For the first time since I began creating annual top ten lists – over a decade ago, now – I actually had to struggle to find shows to select. It’s not that there wasn’t a lot of good TV this year – there was, as you’ll see from reading through my various reviews over the last 12 months. But now that we’re officially out of the Peak TV Era – where it seemed like a handful of shows that would stand the test of time as true classics would premiere every year – there isn’t a lot of great TV out there. And that’s okay! Good TV is often well worth the time it takes to savor a season.
So, when it came to putting this list together, I scoured my TV watching habits both through traditional media – streaming networks, mostly – as well as some non-traditional paths – that would be YouTube, where two of my selections stream here in the US. Because in this ever-changing entertainment landscape, the internet is a source of television. This list represents that best TV I’ve watched during 2025. Same rules as always apply: The show must have aired the majority of its episodes during 2025 to qualify. And, without further ado, here’s what made the cut.
10. Jetlag: The Game – YouTube/Nebula
I’ve been watching this truly delightful YouTube series (which premieres on Nebula, a subscription site, a week prior to streaming for free on YouTube) for several years now and it has become one of the joys of my week. The concept is simple: Our three central participants (Sam Denby, Adam Chase, and Ben Doyle) – who are occasionally joined by a guest fourth (or more) member depending on the game being played – embark on a competition that sees them flying, taking trains, or otherwise just moving around a country or continent in a race. Sometimes the game is Tag around three European countries. Sometimes its Snake along the train lines in Soeul, South Korea. Sometimes it’s an attempt to circumnavigate the world the fastest. Along the way, they are required to complete tasks to earn “coins” to finance their travel. It’s engaging, the boys (and their guests) are really fun to watch, and you get to learn about different places and modes of transport along the way. And once you get over trying to figure out just how these young guys have the financial means to pay for all of this, you’ll surrender to the excitement of the competition at hand. With two seasons a year, there’s plenty to watch and look forward to. This year, we were treated to that massive game of Snake in South Korea, as well as an All-Star Tag season that saw the show bring back three previous guests to team up with the boys for a truly epic game, and a Schengen Showdown that had the teams trying to claim as many European countries as they could. A true embarrassment of riches.
9. Celebrity Traitors: UK – Peacock
While the US version of Traitors is now a competition of various reality show veterans (although a “regular people” version is set to film next year), the UK version of the series has always used normal folks (which is part of the reason I’ve found it to be more entertaining than the US version). But this Fall, the UK offered a Celebrity edition with actual celebrities (as in, not just a bunch of folks from Love Island) and it resulted in a truly fascinating installment of the show. From offering some of the most polite round tables I’ve ever seen – which I would guess stemmed from the fact that these contestants were more aware of the damage a screaming match could inflict on their reputations than normal folks – to some truly terrible work by the Faithfuls along with one of the best Traitor performances out of all the English language series, Celebrity Traitors: UK was one of the best Traitors seasons I’ve seen.
8. Taskmaster – YouTube
I first stumbled upon Taskmaster back in the summer of 2020 – scripted television shows had dried up due to the pandemic and I was scrolling through YouTube when I saw what appeared to be a new British panel series. Now, the series has exploded in the US, with a dedicated YouTube channel (I first watched the series on, let’s say, non-approve YouTube streams) and a mini-US tour for hosts Greg Davies and Alex Horne early next year. The premise is simple: Five comedians spend a couple of weekends completing various tasks under the watchful eye of Horne, and then reconvene for ten studio shows to watch the tasks (completed individually with the occasional team task) and get points bestowed on them for their performance by Davies, who is the Taskmaster. And this year’s two series were the perfect examples of the various ways the show is smart, funny, and irreverent. Series 19 brought the first US-based comedian into the fold with agent of chaos Jason Mantzoukas joining the series as one of the five competitors. His stated goal? Destroy everything – and he came pretty close at times. Series 20, which aired this fall was a bit more staid – without that crazy American energy – but no less hilarious. Somehow, Horne and the casting team always manage to put together the perfect combination of participants, creating long-standing gags and delightful moments. Usually, I can recognize at least one contestant each series. In Series 20, I knew no one, yet found it to be one of the best seasons of the show thanks to the perfect combination of cast members. This is one of the great television joys out there.
7. Righteous Gemstones – HBO Max
This ridiculous comedy rode off into the sunset this summer, but not before presenting us with a truly insane final season. From Bradley Cooper showing up as a thieving ancestor of the Gemstone clan, to Kelvin competing in a reality competition to be Top Christ Following Man of the Year, to the foiling of various assassination plots, season four of Gemstones really had everything. And it was still hilarious to boot. Skewering the world of megachurches and their insane excess, the series always had a grain of reality baked into the hairbrained schemes the spoiled to a fault Gemstone children would get up to, and despite some pretty awful behavior, the kids still had some good within them. I’ll miss watching this crazy clan get up to hijinks in the future, but I’m pretty happy we got to spend the time with them that we did.
