latest Taylor Sheridan drama "The Madison" and Amazon's follow-up to the surprise hit "Jury Duty," among many others.

There'll be a lot to watch, but with a bit of strategic churning - that is, adding and dropping services month to month - you can catch the best of the best while keeping your monthly streaming budget just under $50. Keep in mind that a billing cycle starts when you sign up, not necessarily at the beginning of the month. And it's always worth watching out for time-sensitive deals and money-saving bundles.

Each month, this column offers tips on how to maximize your streaming and your budget - rating the major services as "play," "pause" or "stop," similar to investment analysts' traditional ratings of buy, hold and sell - and picks the best shows to help you make your monthly decisions.

Here's a look at what's coming to the various streaming services in March 2026, and what's really worth the monthly subscription fee:

HBO Max ($10.99 a month with ads, $18.49 with no ads, or $22.99 'Ultimate' with no ads)

It's looking like Paramount Skydance $(PSKY)$ has won its bid to buy HBO Max parent Warner Bros. Discovery $(WBD)$, which is likely to be terrible for everyone. With a price tag of $111 billion, much of that a massive debt load, the merger will doubtlessly result in massive cost cuts - meaning layoffs, fewer (and cheaper) TV shows and movies, the likely gutting of CNN and inevitable price hikes for subscribers. And there's still all that debt. Much as AOL did two decades ago, Paramount may just have paid top dollar for an anchor that will end up sinking it.

See more: HBO Max and Paramount+ will become one streaming service. What does that mean for you?

But back on topic, now that "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" (which managed to make "Game of Thrones" fun again) and "Industry" (season finale March 1), are done for now, HBO Max has a whole new slate of Sunday-night shows coming.

"DTF St. Louis" (March 1), a dark-comedy miniseries, stars Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini as suburbanites going through middle-aged malaise who get involved in a hook-up app that leads to a deadly love triangle. It features a great cast (including Richard Jenkins, Peter Saarsgard and Joy Sunday), comes from a top-flight creator (Steven Conrad, of Amazon's brilliant "Patriot") but the early reviews are mixed - though Harbour's real-life extramarital exploits, as described in vivid detail by his ex, singer Lily Allen, might be even more dramatic.

Warner Bros. apparently remembered that while creator Bill Lawrence was off making hit after hit with Apple ("Ted Lasso," "Bad Monkey," "Shrinking"), they actually had signed him to a massive, five-year production deal four years ago. The result, from Lawrence and co-creator Matt Tarses (the pair also collaborated on "Scrubs," also not on HBO Max), is "Rooster" (March 8), a college comedy starring Steve Carrell as an author who visits his daughter (Charly Clive), a professor whose marriage has fallen apart, only for him to become a surprisingly popular figure on campus. Connie Britton, Danielle Deadwyler, John C. McGinley and Phil Dunster co-star. This looks great, a worthy heir to wry academia comedies such as "Wonder Boys," Netflix's "The Chair" and AMC's "Lucky Hank" (look 'em up).

And a decade after its second season, "The Comeback" (March 22) is back for its third and final season, starring Lisa Kudrow as a former TV star desperate to be relevant again, who's now starring in a sitcom written by AI. The first two seasons were classics, this final installment should be a treat as well.

HBO Max also has the documentaries "Fukushima: A Nuclear Nightmare" (March 10), about the 2011 disaster in Japan; "Born to Bowl" (March 16), a five-part series about pro bowlers; the English manor-house movie spoof "Fackham Hall" (March 6); the season finale of Adult Swim's "Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal" (March 2), and weekly episodes of "The Pitt" and "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver."

On the sports side, HBO Max and Paramount+ will share March Madness, which tips off March 17 with the First Four play-in games, and extends through the national championship (April 6). There's also a full slate of college basketball leading up to the tournament, as well as NBA, NHL, Unrivaled basketball, All Elite Wrestling, U.S. women's soccer (SheBelieves Cup tournament March 4-7) and U.S. men's pre-World Cup matches against Belgium (March 28) and Portugal (March 31), and Major League Baseball, with the New York Yankees vs. the Seattle Mariners (March 31).

