The 15 Best TV Shows Of 2025 That You Need to Watch
We didn't forget you, Carol.
Here’s to the doctors, pilots, ORTBOs, hive minds and hockey players who stole our heart in 2025. These are the 15 best television shows of the year, from one fangirl (me!) to all of you.
Before we get started, I want to announce that biggest winner of 2025 was the weekly release. The majority of the shows that grabbed yours truly and general audiences were the ones that didn’t burden us with a binge drop. They stayed in the conversation for weeks. It’s simply a better way to consume and enjoy television. Let us all plea to the networks to keep that energy going in 2026 and beyond.
The Pitt
I’m still a little bitter that Doctor Odyssey, the 2024-2025 medical series set on a cruise with weekly themes that shared some story DNA with The Pitt but the antipodal tone, got canceled after one season. But I cannot deny that The Pitt is excellent. The real-time storytelling put audiences in the middle of the action. They squeezed an impressive number of timely issues into a single day at the emergency room, including abortion rights, vaccines, and sex trafficking. Then, an entirely different cast of characters showed up halfway through the season to take on the night shift. That’s ballsy storytelling!
Running Point
Of the Netflix original comedies that took off in 2025, including The Hunting Wives, The Four Seasons, and the second season of Nobody Wants This, my personal favorite was Running Point. (Decent year for sports comedy, if you consider the charming Chad Powers as well.) Kate Hudson played the unexpected president of her family’s professional basketball team, to the chagrin of her brothers. The whole experience, along with some other twists, brings them together in unexpected ways. I’m looking forward to more from co-creator Mindy Kaling, obviously one of the best in the biz at this type of ensemble comedy, and the endearing cast.
Yellowjackets
The fact that Season 4 will be the final season of Yellowjackets makes me feel a lot better about the wild swings that Season 3 took. I’m more than a little miffed about what happened to Van in the present timeline, but television should be allowed to piss me off from time to time. At least we know it’s heading to a point. The wilderness trial? The Melissa of it all? The Callie of it all? The cascading series of twists at the end of the season were worth some stumbles along the way. Who knows? When we go back to revisit Yellowjackets as a complete series, maybe they won’t seem like stumbles at all.
Severance
What a relief that the second season of Severance was worth the wait! From ‘shipping wars to fan theories and philosophical debates, the return of the absurdist comedy had us in a chokehold. The second season was somehow even more romantic, stressful, funny, and deliciously uncomfortable as the first. The entire cast upped their game, especially some of the first season’s secondary performers like Dichen Lachman, Tramell Tillman, and Jen Tulluck. Sarah Bock and Merritt Wever were stand-out additions to the cast as well. It’s nice to spend time with these characters, even when what they’re going through feels miserable and impossible. Let’s not let that three year hiatus happen again, alright?
The Studio
As much as I do enjoy comedy that makes you feel bad, it was such a delight to watch and celebrate a true laugh-out-loud comedy like The Studio. Seth Rogen’s new film industry-set series about Matt Remick, a newly appointed studio head who’s convinced he’s not like those studio heads, is exactly what we needed. Less hemming and hawing about IP storytelling in Hollywood on Film Twitter like a Monday morning quarterback; more letting folks like Rogen, who has actually been through the process, lampoon it for us.
The Rehearsal
Who would have thought, in seven billion years, that the second season of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal would change the way we think about Evanescence’s “Bring Me To Life” forever? Has anyone been able to board a flight without thinking about whether or not the flight crew has exchanged pleasantries? The docu-comedy’s second season tackled whether or not interpersonal relationships could prevent plane crashes, and naturally went to some unexpected places including singing competitions, dog cloning, and brain scans.
Adults
Three shows emerged as contenders for the Gen Z friendship hangout crown: Adults, Overcompensating, and I Love LA. Of those three, Adults had a slight edge in my book. It’s definitely a biased opinion. I am a New Yorker, not a college student or an Angeleno. (I do, however, very much enjoy and appreciate I Love LA‘s perspective on influencer culture.) But I’m also more prone to stories about friend groups who are struggling and on equal playing field with each other. This group of relatively unknown performers had the charm and comaraderie I’m looking for.
