Indiewire The 10 Best Tv Series Of 2025 Year End Lists

Leo Migdal

-Dec 11, 2025, 12:27 PM

indiewire the 10 best tv series of 2025 year end lists

IndieWire: The 10 Best TV Series of 2025 [see also 2024 • 2022 • 2010s • 2018 • 2017 • 2016] Year-end lists are fingerprints; aggregate statistics are smudges. Therefore, I make no tallies. As the freshman comedy that won more Emmys than any single season of a comedy ever, it’s easy to take “The Studio” down a few pegs. Its satire isn’t that biting, its casting can cover up any oversights, and its insular appeal to Hollywood obsessives may not speak to the masses like other shows do.

But it’s still really, really funny. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Apple series is devoted to getting laughs and consistently snags them. Following recently promoted studio head Matt Remick (Rogen) as he suffers through the first year of his dream job, “The Studio” chooses a prime subject to be skewered in each half-hour episode. The throwback episodic structure matches the nostalgia-tinged vibes Matt and his cronies give off, while they work up a big presentation for CinemaCon, sweat through the Golden Globes, fight to preserve films shot on... Perhaps “The Studio’s” greatest asset is its insider vantage point of an industry in decline. Making movies is harder than ever, and no one knows that better than Rogen & Co.

With that backdrop framing Matt’s dilemma over creating timeless classics and keeping his company in the black, the series could pack an even greater punch going forward — and carve out new territory for... But hey, even if Hollywood’s produced a zillion satires of itself over the years, it’s still fun to feel like you’re in on the joke. —BT Wong Kar-Wai’s long-anticipated TV debut technically premiered two years ago, garnering massive ratings and awards recognition — in China. Since 2025 marks its domestic debut (thanks to the Criterion Channel), I think it’s proper to treat it like a “new show,” even if its 30 episodes will all be out by the end... A melodrama rooted in commerce and ripped open by compassion, Wong’s “limited” series sees the legendary director toiling in familiar and foreign territory at once.

Much like past heroes, the main character, Mr. Bao (Hu Ge), is a stoic, striking lead trapped by invisible forces and torn between passions. He’s tied to three distinct women and prefers the richest food with the right people over the priciest dishes at the chicest venues. Fans should appreciate these familiar models, but they may be shocked when the first few episodes cram in more dialogue than all of Wong’s previous films combined, while much of what happens — internally... In real life, 2025 has been a chaotic year. We've navigated the beginning of a divisive presidential term, the longest government shutdown in U.S.

history, witnessed a pope from Chicago get elected, a pop star in space, natural disasters and history-making events almost daily. In the fictional worlds that fill our TV screens when we look for just a little distraction at the end of our days, things haven't been particularly calm, either. But in a good way. We're talking about Emmy- and hearts-and-minds-winning "The Pitt" on HBO Max. We're talking about a tiny British drama on Netflix that took off with viewership and cultural conversation. And we're also talking about a couple of shows you've probably never heard of at all.

While TV this year has been full of viral hate-watches (like Hulu's disastrous-but-renewed "All's Fair") and some of the biggest shows of all time (like the final seasons of Netflix's "Squid Game" and "Stranger... As the year winds to a close, we hope you'll give these 10 absolutely superb TV shows a watch. You might be surprised by what you find. To see our longer list of the top 20 picks for the best TV shows of the year, scroll through the gallery below. In cultural criticism, every year ends the same way—with a deluge of top 10 lists for every imaginable art form, as though music and literature and film and TV and theater and dance all... It’s a benign fiction, one that gives critics an excuse to issue a final endorsement for the art that has stuck with us over many months and readers help prioritizing their various queues as...

Still, some years do feel more resistant to culling and ranking than others. This one, for example. Television certainly felt more abundant in 2025 than it has in a while, now that the industry has mostly moved past the delays caused by the major writers’ and actors’ strikes a couple years... Top creators, from Vince Gilligan and Sterlin Harjo to Liz Meriwether and Mara Brock Akil, were back on our screens with exciting new projects. Movie stars like Seth Rogen, Ethan Hawke, and Michelle Williams came to TV with the kinds of smart, character-driven stories big studios rarely put in theaters anymore; Noah Wyle revived the doctor show. Returning series such as Severance and Mo proved worth the years-long wait.

At the same time, as political and financial tides pushed Hollywood towards conservative decision-making—never an optimal environment for creativity—it felt as though fewer new and outsider voices were breaking through. Quality shows came to U.S. platforms from everywhere in the world, though the ongoing consolidation of multinational media giants increasingly limited their variety. It speaks volumes that the best international series I watched this year, Italy’s Mussolini: Son of the Century, was only available stateside on the arthouse streaming service Mubi; the globally renowned Hong Kong auteur... The result, for me, was a schedule packed with shows I very much enjoyed—why yes, that is a 20-item honorable mention list, featuring many titles that would’ve made the top 10 on a different... There was no I May Destroy You, no Underground Railroad, no Succession, no Twin Peaks: The Return (remember Showtime?).

That doesn’t necessarily qualify as an emergency. Every year is, after all, different. The next paradigm-shifting series could be just a month or two or 12 away. If it isn’t, though? Then it might be time to worry. The old-school, network-style drama is so back.

That was the consensus when The Pitt—conceived by and starring ER alums, with a real-time premise like 24 and a weekly rollout—became both a critical favorite and a bona fide hit. But if nostalgia drew viewers to Noah Wyle’s hospital homecoming, what kept us riveted were storylines and characters that resonated in the present. There is no equalizer like an emergency room (at least until the bill arrives), where plagues ranging from gun violence to misogyny to an austerity-starved safety net catalyze life-threatening crises. To the extent that this series constitutes comfort viewing, one reason is because it indulges the timely fantasy that, no matter how broken our society gets, competent, caring people will always work through their... In 2025, even a challenged television landscape was rife with transportive stories. From streamers to broadcast networks, these narratives immersed viewers in different time periods, alternative universes and even forced us to look at our everyday lives.

