To paraphrase Bob Uecker in Major League: In case you haven’t noticed, and judging from our traffic numbers, you haven’t, we’re ranking every TV show of 2025. You can find previous episodes of this series at the links below:
#s 97-86
#s 85-71
#s 70-56
#s 55-41
#s 40-31
30. Death by Lightning (Netflix, Season 1). Should this have just been a movie? It only runs four episodes, and while it’s nice to see a Netflix series that isn’t pointlessly padded, it makes you wonder if Death by Lightning might have been truly electrifying (sorry) as a feature. Regardless, it’s effortlessly watchable, recreating a sordid episode of American history with cheerful absurdity, even if it’s rimmed with sincere melancholy. It also affords the pleasure of watching a phenomenal cast dig into their impersonations with vigor: Michael Shannon is all stoic dignity as the ill-fated James Garfield, Matthew Macfadyen is vivaciously deranged as the President’s assassin, and a who’s-who of character actors—Bradley Whitford, Shea Whigham, Nick Offerman, the ubiquitous Betty Gilpin—round things out with splendid color. Politics sure were crazy those days, huh? Glad that’s over with.
29. Win or Lose (Disney, Season 1). The dogmatist in me resents Pixar getting into the television business, since they’re one of our last great movie studios. But what’s notable about Win or Lose is that it’s very much a TV show, with a conceptual hook—replaying the same series of events from different characters’ perspectives—that’s distinctly suited for the medium. Naturally, some episodes are more engaging than others, and the finale doesn’t lock everything into place as crisply as it might have. But the execution here is very strong—not just the typically vivid visuals, but also the rich dialogue and the empathetic tone. (As for the reported erasure of a trans storyline, it’s both reprehensible and also less terrible than you might have heard.) Winning may not be important, but trying to make meaningful art will always matter.
28. Your Friends & Neighbors (Apple, Season 1). The premise of Your Friends & Neighbors—Jon Hamm stars as an embittered venture capitalist (or something) who gets laid off and starts robbing houses to maintain his privileged lifestyle, then becomes a murder suspect when one of his burglaries uncovers a dead body—is what lends the series its buzzy appeal. It’s also the least interesting thing about the show, given that the criminal chicanery is unpersuasive and the investigative suspense is somewhat tedious. But as a jaundiced depiction of moneyed America, Your Friends & Neighbors is appointment viewing, savaging its pearly sophistication with caustic wit and palpable anger. Fuck these monsters. Also, fuck are they fun to be around.
27. Spartacus: House of Ashur (Starz, Season 1). There are worse first-world problems than locking in a TV show’s year-end ranking before seeing its finale (it airs tomorrow night), but it still rankles me in this instance—especially considering how the penultimate episode was so expertly constructed, spurring a late rush up this list. In any event, as with its predecessor series, House of Ashur is a fiendish bait-and-switch. It presents itself as a premium-cable schlock-fest, with copious nudity and gore. The irony is that, while the sex is cool, the violence is the most boring element of the show, as the stiff direction prevents the fight sequences from developing real energy. (The presumably low budget doesn’t help; the central “ludus” looks like it’s housed on a California beach.) But the show is elegantly scripted, with complex characters and crafty plotting. Beyond that, the dialogue is indecently ornate, and while such verbal sumptuousness might suggest that the writers are constantly using a thesaurus, the dialect is instead unified and singular. Forget asking someone what he was dreaming about; here the question is, “What did Morpheus reveal upon his shores?” Gratitude.
26. I Love LA (HBO, Season 1).
25. Adults (FX on Hulu, Season 1).
I don’t know exactly when I got old. I just know that a few years ago, I started becoming increasingly confused by the language I was seeing online, and feeling more and more removed from modern discourse. But even as I fall hopelessly out of touch with Gen Z, I appreciate that the youth movement is seizing the opportunity to reshape pop culture it its own digitized image. I Love LA is the brainchild of Rachel Sennott, maybe the poet laureate of Zoomer self-pity—I remain haunted by her Bodies Bodies Bodies line reading, “A podcast takes a lot of work!”—and it is unapologetically contemporary, with an intense focus on social media and its externalities. Its hyper-awareness can be exhausting, but for a series about influencers and branding, I Love LA is a whooshing good time, nimbly straddling the line between earnest self-regard and meta self-mockery. It is also unabashedly sexy—some of Odessa A’zion’s outfits warrant 911 calls—and its frenetic pacing feels appropriate in the age of TikTok. You can’t take your eyes off the screen, least of all to look at your phone.
