The 10 best TV shows of 2025

It’s been a dicey year for television. CBS owner Paramount settled a lawsuit brought by Donald Trump, and even late-night comedy seemed at risk with the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show and the suspension of Jimmy Kimmel’s. Despite a handful of adventurous outliers, including Tim Robinson’s “The Chair Company” and Netflix’s delightfully anachronistic “Death By Lightning,” plenty of scripted TV shows this year played it safe, betting on nostalgia to recapture the glories of series past.

TV juggernauts Mindy Kaling and Elaine Ko came back with “Running Point,” a pleasant, old-school comedy starring Kate Hudson. Greg Daniels tried to bring back that “Office” feeling with “The Paper,” and Tina Fey teamed up with Steve Carell and Will Forte in Netflix’s fine but underwhelming “The Four Seasons” — itself a remake of a 1981 film. “Stranger Things,” now starring some very old children, continues to chase that ’80s magic, and Netflix’s “Boots” channeled some Norman Lear-style charm (and polemicism) while exploring how closeted service members experienced the ’90s.

Efforts to revive the rom-com (as TV) were in full force, with Kristen Bell and Adam Brody delivering a funny, albeit repetitive, second season of Netflix juggernaut “Nobody Wants This,” while Lena Dunham — whose influence clearly shaped new shows like FX’s “Adults” and HBO’s “I Love LA,” which aim to capture for Gen Z what “Girls” did for millennials — launched a meta rom-com of sorts with “Too Much.”

The year yielded a rich crop of entertaining if implausible thrillers anchored by giant stars. These include Netflix’s “The Beast in Me,” Peacock’s “All Her Fault” and Apple TV’s “Down Cemetery Road,” an oddly paced adaptation of the Mick Herron novel, starring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson as unlikely allies. “Mare of Easttown” creator Brad Ingelsby returned with “Task,” a respectable Philly-centric tragedy starring Mark Ruffalo as a priest turned FBI agent featuring some off-the-charts acting by Tom Pelphrey, who should be a household name.

Some bigger swings by venerated creators missed the mark, including Noah Hawley’s “Alien: Earth,” a dystopian prequel to “Alien” featuring a crop of super-children governed by a puerile billionaire obsessed with the works of J.M. Barrie, and “Pluribus,” Vince Gilligan’s much-anticipated new project starring Rhea Seehorn, which — like its protagonist — just can’t stop making things harder (and slower) than they need to be. If the former is philosophically overstuffed, the latter so resolutely resists the viewer’s desire for narrative action, plot development or sci-fi world-building that it starts to feel like Jungian homework.

It’s noteworthy, in a landscape this checkered, when TV tries to be really original or — alternately — nails a well-worn formula so virtuosically it somehow feels strong and new. Below are 10 of the better series of this year.

10. ‘Chief of War’

Apple TV’s stab at a sweeping historical epic is gorgeous, well-acted and far more rooted in history than an early scene — in which Jason Momoa charges and lassos a shark — would suggest. Momoa created and co-wrote the nine-episode drama, which condenses a 20-year period of Hawaiian history before unification, with Thomas Paʻa Sibbett. Momoa plays Kaʻiana, a martially gifted, ethically conflicted Hawaiian war chief who helped bring Kamehameha (the first ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii) to power before turning against him. Like FX’s “Shogun,” the series takes a distinctly non-Western approach to exploring a volatile moment when mounting tensions between chiefs were compounded by contact with Westerners. There’s intrigue and plenty of cinematic fighting, particularly in the technically impressive (though narratively wobbly) finale.

9. ‘Slow Horses’

While “Stranger Things” and “House of the Dragon” go years between seasons, Will Smith’s adaptation of Mick Herron’s novels about disheveled, disillusioned and discarded spies has delivered five very solid seasons (and trailers for the sixth) in a mere three years. The latest season — in which a Libyan group honey-traps the Slow Horses’ obnoxious tech genius, Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) — was certainly the funniest. James Callis practically oozes schemes and sweat as bumbling Park head Claude Whelan, and Nick Mohammed — as London’s faux-progressive mayor — nails his character’s marvelously repellent catchphrase (“make London Londerful”). And, for a show this hard-bitten, the season ends on a note so poignant it’s almost sentimental.

8. ‘The Lowdown’

Sterlin Harjo turns the city of Tulsa into a character in this charming, noir-inflected drama, which — despite its eccentricities — feels downright grounded compared to the adolescent dreams and disillusionments of “Reservation Dogs.” Ethan Hawke plays Lee Raybon, an eccentric, nosy, self-described “truthstorian” — sort of a freelance journalist — who investigates racists and real estate moguls when he isn’t selling used books. When the bookish brother (Tim Blake Nelson) of a prominent Tulsa family dies by suicide, Raybon starts asking questions. The show — which boasts Kyle MacLachlan, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Peter Dinklage — is a better hang than it is a mystery; you just want to spend more time in its weird, golden, broken world.

