30 Best Shows of 2025 So Far

In Lumon, a company that resembles the increasingly intrusive oligarchs of Big Tech, Mark (Adam Scott) and his colleagues undergo a procedure that allows them to separate their work memories from their non-work memories. It sounds like a dream: the perfect work-life balance. But things get complicated when one colleague mysteriously leaves and is replaced by confused new hire, Helly (Britt Lower). Mark and Helly dig into shocking truths about what they really do, and for whom.

Just like the endless halls of Lumon, Severance is filled with twists and turns, many of which are impossible to see coming. Slow, smart, and sneaked with a dystopian eerieness that doesn’t feel all that far off, Severance is sure to leave you wary of corporate slavishness, if you aren’t already.

Each episode of the medical show The Pitt follows an ER team over the course of an hour. There are no time jumps or montages, this is real-time for them. Countless patients come and go, their injuries ranging from terrifying to deadly, and whether they live or die depends on how fast the team responds. Leading everyone is Dr. Robby Rabinavitch (Noah Wyle), who is himself recovering from the trauma of losing a colleague during the COVID pandemic. However, unlike Grey’s Anatomy, the drama of the characters in The Pitt takes a backseat to the patients’ issues. That’s not to say we don’t get to know the characters well, just that the writers have very smartly and subtly found a way to integrate who they are into what they do. Much like the medical staff who front it, The Pitt is a highly efficient show. We experience a roller coaster of emotions and get what feels like a lifetime’s worth of medical exposure in a span of an hour. It’s intense, chaotic, disturbing, and at times even triggering. But it also feels essential to watch. It’s a welcome reminder of our mortality and the humanity needed to keep it at bay.

All four episodes of Adolescence are shot in a singular, shocking take. The camera takes us along as Jamie Miller (an outstanding Owen Cooper) is arrested for suspected murder. In one episode we follow Jamie and his confused father (co-creator and writer Stephen Graham), in another we follow DI Luke Bascombe (Ashley Walters). And in one particularly head-spinning episode, we follow Jamie and his psychiatrist Briony (Erin Doherty) as they both try to get in each other’s heads. The series may seem like a straightforward murder mystery at first. Like Apple TV+’s Defending Jacob, it asks, did young Jamie do it? Will his parents believe him? Will we? But those questions are almost secondary to what the show really gets at. It takes on violent misogyny, a growing trend among the Andrew Tate-influenced youth. It takes on parental guilt, grief, and moral responsibility. It’s a hefty piece of work, but the naturalism of the script and the intimacy of the single-takes makes it feel terrifyingly close to home.

Asura is a very particular period piece about the typical, rule-following Japanese family in the 1970s, and yet it feels universal too in its tales of family, marriage, and above all else sisterhood. Based on a novel by Mukoda Kuniko, Asura captures the frustrating, odd, exhilarating, and reassuring specificity of having a sister. You could be in a severe argument one second but laugh about an accident in the next. You could get mad at your sister for staying in a toxic relationship while offering her a place to stay and promising not to judge her in the same breath. And as we witness the dynamics of these four sisters, we also get to see the relationships they pursue (or run away from) all while trying to stay afloat amid Japan’s rigid societal rules. “Is it happiness for women to not make waves?” their mother asks. The entire series sees the women try and fail and try again to answer that all-important and ever-relevant question.

Fictionalizing their famous friends to satirize Hollywood isn’t new for Rogen and Goldberg (see: the stupidly brilliant This is the End), but in The Studio, the writing pair trade manchild and weed jokes for something more adult and high stakes. Rogen is still playing a version of himself—an anxious goofball eager to please—but he just so happens to be a bigshot producer now, and so a bigshot producer he plays. The pair take it a step further by making Rogen’s Matt Remick the head of a billion-dollar studio, Continental Pictures. And so it’s the usual hijinks, but this time with deeper (and depressing) insight into the industry’s inner workings. Rogen employs a circus car’s worth of renowned actors and directors to play themselves, all delivering hilarious performances. Martin Scorsese and Sarah Polley are early standouts.

