Best-of lists are inherently relative — we all have our tastes, and we’re sticking to them — but 2025’s TV felt unusually communal. We were all watching The White Lotus and altering our pronounciation of the word “Lorazepam” just a few months ago, piecing together the mind-bending mysteries of Severance, and desperately googling medical terms to keep up with the relentless life-saving measures of The Pitt. Even as the year kept throwing us curveballs, these shows created a kind of shared experience, a fleeting sense that maybe we were all in this bizarre, screen-addled world together. (It’s funny how simply paying attention to the same thing can do that.)
Obviously there are some more singular picks on our Best TV Shows of 2025 list too, MUBI comedies you probably haven’t streamed and sci-fi thrillers that just popped up in your queue. We’ve still got a job to do, and that job is curating great storytelling so you don’t miss out. But whether you’ve seen every entry here, or are just now marking it as a must-watch, the takeaway is the same: this year was a great one for television and, that seems to be the one thing we can all agree on at the moment.
Adolescence (Netflix)
Every TV show wants to be the one audiences simply can’t look away from, but Adolescence guaranteed our rapidly shrinking attention spans wouldn’t wander, not just with its signature style but through its disturbingly plausible central premise. Unfolding across four hour-long episodes – each staged as a single, unbroken shot – this narrative pressure chamber (created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham) charts the arrest of a teenage boy charged with an unthinkable crime, the painstaking investigation that follows, and the eventual fallout that leaves a family and an entire community fractured. It’s filled with stand-out moments – episode three’s clinical deep dive into the torture psyche of a red-pilled outcast is just one – and a handful of gripping performances from Graham, Erin Doherty, and Christine Tremarco. But it’s Owen Cooper (all of 13-years-old at the time of his casting) who demands attention here, more than earning his Emmy hardware playing Jamie with a mix of believable vulnerability and simmering resentment that makes nailing down his character’s guilt or innocence almost impossible. Thrilling and deeply unsettling, Adolescence is the rare Netflix series that feels genuinely urgent rather than merely buzzy. — Jessica Toomer
Alien: Earth (FX)
Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth ended up being more about the petty human squabbles shaping the prequel’s planetary setting than the chest-bursting extraterrestrials made terrifyingly real in Ridley Scott’s original film… but that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. By giving Peter Pan a science-fiction twist and introducing audiences to the concept of “Hybrids” (artificial beings with transferred human consciousness), Hawley set up a different kind of “monsters unleashed” tale, one that questioned who the true villains of this franchise really are. There were some fantastic performances: Babou Ceesay as a cyborg survivalist with a fanatic devotion to carrying out his mission; Timothy Olyphant as a snobby synthetic mentoring a batch of robotic lost boys; and Sydney Chandler as Wendy, the first hybrid whose Xenomorphic connections and rebellious streak upends the Prodigy Corporation’s larger plans. There were even better practical special effects and newly-invented space horrors – a scheming eye-ball alien, both nightmarish and, oddly, cute, better feature heavily in season two. There were things that worked and things that didn’t, but the show’s commitment to weird and ambitious storytelling made it a rollercoaster worth riding. — Jessica Toomer
All Her Fault (Peacock)
As far as missing persons mysteries go, All Her Fault is on another level. It grabs you from its first scene – a playdate pickup gone horrifyingly wrong – and quickly spins into a layered thriller about family secrets, marital dysfunction, and the ways women carry the weight everyone else refuses to acknowledge. Sarah Snook is magnetic as Marissa, a mom desperate to get her son back, while Dakota Fanning matches her raw emotion with a quieter kind of unraveling that makes their friendship feel authentic and their frustrations relatable. It’s sharp, fast-paced, and filled with whiplash-inducing reveals that sometimes make sense, and sometimes don’t, but land as deliciously messy as you hope they would. A prestige whodunnit? No, but one of the most compelling binge-watches of the year? You bet. — Jessica Toomer
Andor (Disney+)
It hasn’t been the best time to be a Star Wars fan. News comes out at a monthly clip about what could have been (a Soderbergh-directed Kylo Ren movie) or what actually is (a new Star Wars movie from the director of Free Guy). But throughout this, Disney+ casually released two seasons of what might be the best thing ever made in the Star Wars universe. Andor, simply put, felt like a miracle. Gorgeously made, intricately written and performed, and with enough real-world analogs to remember that at their best, these movies help process life on earth, just through the lens of a galaxy far, far away. It’s understandable that the prospect of Star Wars for grown-ups isn’t a priority for Disney. So, just be glad this exists, because who knows if we’ll ever get something this cool again. — Philip Cosores
