We’re ranking every TV show we watched in 2025. In case you missed the prior episodes, you can find them at the following links:
55. The Beast in Me (Netflix, Season 1). In The Beast in Me, Claire Danes plays a traumatized writer who suspects that her new wealthy neighbor (Matthew Rhys) murdered his previous wife, so she decides to make him the subject of her next book in order to surreptitiously investigate him. It’s an irresistible setup that the show somehow makes possible to resist, thanks to some padded plotting and questionable subplots (not to mention an extremely dumb ending). Still, this show isn’t boring; Danes weaponizes her classic lip quiver to full effect, while Rhys is effortlessly watchable as a casually entitled predator. The series embodies the best and worst of Netflix’s binge model—it strings you along and keeps you on the hook, repeatedly sinking its teeth but never drawing blood.
54. Nobody Wants This (Netflix, Season 2; last year: 30 of 88). This show is still cute. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody have strong romantic chemistry, while Justine Lupe and Timothy Simons do excellent work on the margins. But the serialized plot—an endless “will they won’t they” centering on whether Bell’s shiksa is truly compatible with Brody’s rabbi—has zoomed past irritating and is now maddening. I’m happy to spend time with this series because the actors are charming and the characters are well-drawn, but it’s just looping around and around, with a finale that makes you question why you just watched 10 episodes of the same eternal handwringing. On the seventh day, God told these kids to make up their damned minds so he could rest.
53. The Four Seasons (Netflix, Season 1). You might think that a series called The Four Seasons, a remake of a 1981 Alan Alda movie (which I’ve never seen), would run for 4 episodes. It lasts 8, because the first rule of Netflix spending is why make something short when you could make it twice as long for twice the price. But it’s at least structured like a TV show, with episodic focus and calculated time jumps. Framework aside, The Four Seasons is mostly just good company, featuring a solid cast (Tina Fey, Will Forte, Colman Domingo) and a reasonably thoughtful exploration of contemporary marriage. It just isn’t all that funny, and some of its attempts at comedy are painfully strained. It’s a show you’re happy to vacation with, and also one you’re relieved you don’t have to see every day.
52. Peacemaker (HBO Max, Season 2; 2022 rank: 29 of 110). James Gunn was a great choice to take over the DCU… right? He’s a gifted writer, one whose penchant for fastidiously selected needle drops can overshadow his facility for witty dialogue and elegant plotting. On a scene-to-scene basis, Peacemaker is thoroughly entertaining. But zoom out, and a troubling picture emerges in how insistently the series is integrating itself with its broader cinematic universe. Dude, no! This show is supposed to be goofy and wild and weird, with quirky characters and random villains; it doesn’t need Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor showing up for a freighted cameo with a dun-dun-dun score. Let Marvel deal with the sweaty cross-promotion, and stay focused on the amazing dance-title sequences.
51. Platonic (Apple, Season 2; 2023 rank: 62 of 94). Steadfast friendships don’t need to change, but TV shows need to evolve. This presents a problem for Platonic, which insists on complicating its central pairing for dramatic purposes, rather than just letting it exist. It’s understandable but frustrating, because Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen have terrific chemistry, and when the show just allows them to play off one another, it’s delightful. (A fantastic episode where Beck Bennett joins the mix proves that three is not a crowd.) These pals can endure anything together, except maybe the demands of a serialized plot.
50. Paradise (Hulu, Season 1). This show is completely ridiculous, and that’s exactly why I like it. It’s very twisty, but its success doesn’t hinge on its many surprises (most of which are preposterous). They’re just part of the series’ heightened sensation—a pervasive desperation that informs every clenched decision and sudden betrayal and crazy flashback. Sterling K. Brown is an actor of great integrity, which makes him the ideal center for such a demented universe, where nothing is as it seems and where every turn of the plot just leads to another hairpin curve. It’s nonsense. It’s also heavenly.
49. Chad Powers (Hulu, Season 1). I’m almost mad at myself for enjoying this show. It’s a shameless piece of ESPN corporate synergy (it’s rooted in an Eli Manning docuseries, for chrissakes), and its premise—Glen Powell plays a disgraced ex-quarterback who undergoes Mrs. Doubtfire-inspired makeup and tries out for a college football team—is about as plausible as that of Paradise. But so help me, it mostly works. Powell embraces the part’s absurdity, and the writing both invites and subverts sports-movie clichés. We love turning athletes into gods; turns out they’re also heroic when they’re fools.
