When you see the word “content,” what do you hear? Emphasize the second syllable, and the homograph functions as an adjective, describing a feeling of satisfaction. But say the first syllable like the name of a famous Star Trek villain, and the word becomes a noun referring to material, substance, stuff. In this form, “content” doesn’t carry any positive or negative associations. It’s just something that’s there.
This is generally not a healthy description of entertainment. The equation of art with content is pernicious—the kind of corporate jargon used by private-equity vampires rather than true creatives. Yet as the streaming wars rage and the subscriber rates stall and the executives start reinventing this idea called cable, it becomes difficult to shake the sensation that contemporary television is trafficking more in mass production than genuine imagination. Another historical drama. Another sitcom. Another murder mystery, or hooky thriller, or fantasy epic. More and more packaged morsels for the algorithm to feed to hungry consumers. It is too much content, too little contentment.
This might seem like a strange introduction from someone who’s about to spend the next week spending far too many hours and words ranking nearly 100 TV shows from the past year. And to be clear, I don’t dislike most of what I watch on the small screen. A handful of series are truly exceptional, and even when the writing is lackluster, the vast majority of programs still tend to sport talented actors and solid production values. The average television show these days is fine, which is another way of saying it’s forgettable.
So be it. We’ve been doing this annual exercise since 2014, and we’re not going to stop just because of an ongoing avalanche of mediocrity. The usual rules apply: I’ve seen every episode (current and prior seasons) of every show on the ensuing list, which isn’t a bell curve, and despite the appearance of numerical rigidity, the rankings are more guidelines than rules, to the point where most shows could slide up or down 10-15 spots and I’d hardly notice. And remember, if your favorite series doesn’t appear, it’s not because I had too much else to watch, it’s because I dislike you.
Here begin the rankings of every TV show I watched in 2025 (new installments will appear throughout the week):
97. We Were Liars (Amazon, Season 1). It’s facile to claim that all novels now get turned into 8-hour TV series rather than 2-hour movies, but it sure feels like television has become the primary ground for visual transliteration. This typically results in baggy narratives, forced cliffhangers, and occasional moments where loyal readers can excitedly point at the screen because they recognize something from the book. We Were Liars has a few decent actors (Caitlin FitzGerald, David Morse), but its storytelling is completely inane, adopting a dual-timeline conceit whose sole purpose is to disguise an absurd final twist that’s less shocking than exasperating. It’s all there in the title, I suppose, but that’s no excuse for a series whose fundamental quality is its fraudulence.
96. Daredevil: Born Again (Disney, Season 1). I have long since given up trying to untangle the tedious ownership battle between Disney, Netflix, and Marvel, but the subtitle here gives the game away and exposes Born Again as a piece of mercenary rebranding. Oh, those three seasons of Daredevil from the 2010s that you might sort of remember? We’re bringing those guys back, but better! If you say so. I suppose it’s nice to see Charlie Cox again, and Vincent D’Onofrio remains a fearsome growler, but aside from a single episode involving a bank robbery (whose execution fails to really pop), there is nothing memorable at work here. It’s just filler—another chunk of intellectual property for completists to consume so that they might better appreciate a future reference or cameo in a subsequent installment. There’s no meaning in blindness when there’s nothing to see.
95. Butterfly (Amazon, Season 1). I can hardly despise this show, since it’s nice to see a series set (and filmed!) in South Korea, starring likable Asian actors in Daniel Dae Kim and Reina Hardesty. Unfortunately, very little about Butterfly’s spy-game intrigue is persuasive. (Piper Perabo as an unscrupulous vixen who runs a private intelligence agency? Sorry, not buying it.) And while I’m usually loath to ding a show for a terrible ending—TV is typically about the journey, not the destination—the final scene here is truly reprehensible, either clumsily betraying everything that came before or shamelessly teasing a second season which will never come to pass. Regardless, instead of spreading its wings, Butterfly gets stuck in a chintzy cocoon.