The Bear (FX)
It’s hard for me to call The Bear’s fourth season a return to form because I genuinely liked the third season, but I recognize the vibe shift. Everyone’s pandemic boyfriend, Chef Carmy, has become toxic as a result of his work-life imbalance and grating pursuit of success, pushing everyone (including the audience) away. In a way, season 4 was about rebuilding and what comes after the explosive friends and family opening of The Bear restaurant in last season’s finale. Unsurprisingly, the pressure doesn’t lessen as Carmy and company race the clock as set by Unc (Oliver Platt) to remain viable in season 4. While Carmy is less outwardly psychotic this season with flashes of his less exhaustingly brooding self as he switches between trying to be perfect in the kitchen and realizing he might need to be more present in his life, his choices can still be nose bridge grabbingly frustrating. As always, the show’s rich cast shines in moments of focus, specifically Abby Elliott and Ayo Edebiri, who headline some of the season’s most rewarding episodes. Maybe return to form isn’t the right headline, maybe it’s more a return to likability? — Jason Tabrys
The Chair Company (HBO Max)
Tim Robinson brings a very specific vibe to his projects, leading with an exciting volatility that promises outbursts and wild narrative swings. With The Chair Company, he merges that formula with a story about a frustrated middle-aged middle manager who falls down a wormhole after a mundane yet embarrassing moment. The result is Robinson at his best, pivoting from the memeworthy comedy sketches of I Think You Should Leave to a riveting story of increasing obsession that taps into the conspiratorial fog that can so easily grip the bored and unfulfilled. — Jason Tabrys
Death By Lightning (Netflix)
A seemingly dusty tale about the late 19th century assasination of a largely forgotten President and the party infighting that surrounded it shouldn’t have as much energy as Death By Lightning does. But it’s history told right, allowing a fantastic cast to cook and deliver performances that somehow channel their most iconic work. Specifically, Matthew Macfadyen as a political parasite slipping into delusion and grievance powered revenge – a man who could absolutely have a DNA link to Tom Wambsgans (Succession). Nick Offerman’s political henchman (and future President) who slowly grows a conscience as he gains more power also seems Ron Swanson-esque (Parks And Rec) early on when displaying a voracious appetite for liquor and sausages. The list goes on and on. Bradley Whitford and Shea Whigham as opposed kingmakers, Michael Shannon as the morally upright President James Garfield, and Betty Gilpin as his wife, Lucretia, delivering a stoic supporting performance before dropping the coldest burn of the year in a tense stand-off opposite Macfadyen in the finale. Learning obscure presidential history has never been this fun and, at times, stirring. –Jason Tabrys
Department Q (Netflix)
Department Q is comfort food for crime drama junkies. Matthew Goode stars as a sour, sidelined detective exiled to the unsolved cases unit after a house call gone wrong, where he promptly stumbles into a disappearance that refuses to stay buried. The mystery snaps into place episode by episode, hopping timelines and character POVs to give audiences clues the actual investigators aren’t privy to yet, but what really sells the show is its dreary, Scottish atmosphere and its Scandinavian sensibilities. (The show is based on a series of Danish detective novels.) The characters are cranky, quirky, but loveable; the central mystery is filled with so many twists you’ll probably get nauseous bingeing in one sitting; and the payoff, while a bit too neat, is satisfying. What more could you ask for? — Jessica Toomer
Hacks (HBO Max)
At this point, Hacks could just be Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder sitting in a room arguing and I’d still watch. And honestly, that describes a good chunk of the show’s latest season. Somehow keeping the streak alive, the series picks up after that killer season-three finale, dropping Deborah and Ava into the chaos of running a late-night show together with a hilariously ill equipped HR mediator (Michaela Watkins) running interference – a setup that’s basically designed to test every nerve they have. The jokes are as sharp as ever (the branzino meltdown alone earns this a spot on any best-of list), but what really makes Hacks untouchable is how effortlessly it pivots from absurd comedy to emotional warfare. Smart remains a force of nature and Einbinder finally getting her Emmy feels long overdue. Few shows are this consistently funny and this emotionally tuned-in. It’s not an easy combination to pull off, but Hacks convinces you that it is. — Jessica Toomer