Andor
Andor is such a phenomenally written treat for the brain and the heart (and the courage) that I can forgive it for making me watch three episodes a week for a full month. That was a big meal to consume on a Thursday; but the Star Wars series was just operating on another level entirely. The Ghorman massacre was required reading about fascism tucked into a nail-biting action sequence. The character Kleya stepped out of the shadows and became one of my favorite characters in the whole franchise. As for Cassian, the show was always marching him towards his doom in Rogue One. But they even found a way to make that feel more hopeful and resolute than tragic and somber.
The Summer I Turned Pretty
Perhaps I just got swept up in the #TeamConrad versus #TeamJeremiah of it all, but after binging the first two seasons of The Summer I Turned Pretty in preparation for the finale I was kind of blown away. The third, and final, season of the young adult romance took the events of the previous seasons with an impressive gravitas. The final season unpacked every single feeling and motivation between Belly and her respective beaus with care. Falling in and out of love with two brothers sounds romantic, but the reality is so unpleasant for all involved. I’ll never forget how much Christopher Briney had me worried for Conrad’s mental and physical health week after week. If anyone could die from yearning, he could!
Outlander: Blood of My Blood
The Outlander spin-off/prequel thing was an unexpected gem for me this summer. While it complicates the already timey-wimey narrative of the original series–Claire’s parents time traveled too, met Jamie’s parents, became irreparably involved with both of their families and… had another baby??–the love stories at the heart of Blood of My Blood got back to basics. It felt refreshing, like diving into a new unit on your favorite subject in school.
Alien: Earth
Halfway through Noah Hawley’s Alien companion series, he dropped a near perfect episode-long Alien movie that explained how and why a Weyland-Utani ship crash-landed onto Earth with Xenomorphs and a sassy extraterrestrial eyeball monster on board. The mid-season flashback episode is part of a recent-ish trend in television that has irked some audiences and critics; but if just one or two shows a year do it really well, I think it should be allowed to stay. Last year’s crown went to Interview with the Vampire‘s “Don’t Be Afraid, Just Start The Tape,” and this year’s goes to Alien: Earth with “In Space, No One…”
House of Guinness
Historical accuracy be damned, House of Guinness was a frothy delight from start to finish. It was so fun watching Anthony Boyle, Louis Partridge, Emily Fairn, James Norton, Danielle Galligan, Niamh McCormack, and Jack Gleeson, erm, do whatever the Irish equivalent of “ponce about” is in this series. The drama erred a bit more Succession than Downton Abbey, as the filthy rich Guinness family was not portrayed with much of a moral center… but that makes for even more entertaining television.
Elsbeth
A television series that only took a few months’ hiatus and had 1.5 seasons in a single calendar year? I might faint. Yes, I am aware that 9-1-1, Tracker and Abbott Elementary still exist. But Elsbeth leads the pack. The musical Season 2 finale that united a whole rogue’s gallery in song was easily one of the best episodes of the year. Speaking of musicals, the third season kicked off with an homage to Steven Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along for no reason other than to tickle theatre nerds like me. Elsbeth‘s sharp social commentary, delightfully wacky guest star performances, and care given to grounding and growing the main characters are what television should be.
Pluribus
Two shows came roaring in at the end of 2025 and completely shook up the rankings. Everyone say thank you, Leah, for procrastinating! The first is Pluribus, the light science fiction show series Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan about a disgruntled romantasy novelist named Carol who gets left out of a viral (cough cough, not tweet tweet) event called “The Joining” along with 12 other people. In a matter of moments, her wife is dead and over 99% of the world’s population is sharing a hive mind without her. Watching Carol process her grief and loneliness, piece together what’s going on, and try to reach just one other person has been the perfect sweet treat at the end of the year.
Heated Rivalry
The sexy cherry on top of that treat treat is, of course, the Canadian gay hockey show. Heated Rivalry‘s popularity came together so fast, I still have trouble believing it has only been a few weeks. The show was made as a Crave Original and got picked up by HBO Max just days before it was meant to premiere. Audiences showed up for the sheer amount of sex scenes that have been lacking in American media, and stayed for incredible acting performances from Hudson Williams, Connor Storie, and François Arnaud in particular and well-structured romance that we have also been lacking. Lastly, not to be dramatic, but the final moment of the fifth episode, “I’ll Believe In Anything,” demonstrates why representation matters better than any speech or slogan I have ever seen and in a way that only the best television can.
(featured image: Max/Disney+/Apple TV/Netflix)
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