The best series of 2025
What are you watching? It’s been our go-to icebreaker for social gatherings for years, and 2025 is no different. With Netflix and Paramount competing to buy up Warner Bros. and HBO, streaming will increasingly be the way we consume our stories, going forward.
That doesn’t mean movies are now passé. Even with average cinema-sitting experiences passing the 2:30 hour mark, we still love great cinema. But streaming series brings back the collective “cliffhanger” experience that made watercooler viewing such a thing back in the day.
We couldn’t include all the great series this year—left out Severance, Hacks, The Bear, The Diplomat, White Lotus, The Lowdown and the excellent three-part Adolescence. But here’s what we enjoyed watching most.
Pluribus
Carol (Rhea Seehorn) is not happy. An alien virus has turned the human population into a hive mind, capable of only working collectively towards “the good.” But Carol, a cynical author of romance novels, has her doubts. She, along with 11 other humans, is somehow immune to the virus. But for how long? It’s Vince Gilligan, still situated in Albuquerque, New Mexico (where Breaking Bad took place), moving back to X-Files territory (where he was one of the funnier writers). Instead of cooking meth, Carol, a world-class malcontent, is cooking up questions. What are the aliens’ intentions? What is the meaning of “happiness”? Why aren’t the rest of the remaining humans more steamed about this? A metaphysical metaphor for our times, when the increasing weirdness around us gets processed into the “new normal,” Pluribus (on Apple TV) keeps hooking us with perverse twists and unlocked secrets.
Andor
The follow-up season to Tony Gilroy’s Rogue One prequel (on Disney+) puts Diego Luna in the pilot seat as Cassian Andor, smuggler-turned-rebel laying out plans for the resistance, but it’s the intricate machinations of side players and levels of society that make this show such a satisfying slow burner. Just when you think there’s too much detail for you to handle, Gilroy pulls the strings together all at once, setting in motion a rebel domino effect on Ghorman, where the Galactic Empire plans to eliminate the resistance for good. “Welcome to the rebellion” might be the battle cry for our times: an invitation to see the world for what it is and dream of the possibility that it can change. At least in a sci-fi streaming series.
Task
Building on the Pennsylvania-set crime drama of his earlier HBO series Mare of Easttown, creator Brad Ingelsby ups the regional accents and tightens the narrative around two characters on opposite sides of the law: drug heist leader Robbie Pendergrast (Tom Pelphry) and dispirited FBI agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo). Brandis, a former priest with demons of his own, is asked to assemble a rookie task force to find out who’s been robbing fentanyl stash houses. See Ruffalo riff on Peter Falk’s shambling detective Columbo, and ask yourself just how many soulful, tatted-out drug-snatching garbagemen there really are out in rural Pennsylvania. The writing gets to the heart of loss and second chances, and Emilia Jones (from CODA) is outstanding as Robbie’s besieged teenage niece, tasked to take care of Robbie’s kids while he’s out looking for the Big Score; Fabien Frankel (House of the Dragon) and Alison Oliver as a hot-mess task force agent also shine. While Mare of Easttown centered on Kate Winslet’s quietly intense character solving the murder of a teen girl in the middle of sprawling small-town entanglements, Task is more focused: this ensemble rolls on action, with plenty of twists and cliffhangers to keep you watching.
Slow Horses
Speaking of shambling detectives, Gary Oldman MI5 agent Jackson Lamb continues to do his best work with tattered-socked feet propped up on his desk, a glass of Scotch in one hand in Season 5 of Slow Horses (on Apple TV). Even the familiar template of the series—major terrorist act leads the misfit MI5 agents of Slough House to spring into misdirected action as Lamb cracks the funniest lines in television—holds up in a season that revolves around obnoxious tech nerd Roddy Ho (Christopher Chung) getting honey-trapped by a hacker trying to infiltrate MI5 security. (Ho to Lamb: “I don’t get it.” Lamb to Ho: “We should have put that on a T-shirt for you.”)
The Pitt
Another medical drama created by the team behind ‘90s hit show ER—bringing back Noah Wylie no less, playing attending physician “Robby” Robinavitch—may not sound like that much. But The Pitt, set in Pittsburgh, is like a snapshot of America at the beginning of 2025: full of divisions, headline issues and bubbling trouble. Also memorable is its insertion of Filipino nurse characters—reeling out hilarious lines in Tagalog at that—that shows how the American hospital frontline still reads like a national litmus test. There’s the crisis of health care (or lack thereof), immigration, race, abortion pills, COVID masking, vaccines and anti-vaxxers, the opioid crisis, measles outbreaks, IVF costs, elderly neglect, child abuse, sex trafficking and even mass shootings to contend with. A bit much for one season set in one overly hammered emergency room? Perhaps. We can’t wait for Season 2 to drop next year on HBO Max.
The Studio
It may have taken writer partners Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg a lifetime in Hollywood to crack the code, but The Studio (on Apple TV) manages to insert more timely gags and ripe commentary into their Tinseltown satire in 30-minute doses than any other legally available source. With inspired cameos rolling through every episode (Martin Scorsese, eager to do a movie about the Jonestown Massacre, hoodwinked into doing a brand-placement movie about Kool-Aid; Ron Howard as a surprisingly cagey Hollywood player; Zoe Kravitz and Dave Franco overwhelmed by ‘shrooms at a pre-CinemaCon party), it’s the kind of cringe comedy that both Hollywood insiders and casual viewers can equally relish. It’s also a valentine to industry obsessions: The Oner, the Magic Hour. Rogan, playing the perpetually needy new studio head Matt Remnick, tries to balance the entertainment-driven landscape of a faded Hollywood with his nostalgic dream of bringing back “quality” films—and neither task seems to be within his wheelhouse. Cringe away!