48. The Rehearsal (HBO, Season 2; 2022 rank: 72). I hesitate to include The Rehearsal in these rankings, because I’m not sure it’s really a TV show at all; it’s more an elaborate piece of performance art that happens to air under HBO’s umbrella. (Naturally, it comments on this.) But while Nathan Fielder’s meta production defies qualitative classification (is it good? is it bad? how should I know?), it is certainly distinctive, with a number of sequences unlike any that have ever aired on the small screen (or any screen). I’m still not convinced the series represents some sort of historic achievement—it’s a little too proud of itself, a little too self-aware—but it does feel like a small piece of history.
47. Mo (Netflix, Season 2). It lacks the hook and spark of Ramy, but Mo is appealing as the work of an artist with his own voice, and with something to say beyond “America amirite?” The plotting is a little slack, but that’s in keeping with the show’s relaxed vibe; it wants you to enjoy yourself, even as it indicts the Kafkaesque caliber of U.S. immigration policy. And in chronicling its hero’s efforts to reconnect with his homeland, it upends convention, revealing that in today’s America, you can love it and leave it at the same time.
46. House of Guinness (Netflix, Season 1). This show should be forgettable Netflix bloat: another serialized drama about a Succession-lite family that pads out its story for no real reason. And yet, despite its dime-store Peaky Blinders vibe, House of Guinness proves surprisingly enjoyable, with strong performances and solidly defined characters. It’s a series that presents as masculine, with its smoggy aesthetic and brutish violence, yet its most memorable performance comes from Danielle Galligan as a perceptive and morally flexible woman with her own forceful desires. Sláinte, indeed.
45. The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu, Season 6; 2022 rank: 20). They overshot it by one. The conventional wisdom on The Handmaid’s Tale is that it started off great before quickly falling off. For my part, I loved the first four seasons and was fond of Season 5 as well. This last go-round is the first one that betrays signs of repetition and hesitancy, as though the writers finally backed themselves into a corner. That said, it remains watchable; Elisabeth Moss can still hold a close-up, and Bradley Whitford is the ideal purveyor of exasperated decency. The revolution may end with a whimper, but it’s nonetheless one for the storybooks.
44. American Primeval (Netflix, Season 1). The old West was a rough time, and American Primeval channels that ugliness with productive clarity. There’s nothing fancy about the series, but it succeeds as a work of brute force, with clockwork plotting and appropriately grisly set pieces. Betty Gilpin and Taylor Kitsch are both reliable, but keep your eye on Saura Lightfoot-Leon, who lends this cruel enterprise a whiff of longing.
43. The Paper (Peacock, Season 1). And once again, I find myself enjoying a program despite my better instincts. In origin, The Paper is a vulgar and mercenary brand extension, a shameless Office spinoff that hopes to draw viewers based on their affection for a decades-old property. In execution, it’s pretty good! Domhnall Gleeson is suitably hapless as a lovesick boss who’s half-Michael and half-Jim, Chelsea Frei oozes charm as a competent and frustrated subordinate, and the supporting cast brings just the right degree of flavorful silliness. Throw in some genuinely touching concern for the demise of print journalism, and The Paper is hard to resist, even if it’s just republishing the same old story.
42. A Man on the Inside (Netflix, Season 2; last year: 41). Also unnecessary, also cute!
41. The Girlfriend (Amazon, Season 1). This show is trash. It’s a shamelessly hacky production about a possible gold-digger (Olivia Cooke) who swiftly seduces a rich dude, to the displeasure of his finger-wagging mother (Robin Wright). It is extravagant and strident and obscene, and I consumed it greedily. The breathy soundtrack, the alluring costumes, the dual-perspective conceit—all make the series immensely entertaining, even if it isn’t remotely credible. Except, that is, for the lead performances, as Cooke and Wright both bring real shading to their viperous characters without blunting their razor-sharp edges. It’s all shriller, no filler.
Coming tomorrow: sleuths, sisters, comedians, and hockey players.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.