Best TV shows of 2025: The Studio, The Pitt, Pluribus, Adolescence and more

It’s been a great year in TV where new original series captured our attention and the zeitgeist while returning stories proved they still had something urgent and fresh to show you.

These are the best TV shows of 2025.

THE STUDIO

The Studio stormed out of the gates early and no one was able to catch up with it for pure enjoyment as well as its superb writing and undeniably beautiful cinematography.

This is a show you could rewatch seven times and still find yourself guffawing, sometimes because of the sheer audacity of its joke-heavy approach, and sometimes to release the tension of its go-go-go momentum. It might be stressful as all hell, but it’s damn funny and clever.

Seth Rogen, who also co-created the show, stars as a recently promoted movie studio boss, and finds his artistic ambitions in conflict with his business obligations, a perfectly depressing yet realistic portrayal of the eternal fight between art and commerce.

Watch: Apple TV

PLURIBUS

Vince Gilligan spent his early years working on The X-Files and then created Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, so expectations were always high on his next project. With the excellent and singular Pluribus, he didn’t disappoint.

The premise is super interesting – an alien virus spreads across the world and combines all human consciousness into one hive mind, except there are a dozen people immune. One of them is Carol, a surly romantasy writer whose is grieving her wife’s death, and is stubbornly resistant to the “joining”.

There are different interpretations to Gilligan’s conceit (AI, Covid lockdowns and more) but at the heart of all those readings is what Pluribus’s exploration of what it means to be human and individualistic.

Watch: Apple TV

THE PITT

Before The Pitt’s premiere, it was known as the Noah Wyle hospital drama that’s not-ER but kind of is. But then it dropped and we all understood that what it was is brilliant TV that invests in its characters.

Across its large ensemble of doctors and nurses on one 15-hour shift broken down into 15 episodes, you learn about the characters not through exposition or telling, but by being shown how they interact with others and with their environment.

This is patient and layered storytelling that doesn’t assume its audience is off scrolling on their phone.

The success of the series has even led to an acknowledge that this more traditional form of TV is something we shouldn’t discount in the streaming age, especially when it’s as good as The Pitt.

Watch: HBO Max

ADOLESCENCE

Oh man. No one saw Adolescence coming, not even Netflix. Not the way it did, like a steam train running down our complacency. Everyone knew toxic masculinity was a growing problem, but the beauty of art is that, sometimes, fiction is the most impactful way to deliver the truth.

This four-part British miniseries framed the conversation within a story about a young boy who is accused of murdering his female classmate, and the fallout and questions such an unbelievable crime provokes.

There was also its sublime filmmaking, with each chapter captured in one shot to give it a claustrophobic, inescapable intimacy and immediacy.

The boys are not OK, and the power of Adolescence reached into the corridors of governments and struck at the heart of parents’ hearts and fears.

Watch: Netflix

THE LOWDOWN

The Lowdown has the characteristics of its main character – shaggy, gonzo and plenty compelling. It also benefits from the marriage of an idiosyncratic storyteller in Sterlin Harjo (Reservation Dogs) and the artistry of Ethan Hawke. If ever a combination was going to work, it was going to be this.

Hawke plays Lee, an investigative reporter and “truthtarian” out to expose the “respectable” elite for the criminals they are in his hometown of Tulsa, a US city whose history is marred by real-life race riots in 1921, which saw black businesses destroyed and dozens killed.

That ugly stain has carried through to the present day where property developers push out the marginalised and private members clubs harbour white supremacists.

At the centre of the story is Lee and his dogged pursuit, blood, guts and the messiness of having few scruples but a heart of gold.

Watch: Disney+

PLATONIC S2

What’s remarkable about Platonic is that the filmmakers didn’t plan for a second season of the Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne-led comedy about two friends who reconnect after a period of estrangement. Or if there was going to be, it was going to be an anthology format.

But the reunion of Rogen and Byrne, who’d previously starred in two Bad Neighbours movies, was too good, and no one involved could let it go. These are two actors you could watch forever, just letting them loose in the sandbox of quips, jibes and japes.

