14 Great TV Shows from 2025 to Binge

Was it me or was it the medium? 2025 was not the greatest year for television, for me at least, and I felt myself let down more than once by both shows that I loved and new ones that I thought I would. This is not to say there wasn’t greatness in both respects but I was underwhelmed by The Bear S4 and Severance S2, and disappointed by the first seasons of shows that looked promising (Alien: Earth, Black Rabbit, Your Friends and Neighbors, Smoke, Chad Powers, House of Guinness, Duster, Down Cemetery Road). Add to that I spent a lot of time with my parents this year watching CBS shows like Tracker, Sheriff Country and NCIS Origins, maybe I didn’t see as much as I normally do.

Though the Peak TV bubble looks like it’s bursting as Warner Brothers folds into Netflix or Paramount, YouTube is taking over everything (I’m guilty as anyone), and other networks and streaming apps are tightening their budgets, there were still many shows in 2025 worth celebrating, and this year, I picked 14 to highlight. There’s only one returning show in my list, but I will say I loved Shoresy S4 (I included the show in last year’s list), thoroughly enjoyed the most recent seasons of Slow Horses and Hacks…and I didn’t hate the new seasons of Severance or The Bear (they were just disappointing).

There were also shows that just weren’t for me (The Chair Company) and then there’s The Rehearsal, a show that I ended up disliking so much that by the end of S1 that I haven’t brought myself to check out S2 despite nearly everyone I know saying it’s great. Maybe I’ll watch over the holidays, along with finally checking out Eastern Gate, North of North, Dying for Sex, I Love LA, Asura, and The Beast in Me. We’ll see.

This is not quite a Best TV Shows of 2025 list, but it is the best of everything I saw.

Happy holidays, happy viewing, and we’ll see you on TV in 2026.

Head below for my 2025 picks…

The Lowdown (FX on Hulu)

Ethan Hawke has been on a hot streak lately (since at least The Good Lord Bird), and 2025 has been an especially rewarding year, including two Richard Linklater movies, Blue Moon and Nouvelle Vague. The real feather in the cap, though, is his lead role in The Lowdown, Sterlin Harjo’s follow-up to the acclaimed (and underseen) series Reservation Dogs. Set in Tulsa, this is a hangdog noir where Hawke plays Lee Raybon, a too-smart-for-his-own-good alt-weekly journalist (“truthstorian”)/bookshop owner/private eye/fuck-up who stumbles onto the story of the year when the black sheep of a wealthy, politically connected family commits suicide — or did he? Like The Big Lebowski, this is definitely a hang first and foremost, with a light touch and lots of humor, but there’s also a real mystery here with genuine stakes. Harjo blends his love of Jim Thompson novels with State of 2025 issues — racism, big real estate, the decline of journalism, social media slop, and more — into a knotty, thoughtful, and often hilarious mystery. It’s the role of a lifetime for Hawke, who is endlessly charming, and the cast is a deep bench of character actors, including Kyle MacLachlan, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Keith David, Tim Blake Nelson, Peter Dinklage, Tracy Letts, Scott Shepherd, and more. The Lowdown is also a fantastic music show, from a soundtrack heavy on ’70s outlaw country to supporting roles for Killer Mike, John Doe, and Ken Pomeroy. What a treat The Lowdown is.

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Common Side Effects (HBO MAX)

The best conspiracy thriller in recent memory — and possibly the trippiest ever — is this Adult Swim animated series about an amateur herbalist who discovers a mythical mushroom that can heal anything (including mortal wounds) and soon finds the government, big pharma, and those who pull the strings of both after him. The series was co-created by Joe Bennett and Steve Hely, with King of the Hill’s Mike Judge (who does many voices here) and Greg Daniels producing, you can feel their influence here. Common Side Effects is funny, smart, morally complex, and appropriately, vividly psychedelic at times, with an animation style that owes a lot to greats like the late Satoshi Kon (Paprika) and a dry tone that feels right at home alongside Judge’s work. The show also boasts a stronger story than most live-action series tackling similar material, delivering satisfying — and often weird — twists and detours that deepen the characters. Like the best conspiracy fiction, the first season ends on a melancholic note with plenty of loose ends, but we’ll get some answers, hopefully, in Season 2, which was just officially confirmed. Alongside The Lowdown, this was my favorite new show of 2025.

