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The 10 Best Tv Shows Of 2025 Ranked Usa Today

Leo Migdal
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the 10 best tv shows of 2025 ranked usa today

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...

The year's finest TV features stressed out doctors, bifurcated office drones, and more than one Delco accent. Hulu; Apple TV; ABC; Disney; HBO - Design: Alex Sandoval Although the year was full of ups and downs, TV remained a bright spot. Returning shows including Severance and Abbott Elementary shined with stellar seasons, while a passel of new series like The Pitt and Task got our hearts racing. But that's not to say there weren't a few misses in the mix as well. To get a taste of what worked best and what missed the mark, see our list below:

All Kier Egan wanted to do was eliminate pain from the human experience. But if Severance has taught us anything, it’s that science can no more separate the us from our hurt than it can stop the moon from controlling the tides. In its long-awaited second season, the darkly funny, exquisitely weird drama served up some key answers about Lumon Industries while pushing its characters to embrace their whole selves — both in and out of... Much like the employees in Lumon’s Macrodata Refinement department, Severance contains multitudes: office comedy, sci-fi thriller, artsy allegory about worker exploitation, star-crossed romance, family drama. Marshmallows are for team players, but Severance is for everyone who’s ever felt the ache of a broken heart. —Kristen Baldwin

Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby once again brought us to Philadelphia for seven episodes of suspense (and so many Delco accents). But this time we followed Mark Ruffalo's priest-turned-FBI-agent as he tried to take down Tom Pelphrey's big-hearted criminal. Anchored by incredible performances, Task's greatest strength was its writing, as both men grappled with unbearable grief: Ruffalo's Tom Brandis lost his wife — with the added layer of his adopted son having pushed... Against all odds, the two fathers find a bond that makes Task far more than your average cop thriller. —Samantha Highfill For years, I fretted over getting my Top 10 lists “right.” There I was, every December, arguing with coworkers and arguing with myself while striving to pinpoint the objective rationales that would unlock the...

Criticism, of course, is as subjective as the art it’s assessing (because, I would argue, criticism is also art — when done correctly, hehe). But looking back on those first few years, I wasn’t wasting time. (My colleagues may disagree. Sorry, guys.) But interrogating your own opinions is as essential to personal growth as accepting the bias inherent to your individualism. Thinking less is rarely the right way to go when confronted with a task worth taking seriously, and these lists — even if only because they tend to be quite widely read — are... I know some critics hate making them.

I love it. Even today, when I’ve already written many thousands of words about many dozens of shows and episodes, I didn’t punt on this blurb. I still see my Top 10 lists as a chance to celebrate series that deserve the extra attention; that fought to be the best story they could be; that unlocked something unique, moving, and... This list may not be “right” — meaning, if I redid the list in a month, the order would likely change and a few picks might get swapped in for a few outliers —... They’re true. They’re good.

They’re valid. Especially “Platonic.” Don’t take my long-winded rambling as justification for including a comedy about two best friends who hang out at a bar, take too many drugs, and generally use each other to avoid... Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller’s non-rom-com is one of the great modern sitcoms: trusting its two towering leads to carry the load, while infusing quiet profundity into their outlandish adventures. You should watch it. I’ve watched it more times than I care to admit. And I’ll probably watch some more as soon as I’m done with this next sentence.

Because if these aren’t reasons enough to make this list “right,” then I’m finally happy to be wrong. —BT Just when you thought the post-Peak TV glacier of shows had melted into a puddle of mediocre algorithm-feeders, the medium snapped back to form in 2025. We may not be in the midst of a new golden age — streamers and cable networks alike are muddling their way through a very uncertain media landscape (see Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery just this morning!) — but this year delivered a handful of truly original shows that did more than throw A-list stars at a paper-thin plot and try to pass it off as prestige. The series that stood out were daring, stylish, and had something to say about the world we live in today.

Oh, and they were damn entertaining, too. Whether dissecting Hollywood or the health care industry, exploring history or an alternate universe, making us laugh or making us cry (and sometimes both), these 15 shows, presented here in alphabetical order, proved that... This four-part British limited series, about a kid accused of murdering a classmate, hit Netflix on a Friday with little to no advance fanfare; by the end of the weekend, it was the most... A labor of love from director Philip Barantini and co-writer and star Stephen Graham, Adolescence starts with cops bursting into the home of an average suburban family and arresting 13-year-old Jamie Miller (newcomer Owen... Each episode then focuses on the aftermath via a different perspective, from Jamie’s fellow students to his family members; Episode Three, a standoff between Cooper’s incarcerated teen and a psychologist played by Erin Doherty,... And as with Barantini and Graham’s previous collaboration, the proto-Bear chef drama Boiling Point, everything is shot in a single extended take.

There’s a reason this import dominated the 2025 Emmys, but even if it hadn’t walked away with armfuls of statues, it would still leave you feeling like you’ve been gut-punched. —David Fear The sophomore (and final) season of Tony Gilroy’s Star Wars prequel series doubled down on the revolutionary spirit, delivering an even deeper sausage-factory view of how the Rebellion was made while still giving fans... The fact that Diego Luna’s Cassian and his fellow freedom fighters were fighting a fascist empire a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away almost feels incidental; few works of mass entertainment... These 10 episodes had their share of thrills and chills, first-class villains (especially Denise Gough’s imperial apparatchik), highly memeable moments — dance like no one’s watching, Mon Mothma! — and a sequence inside an enemy hospital that played like a stand-alone heist movie.

But the season also offered a chilling look at how authoritarian governments use misinformation and manipulate certain populations into enemies. The I.P. will be with us, always, but Gilroy’s contribution to the canon will be missed. It was even more invaluable the second time around. —D.F. Writer Mike Makowsky, best known for his zippy 2019 HBO film Bad Education, took one of the oddest side plots in American history and made it one of the most riveting shows of the...

Based on Candice Millard’s book Destiny of the Republic, Death By Lighting chronicles, over a tight yet expansive-feeling four episodes, the 1881 assassination of President James A. Garfield (played with stoicism by Michael Shannon) by an unstable fan turned hater named Charles Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen, better than ever). It’s an original story of standom gone wrong that tackles the scourge of American violence. It’s also deeply amusing, featuring basically every character actor you know and love (lookin’ at you, Nick Offerman, Bradley Whitford, and Shea Whigham) in a big bushy beard, absolutely killing it. —Esther Zuckerman One of the year’s most delightful surprises was this sleeper hit in the vein of Slow Horses — it centers on a group of misfit cops in Scotland — but with a bit more...

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