David Phillips’ Best in TV 2025

The first half of the television year was so heavy with quality that, as I was selecting my best-of-the-year choices, I almost asked myself, “Did that actually come out last year?” With the Emmys working on a “television year” (June 1, 2024, to May 31, 2025) instead of a calendar one, as my “best of” does, you can end up questioning yourself a lot. 

Regardless, it was a solid year for television. Once again, streaming networks have produced most of the high-quality TV over the last year. Still, one notable inclusion on my list harks back to the age when the big four networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, & FOX) used to dominate year-end lists and Emmy nominations, even if that show didn’t run on a free network. 

It’s hard to say what the future of network television holds. With series and shows unable to match the streamers in terms of quality and frankness due to free-network content standards, the big four networks are primarily offering comfort-food programs and reality TV. In terms of prestige television, there simply aren’t many reasons for creators to come to network television with challenging ideas that are explicit in any way regarding language, sexuality, and (less so) violence. Broadcast standards put the networks behind the eight-ball, and it’s hard to see how that will ever change, especially in an increasingly polarized society. Trying to solve the problem in a “something for everyone” manner is a path to nowhere. 

Thankfully, high-level programming still exists on our televisions through the streamers. If anything, the issues viewers are most likely to struggle with are having too many options and streaming networks that are all too fickle about canceling shows with niche appeal or that begin with small audiences. Trusting in a streamer to renew a show you just fell in love with will often lead to disappointment. In the last few years, I have been stung by the untimely cancellations of Tokyo Vice, The Man Who Fell To Earth, and The Old Man—all shows that made my year-end list. In a former life, showrunners had to worry about the attention spans of their viewers, but in this modern era, it’s the patience (or lack thereof) of the networks themselves that is the concern. 

Alright, let’s move on. 

But first, a special note on The Savant (Apple TV): Maybe I’ll get to talk about it in detail in 2026, if Apple TV actually releases Jessica Chastain’s show about a government agent infiltrating a domestic terrorist group made up of white supremacists. I guess we’ll see at some point. Apple TV postponed the show on September 23, 2025, after the murder of Charlie Kirk. For now, The Savant is under review embargo, and I can’t say anything more about it. “We’ll get ‘em next year,” I hope.

Honorable Mentions

I Love L.A. (HBOMAX): For those who miss Lena Dunham’s Girls (if not Lena Dunham), Rachel Sennot’s I Love L.A. is a terrific substitute. Sennot has been on the come since her excellent 2020 performance in Shiva Baby. She made further impressions with Bodies Bodies Bodies, Bottoms, and Saturday Night. I Love L.A. presents as a great leap forward for Sennot. Not only is she the lead character of the series, but she is also the creator, executive producer, and primary writer of the show. She even directs the final episode. Sennot has arrived.

The Paper (Peacock): It could have been a terrible idea. It should have been. Greg Daniels, the creator of The Office (US), decided to make a spin-off based around a Toledo, Ohio newspaper instead of, you know, paper paper, which is a surprisingly inspired choice. Only Oscar (“from accounting”) comes over from The Office, but the same mixture of uncomfortable humor and appealing characters is still in full effect. Top marks to Domnhall Gleason as the show’s editor for not giving a Michael Scott part 2 performance as the newspaper’s editor, and Chelsea Frei as a journalist who finds her voice, and maybe a romance with Gleason.

Stories of Surrender (Apple TV): The TV movie may be all but dead, but the special performance film isn’t. Director Andrew Dominik helps U2’s Bono recreate his book tour/concert tour/multimedia extravaganza for Apple TV with aplomb. Stories can’t quite recreate the “being there” experience of sitting front and center (as I did) at the Beacon Theatre on Broadway, but it comes pretty close. Thanks to striking black-and-white cinematography by Erik Messerschmidt, Dominik’s artful touches, and, most importantly, the U2 frontman’s storytelling gifts, Stories of Surrender effectively splits the difference between a stage presentation and a cinematic experience. 

The Leopard (Netflix): Based on the most successful Italian novel ever written, The Leopard not only has to live up to the source material, but also Luchino Visconti’s classic 1963 film adaptation starring Burt Lancaster, Alain Delon, and Claudia Cardinale. This series version doesn’t boast names as familiar to American audiences as Visconti’s film, but no matter, the series is terrific. Not to mention that a show about the death of an aristocracy (even that of a 19th-century Italian prince—Kim Rossi Stuart, in a towering performance) does speak to our current day—the very wealthy few control so much of our modern world. The Leopard is a reminder that we used to have revolutions over this sort of inequity. Now we just complain on Facebook. 