Dying for Sex feels like two shows in one. Mainly, it follows Molly (Williams), a 40-something diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer, and Nikki (Jenny Slate), her messy but fun-loving best friend who is trying to keep up with Molly’s increasing needs. It gets into the gritty reality of Molly’s emotional and physical pain and explores how her relationship with Nikki both fractures and solidifies as her cancer advances. But the show is also largely about sex. It sheds light on the unique struggle people like Molly have to go through to satisfy sexual needs, which, if anything, only intensifies when one is ill. Instead of being desired, Molly is pitied by her husband, who is too afraid to be intimate with her. So Molly, with nothing to lose, explores sex and sexuality. She touches herself, watches videos, goes on dating apps, and starts a BDSM-esque relationship with her neighbor. The series is raunchy and mines a lot of humor from Molly’s journey, but it’s equally sobering and enlightening. It expertly blends these seemingly opposing scenarios and still comes out feeling solidly made. It will make you go through a roller coaster of emotions, which feels apt for a show about life and death.

Masculinity can look like different things, and Big Boys reminds us of that in hilarious and poignant ways. The British series follows best friends Jack and Danny, university students who seem happy enough on the outside but who are dealing with their own issues. Jack still mourns the sudden loss of his dad while struggling to start his journey as a freshly-out gay man. Danny, an expert in social situations, happily helps him even though he’s secretly depressed himself. They’re joined by Corrine and Yemi, characters who blossom slowly but surely in the next seasons. Their friends and family give them a boost, but it’s Jack and Danny’s rare friendship that holds the show down and gives it a solid emotional core. In an era when “No Homo” jokes are still rampant, Jack and Danny are proof that men can explore their emotions and forge deep friendships without breaking under the pressure of gender norms. And men being in touch with their feelings doesn’t always have to be a joke. It can be funny, sure, but also real and true, like this show.

You’ll have to trust us on this: it’s best to know absolutely nothing about this show before you start watching. There’s a reason all the promos you see on it say near to nothing about it, and it’s a reason you’ll be thankful for at the end of the first episode. What we will say is that Paradise is a refreshing take on political thrillers, and the cast–mainly Sterling K. Brown and Julianne Nicholson–are compelling in their flexibility, confidence, and vulnerability. The show is genre-defying, but what drives it above all else is mystery. Creator Dan Fogelman (This Is Us) might have slightly gone haywire with the flashbacks, but he’s careful not to give anything away too quickly. Instead, we’re left with mysterious puzzle pieces, unpredictably solved by Brown’s character.

Created by Peaky Blinders showrunner Steven Knight, A Thousand Blows zooms in on the London Victorian underworld and follows three outsiders trying to uplift themselves in different, often illegal ways. There’s Mary Carr (Erin Rachael Doherty), an ambitious pickpocket who heads an all-female crime syndicate; Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), a merchant by day and bare-knuckle boxing champion by night; and London newcomer Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby), a Jamaican lion tamer who gets roped into Mary and Sugar’s complicated world. The conflicts the show takes onshow’s conflicts are as old as time: wealth inequality, gender divide, and racial discrimination. But Knight gives them a modern refresh so, coupled with razor-sharp dialogue, impressive choreography, gorgeous 1880s details, and stellar performances (particularly from Kirby), the show is invigorating to watch. Peaky Blinders fans who are missing the show will especially appreciate its grit and dark humor.

It’s easy to feel like you’ll know exactly what you’ll get once you see stills from Guy Ritchie’s MobLand, which stars Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, and Helen Mirren. But while it features cliches of the mafia genre, MobLand is far from boring. Plenty of things are happening all at once, and in lesser hands, these storylines would’ve been a mess. But under Ritchie’s veteran guidance, things come together elegantly. It helps that Hardy is the perfect lead. Sure, he’s tough as the London underground’s main fixer, but he’s also surprisingly polite at times and quick-wittedly humorous at others. In the show’s quieter moments, he even manages to be poignant. The changes in tone are never jarring, instead always arriving at the right time. Even if Ritchie and Hardy have directed and starred in too-many-to-mention mob stories, they still delight and surprise in this enjoyable British series.