The Drop 33: Mary Poppins Goes Grimdark and Ted Lasso Won't Leave

Deadline reported this week that Disney is developing a Mary Poppins TV series that will lean into the more complex elements of the source novels. Translation: some executive read the Wikipedia entry for the P.L. Travers books, discovered that Mary is kind of a bitch in them, and decided this was the IP innovation of the decade. Prestige grimdark Poppins. A monologue about grief in episode four. The Banks children are trauma survivors now. Someone in Burbank said the words what if Poppins but Sharp Objects out loud, in a room, to other adults, and got a bonus.

And then Netflix, not to be outdone in the cultural strip-mining Olympics, dropped Wonka's The Golden Ticket, a reality show where contestants walk into a fake chocolate factory and get tempted by candy. Every childhood property is now either being darkened for HBO or turned into Fear Factor for the algorithm. There is no third option. Anyway, here's what actually came out.

Ted Lasso is back and nobody asked

Season four of Ted Lasso arrived on Apple TV+ because the show ended, everyone said goodbye, cried, gave speeches, and then Apple looked at the churn numbers and said absolutely not. Sudeikis is back, the mustache is back, Roy Kent is still grunting. It's fine. It's warm broth. If you watched the first three seasons on your couch during a rough patch and it meant something to you, they will happily sell that feeling back to you at a premium.

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Lanterns keeps being weirdly good

The Green Lantern show on HBO Max should not work. It's a DC property, which is a curse. It has Damon Lindelof attached, which is either a blessing or a threat depending on who you ask. And yet six episodes in, Lanterns is playing like a small-town murder mystery that occasionally remembers there's a space cop in it. Kyle Chandler is doing Friday Night Lights energy in a green ring. Aaron Pierre is a movie star we haven't caught up to yet. Watch it before Warner remembers it exists and cancels it in a reorg.

✅ WORTH IT

McConaughey and Harrelson made a show about themselves

Brothers on Apple TV+ is Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson playing Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson discovering they might actually be brothers, which is a bit these two have been running for a decade on podcasts and now Apple gave them $80 million to keep doing it. The premise is one True Detective scene stretched to a full season. If you love these guys, you'll love the hang. If you don't, this show will feel like being trapped at a Malibu dinner party where two very rich men keep saying the word bro.

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Sharon Horgan wrote the horny divorce show

Youth is Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe, Bad Sisters) playing a 50-year-old divorcee looking for sex while caring for ailing parents and a failure-to-launch son. On HBO Max. Horgan writes women who are actually funny and actually messy, which is somehow still a rare deployment on television in 2026. Rupert Friend co-stars. Early word is very good.

✅ WORTH IT

Jon Hamm hostage negotiation hour

American Hostage is a Shawn Ryan (The Shield) anthology on MGM+ streaming via Prime, dramatizing the 1977 Tony Kiritsis case: a guy who wired a shotgun to a mortgage broker's neck and held the city of Indianapolis captive for 63 hours. Hamm as the radio host who ends up in the middle of it. Ribisi is the hostage-taker. This is the exact kind of grimy 70s procedural Shawn Ryan does in his sleep and it's the show most likely to reward you this week if you like adult TV about specific historical crimes.

✅ WORTH IT

The Scandal (Netflix, Korean, actually thirsty)

A Joseon-era Korean drama on Netflix where a noblewoman, a famous seducer, and an unsuspecting lady get tangled in a secret proposal. Son Ye-jin is in it, which is the entire pitch. Netflix's Korean division continues to eat everyone else's lunch by making shows that assume adults exist and want to watch things about them. Eight episodes, one season, done.

✅ WORTH IT

The dishonorable mentions

Wonka's The Golden Ticket on Netflix is a reality competition inside a fake chocolate factory and I refuse to write more sentences about it. 🐍 SLOP

Best of the Best is a Netflix movie about UCLA's Bollywood-fusion dance team going for a championship, which reads like a 2011 direct-to-streaming pitch that lost a bet and time-traveled here. 🐍 SLOP

The Love Hypothesis hits Prime Video, adapting the fake-dating fanfic-turned-bestseller with Lili Reinhart and Tom Bateman. If you're the target audience you already have this queued. Everyone else, keep walking. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Raw is on Netflix every Monday now because Netflix bought wrestling and is going to keep buying live things until your subscription costs $47. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Minerva Academy is a moody Italian teen thriller set at a military school. Handsome cadets, missing friends, secrets. If you liked the vibe of Elite but wanted more marching. 🛋️ BACKGROUND TV

Pick of the Week

Lanterns on HBO Max. Small-town murder mystery in a superhero wrapper, and it's the rare Warner project firing on all cylinders while the parent company is busy renaming itself for the fifth time. Six of eight episodes are out. Bail after episode two if the tone isn't for you; if it hooks, it hooks.

Somewhere in a Disney conference room right now, an executive is holding up a slide that says DARK POPPINS: NUMBER GO UP. That's the industry. Ted came back because the spreadsheet demanded it. Wonka became a game show because the spreadsheet demanded it. Every childhood memory is a spreadsheet's next quarter. The good news is that between the reboots, real shows are still slipping through — a Shawn Ryan crime drama, a Sharon Horgan comedy, a Korean period romance, an actually watchable superhero show. Watch those. Let the spreadsheets fight the storm.