The 20 Best Shows of 2025 (So Far)

Television is always in season these days. It can be a distraction from the world’s ills, transporting us back in time or immersing us in the first blush of young love; it can also help us work through them, taking on the rise of fascism or the pervasive threat of online radicalization. The best shows of the year could be hilarious farces or gripping mysteries, epic face-offs or small and intimate dramedies. Whatever you’re looking for from your leisure time, the first half of the year has offered a full array of options. Variety TV critics Alison Herman and Aramide Tinubu have each selected their 10 favorite shows — presented here unranked and in alphabetical order — from the first half of 2025, from Noah Wyle’s return to the ER to a modern reimagining of a Judy Blume classic.

• Aramide Tinubu’s Top 10

• Adolescence

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix

  Netflix’s riveting limited series “Adolescence” has taken the globe by storm. Created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham (who also stars in it), the show is a chilling examination of red-pill propaganda and its impact on the minds of impressionable boys and young men. Set in an unnamed English city, the four-episode series follows 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper), who is accused of murdering a girl in his class. Helmed by director Philip Barantini, who uses his signature one-shot style throughout all four episodes, viewers follow Jamie’s arrest and examine the damning evidence against him. Expanding outward, “Adolescence” explores how the incident affects Jamie’s classmates, friends and family members. Moreover, during a session with the court-appointed child therapist (Erin Doherty) assigned to his case, it becomes quite clear how Jamie has gotten to this point. Haunting and enthralling, this show unpacks the most grotesque aspects of the manosphere and what we can expect as a society if it isn’t exposed. 

• A Cruel Love

  
  Image Credit: Credit: ITV Studios

  Based on a true story and Carol Anne Lee’s biography, “A Fine Day for Hanging,” BritBox’s crime drama “A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story” is a devastating series about abuse, misogyny, trauma and the deep desire to love and be loved. Set in 1955, the series follows Ruth Ellis (Lucy Boynton), a young mother convicted of killing her abusive lover. Ruth became the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom. Though the series opens on July 13, 1955, the day Ruth is executed for murdering race car driver and known playboy David Blakely (Laurie Davidson), creator Kelly Jones and her writers rewind the clock on Ruth and David’s volatile romance. Manipulation, terror and obsession anchored this relationship. A cinematographically stunning series, despite the challenging subject matter, the series illustrates the societal standards of the time and how women like Ruth, despite their best efforts, never stood a chance.

• A Thousand Blows

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Hulu

  Set in London’s East End in 1880, “Peaky Blinders” creator Steven Knight’s boxing drama, “A Thousand Blows,” revolves around a group of outsiders determined to get more from the world than it’s willing to offer them. The show follows Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), Jamaican immigrants who arrive in the U.K. in search of new opportunities. Instead, they find themselves swept up in the criminal underworld of the East End and caught between gangster Sugar Goodson (“Adolescence” star and co-creator Stephen Graham), who rules the neighborhood, and Mary Carr (Erin Doherty, also of “Adolescence”), who leads a woman’s gang called the Forty Elephants.  A tale of sexism, racism, loyalty and revenge, this period piece is detailed, engrossing and stunning from beginning to end.

• Dept. Q

  
  Image Credit: Justin Downing/Netflix

  Based on the book series by Jussi Adler-Olsen and adapted for television by “The Queen’s Gambit” creator Scott Frank, Netflix’s Scotland-set crime thriller, “Dept. Q,” is a brilliant blend of mystery and psychology. The series follows Detective Chief Inspector Carl Morck (played by Matthew Goode), a brilliant but wholly unlikable character. Reeling from a horrific incident that shreds what’s left of his emotional stability, Morck is assigned to a high-profile cold case that forces him to confront his personal pain points and inadequacies. Intense, with complex twists and turns, the neo-noir is an absorbing watch all the way through.

• Forever

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix

  Mara Brock Akil’s “Forever,” inspired by Judy Blume’s groundbreaking novel, is a breathtaking teen love story.  Set in Los Angeles in 2018, the series follows track star Keisha Clark (Lovie Simone) and basketball player Justin Edwards (Michael Cooper Jr.) as they try to navigate their final high school years and their burgeoning romantic relationship. A nuanced and exceptional showcase of first love, Brock Akil offers a glittering tapestry of young Black love that’s so rarely seen on television that it feels magical. Tender and vivid, the series takes audiences on an emotional journey filled with love, anguish and a multitude of first times.

• Long Bright River

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Peacock

  Based on Liz Moore’s best-selling novel, Peacock’s “Long Bright River” — adapted by Moore and Nikki Toscano — moves well beyond the typical murder mystery. The series follows Philadelphia patrol cop Mickey Fitzpatrick (Amanda Seyfried), who has watched her community and her younger sister Kacey (Ashleigh Cummings) succumb to poverty and addiction. When unhoused sex workers start turning up dead, Mickey and her former partner Truman Dawes (Nicholas Pinnock) begin uncovering a haunting labyrinth created by cycles of disempowerment and despair. The crime drama is a series about sisterhood, connections and the truths people are desperate to bury.