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Andor (Disney+)

It was worth the three-year wait between Andor’s two seasons. Created by Tony Gilroy, screenwriter of Michael Clayton and Nightcrawler, this Star Wars series follows Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a directionless hustler who ends up becoming one of the key figures in the Rebellion that leads to the destruction of the Death Star in A New Hope. But what it’s really about is the rise of fascism, and how seemingly evolved societies allow it to happen. Andor is the most morally complex TV series since The Wire, with astonishing talent on both sides of the camera. Originally planned as three seasons before being shortened to two, it would have been great to have more Andor, but Gilroy and his team show a remarkably deft touch, packing in a huge amount of story — involving a dozen characters across many years and planets — without ever feeling rushed. In a world of marketing tie-ins and safe sequels, it’s kind of a miracle Andor exists at all.
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Adolescence (Netflix)

One of the most talked-about shows of the spring, Adolescence was created by actor Stephen Graham (Al Capone on Boardwalk Empire), who stars as a man in Yorkshire, England whose son (Owen Cooper) is accused of murdering a girl in his class. You might think a show like this would go one way, but it takes a much more difficult path, exploring themes of unimaginable tragedy and the world that helped it happen. Performances across the board are excellent as this family comes to grips with what has happened and what will happen next. On a technical level, Adolescence is a marvel: all four episodes — each around an hour long — were shot in a single, continuous take, with no digital trickery, just bravura cinematography, direction, and acting. What could be a gimmick in other hands instead heightens the immediacy here, and with no cuts there’s also no turning away from some very uncomfortable situations. It also allows the actors to really show their stuff, especially in the series’ penultimate episode, which is basically two characters in a room and is as edge-of-your-seat intense as any action set piece. Adolescence is a gut punch you can’t turn away from.

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The Pitt (HBO MAX)

Noah Wyle and producer John Wells reteam for this medical drama that bears a lot of similarities to their previous show together, NBC’s E.R. (so much so that the widow of E.R. co-creator Michael Crichton is suing Warner Bros. over it). But this series, set at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, is a different, decidedly post-COVID trip to the emergency room. Each episode covers one hour of a 12-hour shift, with Wyle as attending physician Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch watching over four medical students. You get cases that wrap up in a single episode and others that stretch across the season, glimpses into the lives of the staff, and early hints that today will not be a normal-level grueling shift. It’s the mix of familiar procedural beats with a season-long story, plus the freedom streaming allows to show emergency medicine in its rawest state. The Pitt is the best of the old and the new — more shows should take a cue from this.

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Pluribus (Apple TV+)

Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan’s first new show since putting a bow on that universe is a sci-fi series that’s both dazzling in its scope (and budget) and unafraid to slow down and focus on character. The tagline is “The most miserable person on Earth must save the world from happiness,” and it’s pretty accurate. Mild spoilers ahead: the miserable person in question is Carol Sturka — played by Rhea Seehorn (Kim Wexler on Better Call Saul) — a successful fantasy romance author who is one of a dozen humans unaffected when an alien virus takes over Earth’s population. Where it goes from there, the less said the better, but it involves visits to Spain, Paraguay, Morocco, Norway, Las Vegas, and other far-flung locations — mostly filmed on location — though much of the action unfolds in Walter White’s hometown of Albuquerque, NM, even if the two series are supposedly not in the same universe. Pluribus is hilarious at times, deadly serious at others, and almost always beautifully shot, as Gilligan uses it to explore free will, the good of the many over the few, what makes us human, and the 2025 hot-button topic of AI. Fans of “process” will love the series’ obsessive attention to detail (a Gilligan hallmark), though some viewers will undoubtedly be yelling “get on with it!!!” at their screens. The show feels like it’s only really getting started as it hits the Season 1 finale, so thank goodness there will be a Season 2.

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Paradise (Hulu)

How to describe a show like Paradise without spoiling things? Well, here’s the official synopsis: “Paradise is set in a serene, wealthy community inhabited by some of the world’s most prominent individuals. But this tranquility explodes when a shocking murder occurs and a high-stakes investigation unfolds.” The great Sterling K. Brown, in a role that 15 years ago would’ve gone to Kiefer Sutherland, stars as Secret Service agent Xavier Collins, assigned to protect the president (James Marsden). Then comes that shocking murder, followed by a whole lot of other surprising developments that viewers may start suspecting before they’re actually revealed. Paradise was created not by M. Night Shyamalan but Dan Fogelman, who gave us the weepy, twisty NBC hit This Is Us, and this feels like a show that could’ve aired 10 years ago as well — but, like HBO’s The Pitt, familiarity isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The plot never gets too convoluted or far-fetched, though, to bring up Kiefer again, there is at least one contrived scene that rivals “Kim gets attacked by a mountain lion” in the first season of 24. Mostly, Paradise keeps the reveals coming at a satisfying pace while laying out new mysteries, and hopefully things won’t go totally off the rails in Season 2.