Play, pause or stop? Play. Everything new looks extremely watchable, and it's worth catching up with "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" and "Industry," which was just renewed for a fifth and final season and remains the most jaw-droppingly audacious show on TV.

Netflix ($7.99 a month for standard with ads, $17.99 standard with no ads, $24.99 premium with no ads)

Netflix $(NFLX)$ is the king of buzzy, word-of-mouth hits. But one upcoming series may suffer because it's already become a bit of an online joke.

That would be "Detective Hole" (March 26), a gritty detective series set in Norway, whose main character's name - Harry Hole - doesn't quite translate to English (apparently it's more like "Hoo-la" in Norwegian). Cringe-worthy name aside, the series' bigger hurdle may be more existential. The Harry Hole series from novelist Jo Nesbo helped create the Nordic Noir genre in the early 2000s. The only problem now? Its tenets - a moody, troubled but brilliant detective operating in a moral gray area exposing the bleaker parts of Scandinavian society - has become a tired trope (see: "Deadwind," "Borderlands," "The Åre Murders" and "The Glass Dome" - and that's just a handful from Netflix). Will viewers be turned off by what's become a boilerplate setup? Another possible strike against it: The terrible 2017 movie adaptation of Nesbo's "The Snowman" - also featuring Harry Hole - is remembered mostly as a meme punchline. For what it's worth, the book series was mostly great. We'll see how the series turns out, but the odds seem stacked against it.

The prospects seem better for "Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man" (March 20). Four years after Steven Knight's popular period-crime drama ended, Tommy Shelby (Cillian Murphy) and his Birmingham gang are back for a farewell movie, with Tommy returning from exile to deal with his out-of-control gangster son (Barry Keoghan) under the shadow of World War II.

Then there's "Vladimir" (March 3), which almost seems a mashup of HBO's "DTF St. Louis" and "Rooster": a comedy-drama series starring Rachel Weisz, Leo Woodall and John Slattery about a married professor who becomes infatuated with her hot young colleague, and becomes more and more unhinged as her fantasies clash with reality. It looks very bingeable.

Also of note: "The Dinosaurs" (March 6), a CGI docuseries about, well, dinosaurs (and looking suspiciously like Apple's "Prehistoric Planet"), from executive producer Steven Spielberg and narrated by Morgan Freeman; "War Machine" (March 6), a "Predator"-esque action movie about a team of Army Rangers whose training mission turns deadly when a killer alien robot starts hunting them; Volume 2 of the reimagined children's standby "Sesame Street" (March 9); Season 2 of the hit pirate-adventure manga adaptation "One Piece" (March 10); "Age of Attraction" (March 11), a dating show mixing the olds and the youngs; Season 7 of the hit small-town romantic drama "Virgin River" (March 12); Season 2 of the French crime thriller "Furies: Resistance" (March 18); Season 2 of Tyler Perry's family power-struggle drama "Beauty in Black" (March 19); Season 2 of Dick Wolf's true-crime docuseries "Homicide: New York" (March 25); and "Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen" (March 26), a horror series following a bride and groom in the week leading up to their ill-fated wedding.

Netflix also has the Actors Awards from SAG/AFTRA (live on March 1); "BTS: The Comeback Live" (March 21), a live concert event as the K-pop supergroup reunites, along with the making-of-the-album docuseries "BTS: The Ruturn" (March 27); and MLB Opening Night, as the New York Yankees take on the San Francisco Giants (live March 25).

UPDATE: Netflix just announced a live concert performance, "Harry Styles: One Night in Manchester" (March 8, 3 p.m. Eastern), where the pop superstar will perform songs from his new album.

Also on the way are movies including "Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale" (March 7), the timely "Nuremberg" (March 7) and the kids animated hit "The Bad Guys 2" (March 21), along with all four seasons of Amazon's alt-history drama "The Man in the High Castle" (March 11) and all six seasons of the CBS sitcom "Mike & Molly" (March 26).

Whew.

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March 02, 2026 18:23 ET (23:23 GMT)

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