• Power Book III: Raising Kanan

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Starz

  Set in the early 1990s, “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” follows the origin story of Kanan Stark (portrayed by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson in “Power”) as he comes of age in Queens, New York. A family drama at its core, the series chronicles the demise of teen Kanan’s (Mekai Curtis) relationship with his queenpin mother, Raquel “Raq” Thomas (Patina Miller.) In Season 4, a completely estranged Kanan and Raq find themselves in a stunning confrontation, with Kanan raising a gun to his mother’s head and pulling the trigger. Deeply intense and compellingly written, Sascha Penn’s series is a portrait of family, loyalty, trust and pain. It’s a worthy prequel to “Power,” a powerhouse drama that revolutionized the landscape for Black-led cable series.

• Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney+

  With Disney+’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man,” creator Jeff Trammell puts a refreshing spin on one of the most enduring superheroes in popular culture. The 10-episode first season offers an alternative origin story for the web-slinger and opens with 15-year-old Peter (Hudson Thames reprising his role from “What If…?”) rushing to his first day of school orientation. When a radioactive spider bites him, the teen finds himself trying to manage some newfound powers and abilities. As Peter tries to embrace his new alter ego covertly, he also navigates the typical teen tropes of friendship, belonging, love and self-actualization. With animation led by Leo Romero and Polygon Pictures, which combines 2D and 3D techniques, the series is a blend of nostalgia and 21st-century flair. Intriguing, fun and timeless, the show is a love letter to those who’ve always adored the wall-crawler while welcoming new viewers into his world.

• Your Friends & Neighbors

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV+

  In Apple TV+’s “Your Friends & Neighbors,” creator Jonathan Tropper offers a complex narrative about a middle-aged man navigating an intense mid-life crisis. The dramedy follows Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm), a recently fired hedge fund manager struggling to cope as the fragments of his formerly “perfect” life begin slipping through his fingers. Still intensely bitter about his ex-wife Mel’s (Amanda Peet) affair that led to the end of their marriage, and increasingly distant from his children, “Coop” cooks up a scheme to maintain his lavish lifestyle. Disgusted with the people he once called his friends, he begins stealing from his affluent suburban community. More than an assessment of the falsity of the American dream, the series examines what can be masked with money and influence.

• Alison Herman’s Top 10

• Andor

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Disney+

  Tony Gilroy’s two-season drama is so much more than a prequel to “Rogue One,” as I’ve told any number of people who balk when I enthusiastically urge them to watch a piece of peripheral Star Wars IP. It’s a nuanced, stirring, perceptive study of fascism and rebellion in its own right, drawing on real-world history and phasing out the supernatural aspects of its franchise to deliver a resonant ensemble piece. Diego Luna’s Rebel pilot may be the show’s namesake, but “Andor” is really a cross-section study of the ordinary people it takes to both run an empire and to slowly shirk off its yoke. From spymaster Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) to conflicted politician Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) to Imperial inspector Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), “Andor” proves it doesn’t take lightsabers or the Force to make a story stick with us.

• Dying for Sex

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of FX

  A show about terminal cancer doesn’t sound like a comedy, but few shows this year have made me laugh more than “New Girl” collaborators Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock’s take on the hit podcast-as-memoir. The entire endeavor rests on Michelle Williams’ triumphant performance as Molly, a woman whose diagnosis sparks a sexual odyssey. “Dying for Sex” is both deadly serious about the redemptive potential of embracing kink and slyly irreverent about everything else. But for all Molly’s erotic adventures with urine fetishes and cock cages — and Williams’ sweet, strange chemistry with Rob Delaney’s hunky neighbor — the true romance of the show is between Molly and her best friend Nicki (Jenny Slate). Both dying and sex, it turns out, are a form of intimacy. Molly may be gone, but her bond with Nicki is eternal.

• Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix

  This spring, the comedian resurrected last year’s limited-run talk show and extended it into a more enduring, but no less whimsical, experiment in live comedy. “Everybody’s Live” got off to a rockier start than “Everybody’s in L.A.”; the call-in segments were frequently awkward and generally hit-or-miss. But that’s the risk run by a show that’s so gleefully willing to try anything, and mercifully liberated from its guests’ promotional cycles. Mulaney has whoever he wants on his couch, from Joan Baez to an HR expert, and lets his writers pursue their interests, no matter how niche. A Christmas episode in April? Why not! A behind-the-scenes documentary about sidekick Richard Kind’s failed Charli xcx joke? The same! Mulaney’s stand-up is all meticulous control; it’s thrilling to watch the performer give himself over to zany anarchy.

• The Pitt

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Max

  The people yearn for old-school television — that seems to be the lesson from the surprise breakout success of “The Pitt,” which eschews established stars and fancy locations for a medical ensemble drama that plays out in real time under the fluorescent lights of a hospital emergency room. “The Pitt” has an obvious — and legally disputed — family resemblance to “ER,” with whom it shares several principals, including star and executive producer Noah Wyle. But by the end of the 15-episode season, viewers cared fiercely enough for the hospital staff, from Wyle’s warm and sensitive Dr. Robby to Isa Briones’ abrasive-yet-perceptive Dr. Santos, that the NBC mainstay became a distant memory. Maybe this genre is a classic for a reason!

