Streaming and network TV are stacking premieres into the back half of September, and the lineup this year genuinely spans the map — a prestige spy thriller, a legacy franchise spin-off, two animated institutions entering their late-30s, and what’s being billed as a crossover event a decade in the making. Here’s what’s actually landing.
Slow Horses returns for season 6 (September 16)
Apple TV+’s spy drama comes back with Gary Oldman still leading his team of disgraced intelligence misfits at Slough House. Season five swept nine Emmys, including Outstanding Drama Series, so the bar for season six is unusually high. This run adapts further into Mick Herron’s novels and puts the team “on the run,” facing threats from inside their own institution rather than an outside enemy — typically where the show is at its sharpest.
Neagley expands the Reacher universe (September 16)
Prime Video’s Reacher spin-off hands the spotlight to Maria Sten’s Frances Neagley, now working as a private investigator in Chicago. Unlike the flagship series, this eight-episode run is an original story rather than an adaptation of a Lee Child novel, centered on a murder case tied to a cult. It’s a meaningful test of whether the Reacher franchise can carry a show without Reacher in it.
Two animated institutions, still going
South Park enters its 29th season on Comedy Central on September 16, still the longest-running original adult animated series in American TV history and still finding new ways to skewer political chaos in close to real time. The Simpsons follows on September 27 with season 38, 37 years after its debut — a run so long it’s less a TV show at this point than a permanent fixture of the culture.
American Horror Story’s crossover event (September 24)
FX and Hulu are billing season 13 as the franchise’s first genuine crossover, pulling characters from multiple prior seasons — rooted in the beloved Coven storyline — into one arc. Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, Jessica Lange, and John Waters are all attached, which is as close to an all-star lineup as the anthology series has assembled. For a franchise built on reinventing itself every season, folding its own history back in is a genuinely new move.