6. Adolescence – Netflix
Searing and incredibly hard to watch, this miniseries tackled an ever-growing issue: incel culture. When 13-year-old Jamie (an outstanding Owen Cooper) is arrested on suspicion of murdering a female classmate, we’re slowly exposed – along with Jamie’s family and the police – to just what types of things he and his friends have been watching, reading, and talking about that have convinced Jamie that his actions were perfectly acceptable. The series has been showered with awards and rightly so – the performances are stellar, the writing is taut, and the gimmick of the series – each episode was shot as a single, unbroken take – works without distracting us from what we’re watching. It’s a must watch, especially for parents of young kids.
5. Long Story Short – Netflix
From Raphael Bob-Waksberg (the creator of BoJack Horseman), Long Story Short is a time-hopping look at a Jewish family through the years. The non-linear story focuses on the three Schwooper children – Avi, Shira, and Yoshi – as they grow up, struggle with love, loss, their faith, and their position within the family. As someone who isn’t normally drawn to animated series, I was willing to take the leap with this one on Bob-Waksberg’s name alone, and I am so glad that I did. The emotional depth of the series – a hallmark of Bob-Waksberg’s work – is searing at times. The characters are flawed but so human. And the stories being told are universal.
4. The Pitt – HBO Max
For those of us who grew up in the 90s, seeing Noah Wyle as a doctor in an inner-city emergency room is actually kind of soothing. Even if The Pitt, which follows a team of medical professionals during a harrowing 18 hour stretch at a Pittsburgh hospital is anything but chill. A throwback to old school dramas, The Pitt takes what is familiar about the episodic television structure and meshes it seamlessly with a serialized arc. Over the 18 episodes – 18 hours in a single day for these doctors, medical students, nurses, and support staff – we meet, come to know, and come to root for these characters. But we don’t learn too much – after all, this is only one day in these characters’ lives – just enough to keep us hooked to find out more. The second season is set to kick off in January, taking us through another shift in the Pitt, this one on the always dangerous 4th of July holiday. How will our characters have grown in the time between seasons one and two? Who will have moved on? Who will be joining the team? I can’t wait to find out.
3. Severance – AppleTV+
In the long wait between seasons one and two of Severance, Apple’s puzzle-box drama, fans became restless trying to suss out just who or what was behind the ominous Lumon Corporation, who offers a severing process that splits the mind of select employees into an Innie (their work life) and Outtie (their personal life). At the center of the series is Mark, a man who believes he lost his wife in a car accident on the outside (surprise: she’s alive and being held within the walls of Lumon) and a man who is slowly falling in love with his enigmatic coworker, Helly, on the inside. As the Innies attempt to break free of their artificial confines and escape into the outside world (at the expense of their Outtie selves), Mark is on a mission to merge the two halves of himself into a single aware version and break the system for good. Season two offered some answers, some more questions, as well as a couple of all-time great episodes of television. With the promise that the break between seasons two and three won’t be as long as the one between one and two, I’m hopeful we’ll soon get a chance to see how Mark and company will break the system once and for all.
2. Pluribus – AppleTV+
I’d been eagerly awaiting this series since it was first announced by Vince Gilligan in the wake of the Better Call Saul finale. Re-uniting Gilligan – a man who has proven that he knows how to make good TV – with the heart and soul of Saul, Rhea Seehorn (who should have a shelf full of awards for her work as Kim Wexler on that series and will hopefully get a shelf full of them for this series), Pluribus is not, as some viewers seem to want, a puzzle-box show. Rather, like HBO’s exquisite The Leftovers, Pluribus take a world-wide inception event (here, the entire planet, except for 13 people, suddenly becoming part of a Hive mind that makes them all incredibly happy) and has us experience it through the lens of a handful of Survivors who are unaffected. One gentleman decides to use this new world order as a fantasy fulfillment device – living large and doing everything he dreamed of but wasn’t able to afford. One man shuns these Others, refusing their aid even to his own detriment, hoping to find a way to right the world. And then there’s Carol, a misanthrope romantasy writer who loses everything in the aftermath of the Joining. Angry, scared, and grieving, she pushes back against the Others, lashing out and desperately trying to find a way to bring back the old world. But, with Seehorn in the role, you know there’s more to Carol than just anger and despair – and we see it in every moment she’s on screen. Will she succeed in her attempt to make things “right”? Or will she be seduced by the good life – and her very attractive chaperone from the Others, Zosia?
1. Andor – Disney+
Andor is what happens when the powers that be at Disney say, “You know what? Go off in the corner and write whatever you want – we won’t tell you no.” to an auteur filmmaker (in this scenario, the brilliant Tony Gilroy). And it is glorious. Andor is easily the best Star Wars story in years – I’d argue the best ever made – that harkens back to the heart of the original trilogy (fighting the rising tide of fascism while unflinchingly calling out just how corrupt, power-hungry, and frankly terrifying those who use their power for gaining more power can be). Its second season also happened to arrive at the perfect time, as the United States found itself slipping further and further away from its ideals and closer to the universe inhabited by Cassian Andor, Mon Mothma, and company in Andor. It’s a series that lays out how the slow creep of fascism takes over governments. How once a scapegoat is found, the propaganda arm of the government can easily turn a story on its head to benefit those in power. And how a rebellion starts with a spark and can grow into a flame so long as the dedicated people behind it keep blowing oxygen in. Inspiring, complicated, and emotionally devastating, this cast, crew, and writers have created a truly seminal work of art that transcends the IP it’s based on to tell a story that rings true to us in the real world.