Hal & Harper (MUBI)
Cooper Raiff is no stranger to a Sundance hit – his 2022 film Cha Cha Real Smooth won the Audience Awards there. So it wasn’t a surprise when his first series, Hal & Harper, debuted there this year to positive buzz and was picked up by Mubi for release in the fall. But what is a surprise is how this took the earnest dramedy of his previous feature film and turned the dial to become something even more resonant and affecting. Mark Ruffalo (maybe TV’s MVP this year) and Lili Reinhart are both excellent in the sprawling family three-hander that explores the long-tail effects of traumatic events through an extremely human lens, all set to a beautifully curated soundtrack. There’s tears and laughter and all the things that make up life, and through Raiff’s eyes, it becomes a big-hearted vibe that the viewer wants to stay in as long as possible. — Philip Cosores
I Love LA (HBO Max)
Rachel Sennott’s I Love LA can be described in a few ways. It’s a slice of zillenial life, capturing the float of a group of creators and creative-adjacents hustling their way through Hollywood while navigating toxic institutional hierarchies and bosses. It’s also a batch of complex relationship stories rife with jealousies and shifting power dynamics (best exemplified by the “Game Night” episode), and a comedy that embraces chaos and absurdism (“Upstairses”). By no means fully baked, the show has great potential to grow into HBO’s latest generational statement series in its confirmed second season, but it’s worth climbing aboard now for the above highlights and a terrific ensemble led by Sennott, Josh Hutcherson, Odessa A’zion, True Whitaker, and Jordan Firstman. –Jason Tabrys
The Lowdown (FX)
Ethan Hawke playing a truth obsessed journalist and splinter in the toe of Tulsa elites and shady characters is one of 2025’s best out-of-nowhere surprises. Laced with a cast of interesting side players and cameos, the other side of the tracks world Reservation Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo makes feels like a broken glass shard filled sandbox for Hawke’s Lee Raybon to navigate. And yet, while he’s chasing serious people, serious conspiracies, and vulnerable to serious consequences, it’s genuinely funny watching the character make bad choices and try to talk his way out of them. That’s the benefit of leaning hard into Hawke’s wily charms. It’s impossible to imagine anyone else playing this singular trainwreck of a man who is flailing as a father, bookseller, and investigator. –Jason Tabrys
Mr. Scorsese (Apple TV+)
Rebecca Miller’s 5-part portrait of Martin Scorsese deals with the totality of a man still humming along, creating culturally substantial films more than a half-century after his first real success with Mean Streets. Bounding from era to era, personal and professional ups and downs, Miller molds several wide-ranging, intimate conversations with Scorsese (and a parade of his friends, former lovers, and frequent collaborators), constructing clear statements on things like the director’s Italian-American heritage, New York upbringing, creative desires, faith, and family – elements that are all at the heart of so many of his works. Walking away, film fans get our clearest look yet at a titan of cinema who has probably worked too much for his own good and seems destined to keep challenging time and expectations to the very end. — Jason Tabrys
Platonic (Apple TV+)
This Apple TV+ buddy comedy is not the Seth Rogen small-screen vehicle that everyone was talking about in 2025. (That would be The Studio, also featured on this list.) But just because a show doesn’t have Dave Franco reinventing the way we say “shrooms” while Zoe Kravitz has a drug-fueled meltdown in the background doesn’t mean it’s not one of the funniest TV entries of the year. Platonic is quieter, less manic with its comedy, but it’s bolstered by a brilliant performance from Rose Byrne, some terrific guest bits from Aidy Bryant, Bobby Cannavale, and Beck Bennett, and a costume department that spent its entire budget on men’s cardigans. (The highest of compliments to Rogen’s stylist here.) Few shows tackle friendship better than this series – the toxic codependency, the frustrating stagnation, the freedom and inhibition that comes from a relationship with no romantic responsibilities. It’s just too damn charming not to warrant another season. — Jessica Toomer
Pluribus (Apple TV+)
Vince Gilligan’s return to sci-fi (the Breaking Bad creator worked on the X-Files early in his career) feels like an elongated Twilight Zone classic. Starring Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn as Carol, one of only a handful of “survivors” who somehow managed to maintain their individuality after a global event turns the rest of the world into a hive mind, the show is split between its central mystery and the exploration of Carol’s grief and anger. A series that isn’t interested in pre-chewing its message, Pluribus wants its audience to spend some time thinking about what it’s trying to say about having people to care for and about us, technology, agency, and other heady topics. A delightful throwback and showcase for the shockingly Emmy-less Seehorn. –Jason Tabrys