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Death by Lightning (Netflix)

This Netflix limited series looks at the political life of James A. Garfield, a man who never really wanted to be president but ended up there anyway — he was the United States’ 20th president — only to die after just 200 days in office, spending much of that time bedridden and slowly dying after being shot by an assassin. Intense actor and occasional R.E.M. tribute-band frontman Michael Shannon gets a chance to show his sweeter side as Garfield, who had the potential to be a great president, while Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen gleefully chews up the scenery as morally deficient huckster and ex-con Charles Guiteau, who becomes obsessed with Garfield. Based on Candice Millard’s Destiny of the Republic, Death by Lightning was written and created by Mike Makowsky and directed by Matt Ross (whom you might recognize as a cast member of Big Love or Silicon Valley), and they make a historical drama about one of our least-remembered presidents not only interesting but genuinely exciting, with plenty of humor along the way. The cast is filled out by a who’s who of character actors, including Nick Offerman, Bradley Whitford, Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigham, and Vondie Curtis-Hall, and the attention to period detail is impressive. You may be shocked — and fascinated — by how easy access to the president was 100 years into the country’s history, how bad medicine remained even for the nation’s elite, and how blatantly corrupt nearly everyone was back then (OK, maybe not surprised about that last part). With only four one-hour episodes, Death by Lightning flies by, and this may be a rare case where you wish there’d been one more episode.

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The Studio (Apple TV+)

You don’t have to read Variety or listen to entertainment-industry podcast The Town to enjoy Seth Rogen’s Hollywood satire series The Studio, but it helps. Rogen plays Matt Remick, the newly appointed head of movie studio Continental at a moment when the state of the industry has never felt more uncertain. “Being the head of Continental is the only job I’ve ever wanted,” Remick says at one point. “I got into all this because, you know, I love movies, but now I have this fear that my job is to ruin them.” That’s pretty much what happens over the course of The Studio’s first season, but if you have any appreciation for farce and the “likable idiot fails upward” genre, the show is a blast — as funny as it is insightful about the industry’s behind-the-scenes chaos. Rogen is surrounded by a fantastic cast of comedic actors, including Catherine O’Hara, Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtz, Bryan Cranston (clearly having the time of his life as the studio’s CEO), and David Krumholtz, along with a parade of Hollywood elites playing themselves, including Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Zoë Kravitz, Ice Cube, Steve Buscemi, Greta Lee, Jean Smart, and more. The Studio loves the craft as much as the stories, frequently deploying impressive long single takes, including the episode “The Oner,” which is about single-take shots and is filmed in one. Most episodes have a self-contained story (like optioning a Kool-Aid Man movie), but it all builds to a wild season finale in Las Vegas involving an old-school “Hollywood buffet,” huge laughs, and Emmy-reel performances from everyone involved, especially Cranston. Speaking of which: The Studio’s first season picked up nine awards at this year’s Emmys, including Best Comedy Series, so we can expect this one to stick around for a while.

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Task (HBO MAX)

Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby takes us back to Philly-adjacent Delaware County for another gritty small-town crime drama full of humanity, humor, jobs-gone-bad, family, friends, traitors, and Delco accents. Mark Ruffalo plays Tom Brandis, an FBI agent and former priest who assembles a task force to get to the bottom of a string of violent robberies. On the other side of the story are Robbie Prendergrast (Tom Pelphrey) and Cliff Broward (Raúl Castillo), two garbage men who are behind those robberies. Ruffalo and Pelphrey may be the leads, but Task has an outstanding cast of rising talent, including Emilia Jones as Robbie’s deeply sympathetic wife, Fabien Frankel as a local police officer who joins the task force, and Alison Oliver (Saltburn) as the team’s youngest member. (Like The Wire 20 years ago, you may be surprised by how many Pennsylvanians are played by British thespians.) As with Mare of Easttown, Ingelsby always puts character first, which is why you end up caring about nearly everyone on the show, even when they’re doing some very stupid things.

