How many episodes is Cape Fear on Apple TV?
Apple TV's starry new thriller — Javier Bardem, Amy Adams, Patrick Wilson, with Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg as executive producers — is the third screen version of this story, after the 1962 and 1991 films. This time it's stretched into a full series, so here's exactly what you're signing up for.
The short answer
Cape Fear is a 10-episode limited series. It premiered on 5 June 2026 with a double episode, and the rest have been landing weekly on Fridays — the finale streams on 31 July 2026. Episodes run roughly 45 to 57 minutes each.
The release schedule
If you're watching week to week, here's the shape of it:
- 5 June 2026 — Episodes 1 and 2 arrive together on premiere day.
- Every Friday after — one new episode, including episode 6 ("Possum") on 3 July.
- 31 July 2026 — the finale, episode 10, wraps the series.
So as of mid-July 2026, the season is still rolling out — the last episodes haven't dropped yet.
What's it actually about?
Created by Nick Antosca, the series adapts John D. MacDonald's 1957 novel The Executioners, the same book behind both films. Bardem plays Max Cady, a convicted murderer released after seventeen years, who fixes his attention on Anna Bowden (Adams) — the lawyer connected to his case — and her husband Tom (Wilson). Cady uses his knowledge of the law to torment the family while staying just inside it.
Is it any good?
Divisive. The series holds 76% on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics' consensus credits Bardem's performance with making it work:
"Elevated by Javier Bardem's manic charisma" — Rotten Tomatoes critics' consensus, 2026.
Others were far harsher — WBUR's Sean Burns argued in June 2026 that a simple stalker premise can't sustain ten hours of television. Judge for yourself: with 10 episodes at under an hour each, the whole thing is roughly an eight-to-nine-hour watch.
For the record: this is billed as a limited series, so don't expect a season 2 — the story is built to end on 31 July.