The Best Series Of 2025 Ranked A Top 10 List Indiewire

Leo Migdal

-Dec 9, 2025, 11:36 PM

the best series of 2025 ranked a top 10 list indiewire

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 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. 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. When it comes to excellent TV shows, 2025 was not short of them. Between daring new concepts, new shows by established creators, and stories that pushed your emotions, the year of television is one for the history books. With such a large pool of series to pull from, including Emmy darlings and underrated hits, it was a bit difficult to pick the greatest ten, but after some careful consideration, these ten series... From Emmy darlings like The Pitt and The Studio to underdog series like Overcompensating, these shows got us talking online. Some we binged in a single sitting, like Adolescence.

Others, we waited patiently week after week for the next chapter of our story, like Task. However you consumed your television this year, chances are these shows were part of your lineup. It's time to celebrate the best new shows of 2025! They say write what you know, and Benito Skinner took that to heart. Literally. Prime Video's Overcompensating is the breakout series of the year.

Easily the most underrated series of the year, Skinner's story spoke to the millennials, making us all wish we could go back to college. The series follows Benny (Skinner), a former high school football star and valedictorian from Idaho, as he begins college at Yates College. Trying to present a machismo front to hide himself as a gay man, Benny navigates new friendships and bold crushes in this smart new comedy. Not since Greek has college life been depicted so perfectly. The comedy is sharp, the situations are believable, and the characters are far too real. But there's more to this campus comedy.

Skinner's story, based on his life, is still relevant. It's an important narrative to present that’s done with precision, care, and warmth. Once known solely as a social media content creator, Skinner is a bona fide television star and scribe. Bash him all you want for looking like the most mature college freshman, it doesn't matter when the writing and performance are filled with passion and heart. Skinner and Mary Beth Barone have innate chemistry as siblings, but it's his on-screen pairing with Wally Baram as bestie Carmen Neil that comes out as the most touching and authentic. If you're looking for cameos, the first season is filled with them.

Come for Charli XCX, stay for the exceptionally hilarious duo of Connie Britton and Kyle McLaughlin. With so many shows to choose from, finding a show worthy of a rewatch is rare. Fortunately for Overcompensating, it's a show that deserves to be seen over and over again as you watch along with your friends. Visibility and representation are important in the media, and that was never more evident than in Abdullah Saeed's brilliant comedy Deli Boys. The Hulu series two spoiled Pakistani-American brothers, hardworking Mir (Asif Ali) and party animal Raj Dar (Saagar Shaikh), whose lives are upended when they must take over their deceased father's secret cocaine-smuggling operation, Dark... A witty, unabashedly unafraid crime caper, Deli Boys is a fast-paced comedy with cultural relevance.

What a year for new shows. As TV Guide narrowed down our favorite series of 2025, what stood out was how many of them — more than half — premiered this year. And not one of those new shows is part of a franchise. It isn't easy to get any TV series made these days, especially when it isn't a spin-off of a spin-off, but the ones that beat the odds did it in style. Plenty of them were also massive, Emmy-winning hits, because nothing is more exciting than original storytelling. This year, Pluribus followed in the footsteps of Severance as a truly fresh Apple sci-fi series that got everyone talking.

The Lowdown dug deep into Tulsa's underbelly for a vibrant noir mystery. The Chair Company uncovered an absurd conspiracy all its own. Long Story Short spanned decades of one family's life with humor and care. Adolescence gave crime drama a new look with its immersive one-shot filmmaking. And The Pitt took a similar real-time approach, with every episode chronicling one hour in a chaotic emergency room. The series was also a nostalgic throwback to network TV's heyday, but bringing a broadcast-style workplace drama to streaming was its own kind of innovation.

Plenty of returning shows had great years, too — just look to our No. 1 show for proof — and one series on our list made the most of a major cinematic universe. But take a minute to appreciate the new shows and novel ideas that arrived when we needed them most. These are TV Guide's picks for the 10 best TV shows of 2025. Honorable mentions: Dark Winds, Dying for Sex, The Rehearsal, Task, Too Much 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.

The Best Series Of 2025 Ranked A Top 10 List Indiewire

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