The Best of TV in 2025

 

The Best of TV in 2025

 

It’s been another year where I’ve seen enough noteworthy television that I can do a worthwhile recap. The holidays are always a busy time for me, and I wanted to get this out before 2025 came to a close, so for those reasons (plus I want to write about Avatar in January) I’m going to keep this as short as possible by starting with the shows that disappointed me, then diving right in to the best, in no particular order. I will not be elaborating on Alien: Earth (which I reviewed back in September, link here: https://cccmovies.blogspot.com/2025/09/alien-earth-season-one-review.html), Dune: Prophecy (which I didn’t even finish) or The White Lotus Season Three, but I will start with White Lotus as my first best show, because I just watched the first two seasons this year.

The White Lotus hooked me with its initial mystery and vast cast of characters (most of whom were wonderfully despicable) but the humour and character progression from one episode to the next kept me invested. Season one’s music also really stuck with me—I kept making that “buh-buh-bwuhhh…” sound for months afterward—but I think the second season overall was even better than the first, with even more interesting characters, more compelling converging plot lines, and higher overall stakes, despite following a similar formula established in the first season. Having it as an anthology with only some tangential connections between seasons didn’t diminish how compelling subsequent seasons were, but season three let me down with it being all a lethargic setup with no payoff (or rather just an unsatisfying conclusion). The cast was good, the potential was there, but it just didn’t live up to the high standard set by seasons one and two.

Adolescence was a show that quickly snuck up as a must-see, with frighteningly pertinent themes for our modern world. For me, the technical aspects of how the episodes were shot in continuous takes with unbelievable setups for these complex camera moves overshadowed the actual narrative, which started off very strong and lost that unique sense of intrigue by the end. I was so wowed by the performances and the direction that I was hooked for the first two episodes, but found the story petered out and it didn’t really stick with me after it was over. I don’t want to watch a second season, but I would like to see someone attempt to top the technical prowess it took to pull off a story told that way in an episodic format.  

Three shows I was very glad to see back were The Bear, Daredevil, and Andor. Daredevil was a surprise, considering how much bad publicity there was in the lead up to Marvel’s revival of the previously-Netflix-produced show, but the reshoots ultimately bettered the story, and while it still paled in comparison to the best episodes of the Netflix era, Daredevil: Born Again kept me entertained and gave me a bit more than a Daredevil film reboot would have provided, although I do hope the next season is a bit smoother and more consistent. I disagree with the haters: The Bear season four was fantastic. I don’t think it will ever get as good as season two, but coming off a full rewatch of season one, two, and three, I found four was compelling but wholesome, intense but tender, and ultimately felt like a proper leadup to what should be the final season, with a more satisfying beginning, middle, and end than the previous season (which I enjoyed more the second time). Andor season two gets no notes. I already loved season one, I rewatched it before season two, and the only bad thing about it was that it sprinted through the remainder of the story to wrap it all up, but if that’s what it took just to get the second season and all of its triumphant moments, so be it. Andor stands apart from the rest of the Disney Star Wars content as its own entity that doesn’t feel like content; it truly is worthy of a place in the galaxy far, far away. I don’t think Disney will ever succeed in presenting any other Star Wars stories in any format nearly as successfully as Andor.

Two brand-new shows on Crave (Canada’s equivalent to HBO Max) caught me off guard with how excellent I found both of them. The Pitt took a somewhat similar approach to Adolescence in telling a story through a limited amount of time, and while it was not as innovative in terms of how it was shot or presented, I found it far more enjoyable comparatively, quickly getting wrapped up in the characters and the goings on at a very chaotic ER, reminding me of why I loved the show House M.D. back in the day. Just sneaking in during the last month of the year was Heated Rivalry, which surprised me more than any other show I saw this year, because I could not have guessed an LGBTQ+ hockey romance drama would make me laugh, gasp, and even shed a tear by the final episode.

The ultimate winner in terms of overall streaming apps in 2025, for me and I’m sure many others, was Apple TV. What shows did I find there? Severance, Ted Lasso, Pluribus, Murderbot, Slow Horses, Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age, and more! I haven’t finished Murderbot, Pluribus or Prehistoric Planet and haven’t started Slow Horses yet, but of all these shows, I got into Severance first, and have not been compelled by a show like that since perhaps Breaking Bad. The sci-fi concept was (and still is) rife with possibility, and it gets almost too real at times even with all its strange ideas. While season two did not satisfy me quite as much as season one, I am still on the edge of my seat waiting for the next season, and look forward to rewatching it all again. Ted Lasso seasons one, two, and three all tugged at my heartstrings, made me laugh out loud, and made me realize how few shows cultivate genuine optimism these days. Even as the show evolved into more of a drama with longer episodes, straying a bit from its initial appeal, I remained invested, and look forward to its return (even if it feels a bit like a new show—no spoilers, but the first three seasons feel very contained to telling a complete story).

The last show I’ll touch on is Stranger Things 5. I haven’t commented on Stranger Things  since the first “sequel” season came out back in 2017, which feels like a lifetime ago. Season three made me miss when the show felt special because it was just one season with some retro nostalgia mixed in to something that felt fresh and compelling, but season four retroactively made me appreciate aspects of all the past seasons more, and I found it mostly enjoyable, with the new villain Vecna tying in to the more interesting lore expansion and the further development of the characters. The main issue has been with these big gaps in time between seasons three, four, and five, and this final season being broken up into three separate releases did nothing to help with hyping up its epic conclusion.

The final season has felt a bit more like a chore than a compelling finale, and I haven’t finished watching it as of writing this, but the first part of Stranger Things 5 felt slow and unnecessarily tedious to get through, with it finally tapping into some more genuine thrills and progression by episode four—only for the momentum to be killed because we had to wait until after Christmas to continue watching. I’m still enjoying the final season well enough so far, and I hope it ends in a satisfactory way, but my expectations are low, and I don’t really care about it as much now that it’s become this cultural phenomenon and feels more like a Netflix brand than the unique streaming series it once was.

I think that covers all the TV of note in a summary of reasonable length! All that’s left is a little peek into the future for what’s coming out in 2026. Stay tuned as we say farewell to 2025 and see what’s in store for new movies and shows in the new year!