The definitive list of the 10 best TV shows of 2025
I’m on the road today, writing today’s newsletter at a variety of car chargers between Sydney and Brisbane. Right now I am cursing out an NRMA Chargefox charger which has faulted on me twice near Port Macquarie.
Scroll down after the daily News Desk and Trailer Park sections for my Top TV of 2025 list.
Apologies for the lateness of the email send.
News Desk
Tim Kring will showrun a new Magnificent Seven TV series for MGM+. Read: THR
Despite Kurt Sutter (Sons of Anarchy) seemingly flaming out on every show he’s running, the guy just keeps getting yet more chances. This time he has a deal at MGM+ for a 50s-era period detective noir (as per Deadline). How does he keep getting more shots?
Oh… A UCLA study has found more than 90% of streaming shows are created by white people. Read: The Guardian
The Pluribus production designer was interviewed about building the external house Carol lives in… it started with just a fake exterior that became a much bigger project than they expected (but should have expected)… Read: Indiewire
John C Reilly will star opposite Jason Segel in new Apple TV thriller Sponsor. Read: Deadline
Haroon Siddique is The Guardian’s legal correspondent and breaks down the Trump v BBC lawsuit. Read: The Guardian
Boots has been cancelled by Netflix after one season. Read: Variety
More than 15 iHeartPodcasts will debut on Netflix in 2026. These include Charlamagne tha God’s The Breakfast Club, My Favorite Murder, Chelsea Handler’s Dear Chelsea, and Bobby Bones Presents: The Bobbycast. Read: THR
Ted Sarandos has appeared at a Canal+ event in France as part of a charm offensive to tell the French that Netflix believes in cinema. Read: Variety
Trailer Park
The Pitt is back for season 2 January 8 on HBO Max. Did season one make my top 10 of 2025 list? Scroll down to find out…
Disclosure Day is the new Steven Spielberg UFO movie debuting in cinemas on June 12.
This year’s 10 best TV shows of 2025 list
I’m not looking for you to agree with my choices (though, hopefully many of you will agree with them or see why I chose them), but rather I’m hoping my list may get you to discover and press play on some of the outstanding TV from throughout the year.
10. Last Samurai Standing
There are a handful of foreign language shows that should probably be on my list this year. I’d have probably included Blossoms Shanghai, the new Wong Kar-wai TV series - but it is yet to launch in Australia and I haven’t quite been able to see enough of it to have a firm opinion. Asura on Netflix is also really worth your time and sits just outside of my top ten.
When Squid Game exploded back in 2021, Netflix greenlit several knock-off shows hoping to tap into something in the zeitgeist. There were shows like The 8 Show, which was empty in spirit and lacked artistic ambition. This is absolutely commissioned in an effort to tap into SG, but it also managed to be its own show. But also, if you looked at this and was also feeling a bit of Shogun mixed in, I don’t think that’s entirely a coincidence either.
Last Samurai Standing, which is about an era where samurai’s have been outlawed and the remaining warriors are now left with no skills beyond murdering. When they’re given the opportunity to make an obscene amount of money to compete in a game which would have 100 samurai heading from (I think it was Kyoto) to Tokyo, with only one allowed to quite literally be left standing, they take on the challenge. It’s a silly, but pretty cool premise that is supported by constant and varied incredible action sequences.
I had a blast watching this show.
9. The Diplomat (Season 3)
Like seasons one and two, this show is so squarely made with me in mind, that it would frankly be rude of me not to add it to my top 10.
It may be a case of the show having revealed all of its tricks, but the third season of the show wasn’t quite as full-throatedly watchable as the first two outings. But the show was still incredibly watchable and I’m very bought into it by now that even if I’ve moved from being in love with the show to being strongly in-like with it, I couldn’t bring myself to let it drop out of my top 10 just yet.
8. English Teacher (Season 2)
What is going on with this show behind the scenes? Like all hang-out comedies, the show will have those that connect with it and those that don’t - it’s a show that I love dearly. But it’s also a show that surely had more life left in it than to be mercilessly killed off after just two seasons.
The allegations against Brian Jordan Alvarez don’t seem to have amounted to much, but they remain an albatross over the series. It seemed to take a while for FX to renew the show for the second season and when it did, they just dumped it out as a binge release with little fanfare. Was FX just nervous about it? Was the viewership just not there?
This second and final season of the show delivered more of the same, with more hang-out sitcom style episodes about teachers facing continued generational and social clash with their students and the kids parents. It also capped it off with a conclusion to Evan’s relationship. With Jordan Firstman, who played the boyfriend, now off on HBO Max’s far more buzzy I Love LA playing a very similar character, it feels like English Teacher has served its purpose.
The show will live on as a cult favourite, revisited every so often until that fateful day where it just drops off the Disney+ streaming service for good…
7. Dept Q
It’s rare that I’m inclined to want to include UK-style murder detective shows on my list. It’s not that they aren’t worthy of making it on lists like this, it’s often just that there’s a sameness about them.