The Pitt (HBO Max)
Yes, medical dramas have been mined to dust on television. Yes, we’ve seen Noah Wyle play a “so-competent-it’s-borderline-erotic” doctor in a stretched-too-thin emergency department before. And no, we will not apologize for naming The Pitt the best TV show of 2025. Sometimes, the best storytelling isn’t about doing something that’s never been done, it’s just about doing the same thing really, really well. And John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill? They do medical pressure cookers really, really well. With Wyle as the weary senior attending battling a PTSD flare up on a particularly grueling day in his trauma one center, The Pitt stretches its 15-hour shift across 15 episodes – a practically unheard of season length by today’s TV standards – squeezing every bit of excitement and anguish it can from the resulting chaos. Katherine LaNasa, Patrick Ball, Taylor Dearden, Gerran Howell, Isa Briones, they all give incredible supporting turns at the charge nurses, residents, and student interns managing the day’s mess of mass shootings and measles outbreaks, but make no mistake, this is Wyle’s show, and he carries it effortlessly. — Jessica Toomer
The Rehearsal (HBO Max)
Perhaps more than any other show on this list, I don’t want to get too into the weeds on the story of this season, because it’s best discovered on your own (assuming you’ve been able to dodge all the stories about Nathan Felder’s awkward aeronautic adventures). I’ll just say that season 2 of The Rehearsal is a perfectly executed demonstration of Felder’s genius through specificity. Going back to Nathan For You, Felder has been a singular comedic engine, bridging the divide between the unscripted, the thoroughly planned, and social satire with his curiosity and comedic guts. While you can’t know if you can ever trust what he’s putting on screen, you know you can trust that, at the end of the ride, you’re going to be wowed by the density of what he’s built and his commitment to whatever the bit was. Felder is our top comedic tightrope walker. — Jason Tabrys
Severance (Apple TV+)
Severance season two returned with the confidence of a show that knows exactly how strange it is, and wants to test whether those limits can be pushed any further. After a punishingly long wait (three years, seriously?), the doors to Lumon finally reopened this year, expanding its cerebral nightmare beyond those familiar fluorescent-soaked cubicles. The show dove even deeper into the surreal machinery of capitalism, with Mark confronting the shocking truth about his wife and those eerie Cold Harbor experiments, and tensions between innies and outies playing an even bigger role as the corporate power struggle ventured to some pretty wild, morally dark places. Adam Scott and Britt Lower shouldered most of that heavy-lifting, turning in some electrifying performances, but the real joy of Severance is the sum of its parts, and its sheer ambition when it comes to storytelling. Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson’s sci-fi experiment is still operating on a wavelength few shows even attempt, trusting viewers to sit with confusion, dread, and the occasional goat-related curveball while it leads us down the rabbit hole. — Jessica Toomer
Sirens (Netflix)
From the first half of the year, Sirens is a deliciously messy look at the cultish, insulated world of the upper crust and what happens when an outsider starts pulling threads and hitting nerves while visiting their kingdom. Headlined by Meghann Fahy, who plays a struggling and emotionally fried older sister suspicious of the hold Julianne Moore’s society diva character has on her little sister (Milly Alcock), the show fills up the screen with beautiful Hamptons-style locales and twisty upstairs/downstairs drama. Family secrets, entitlements, and dysfunction spill allover the place, challenging the stability of relationships and, perhaps more importantly, status. The show is A LOT, but in the best way. A perfect weekend binge. –Jason Tabrys
The Studio (Apple TV+)
The business side of Hollywood has rarely been more in our faces than it is right now with merger and hostile takeover talk featuring Netflix, Warner Discovery, and Paramount everywhere. In a way, it’s like Seth Rogen’s The Studio prepared us for all of it, pulling off the magic trick of creating an inside baseball Hollywood story that isn’t so far up its ass that it forgets to give us people to root for. As an idealist in a vice, Rogen’s fresh studio head Matt Remick is quickly getting crushed under the pressure of his job, need to please his boss (played by Bryan Cranston), and existential need to both feed his ego and desire to make real pictures. The energy is chaotic, throughout, culminating in a season finale blessed with some supernatural physical comedy and cameos from Cranston, Zoe Kravitz, and David Franco. –Jason Tabrys