94. The Summer I Turned Pretty (Amazon, Season 3). Season 2 of The Summer I Turned Pretty—fraught with purported suspense over who might inherit a beach house—is one of the dumbest batch of episodes I have ever had the displeasure of watching. That makes the garden-variety badness of this third and final season vaguely palatable, with flaws—wild tonal swings, dubious logistics, an endlessly shifting love triangle—that are less enraging than annoying. What’s most notable about the show, far more than its wan characters or its cringeworthy writing, is how it reveals the limits of the power of pop music. With material this flimsy, even a double-album’s worth of Taylor Swift needle drops can’t save it. It’s not a love story, it’s a blank space.
93. The Last Frontier (Apple, Season 1). There are some appealing qualities here: The wintry location is distinctive (production took place in Canada, doubling for Alaska), and a few early set pieces (directed by Sam Hargrave, of Extraction fame) pop with ingenuity. But the novelty soon wears off, and before long The Last Frontier reveals itself as another generic streaming production, with a padded plot, tiresome characters, and unconvincing details. The scenery is frigid, and so is the momentum.
92. Reacher (Amazon, Season 3; 2023 rank: 75 of 94). Wait, Season 3? I’ve seen 24 episodes of this? You’d think that would give the series enough time to develop a personality beyond, “Check out this dude, he’s big.”
91. Long Bright River (Peacock, Season 1). Amanda Seyfried had a good December at the movies, starring in both The Housemaid and The Testament of Ann Lee. She’s an A-lister, which makes you wonder what the hell she’s doing anchoring this plodding mystery, which is less terrible than supremely forgettable. I think I remember who the killer is, but that hardly matters; what’s really dispiriting is how disposable this show is, and how even Seyfried’s presence can’t infuse it with energy or color. It just trudges along, like a cop walking the beat waiting to clock out.
90. The Wheel of Time (Amazon, Season 3; 2023 rank: 88). In my dementia-addled brain, this show has grown indistinguishable from Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series. The pretty landscapes, the weightless action, the torturously complicated mythology—it’s all just grist for the IP mill. To my understanding (which is based on reading the book as a teenager, not from recalling anything about the show), the Wheel of Time is a metaphysical device that describes how the world just keeps on turning, no matter what. As applied to a content-generating fantasy series, the metaphor is far too apt.
89. The Chair Company (HBO, Season 1). I’ll admit that this one has personality. From the sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave to the anti-comedy feature Friendship, Tim Robinson has constructed his own distinctive brand, a kind of cringe humor founded on absurdity, extremity, and social helplessness. In theory, it’s interesting how this mode of storytelling might be applied to a serialized conspiracy mystery. In practice, I experienced The Chair Company the same way I absorbed Robinson’s prior productions: laughing once or twice, but otherwise constantly wincing, rolling my eyes, and waiting for it to be over. This dude is simply not for me. To paraphrase Robinson’s most popular meme, I am sick of trying to find the guy who did this.
88. The Righteous Gemstones (HBO, Season 4; 2023 rank: 77). Ibid.
87. Down Cemetery Road (Apple, Season 1). Emma Thompson gives a wonderful performance in Down Cemetery Road, playing a dyspeptic private eye who’s less interested in solving the case than in getting laid, and who seeks justice less out of moral decency than familial obligation. Unfortunately, the show itself is strenuously interested in unraveling its own tangled plot, which glances toward topicality (governmental malfeasance! biological warfare!) but has little to say of genuine substance. There’s some welcome detail on the margins—beyond Thompson, Adeel Akhtar and Darren Boyd concoct a bizarrely nasty relationship as a sweaty G-man and his casually evil superior—but the main story is such a slog, it overrides any sense of color. In so studiously pursuing its own tiresome intrigue, Down Cemetery Road steadily marches into its own grave.
86. The Waterfront (Netflix, Season 1). This is your prototypical Netflix show: a few decent actors (Holt McCallany, Melissa Benoist), a vaguely interesting hook, a flat televisual style, and a story that just spins its wheels, loading up the cliffhangers and expecting you to greedily hit the “Watch Next Episode” button so that you can consume the next manufactured shock. It’s not terrible (Topher Grace popping up as the main villain is cute), but it’s not suspenseful or persuasive or provocative either. It’s just there. In that sense, maybe The Waterfront is 2025’s show of the year.
Coming later today: Warriors, murderers, dictators, and news anchors.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.