Which is why it is always exciting when one breaks out. What makes Dept Q different? It may just be that we have one of America’s best screenwriters penning this, otherwise, very UK-styled show. But maybe it is having Matthew Goode in the lead. Or it could just well be the confluence of a great writer, cast, production crew, and source material that came together to make this one pop. Whatever it was, I was gripped and completely got on board with it’s leisurely propulsive first season.
6. King of The Hill (2025)
The Hulu revival of King of The Hill only delivered ten episodes for its debut/return this year. That’s about eight more episodes of King of The Hill than I ever saw in its entire original 13 season run (1997-2009).
What makes the King of The Hill revival season so magical is that it took its original animated sitcom premise and realistically looked at what it would be like to bring these characters back in modern America with the time jump in place.
Adults Hank & Peggy Hill have spent a decade abroad and with their return, they really don’t feel comfortable with what the modern day version of home feels like. Meanwhile son Bobby Hill is now a young man trying to make a go of his restaurant, while also navigating friendships and romance.
The characters are the same, only they have grown, evolved, and maybe have more to say in the current moment than seemed appropriate on broadcast TV as a prime time cartoon.
5. The Lowdown
Ethan Hawke stars as a dirty, rather broken down citizen journalist who has his heart in the right place and the intellectual rigour to do right by his readers, but is one of those guys who always just gets in his own way.
The show, created by Reservation Dogs showrunner Sterlin Harjo, does this marvellous job of bringing Tulsa in Oklahoma to life with characters that all feel very lived in. Everyone in this show has a history, with the show flirting with this expansive world at the same time as it is busy looking for ways to see our hero get beaten up and knocked around every episode.
It has been just over a month since the last episode of the first season streamed and I’ve felt a longing to return back to this world every week since.
4. Pluribus
When the show debuted on Apple TV in early November, under orders from superstar showrunner Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul), critics were kept from revealing what the show was about.
While Pluribus is a show that is absolutely best discovered for yourself, that sense of mystery also builds in expectations of what the series is and a sense of pretentious preciousness that is also very hard to overcome if you are an information-heavy TV viewer who reads a newsletter like Always Be Watching.
There’s also a lot of conjecture over what the show is about. This week Apple TV published the seventh episode (of the nine-episode first season) and I don’t think viewers are any clearer on thematically what is happening. A lot of the show seems to be about AI’s forceful encroachment on humanity. But also, especially in the final handful of episodes of the season, there’s an argument to be made for it as an exploration of acknowledging mental unwellness.
The lack of understanding of what the show is about doesn’t make the show any less compelling. It’s slow-burn TV that, yes, can occasionally be a little too frustrating for its own good. But it demands ones attention and I’ve felt more than happy to give myself over to it.
3. Common Side Effects
Unquestionably, the most satisfying thriller of the year was this wild animated series. Frances, an executive assistant for the CEO at a big pharma company, is surprised when at an AGM, a guy she knew from high school takes to the microphone and starts asking a lot of questions about mushrooms. She follows him out to do a sort-of wellness check on him, which leads to a conversation where the guy, Marshall, reveals he has found a mushroom that can cure all illness - including the dementia diagnosis Frances mother has received.
The show is broadly about the intersection between big pharma, the government, and natural remedies with oppressive forces keeping the general population sick to maintain social cohesion.
Common Side Effects is thoughtful, weighty, a bit funny, incredibly thrilling, and occasionally a bit trippy. Don’t overlook this just because it is a cartoon.
2. Andor (Season 2)
A new bar for Star Wars was set with this show. The show is unquestionably Star Wars, creating greater depth and consideration given to aspects of Star Wars history and little-explored elements of the films (and TV shows). It has made watching many of the films a richer experience - a rarity for a prequel.
But also, while the show IS Star Wars, it can also be viewed on its own terms with a story about the people caught up in funding and planning a rebellion. What does it take to create the right conditions for an uprising?
It’s a thematic idea that feels especially resonant in recent years where it has been revealed just how tenuous democracies can be. And yet, the show cannily reminds us that we’ve been fooling ourselves if we think a democracy on the edge is a new idea, regularly evoking imagery from Thatcher’s 1980s Britain along with (the more obvious) World War II.
Andor has pushed the boundaries on what Star Wars can and should be. Not bad for a property with so many films, books, video games, and TV shows already under its belt.
1. The Pitt
It is the show that has redefined streaming TV by taking television serialised storytelling back to its broadcast vibes.
The promise of streaming TV shows originally was to bring an on-demand element to TV. What it quickly became was a slew of shows making an effort to become a 13-hour movie, with lavish budgets and huge stars attached.
What resulted were some outstanding TV shows… but most of them have been dull and mediocre.
The Pitt came along and offered a return to a sort of television practically perfected by 90s drama ER, but layering into the format the benefits of streaming: More adult storylines, greater honesty in medical gore and appropriate in-hospital nudity, and a serialisation that can work as both a weekly watch, or enjoyed as a binge.
The Pitt is a shining light on a hill. It’s a fantastic medical procedural drama that also doubles as TV’s white knight.
That’s the newsletter for the today. Sorry it was so late in the day.
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A diverse list! A couple shows I need to jump onto. I'd swap Andor and The Diplomat IMO.