From streaming to cable to regular broadcast, there’s an overwhelming abundance of quality television this year. But for our money, these were the 10 best TV shows of 2025.
Honourable mention: Severance
Season 2 of Severance returns with the same eerie precision and emotional weight that made the first season unforgettable. The show widens Lumon’s labyrinth while digging deeper into fractured identities and the fallout of the innies’ awakening. Every storyline feels sharpened, every silence charged with tension. What makes the season stand out is how intimately it explores the cost of splitting a life in half — and how far people will go once they realise they’ve been living only part of their truth. It’s still some of the smartest, most unsettling sci-fi on television.
10. Andor
Andor pushes its political spine and emotional grit even further in season 2, following Cassian as he edges closer to becoming the symbol the rebellion needs — not by destiny, but through bruising, painful necessity. The show remains a masterclass in tension: shadowy alliances, impossible choices, and the quiet bravery of people trapped inside oppressive systems. This season tightens every thread, making each moment feel loaded with consequence. Andor proves again that grounded, character-first storytelling can make Star Wars galaxy far, far away feel more human than ever.
9. The Apothecary Diaries
Season 2 deepens everything that made The Apothecary Diaries a breakout hit — sharper mysteries, richer court politics, and a Maomao who continues to be one of the most compelling protagonists in anime. The show perfects its balance of deduction, humour, and slow-building tension, folding medical logic into imperial intrigue with effortless elegance. What stands out most this season is its emotional undercurrent: the palace feels more dangerous, relationships more layered, and every revelation carries real weight. It’s thoughtful, beautifully crafted storytelling that rewards every episode.
8. The Studio
The Studio takes the modern creative workplace and turns it into a compact storm of insecurity, ambition, and chaotic collaboration. The series is sharp without being cynical, capturing the strange blend of burnout and exhilaration that defines creative industries today. What makes it such a strong entry this year is its outrageous humour — the kind that comes from people who care too much about work that constantly slips out of their control. With its star-studded ensemble and wry honesty, The Studio is one of TV’s most absurd portraits of trying to make something worthwhile.
7. Dying for Sex
Based on the hit podcast and the real life of Molly Kochan, Dying for Sex follows a woman with terminal cancer who embarks on a journey of sexual exploration and self-definition, with her best friend by her side. Reviewers have called it “revolutionary TV” and “a really beautiful, worthwhile watch”, and singled out Michelle Williams and Jenny Slate for career-best performances. It’s heavy and hilarious at once — a show about death that insists on pleasure, curiosity, and radical honesty. Rather than sensationalise sex or illness, it treats both as extensions of a messy, vivid life. You end up staying for the friendship story as much as the premise.
6. The Lowdown
From Reservation Dogs co-creator Sterlin Harjo, The Lowdown is a crime comedy-drama set in Tulsa, following a washed-up journalist (a gloriously scruffy Ethan Hawke) chasing stories and getting dragged into the city’s underbelly. The Guardian praised it as a “playful neo-noir” with Hawke “terrific” in the lead, while Variety called it a “superlative crime yarn” that stands alongside Harjo’s earlier work. It works because it’s specific: Tulsa feels lived-in, messy, and funny as hell. The series blends noir mood, Indigenous storytelling sensibilities, and off-beat humour into something loose, humane, and quietly political.
5. The Chair Company
Tim Robinson takes his volcanic cringe-comedy into serialized territory with The Chair Company, an HBO conspiracy-comedy series about a man convinced an office chair manufacturer is hiding something monstrous. Critics have been ecstatic: the show holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, praised as “one of the best shows of the year”, “the funniest show of the year”, and “a descent into paranoia that finds huge laughs in deeply uncomfortable places”.
It’s absurd and unnervingly relatable — office rage translated into operatic meltdown. Robinson’s gift for escalating awkwardness is given room to spiral, but underneath the screaming fits is a strange empathy for people being crushed by systems they don’t understand.
4. Pluribus
Created by Vince Gilligan, Pluribus is a sweeping sci-fi drama set in a world reshaped by a mysterious signal that draws most of humanity into a shared hive mind. Reviewers praised Gilligan’s return to long-form storytelling after the success of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, noting the series’ bold premise, striking visual style, and its emotional weight. What makes Pluribus stand out is how it uses its high-concept hook to explore isolation, belonging and the concept of individualism versus collectivism within a provocative character study of one unhappy woman. Thoughtful, eerie, and executed with Gilligan’s signature precision, it’s one of the year’s most distinctive and resonant shows.
3. The Rehearsal
Season 2 of The Rehearsal pushes boundaries like never before — for the new run, Nathan Fielder uses his signature method of hyper-realistic simulations to tackle aviation safety, reconstructing cockpit scenarios and reimagining human error and communication breakdowns under pressure. Rather than simple social rehearsals, the show escalates to life-or-death stakes, injecting real anxiety into its absurdist framework. This second season is even more daring, profound, and subversively hilarious than the first. The result is uncanny — unsettling, often hilarious, but also deeply thought-provoking. The Rehearsal becomes less a comedy-experiment and more a psychological crucible that asks: Can you rehearse disaster and walk away changed?
2. Long Story Short
Raphael Bob-Waksberg’s (BoJack Horseman) new Netflix animated comedy-drama follows a Jewish family across decades, hopping non-linearly between the 1950s and 2020s. Critics have gone wild: a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, with reviews calling it “bitingly funny and thoughtful” and “TV so funny and clever it could run for ever”, praising its emotional maturity and inventive structure. It’s dense with jokes and visual gags, but what lingers is how deeply it understands family dynamics, memory, and inherited trauma. Episodes feel like short stories that echo off one another. It’s sharp, sad, warm, and formally playful — classic Bob-Waksberg, just even more precise.
1. Adolescence
Adolescence is a stunning achievement — a coming-of-age crime drama shot with the urgency and rawness of lived experience. Following a teenage boy pulled into violence he barely understands, the show moves with breathless intensity, each scene unfolding in a single unbroken current. Its visual style is daring, its performances fearless, and its emotional impact overwhelming. What makes it the year’s standout is its honesty: a portrait of youth shaped by pressure, fear, bravado, and impossible choices. It’s gripping, heartbreaking television that stays with you long after you look away.
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