• The Rehearsal

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

  Three years after its first season elevated his brain-bending performance art to new heights, Nathan Fielder soared even higher for Season 2 of his HBO series — specifically, to the skies. Fielder resolved to apply his signature technique (compulsive, controlled recreation of real-life scenarios) to the pilot-on-pilot communication issues he’s convinced are responsible for the vast majority of plane crashes. That aviation safety is now very much in the news is just one of the many magic tricks Fielder pulls off on his character’s voyage down the rabbit hole. It may not initially be clear how a supersized crib, a makeshift Nazi lair or a bogus singing competition connect to plane crashes, but with enough time spent in Fielder’s bizarre brain, it all starts to make strange, hilarious sense. Fielder was already known for superhuman commitment, but the sight of him in the cockpit of a 747 quite literally takes it to another level.

• The Righteous Gemstones

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

  Danny McBride’s magnum opus about a dysfunctional family of Southern televangelists hit a crescendo in its final season, ensuring the HBO comedy ended on a high note. Siblings Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson) and Kelvin (Adam Devine) have faced their fair share of challenges: mourning their late mother Aimee Leigh (Jennifer Nettles), seeing Judy’s husband BJ (Tim Baltz) paralyzed in a freak pole dancing accident and sinking millions into a vanity project so their Uncle Baby Billy (Walton Goggins) could play “Teenjus.” But patriarch Eli (John Goodman) falling for family friend Lori (Megan Mullally) truly tested the kids, and not just because they caught the two in flagrante delicto. En route to the Gemstones’ happy ending, they had to accept their dad — and themselves — finally moving on, even as the show looked back with a bravura premiere starring Bradley Cooper in a Civil War flashback. Closure is hard to come by, but “The Righteous Gemstones” nailed it.

• Severance

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV+

  It took three years for creator Dan Erickson and lead director Ben Stiller to follow-up the smash debut of their science fiction series, a parable about modern work in which employees willingly split themselves in two rather than endure office drudgery. Season 2 doubled down on the ethical implications of this scenario: What if one’s “innie” and one’s “outie” want and need different things? Should innies accept their own de facto death if they think severance is wrong? The romance of Mark S. (Adam Scott) and Helly R. (Britt Lower) became a tangible way for audiences to invest in these abstract moral dilemmas. But on Severance, the weird world of Lumon industries is a character in itself, from a full-on marching band led by Mr. Milchick (Tramell Tillman) to an offsite held on a frozen tundra. It’s at least a couple years’ worth of food for thought.

• Sirens

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix

  Molly Smith Metzler’s Netflix miniseries riffs on Greek mythology and flirts with fantasy. The relationship at its core, though, is as real as it gets: two sisters, Devon (Meghann Fahy) and Simone (Milly Alcock), are estranged yet bound together by a complex brew of guilt, resentment, love and protectiveness. Even the star power of Julianne Moore as Simone’s boss, a rich socialite and bird enthusiast, can’t eclipse Fahy and Alcock’s chemistry as their characters argue over what they owe their aging, abusive father (Bill Camp), not to mention each other. “Sirens” may end on a messy note, but until then, the show brings a camp-adjacent flair to Simone’s adopted home on a Nantucket-esque island that alleviates the bite of all the family strife.

• The Studio

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of Apple TV+

  Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s Apple TV+ comedy may be lavish, stuffed-to-the-gills with celebrity cameos and tricked out with showy single takes. But it’s also a lament of lost extravagance and the risk-taking that comes with it, following newly installed studio head Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) as he learns the job is much more of a headache, and much less of an artistic undertaking, than he’d dreamed it would be. “The Studio” has a refreshingly episodic structure, with every episode building to a grand crescendo that illustrates Matt’s well-meaning ineptitude before moving on to his next headache. Its humor is also as broad and straightforward as its references are niche. You may not relate to Ron Howard’s frustration with bad studio notes, but everyone enjoys a good pratfall, don’t they?

• The White Lotus

  
  Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

  The third installment of Mike White’s smash hit anthology series was the least warmly received by critics. But the HBO tentpole’s trip to Thailand was, while more awkwardly paced and unwieldy in length than its predecessors, another deeply compelling character study in the aggregate. Aggrieved, resentful Rick (Walton Goggins) and his younger, more optimistic girlfriend Chelsea (Aimee Lou Wood) emerged as the story’s tragic heroes; White nonetheless struck gold with the less high-stakes but even finer-drawn tug of war among three middle-aged women (Carrie Coon, Michelle Monaghan and Leslie Bibb) who bury their resentment for one another with unconvincing smiles. Season 3 focused on spirituality, even if the concept has always lurked beneath the series’ surface. As long as rich people continue to waste money trying to fill the holes in their souls, White will never lack for material.