7. ‘Murderbot’

It’s fun when slight little shows — especially comedies — overperform by improving on a silly premise. In Apple TV’s goofy space dystopia “Murderbot,” Alexander Skarsgard plays a crabby, semi-obsolete “SecUnit” (or “private security construct” — sort of a computer with human tissue) that started the series by quietly rebelling against its overlords. Specifically, it hacked its “governor module” to watch a bunch of movies and TV, and it must now hide its newfound sentience (and fandom) from the incompetent humans it’s forced to protect. The series was one of the year’s weirder and more successful television experiments. Created by Weitz brothers Paul and Chris (who also made “American Pie” and “About a Boy”), the show, an adaptation of the first book of Martha Wells’ “The Murderbot Diaries,” makes extraordinary — and original, and very funny — use of Skarsgard’s almost inhumanly handsome and distant screen presence.

6. ‘The Studio’

There’s a reason this series won all those Emmys. Seth Rogen is really, really funny as Matt Remick, an embattled studio executive struggling to reconcile his venal ambition with his love of film and his ego. Ike Barinholtz is even better as Sal Saperstein, Matt’s sporadically treacherous No. 2. Chase Sui Wonders — playing Quinn, Matt’s ex-assistant — is a fabulous thorn in Sal Saperstein’s side, while Catherine O’Hara, playing Matt’s jaded ex-mentor, tortures him with unreasonable demands he’s powerless to reject. It’s not a perfect season, but Kathryn Hahn as Maya, the crew’s soulless, bizarrely coiffed head of marketing, helps some of the weaker episodes work. Come for the oners and Dave Franco, stay for Zoë Kravitz, whose cameo might be even better than Ron Howard’s (or Martin Scorsese’s).

5. ‘Adolescence’

We may be drowning in true crime dramas, but it’s rare for a show to focus on someone other than the victim, the killer or the case. That’s partly what sets “Adolescence” apart. Owen Cooper plays Jamie Miller, a diminutive 13-year-old boy who killed a female classmate who rejected him. The show unpacks the short- and long-term impact on Jamie’s family along with the investigation as police and psychologists piece together what happened and how (in legal terms) to proceed. Less a whodunit than a whydunit, the series is rightly hailed not just for its subject matter and extraordinary acting but also for its technical derring-do: Each of the four episodes was shot in one continuous take.

4. ‘The Pitt’

While characters on “The Pitt” come up with several improvised solutions to medical crises they lack the supplies to deal with, this particular series isn’t experimental in the least. Quite the contrary: It overachieves despite drawing on tropes we know all too well. The medical drama, which won several Emmys this year, follows Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) and the staff (including two new medical students, an intern and a resident) of a Pittsburgh emergency room during one extremely eventful 15-hour shift. Each episode corresponds, “24”-style, to an hour in real time. Gimmicky? Maybe. But the series excels at the formulas that make medical shows worth watching without feeling derivative. It’s popular to sneer at “linear TV” these days, but “The Pitt” feels like great network television augmented by HBO money and freedom.

3. ‘Dying for Sex’

Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate star in this searching, tender, mordantly funny series about a woman (Williams) who, on finding she has terminal cancer, leaves her husband and asks her friend (Slate) to help her die. There’s an unusual item on her bucket list: She wants to overcome her history of sexual assault and have an orgasm with someone else before she dies. Based on a podcast of the same name, the series, which aired on FX, is frank about the realities and brutalities of cancer. It’s also quite explicit about sex (one liaison results in a broken bone). This is a weird and special show that’s hard to get people to watch. It sounds too dark. It is beautiful. And brilliant.

2. ‘Andor’

A prequel to the 2016 film “Rogue One,” “Andor” tracks the adventures — and radicalization — of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), one of the doomed rebels on that mission to steal the plans for the Death Star. The show’s second season makes clear that this isn’t a hero’s journey. The series, which shrugs off the Jedi to focus on lower-ranking folk, is agonizingly clear-sighted about the sacrifices that go into a revolution. Few series can be wildly inspiring while sustaining this level of pessimism and ambivalence. The immorality of fascism is old news, but “Andor” doubles as a sobering thesis on the moral injuries those fighting it sustain as well.

1. ‘The Rehearsal’

The second season of “The Rehearsal,” Nathan Fielder’s HBO show in which he helps people “rehearse” elaborate scenarios, confirms him as one of the most inventive, audacious, committed and innovative creators working today. This is a hard show to discuss because revealing the narrative moves that elevate it to high art — or philosophy — would deprive viewers of a shift they deserve to directly experience. But if you want to see the best thing that happened this year, on TV, watch it. Watch till the end.