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Murderbot (AppleTV+)

Alexander Skarsgård frequently gets cast for his looks, but he’s a nuanced actor capable of drama and comedy, going big and small, and he gets to show off his full range as the titular star of this series adaptation of Martha Wells’ The Murderbot Diaries novels. He plays a man-machine hybrid security unit built to protect humans, assigned to a group of researchers on an inhospitable planet. One day it hacks its own programming and secretly becomes autonomous, renaming itself Murderbot — without telling the humans what’s happened — while continuing to protect them, even though it doesn’t really like them. With this new freedom, Murderbot begins exploring what it means to be human, which mostly involves watching a lot of TV. Sounds like it’s figured things out. (The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon is the best fake soap-within-a-show since Twin Peaks’ Invitation to Love.) The series was adapted by Paul and Chris Weitz — who gave us American Pie and About a Boy — and they keep the tone light, though it occasionally swerves into over-the-top silliness. It’s never less than entertaining, even if the show initially struggles with how to adapt books told in the first person; midway through the season it settles on the right tone and style, all the way through an excellent finale (it’s already been renewed). Skarsgård is the real reason to watch, and his performance gives Murderbot its beating heart — so to speak.

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Dept Q (Netflix)

Hate waiting for the next season of Slow Horses and wish there were another quirky crime drama about a group of misfit agents who somehow stumble onto major cases? Please enjoy this series, based on the novels of the same name by Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen and brought to the screen by Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit, Godless) along with Chandni Lakhani (Black Mirror). Frank moves the setting from Copenhagen to Edinburgh, Scotland, and Matthew Goode (Chasing Liberty, Downton Abbey) leads the cast as Carl Morck, a brilliant but antisocial detective tasked with heading up Department Q, a unit assigned to review seemingly unsolvable cold cases. They’re given very little budget, but they do inherit the police department’s disused — and very cool-looking — basement bathhouse as their home base. First case: the disappearance of Edinburgh prosecutor Merritt Lingard. Goode and the rest of the main cast (including Kelly Macdonald, Alexej Manvelov, Chloe Pirrie, Leah Byrne, Kate Dickie, and more) are terrific as an ensemble, and the dialogue is strong enough that you almost forgive the wildly convoluted direction the mystery eventually takes — and hope for a slightly more down-to-earth Season 2.

King of the Hill (Hulu)

Sixteen years after the beloved FOX animated series King of the Hill sailed off into the Texas sunset after 13 seasons of good-natured, genuine laughs, creators Mike Judge and Greg Daniels decided to check back in on propane salesman Hank Hill and his family and neighbors. Set in the present day, the revival finds Hank and wife Peggy returning to Arlen, TX after a long stint working in Saudi Arabia at a job too lucrative for Hank to turn down. They discover a hometown that’s very different from the one they left: son Bobby is now a chef and co-owner of a local Japanese–German–American fusion restaurant, and the town itself has been radically reshaped by technology and the pandemic. The first episode efficiently catches us up, revealing that Dale has (unsurprisingly) taken his conspiracy theories to social media and nearly became Arlen’s mayor; mumbly ladies’ man Boomhauer is dating a woman and bonding with her son; and Bill Dauterive has only recently emerged from years as a COVID recluse after, as he puts it, “finishing Netflix.” Times may have changed, but King of the Hill still has its heart in the right place, with Hank grappling with millennials, Gen Z, and a topsy-turvy America are all handled with the thoughtfulness, empathy, and dry humor the show has always done best. Welcome back, Hank.

Étoile (Prime Video)

Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel creator Amy Sherman-Palladino was a ballet dancer before her career in television, and her long-running love of the art has made its way into much of what she’s done over the past 25 years, including her terrific post-Gilmore series Bunheads. Following the success and accolades of Maisel, ASP took another shot at bringing ballet to home screens with this ambitious series about the heads of two world-renowned ballet companies in New York (Luke Kirby) and Paris (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who decide to trade their most talented stars in an effort to drum up interest and save their respective institutions. Étoile is the most serious show Amy Sherman-Palladino and husband Daniel Palladino have given us, but it’s still as whimsical, quick-witted, and packed with rapid-fire dialogue as the rest of their work. ASP has also become a fantastic director, and, as in Bunheads, the dance sequences are thrilling, made even more gorgeous by shooting on location in NYC and Paris. She’s filled out the cast with familiar faces, too, including Gilmore Girls’ Kelly Bishop and Yanic Truesdale. Alas, like Bunheads — and mirroring its subject — ballet didn’t connect with broader audiences, and despite the zippy dialogue, Étoile was canceled after a single season. But also like Bunheads, it’s very much worth your time.

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