MovieManifesto

Our rankings of every TV show of 2025 continue apace. Yesterday featured two installments; you can find them here and here.

70. Stick (Apple, Season 1). Owen Wilson seems like a nice guy, and Stick—about a disgraced golfer who decides to return to the game by coaching a teenage prodigy—is a pretty nice show. Even the main antagonist is more of a rapscallion than a villain (it helps that he’s played by Timothy Olyphant). But pleasant vibes can only get you so far, and Stick has too little personal or dramatic urgency to be engrossing. Wilson’s athlete talks about the need to take chances, yet this series lays up again and again.

69. North of North (Netflix, Season 1). Cute! Cold! Cheerful and also quite insubstantial!

68. Sirens (Netflix, Season 1). This show tries to be both a twisty thriller and a biting satire about moneyed elites and how ostensibly powerful women are nonetheless subjugated by the entrenched patriarchy. It doesn’t really work; the plotting is too silly to take seriously, and the themes are clunky rather than forceful. But it’s still diverting, thanks to three watchable performances from Meghann Fahy, Julianne Moore, and Milly Alcock. (Kevin Bacon is also around for reasons that he doesn’t seem to understand.) And as you’d expect from that cast list, it’s quite pretty, with vivid pastels and glamorous costumes. Sirens may ram its ideas down your throat, but those lovely dresses make the didacticism go down easier. Read More

We’re ranking every TV show we watched in 2025—all 97 of them. If you missed the first installment, you can find it here.

85. Only Murders in the Building (Hulu, Season 5; last year: 67 of 88). Sigh. Schematically, the design of this show remains appealing, as the criminal investigation is just scaffolding for the actors’ cheerful, exasperated banter. But five seasons in, the dialogue lacks the zip it once possessed, and rather than settling into a groove, the character dynamics have calcified. There’s nothing wrong with Only Murders in the Building constantly repeating itself, because formulaic shows like this are supposed to repeat themselves. But the initial vivacity has been replaced by tedium and obligation (plus an annoying reliance on high-wattage guest stars). It might be time for these folks to move out. Read More

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. Read More