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The Best Tv Shows Of 2025 So Far Thereviewgeek Recommends

Leo Migdal
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the best tv shows of 2025 so far thereviewgeek recommends

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. As the fall TV season approaches, let's take stock of the best television has had to offer so far in 2025, from Andor to Severance and beyond. In a March 2025 interview with Howard Stern to promote his Apple TV+ comedy The Studio, Seth Rogen described what drives his character Matt Remick, head of fictional Hollywood studio Continental. “What’s so frustrating about Hollywood, and what’s so alluring about these delusions of grandeur – especially if you run a movie studio – is that you think you might be the person to course... “Singular people have done that. But if you were someone who was willing to buy into the delusions of grandeur of all of it, you could view yourself as the person who single-handedly saves Hollywood.”

Spoiler alert: Matt Remick doesn’t save Hollywood. Funnily enough though, Rogen may have helped to save television this year all the same. That’s because Rogen and company’s delightful 10-episode series is just one of many 2025 cable and streaming efforts that understood the assignment. From Apple TV+’s Severance to HBO Max’s The Pitt to FX’s Alien: Earth and beyond, this year has been filled with projects that have respect for TV as an episodic medium. And while the weekly release format remains more of a novelty than a fact of life in the streaming world, many properties are increasingly putting it to good use or at least finding a... Has television finally gone through the glut of mediocrity that has dragged it down for the last few years?

By expanding into too many streamers too quickly and prioritizing quantity over quality, the form dipped after its historic peak in the 1990s and 2000s. Sure, there have been some standouts in the 2020s, but anyone who thinks we’re in an era that’s remotely comparable to when Tony Soprano and Walter White prowled the networks needs to do their... Something finally feels different at the halfway point of 2025. People are talking about TV again. They’re getting blindsided by the emotional power of “Adolescence,” debating the twists of “The Last of Us,” marveling at the timeliness of “Andor,” and trying to predict where “The White Lotus” is going. The first six months of 2025 have been one of the strongest for TV in a very long time, better than some recent full-year stretches.

Let’s hope it keeps up. There may be some that fall away in the next six months, but these are the 18 shows you need to have seen to talk about the year in TV at the halfway point. They’re the essentials. Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne’s four-part miniseries made waves when it came out on Netflix, not just for its expertly executed visual gimmick (each hour is constructed of one long, uninterrupted take, capturing all... I totally understand criticisms of the show’s conceit—there’s little exploration of what women and girls think of all this, after all, despite being the ones at risk. But the craft, and performances, will out; I still think there’s ultimate value in exploring these mindsets, especially if, after all, it’s men and boys who are going to have to be the ones...

– Clint Worthington The Disney era of “Star Wars” has been one of incredible swings and roundabouts, a frantic throwing of material at the wall to see what sticks. But after a divisive sequel trilogy and a bevy of ill-conceived fanbait-y Disney+ shows, the franchise finally showed us something different and valuable in “Andor.” Season 1 was a triumph, as Tony Gilroy expanded... Its set-pieces felt more invigorating, its performances more mature, and its cast of characters suffused with the exhaustion that comes from the enormous sacrifices required of revolution. The finale saw Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor striding towards the events of “Rogue One,” and his impending doom. But if the show taught us anything, it’s that those sacrifices are never, ever in vain.

– CW Look, 2025 may just be a little more than half over, but it’s already been a great year of television for both new and returning shows. Severance returned after a three-year hiatus and did not disappoint. Hacks continues to show that comedies can be comedic. HBO hits like The Gilded Age and The White Lotus returned with new seasons that delighted viewers. And broadcast proved that it can still hold its own against cable and streaming with some solid series.

HBO Max delivered a solid hit with the debut of the new medical drama The Pitt, while Paradise reunited Sterling K. Brown and Dan Fogelman for a show very different from This Is Us. And Apple TV+ offered a look inside Hollywood with The Studio. Below, TV Insider’s staff has gathered to share our picks for the Best Shows of 2025 so far (taking into account those that have aired through the first week of August). Let us know what makes your list in the comments section below. If you want to know your favorite reality TV stars’ favorite reality TV show, look no further than Love on the Spectrum U.S..

Featuring vibrant series newbies, Madison Marilla and Pari Kim, alongside returning favorites Abbey Romeo, Tanner Smith, Connor Tomlinson, Dani Bowman, James Jones, and more, Season 3 takes the Netflix docuseries to the next level,... In a sea of gamified dating competitions, Cian O’Cleary’s Love on the Spectrum U.S. rises above as romance reality TV at its best. — Rebecca Perlmutter After an eight-year hiatus from TV, Too Much is a return to form for Girls creator Lena Dunham. The director pulls from her own life experiences to create a different kind of rom-com.

There’s plenty of clichés, tropes, and bits of optimism, but it also bears a certain realism and insightfulness that’s rare for the genre. At the heart of it is Megan Stalter’s Jessica, who flits between moments of exaggerated comedy and gut-punching heartbreak. It may not be the most revelatory show of the year, but Stalter’s performance and Dunham’s clever-as-ever writing make for a love story that we won’t forget any time soon. — Morgan Pryor 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 Find this story in your account’s ‘Saved for Later’ section. It’s that time of year again, when Vulture’s critics embark on our messiest annual tradition: the finalization of our Top 10 lists. Here are the best shows of 2025, according to critics Roxana Hadadi, Jackson McHenry, Nicholas Quah, and Kathryn VanArendonk.

It was a weird year for TV. The 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes, coupled with the 2024 California wildfires, froze the production pipeline and reduced the number of industry jobs, while Warner Bros. Discovery’s cost cutting, the steady deterioration of Paramount, and Disney’s announcement that Hulu will disappear as a standalone service by the end of 2026 added to a blanket unease. Amid all this uncertainty about what the future of TV holds, these series demonstrated the medium’s possibility. The year’s best shows told stories that felt like they were reaching through our screens, pointing at the world and urging us to open our eyes to the fraught moment. One even has Malin Åkerman finding novel ways to say the word “cunt.” That’s the potential of the small screen.

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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 lo...

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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. As the fall TV season approaches, let's take stock of the best television has had to offer so far in 2025, from Andor to Severance and beyond. In a March 2025 interview with Howard St...