Adults is similarly etched in our app-based vernacular, but its tone is less hectic than amiably helpless. Its characters are all nominal losers: poor, unemployed, scatterbrained, clueless. They are also all very nice people, with a collective empathy that’s surprisingly affecting. One of the quirks of the show is that all of its regulars somehow live in the same ramshackle house, and Adults reflects that kind of big-tent sensibility; everyone is welcome, and everyone deserves love—except for the assholes and the racists and the poisonous elites and that one pregnant teenager who’s really mean. The series’ abiding warmth extends to its writing; the relationships, whether straight or queer, are handled with affection, while the dialogue is hip without being self-conscious. These days, kids say the smartest things.
24. Slow Horses (Apple, Season 5; last year: 16 of 88). All seasons of Slow Horses have the same strengths; all seasons of Slow Horses are flawed in their own way. This latest six-episode batch suffers most prominently from its unmemorable villains (a sharp downgrade from Season 4’s Hugo Weaving), plus a terrorist plot that feels lifted from any generic spy novel. Whatever. Everything that makes the show sing remains in place: the flavorful dialogue, the bureaucratic incompetence, the expert blend of geopolitical intrigue and workplace comedy. Gary Oldman does some of his best work yet—be sure to savor his brilliant monologue about Cold War tactics, which functions on several levels at once—and the contrast between his casual superiority and Jack Lowden’s try-hard bumbling is still delightful. This is ostensibly a high-stakes espionage series that traffics in mass chaos and social catastrophe, so naturally one of its best set pieces concludes with a can of paint falling onto someone’s head. In terms of comic timing, only one of Oldman’s farts could be more perfect.
23. Dying for Sex (FX on Hulu, Season 1). Michelle Williams is a radiant actor, so it seems counterproductive to afflict her character with cancer and systematically drain her of her life force. But that cognitive dissonance is the key to Dying for Sex, which takes a tragic situation and transforms it into a vibrant comedy. Not that the series is cavalier; it takes its themes seriously, in particular the pursuit of pleasure and the value of intimacy. That it couches its ideas within a parade of raunch and sadomasochism only strengthens the vitality of its message, while also inoculating its tender emotions against sentimentality. Death has rarely felt this life-affirming.
22. Dept. Q (Netflix, Season 1). Once again, the style trumps the plot. As a mystery, Dept. Q is reasonably engrossing, but its suspense still bumps up against the ceiling of the genre. Yet because the show is the work of Scott Frank (The Queen’s Gambit, Godless), it’s suffused with deep-seated anguish and moral rot, and these qualities imbue it with an intensity that distinguishes it from your typical whodunit. This doesn’t mean the show is a dirge; there’s warm humanity between the central cast, and acid humor accompanies the explosive violence. But there’s also a powerful sense of rage on display, directed at both the flawed bureaucratic system and the larger world. As befits a series about cold cases, this show crawls under your skin and stays there, buried, waiting to be awakened.
21. Étoile (Amazon, Season 1). They did my girl dirty. The work of Amy Sherman-Palladino (creator of one of my all-time faves, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Étoile presumably got cancelled because of its budget, which required extensive shooting in both New York City and Paris, plus hiring a fuck-ton of dancers. (Something tells me Jeff Bezos can afford it.) Regardless, the eight episodes we do have are mostly fabulous—a gorgeous medley of whiz-bang dialogue, lavish dancing, and brimming desire. The storytelling in Étoile isn’t always sound; certain characters feel artificial, and a few subplots wheeze. But this is a beautiful production, featuring what should be a star-making performance from Lou de Laâge. She plays a naturally gifted dancer whose tempestuous temperament keeps getting her into trouble, despite her prodigious talent. In other words, she’s too good for this world. As fate would unfortunately have it, you could say the same for this show.
Coming tomorrow: the honorable mentions.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.