There’s a line from “Adolescence,” my favorite TV show of 2025 by a mile, in which a teen son tells his father: "I just thought you needed to know. It was just embarrassing watching you blunder about."
I felt embarrassed about a lot of TV in 2025. It’s not only the lousy shows like the Ryan Murphy/Kim Kardashian debacle “All’s Fair” or the shambles of Robert De Niro’s “Zero Day” or the just plain uselessness of “Suits LA.” I’m talking about the avalanche of crap that comes streaming at us with every TV season. Nothing in media has the reach of TV or its ability to cover the world in a blanket of bland.
Is all TV bad? No way. That’s why I’m happy to put together this list of the 10 Best Shows of 2025 to celebrate TV when it gets things right. That means when the medium moves past the crushing repetition that too often defines it. If a network finds a hit, it will milk that sucker for every last drop of profitability. Look at “Grey’s Anatomy” or the “Law & Order” franchise or “The Real Housewives” of Nowhere USA.
So this year I want to praise originality. Don’t scream, holler and throw things if you don’t see “Severance” on my list or “Andor” or the venerable “Hacks.” I’m not hating on them by any means. I’m just here to give flowers to the new stuff that dared to stand up against a tide of repeats and say, “look at me.” I looked and here’s the 10 best newbies I found.
- “Adolescence”
Since this British series started streaming on Netflix in March, the buzz has been deafening about this series in which an adolescent boy is accused of murder and about the concept of shooting each of its hour-long episodes in one dazzling, unbroken take. But even these technical wonders pale next to the performances of three actors who raise their craft to the level of art. I’m talking about superb Stephen Graham as the aggrieved father, newcomer Owen Cooper, who’s simply stupendous as his accused son, and indelible Erin Doherty as the therapist who brings out the monster lurking just behind the face of presumed innocence. I was truly heartened to see Graham, Cooper and Doherty standing on the Emmy stage in September with acting awards for a series that won 8 Emmy Awards, including the big one for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series. Emmy got it right as did anyone who saw this series and watched history being made, including for Cooper, 15, who hit the record books as the youngest male ever to win a Primetime Emmy in an acting category. Said Cooper of the fourth and final episode: “I was only in a small bit of that, but that’s my favorite episode. The very last scene [when Jamie’s dad tucks his teddy bear into his bed], it’s so sad, but that’s my favorite scene in the whole show.” Mine too.
- “The Studio”
The Emmys got it right again in the comedy category with “The Studio” becoming the most-winning freshman comedy series in history, setting a new record with 13 wins overall. Well deserved. The Apple series blissfully bites the Hollywood hand that feeds it as creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg bust open a piñata of juicy inside jokes to enhance the tale of a film geek (Rogen) who gets his dream job running a studio, only to find that success means killing the thing he loves. And the cameos from legend Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard playing absurdist versions of themselves are perfection. Rogen won the Best Actor Emmy, but every member of this cast from Catherine O’Hara and Kathryn Hahn to Ike Barinholtz and Bryan Cranston scores a hit. A few negheads think the show is too inside Hollywood for its own good. What a crock.
- “Pluribus”
Now that I’ve seen the “Pluribus” finale (Apple held back the last two episodes from critics), I can categorically state that this Vince Gilligan series—his follow-up to “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul”— is TV at its original and outrageous best. The sci-fi premise plopped us down in a near future where a global virus infected almost the entire planet, turning humans into happy drones who want everyone else to become as happy as they are. Resistance to the hive mentality, aka The Others, comes hardest from the great Rhea Seehorn (get her an Emmy at once) as Carol, a self-loathing author of romance novels and a balls-to-the wall freethinker. As we learn from the last episode, Carol thinks an atomic bomb may be the solution. Can she form at least a fragile bond with fellow rebel Manousos (Carlos-Manuel Vesga) to blow up the world? We won’t know until the already green-lit Season 2. I’ll be watching, and I expect you to be watching with me.
- “Death By Lightning”
A strong Emmy contender for the new year, “Death by Lightning” is a four-episode (just right), mostly historical series about the 1881 assassination of President James A. Garfield (a solid Michael Shannon) by a dangerously unhinged Charles Guiteau (a scary brilliant Matthew Macfadyen). Both names are lost to history, unless you’re a fan of “Assassins,” the acerbic Stephen Sondheim musical in which Guiteau started singing “I’m Going to the Lordy,” just before they hanged him. That part is all true and “Succession” Emmy winner Macfadyen crazy sings it here. Separating fact from dramatic license is part of the bracingly bonkers fun of this Netflix series. MacFadyen, Shannon and the sensational Betty Gilpin as the Garfield’s feisty First Lady find the humor and humanity in these pawns of history. Their acting mischief makes the assassination that America forgot into one of the most memorable and original shows of the TV season.
- “The Pitt”
Don’t start shouting. I know this HBO/Max medical series sounds like a newfangled version of “ER,” the NBC medical drama than ran from 1994 to 2009, made a star of George Clooney (he left for movies after Season 5) and raised the profile of newcomer Noah Wylie. Solidifying the connection is Wylie in the pivotal role of Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch, who leads the grueling shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center's emergency room. But the difference, as they say, makes all the difference as “The Pitt” covers a single 15-hour work shift, with each episode running one, real-time hour. The tension is palpable. “The Pitt” has already won an Emmy for Wylie and for Best Drama Series. More crucial is the praise from the medical community for its accuracy, its realistic portrayal of healthcare workers, and the way it addresses the psychological challenges faced in a post-pandemic world. If you haven’t seen it yet, get busy since Season starts on Jan. 8.
