2025 Best in Network TV: Drama Winners

Every year since The Word on Pop Culture began in 2010, we have awarded the best in network television in something we like to call The Broady Awards. The theory behind the Broadys was that there was still a lot of good and worthwhile TV on the original big broadcast networks that were often overlooked by the time the annual Emmy Awards rolled around, which had begun to focus mainly on cable, premium cable, and later streaming series.

Here are this year’s Broady Drama winners: 

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Best Drama Series: Will Trent (ABC)

Photo: ABC

​ABC’s “Will Trent” has been the best drama series on network television for a couple of years now, showing that a procedural cop drama can become more than a “case of the week,” when you mold characters as interesting as the ones it showcases, and have a cast with incredible chemistry. Based on author Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent series of novels, the show focuses on the titular character, played wonderfully by Ramon Rodriguez, a talented special agent with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, who has a troubled backstory stemming from a childhood spent in foster care. “Will Trent” deftly combines fun, crime stories with a charming sense of humor, making for one of television’s most enjoyable watches. 

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Best New Drama Series: NCIS: Origins (CBS)

Photo: CBS

As you probably guessed from the nominations for Best Drama Series, our Best New Drama Series of the 2024-25 television season is the CBS series “NCIS: Origins.” Never would we have guessed a prequel to the long-running, popular CBS naval crime drama “NCIS” would be such a riveting drama, especially given that series seemed to be dwindling with the mothership in its 22nd season and all of its American sequels having come to an end. But there was still some life left in the story of Leroy Jethro Gibbs, whom Mark Harmon played on “NCIS” for most of its run. The story of how Gibbs, played in the prequel by Austin Stowell, became involved with NCIS, then called NIS, and how those around him helped him survive tragedy was a terrific way to continue the show’s legacy. 

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Best Drama Episode: "Blue Bayou" NCIS Origins

Photo: CBS

​When you count up all of the episodes of the “NCIS” series over the two-decade-plus run of the shows (six in total), you have more than 1,000 episodes of dramatic television, and every single one of those episodes had been a procedural “crime of the week” story. So, it was incredibly shocking when “NCIS: Origins” aired “Blue Bayou” in its freshman season, and there wasn’t a dead body at the beginning, and a case that the special agents spent the remainder of the episode trying to solve. Instead, “Blue Bayou” tells of one of the most critical relationships Leroy Jethro Gibbs, the hero of the “NCIS” extended universe, ever had in the form of his landlady turned friend and trusted confidant. The episode is just Austin Stowell as Gibbs and London Garcia as his landlady/friend Ruth and the two expertly chew the scenery in an episode style I hope the show comes back to at some point in the future.

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Best Actor: Ramon Rodriguez (Will Trent)

Photo: ABC

​Ramon Rodriguez brings so much to the role of the titular Will Trent on the ABC drama. He’s the most brilliant special agent in the room and has managed to achieve this despite having dyslexia. But he also has so much darkness in his past, growing up a foster kid, never knowing his parents, finding out his mother was murdered, and all of this stuff comes up often. He also has an on-again, off-again relationship with Detective Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen), which is off in Season Three after a devastating turn in the Season Two finale. Rodriguez has never been better than in season three, when his character experienced the truly horrifying storyline of accidentally killing an innocent teenager with an errant shot while in a shootout with a criminal.  

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Best Actress: Carrie Preston (Elsbeth) 

Photo: CBS

This was a tough choice. Kathy Bates was her typical Kathy Bates greatness in the first season of the CBS law drama “Matlock” and Erika Christensen has never been better than in the third season of ABC’s “Will Trent.” However, for the second year running, we’re going with Carrie Preston’s humorously wacky and charming performance as attorney-cum-police consultant Elsbeth Tascioni in the CBS drama “Elsbeth.” Preston was made for the role of Elsbeth, something we first realized when the character was stealing episodes and winning Emmy Awards on “The Good Wife.” It was a terrific idea with showrunners Robert and Michelle King to give the character her own series, and Preston’s performance hasn’t grown old yet. 

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Best Supporting Actor: Kyle Schmid (NCIS: Origins) 

Photo: CBS

​Muse Watson portrayed the grizzled character of Mike Franks, the mentor and old friend of Mark Harmon’s Leroy Jethro Gibbs, so well for 20 episodes on “NCIS” that it would be hard to imagine anybody stepping into his shoes. However, Kyle Schmid owns the character of Mike Franks in his younger days as the lead agent in an NIS office in the early ‘90s, who brings Gibbs into the fold and mentors him in his gruff, old-school way. Schmid nails the gruffness of the Franks character to a T, but where the performance truly shines is with the heart and care he puts into the role when it comes to the people closest to him, or those he can identify with, who he believes need to be cut a break. 

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Best Supporting Actress: Skye P. Marshall (Matlock)

Photo: CBS

​This is one I might have to rethink next year, because honestly Skye P. Marshall’s performance as attorney Olympia Lawrence in the freshman CBS law drama “Matlock” feels like a co-lead situation with Kathy Bates. But because Bates is the titular Matlock, well, sort of (you’ll know what I mean if you’ve seen the show), we’ll let Marshall sneak into the supporting actress category at least for the show’s first season. Marshall’s Olympia is a powerhouse of an attorney, who may have gotten her foot into the big Jacobson Moore because she was married to the boss’s son, but she has more than earned her position and shows as much, while also dealing with divorce, motherhood, a fight to become partner and having the be a mentor to three attorneys, one of which is elderly and out of her comfort zone. It’s toward the end of the season when Marshall plays Olympia as a betrayed friend and co-worker that Marshall really earned this honor.  

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Best Guest Actor: Michael Emerson (Elsbeth)

Photo: CBS

​Michael Emerson has made a career of playing great television villains, and had recently wrapped up one of his most memorable as satanic Leland Townsend on “Evil,” created by Robert and Michelle King. He brought those terrifying tendencies to the King’s CBS law drama “Elsbeth” this season as a murderously corrupt judge, who crossed paths with the titular do-gooder. The most glorious part of Emerson’s turn on “Elsbeth” is that his real-life wife Carrie Preston plays the title character. Seeing the two work opposite of each other (which they’d done briefly before on CBS’ “Person of Interest”) was a lot of fun, representing good versus evil. It’s just a shame Emerson won’t be returning for future episodes.  

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Best Guest Actress: London Garcia (NCIS: Origins)

Photo: CBS

​London Garcia was an unknown actress to us before we saw her in the Season 1 “NCIS: Origins” episode “Blue Bayou,” and by the end of the episode, she had delivered one of our single favorite performances on television all year. Garcia plays Ruth, the landlady of Leroy Jethro Gibbs, in the episode, which features her irascible, no-nonsense character initially butting heads with the young Marine-turned-special agent before becoming his closest confidant. “Blue Bayou,” which kicked the usual “case of the week” aspect of “NCIS” shows to the curb for an excellent character study, sees the entire friendship between the two from the beginning to its tragic end, and Garcia instantly ingrained herself into the “NCIS” lore.