10 Best TV Shows of 2025

by Julian Spivey​

Photo: NBC

​10. "Saturday Night Live" 50th Anniversary Documentaries (Peacock/NBC)
“Saturday Night Live” celebrated its 50th season from the fall of 2024 through the spring of 2025, and with the celebration came several documentaries about the show that were an absolute delight for an ‘SNL’ superfan like me. A four-episode docuseries called “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night” featured episodes on the show’s writing process, audition process, the “More Cowbell” sketch, which I and many consider to be the greatest sketch in ‘SNL’ history, and a documentary about the show’s eleventh season, which it almost didn’t survive. There was also the remarkable nearly three-hour ‘SNL’ music documentary, “Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of SNL Music,” co-directed by The Roots drummer Amir “Questlove” Thompson and Oz Rodriguez, that featured a much-talked about opening supercut of some of the show’s most incredible performances that dropped jaws, and truly was one of the most fantastic TV scenes of the year. 
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Photo: HBO

​9. "Marc Maron: Panicked" (HBO/HBO Max)
Few people had a better year in entertainment than comedian/actor/podcaster Marc Maron. Maron ended his landmark podcast “WTF” in late 2025 after 16 years and more than 1600 episodes, his AppleTV comedy series “Stick” with Owen Wilson debuted and was picked up for a second season – and would appear on this list if we included 20 shows and his most recent comedy special, “Panicked,” which aired on HBO, was one of the year’s best received stand-up hours. “Panicked” was my favorite stand-up special of the year, and one of my all-time favorites. I dig Maron’s neurotic, witty, and let’s face it, liberal-leaning comedy. I enjoyed him poking fun at liberals, though, like how he joked that we being annoying led to people voting for fascism. But I also loved his jabs at conservative dumbass podcasters like Theo Vonn, musing about whether or not they would’ve interviewed Adolf Hitler. However, my absolute favorite bit from his special was about trying to flee a forest fire with his multiple cats. Any cat lover will understand and nearly pass out laughing from that story. 
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Photo: Apple

​8. "The Studio" (Apple TV)
One of 2025’s best and most exciting television series was about the film industry. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s “The Studio” finds Rogen playing studio executive Matt Remick, who’s just been placed in charge of a fledgling studio and tasked with turning things around. The show is played for laughs, with Remick stumbling his way through his first year on the job and struggling to turn a profit while also trying to maintain his artistic integrity. “The Studio” was one of the year’s funniest TV shows and was awarded with a massive haul on Emmy night, including the coveted Outstanding Comedy Series honor. 

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Photo: Apple

​7. "Pluribus" (Apple TV)
I didn’t know anything about Vince Gilligan’s Apple TV show “Pluribus” until I started watching. It seems nobody really did. The promotion for the show didn’t give away much – I guess when you have Gilligan’s first series since “Better Call Saul,” you figure folks will tune in. I don’t really want to elaborate much on the show, but I will say that it’s a science fiction series and Rhea Seehorn gives one of the year’s best performances as Carol Sturka, a romance novelist who experiences a worldwide change and must work her way through it. That should be enough to get you excited. 
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Photo: HBO Max

​6. Hacks (HBO Max)
“Hacks” is the only series on this list to have appeared last season – of course, it’s one of only two on the list that aired a season in 2024 – but it’s found a home on our best TV of the year list every season it’s aired. It was our No. 1 show last year, it was No. 3 for its second season and No. 2 for its first season. While this might be the first time it’s been out of the top three, it’s still clicking along just as well as ever. In season four, Deborah Vance (the excellent Jean Smart, who has won an Emmy for all four seasons) has reached the pinnacle of her career – she’s finally a late-night TV host. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go as planned, and by the season’s end, she’s forced to decide between her show or Ava (Hannah Einbinder, who I’m thrilled finally won an Emmy Award for her performance), and after years of doing wrong by Ava, Deborah finally makes the right decision. It’ll be interesting to see where that takes us for next year’s final season. 
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Photo: HBO