While some series offer mystery (what’s the deal with the small town in “Paradise”?), fantasy (what if you could time travel to meet your true love?) and escapism (will Gladys Russell really marry a... (Nowhere close to living down the sins of our past, if “The Righteous Gemstones” is any judge.) Whether you’ve had a great year in which you’ve thrived or have simply pushed through, television has... From this vast array of options, Variety TV critics Aramide Tinubu and Alison Herman have each selected their 10 favorite shows from 2025, with an eclectic range of selections and two delightful crossovers. These picks span animated and live action series; true crime and talk shows; hospital emergency rooms and galaxies far, far away. What unites these disparate works is an eye for character, narrative and above all, quality. Whether romance or horror, comedy or high drama, each show has succeeded in standing out from a crowded field to be remembered as one of the best of the year.

Read on for more on what made the cut and why. (Click here to jump to Alison Herman’s list.) There have been few recent true crime stories more captivating than the Murdaugh family murders. With its fictionalized miniseries, “Murdaugh: Death in the Family,” Hulu offers an engaging portrait of greed, cruelty and arrogance that begins well before Maggie Murdaugh (Patricia Arquette) and her son Paul (Johnny Berchtold) were... Dialing back several years before the 2021 deaths, and peeking into the Murdaughs’ from generations past, “Murdaugh: Death in the Family” highlights a privileged family rife with addiction, intense coddling and complete dysfunction. Arquette and Jason Clarke, who portrays patriarch Alex Murdaugh, anchor the series that unpacks a group of people so deeply indoctrinated in their own lore that they engulf themselves in it

Created by Julian Fellowes, HBO’s “The Gilded Age” has been transporting viewers to the high society of late-19th-century New York for years. However, Season 3 delivered a fresh, sharp perspective that had been missing. The power dynamic between sisters Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada (Cynthia Nixon) shifted drastically after Agnes lost her fortune and Ada came into her own amid her late husband’s passing. Across 61st Street, the Russells are also a tipping point, with Gladys’ (Taissa Farmiga) marriage to the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb) and the resulting fracture in George (Morgan Spector) and Bertha’s (Carrie Coon)... The third season also offered much richer storytelling for the series’ Black characters, introducing Phylicia Rashad as Peggy’s (Denée Benton) potential new mother-in-law, and highlighting the nuances of Northern Black life, including education and... Written by Mark L.

Smith and Elle Smith, Netflix’s mystery-thriller “Untamed” is an absorbing ride of secrets and long-festering wounds. Set in Yosemite National Park (though filmed in British Columbia), the stunningly shot series follows Kyle Turner (an exceptional Eric Bana), a special agent for the National Park Service Investigative Services Branch (ISB). When a body is discovered in the park, Kyle comes in to investigate. However, as he tries to solve the crime, his personal traumas begin to surface, continually clouding his judgment and putting him on edge. Crafting a unique investigative drama in an over-littered landscape is challenging, but “Untamed” proves that by showing complex human relationships and being unafraid to highlight our worst impulses, it can be done. Here are the 10 most popular series with new episodes released in 2025 that ranked highest on the IMDbPro MOVIEmeter chart throughout the year.

IMDbPro MOVIEmeter rankings are based on the actual page views of the more than 250 million monthly visitors to IMDb worldwide. Explore the movies, series, and stars that defined the year Fourteen years ago, Emily Nussbaum, one of my esteemed predecessors in the TV-critic chair, notoriously titled her Top Ten list “I Hate Top Ten Lists.” I’ve seldom felt the same. I’m not much of a holiday person, but, for most of the time that I’ve been a working critic, I’ve loved the end-of-year ritual of sorting the so-so from the superb and the overhyped... I’ve always taken seriously—probably too seriously—the privilege of giving hidden gems another chance to shine. New Yorker writers reflect on the year’s highs and lows.

But, in 2025, I can’t say that curating such a roundup was much fun. This year, as executives backed away from the kind of risky, ambitious programming that marked the last golden age of television, the industry’s decline was evident from its output. TV felt smaller. There were few epics like “The Last of Us” and “Alien: Earth,” which, while entertaining, were ultimately constrained by their source material. Several of the year’s most prominent prestige series—“Severance,” “Andor,” “Adolescence,” “The Bear,” “The White Lotus,” and “The Studio”—were, to my mind, ponderous, shallow, or both. I was especially disheartened by the dearth of straightforward sitcoms, as the comedy ecosystem continues to migrate online and becomes increasingly, sometimes incomprehensibly, niche.

In the past, keeping tabs on all the boundary-pushing shows could be a lonely affair; there were always series that I felt sure were only being watched by other TV critics. But, in such an uninspired year, I found my yardstick for what constitutes great television shifting. Though the traditional standards of excellence—innovation, ambition, execution, distinctiveness, and relevance—still apply, I was more inclined to highlight projects that I wanted to discuss (and debate) with other people. The water cooler may never be reinstalled, but these shows made me crave its return. In 1881, a man named Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield in a bid to be remembered in the history books; instead, he consigned both himself and his victim to the footnotes. This lively excavation of the entwined fates of Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen) and Garfield (Michael Shannon) makes for a twisty, political period drama, as well as a haunting parable for our violent times.

Indiewire The 10 Best Tv Series Of 2025 Year End Lists

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