- “TASK”
So you think this one sounds just like every other cop series? Snap out of it. Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey elevate this HBO/Max police procedural to the level of art. It’s a brilliantly acted, written and directed seven hours of television. Series creator and Pennsylvania native Brad Ingelsby returns to the outskirts of Philadelphia where he set his Emmy-winning 2021 series “Mare of Easttown” with Kate Winslet. “TASK,” standing for a police Task Force, has two main protagonists: Ruffalo as recently widowed FBI agent and former priest Tom Brandis and Tom Pelphrey as sanitation worker Robbie Prendergrast, a family man who’s hiding behind his guise of normalcy to rob stolen drug money from local motorcycle gangs who don’t like it a bit. You might think you need a scorecard to keep up with the characters who move in and out of this busy series. But Ingelsby and the actors take the time to create distinct personalities. In short order, every one of them will seize your imagination. If you watch this entire series and still feel it’s too long and grim, give “TASK” another chance. And this time pay attention.
- “The Lowdown”
In 2025, Ethan Hawke gave the film performance of his career in “Blue Moon.” Now he performs the same magic on TV in “The Lowdown,” as a crusading Tulsa bookworm in a rollicking, riveting series on FX that takes its place with the year’s best. The show is the brainchild of writer-director Sterlin Harjo, who created “Reservation Dogs” about Indigenous teens. Hawke plays an Oklahoma writer and rare book collector named Lee Raybon and he wears the role like a second skin—a self-styled “truthstorian,” though he mostly writes for a local porn rag and a literary quarterly. You figure Lee must be on the side of the angels since he repeatedly gets the crap beaten out of him by neo-Nazis and shady rich white folks. The crime plot is just an excuse for Harjo to create a colorful community of Tulsa haves and have-nots that jump off the screen and get inside your head. It’s a hilarious and heartfelt tribute to the eccentricities of real people living on a very recognizable edge. It’s also a rousing confirmation that the 54-year-old Hawke, long past his teen dream days as he delivers one brilliant, battered performance after another, is an actor who can hold his own with the best of his generation. And that’s the real lowdown.
- “House of Guinness”
This Netflix series, told in eight, one-hour episodes, grew on me. At first, I was put off over claims that the plot was “inspired by true stories” since much has been left to invention. And it plays that way. Still, there is much to recommend in this grimy-gorgeous, sex-obsessed family drama from Stephen Knight, the wordsmith behind “Peaky Blinders.” If “Peaky” had a bastard child with “Succession,” you’d have a good idea of what “House of Guinness” is rattling on about. It’s kind of like a season of “The White Lotus” in which everyone is high on beer. The time is 1868, the place is Dublin, and the business at hand is the legacy dark lager that the just-dead Sir Benjamin Guinness has left his four children—three boys and a girl—to wrangle over. Anne (Emily Fairn) is a woman and therefore of no consequence. Young Ben (Fionn O’Shea) is a fall-down drunk. That leaves the youngest brother Edward (a distractingly handsome Louis Partridge) to run the business and the closeted gay older brother Arthur (the best-in-show Anthony Boyle) to lord it over everyone and stand for Parliament where he can use his influence to boost the company’s fortunes. Still, thanks to Knight’s sharp and an up-for-anything cast, you will be royally entertained. There’s nothing like the screw-ups of other families to make us feel better about our own.
- “Dept. Q”
Misfit Scottish cops, led by a gloriously dyspeptic Matthew Goode, show why they should never be underestimated. Though it stands in the shadow of Gary Oldman’s “Slow Horses” team, Dept. Q is considered so low on the pecking order that their office is literally in the police building basement which was formerly used as shower quarters. Right, that’s the Q in “Dept. Q.” And yet, despite borrowings from other crime procedurals, “Dept. Q” still manages to feel utterly original. Things start in a jumble. Not so unusual when a rookie series needs to get up to speed. We meet Goode’s Carl Morck on the job in what will be the show’s inciting incident, a sudden spray of bullets that leaves Carl shot in the neck, one partner dead and another (Jamie Sivers) paralyzed. No one has a clear idea of what happened, but finding out is a top priority for Carl, whose hair-trigger temper hasn’t been improved by mandatory post-shooting therapy from a shrink played with smarts and sass to spare by Kelly Macdonald. It's a setup for a comedy of errors, which it sometimes is. What makes it funnier, fiercer and deeper are the sublime performances. Four more relatable crazies would be hard to find. That they also find the pain underneath their characters lifts “Dept. Q” to the rarified realm of essential viewing.
- “Heated Rivalry”
Dismissed as a guilty pleasure and teased by negheads as “homo hockey,” this six-part Canadian series from Crave and HBO Max is way more than the exceedingly explicit off-rink guy-on-guy action that has rocketed “Heated Rivalry” into the viral stratosphere as the smash hit no one saw coming. Season 2 is already on the books. The alleged rivals are swaggering Russian Ilya Rozanov (played by Texas-born Connor Storrie, 25), star center of the fictional Boston Raiders, and shy guy Shane Hollander (Canadian actor Hudson Williams, 24), team captain of the also-fictional Montreal Metros. They must carry out their affair in secret, sponsorships and all that. Written and directed by Jacob Tierney and based on the popular book series by fellow Canadian Rachel Reid, “Heated Rivalry” is filled to the brim with sizzle, giggles and surprising tenderness, which may account for its burgeoning popularity with women. Compared with the timidity of most queer TV (I’m looking at you, “Heartstopper”), “Heated Rivalry” deserves points for its entertainment (not shock) value, the zest of its storytelling and mostly for the empathy the actors and creatives invest in every scene.