2025 was a bumper year for the small screen. As we finally moved past the lull from 2023’s writers’ strike, we were treated to twelve months of exceptional new shows, from long-awaited sophomore seasons to exceptional debuts and gripping limited series.
Next year is looking to be no different, with the arrival of Euphoria’s much-anticipated third season, the TV adaptation of the novel Margo’s Got Money Troubles, and the follow-up to Hulu’s twisting post apocalyptic thriller Paradise, it’s safe to say we’ll be as glued to our screens in the new year too. Prepare for the next batch of excellent television with our guide to the best shows from the year that was. Your conversational cultural capital will be well-stocked for the holiday season.
Mobland
If the idea of a Guy Ritchie gangster drama — a surefire recipe for success — isn’t enticing enough, Mobland features Tom Hardy as a threatening fixer for a wealthy Irish family in London, showcasing the actor at his best. The show is classic Ritchie: swaggering, ruthless, humorous in its violence, and showcases a top-notch cast in key roles, with Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren alongside Hardy.
Adolescence
A breakout success of 2025, Adolescence is a harrowing, claustrophobic portrayal of male violence in the modern age. Impressively filmed in one continuous shot, the story follows the fallout after 13-year-old Jamie Miller is arrested for the murder of classmate Katie Leonard. The show prompted innumerable think pieces on the reality for boys and men in the present day and the risks posed around violence against women and saw newcomer Owen Cooper become the youngest actor to win an Emmy for his role.
The Four Seasons
If The White Lotus was a quarterly vacation with friends with a little less death and a little more cutting commentary, you’d have The Four Seasons, Tina Fey’s gripping series about three couples who have been friends since college and holiday together four times a year. A nuanced portrait of the intricacies of lifelong friendship and married life, the story tackles divorce, age-gap relationships, marriage counselling, grief and more, with humour, heartfelt moments and heavily relatable quotes thrown in for good measure.
Your Friends and Neighbours
When he is fired from his high-paying hedge fund job, Andrew Cooper resorts to pillaging the homes of his neighbours in wealthy Westmont Village to keep up his expensive lifestyle. In the process, he discovers some dark secrets hiding between the wads of cash and watches. An extension of a spate of recent shows dissecting the lives of the ultra-wealthy, Your Friends and Neighbours is a darkly humorous tale.
The Girlfriend
In The Girlfriend, Laura’s picture-perfect life is upended when her beloved son introduces Cherry — a charming newcomer whose presence quickly sows suspicion. What starts as polite unease escalates into a gripping battle of wits in this taut drama about love, ambition and the dangerous games people play.
The Studio
An extremely meta TV show about the trials facing the film business, The Studio follows a recently promoted studio head (played by co-creator Seth Rogen) as he struggles to keep his job and balance the bottom line with his true desire to make movies of quality. Self-aware and humorous it is predictably filled with sharp gags and hilarity.
Dept. Q
Setting a dark, drizzly thriller with an irritable cop as its lead in gothic Edinburgh is always going to be somewhat of a slam dunk in the television stakes, but Dept. Q does so much more than simply rest on this recipe for success. Matthew Goode does an exceptionally good job of playing the extremely unlikeable detective Carl Morck, and the twisting element of the case at the centre of the series keeps viewers on their toes to the very end.
Too Much
Lena Dunham’s Too Much is a 10-part rom-com series co-created with her husband, Luis Felber. Starring Megan Stalter and Will Sharpe, the show follows heartbroken New Yorker Jessica, who flees to London and meets chaotic Brit Felix. Love, drama, and emotional baggage collide in this sharp, candid take on modern romance.
Landman Season 2
Delving into climate, economy and geopolitics, Yellowstone’s Taylor Sheridan brings the high-stakes world of Texas oil to life in Landman. Based on Christian Wallace’s Boomtown podcast, this gripping drama starring Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Hamm, and Demi Moore, is a modern-day upstairs/downstairs tale of fortune seeking in the world of oil rigs during a fuelling boom.
All Her Fault
Every parent’s nightmare is put on full display in All Her Fault, which tracks a wealthy community in Chicago as the son of one couple is kidnapped from school. The story slowly unravels over the course of the investigation, shining a spotlight on secrets, rivalries and the fraught dynamics of parenting. Sarah Snook and Dakota Fanning are exceptional in their performances as mothers desperately trying to balance work and family life.
Severance Season 2
Few fans have had as long a wait for as sudden a cliffhanger ending as those who invested in Severance season 1. Ending with a series of heavily unanswered questions, it then took three years for the sophomore season to finally grace our screens in January. Apple TV’s hit returned in an equally impressive manner, providing some answers but leaving a lot more up in the air. We got further insight into the ghostly business at the centre of the series, alongside spending more time in the outies’ lives, all anchored in the show’s textbook hauntingly tense study of corporate life.
The Beast in Me
The Beast in Me is a dark, tense thriller that follows grieving journalist Aggie Wiggs as she struggles to write her next book after publishing a hit memoir. Wealthy property developer and suspected murderer Nile Jarvis moves in next door and kicks off a game of cat and mouse that sees Aggie agree to take on Nile as her next subject. Suspicions are rife between both parties, and viewers are kept on the edge of their seat when it comes to the question of guilt. While spectacular writing and nuanced production anchor the show, it’s the performances of Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys that take it to the next level.
The White Lotus Season 3
There’s no Sunday quite like the first Sunday of the new season of The White Lotus. Few shows have garnered such cult-like followings in recent years quite like Mike White’s sardonic and fatal explorations of wealth and holiday dynamics. Popularity has swelled with each season so, unsurprisingly, hopes were high for its third edition. Taking us to Thailand, the season explores greed and religion, introducing us to a whole host of iconic new characters, from Parker Posey’s Lorazepam-popping Victoria Ratliff to Aimee Lou Wood’s deeply spiritual Chelsea and Walton Goggins’ vengeful, cantankerous Rick.
Paradise
Dan Fogelman’s Paradise offers up one of the most shocking end-of-episode twists at the close of Paradise’s first instalment, when what seemed like a benign whodunit ends up expanding into a complex dystopian story of power dynamics, backstabbing and the lengths we’ll go to to survive. Sterling K Brown and James Marsden are masterful in their representations of a bodyguard and the president he is employed to protect and the complex relationship between the two.
Dying For Sex
A podcast as source material might not sound like the most riveting starting point for a TV show but, in the case of Dying For Sex, bringing Molly Kochan’s heartbreaking, kinky, and at times hysterical story to life on the screen is a remarkable choice. Based on the titular podcast, Dying For Sex follows Molly after she’s diagnosed with stage 4 breast cancer as she decides to leave her husband with whom she no longer has sex, in favour of spending her final few months searching for sexual satisfaction. The show is predictably devastating, but it’s also funny and heartwarming and immensely human.