In an even rarer instance, this second season is better than the first – funnier, more confident and goofier. A particular highlight is the show’s Jeopardy-themed episode, which has some of the best physical comedy you will see on TV this year.

Watch: Apple TV

ANDOR S2

You might be surprised to discover the most politically engaged and astute TV series of 2025 is a Star Wars show, but then you have to remember that George Lucas was inspired by the Vietnam War when he made his first film (for the record, the Empire is the US, Palpatine is Nixon, duh). So, Andor has that as its legacy.

The second season of this Tony Gilroy-penned political thriller is a potent allegory for how fascism rises, how an oppressive regime amasses power through fear, propaganda and manipulation, and the dedication and sacrifice it takes to resist authoritarianism.

There are some ripper episodes and scenes, ranging from the planned massacre of a scapegoated community to the viscerally tense set-piece of when Senator Mon Mothma speaks the truth – “genocide” – in the parliament at great personal risk.

Watch: Disney+

DYING FOR SEX

The headline story for this Michelle Williams-led drama-comedy is about Molly, a woman who blows up her marriage when she receives the news that her cancer which was in remission is back, and this time, it will kill her.

For the first time in her life, she wants to indulge in her sexual desires, and have her first non-masturbatory orgasm, and she’s not going to get that from her husband who hasn’t touched her in years.

The series is funny, warm and horny, but as much as it is about Molly’s sexual walkabout, the heart of the show is the friendship between her and Nikki (a sublime Jenny Slate), who has to step up for her friend while also grieving the inevitable.

Watch: Disney+

THE REHEARSAL S2

You never quite know if mercurial writer, actor and creator Nathan Fielder is messing with you, but that blurry line between fiction and meta-fiction is why his works are so magnetic.

The second season of this show is both a departure and continuation of the original premise, which is to “rehearse” life moments to plan for all eventualities. Here, Fielder is exploring the issue of airline disasters and whether they could be better prevented if pilots improved their communication skills.

Don’t let that dry-ish question box you in because Fielder’s bold experiment involves gung-ho sequences including one in which he’s dressed up as a baby Chesley Sullenberger, even sucking milk out of an artificial teat.

The final reveal was a masterstroke, that in the two years in between seasons, Fielder actually got his pilot licence to take charge of an actual 747. Bonkers.

Watch: HBO Max

ASURA

Asura is a patient series in that it does not begin with a flashy death scene before cutting to “six months earlier”. This is a character-driven rather than plot-driven story, and it marinates in the small details of its ensemble, allowing them to breathe and be real people.

Adapted from a groundbreaking 1979 Japanese drama that set the standard for the genre, and written and directed by Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda, Asura is centred on four sisters who discovers their elderly father has a long-standing mistress and potentially a secret love child.

The revelation upends their family dynamics as it forces each sister to confront her own life choices, and what they expect of each other and themselves.

Watch: Netflix

THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH

Many moments in The Narrow Road to the Deep North are upsetting and harrowing, reflective of the horrors endured by WWII prisoners-of-war captured by the Japanese and put to work – and many to death – constructing the Burma Railroad.

Those scenes in this Justin Kurzel-directed miniseries adapted from Richard Flanagan’s book, speaks to the hardship and trauma experienced by soldier Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi), but also plays at how national mythologies demand heroes, even compromised ones.

Dorrigo is a complex figure because while society wants him to be one thing, he knows he’s not that, or at least not always that, and the internal conflict that arises is something that’s hard to reconcile.

This is a lush and beautiful if sometimes hard-to-watch Australian drama, one which showcases our deep bench of talent, which also includes actors Thomas Weatherall, Odessa Young and Heather Mitchell, and writer Shaun Grant.

Watch: Prime Video

HONOURABLE MENTIONS: English Teacher S2 (Disney+), South Park S28 (Paramount+), Slow Horses S5 (Apple TV), Task (HBO Max), Ludwig (7plus), Long Story Short (Netflix), Alien: Earth (Disney+), Optics (ABC iview), Such Brave Girls S2 (Stan), Hacks S4 (Stan), The Bear S4 (Disney+), Deli Boys (Disney+), Paradise (Disney+), Overcompensating (Prime Video), and North of North (Netflix).