​5. "The Last of Us" (HBO)
The second season of HBO’s apocalyptic-horror drama “The Last of Us” was the most unfairly maligned season of television in 2025. The biggest reason is that a good portion of the audience was obviously unaware of the source material – the video games – and didn’t know that a very popular character was going to meet their end in the season. I’m one of the show’s viewers who are unfamiliar with the source material, but I’m fine with the show’s creators sticking to artistic integrity and sticking with the story as it was meant to be told. Bella Ramsey’s portrayal of Ellie, which came to the forefront in season two, was powerful (though many online have it out for Ramsey for reasons not necessarily related to the show). The addition of Isabela Merced, Kaitlyn Dever and Jeffrey Wright to the cast added to the show’s already great history of plugging in actors in more minor, yet important roles. 
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Photo: FX/Hulu

4. The Bear (Hulu)
The first two seasons of “The Bear,” an FX production on Hulu, were perfect television – both seasons topped this very list. Then came season three, a slower, more meandering season that didn’t really go anywhere, and it seemed the magic vanished into thin air (and I didn’t even dislike the season, as many did). Showrunner Christopher Storer righted the ship in season four, which saw the gang of lovable restaurant workers back in gear, working together to make a struggling restaurant succeed against all odds. The show is truly magical when clicking on all cylinders, and that came through brilliantly in one of my favorite single episodes of TV in 2025, “Bears,” with every single person on screen performing flawlessly. 
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Photo: HBO

3. "Task" (HBO)
Brad Inglesby’s HBO limited crime series “Mare of Easttown” was one of my favorite shows of 2021, and ranked No. 6 on this very list from that year. Thus, I was super pumped to hear Inglesby had another crime series coming to HBO this fall called “Task,” which starred Mark Ruffalo and Tom Pelphrey. “Task” was every bit as good as “Mare of Easttown,” if not even better. Pelphrey plays a sanitation worker who robs drug houses of a local biker gang, against whom he holds a grudge. Ruffalo is the FBI agent tasked with solving the crime. The performances from Pelphrey and Ruffalo are among the best on TV all year, and the show features another fantastic performance by Emilia Jones, who plays the 21-year-old niece of Pelphrey’s Robbie Prendergrast. The final three episodes of the seven-episode first season are damn near perfect, especially scenes between Ruffalo and Pelphrey in the fifth episode, “Vagrants.” 
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Photo: Netflix

2. "Adolescence" (Netflix)
​“Adolescence,” a four-part Netflix limited series about the murder of a young girl and the case surrounding it, was a remarkable bit of storytelling, the kind we rarely see on television, as each episode was told in one long take. The series, created and written by Steven Graham and Jack Thorne, was a remarkable take on what a crime drama can be, after viewers figure they’ve seen them all. The English series featured incredible acting that matched the excellent filming and writing that led to Emmy wins for Graham, who also portrayed the father of the killer, Owen Cooper, a young man in his first acting role, and Erin Doherty, as a child psychologist in one of the year’s most riveting single episodes. Ashley Walters and Christine Tremarco (also nominated for Emmys) and Faye Marsay were also remarkable. 

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Photo: HBO Max

​1. "The Pitt" (HBO Max)
I never would have guessed HBO Max’s medical series “The Pitt” to be the best television show of 2025. I had heard it was coming, and it sounded like a lesser version of “ER,” and even may have had origins as an “ER” spinoff that damn near got the whole thing shut down before it even started. What the show wound up being was the most realistic portrayal of emergency room doctors, nurses and staff ever shown on television, and done so in a not new, but well-chosen method of telling a story in real-time with every episode being an hour during the shift of the medical staff. The writing and performances by a cast led by Noah Wyle and featuring a bunch of mostly unknown faces – both young and veteran – gave us the most interesting group of characters on television all year. “The Pitt,” which aired 15 episodes in its first season and aired weekly, brought an old-fashioned type of television most of us grew up watching into the streaming era, and we ate it up. 

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What was your favorite television show of 2025?