Alien: Earth (FX/Hulu): The unkindest cut from my top ten. The first half of the eight-episode season, building on Ridley Scott’s Alien universe, presented as quality genre work, but had me wondering if we really needed another Alien variant. Saying that Alien: Earth is the best iteration of Giger’s monster felt like faint praise, no matter how true. Then came the fifth episode, “In Space, No One,” which played like a superior 64-minute movie. The episode, a self-contained flashback, delivered the tears and fears while also setting up the true moral implications of what came before, and what followed in the final three episodes. Questions of humanity, scientific ethics, and artificial intelligence are seriously considered, as is the possibility that maybe the aliens aren’t the enemy. Perhaps it’s us. Sydney Chandler, as a hybrid “replicant” (the show deftly nods to Scott’s other great sci-fi film, Blade Runner), and Timothy Olyphant as a synthetic (think Lance Henriksen in Aliens) are both terrific. But it’s Babou Ceesay’s morally ambiguous cyborg who steals the show. This Alien project earns appreciation far beyond nostalgia.

The Top Ten

10) Katrina: Come Hell and High Water (Netflix): Both a recap and a follow-up to the 2005 hurricane that hit New Orleans and the calamitous days after the storm made landfall, this docuseries went well beyond a summation of events and the subsequent fallout. Come Hell and High Water, in trenchant and heartbreaking fashion, exposes the political, racial, and economic divides that continue to tear at the fiber of this country. No one is above criticism over the show’s three episodes. The 2005 failure of the federal, state, and city governments, shared by the democrats (Mayor Ray Nagin, Governor Kathleen Blanco) and republicans (President George W. Bush, and the Louisiana state legislature), is so painful to watch that I found myself with my hands on my head yelling at the TV. But the series doesn’t stop there. In subsequent years, the best intentions of liberals also take a beating. Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation’s effort to create “green homes” for local citizens resulted in unlivable housing that couldn’t withstand water(!). Teach for America sent inexpensive instructors into the school system, displacing local educators with young, inexperienced, and primarily white teachers who had no cultural understanding of their students and no long-term commitment to the area. Most painfully, there is the understanding that due to poor funding, bad rebuilding, and still ineffective levees, this nightmare is almost sure to repeat itself. It’s only a matter of “when.”

9) Dope Thief (Apple TV): Maybe the saddest love story of the TV year. Gifted actors Bryan Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura play childhood friends who grow up to become robbers of drug dealers. What begins as a Robin Hood tale quickly becomes a desperate bid to avoid the authorities as the two men mistakenly rob an infiltrated dealer and badly injure an undercover agent (Marin Ireland in a career-best performance). Henry and Moura aren’t lovers in the conventional sense. Think of them as a very unhealthy version of Morgan Freeman and Tim Robbins’ characters from Shawshank. Where those two men lifted each other, Henry and Moura pull each other down. Dope Thief is a riveting crime series that gives Henry the best showcase of his career, and he does not miss. Excellent support is supplied by Ving Rhames (as Henry’s convict father), Liz Carribel Sierra (Moura’s girlfriend), and especially the grand Kate Mulgrew as Henry’s adoptive mother. Ridley Scott directs the first episode, and it’s his best work behind the camera in over a decade.

8) Mr. Scorsese (Apple TV): Hands down the most purely enjoyable five hours of television I watched all year. Director Rebecca Miller aces the mission as the assembler of facts and film, showcasing the extraordinary career of Martin Scorsese. As good as Miller is at connecting the dots between Scorsese’s upbringing and the influence it had on the films he made, she also proves to be an ace interviewer. Scorsese himself is a wonderfully enthusiastic subject, but Miller’s ability to pull just enough teeth, I mean words, out of Robert De Niro should be studied. Miller and her ace editor, David Bartner, turn every pregnant pause and incomplete sentence of the notoriously difficult interview subject that De Niro is into genuine value. Beyond that, the summation of Scorsese’s numerous successes and occasional failures is delivered with a well-below-the-surface touch. The only flaw in Mr. Scorsese is that it isn’t long enough. That’s one hell of a statement about a docuseries based on a single filmmaker’s work.

7) Plur1bus (Apple TV): Of all the shows that one might have envisioned coming from Vince Gilligan after leaving the Breaking Bad Universe, Plur1bus was not likely in anyone’s crystal ball. Moving away from pulp and into science fiction, Gilligan has created one of the most confounding and surprising shows of the year. Surprising for the genre switch by Gilligan, and confounding because of the very difficult questions it asks its audience to wrestle with. The great Rhea Seehorn plays Carol, a successful but self-loathing science fiction novelist who is one of the last people on earth not to merge with a new race that speaks as one entity, and removes all individualism in an effort to create world harmony. Carol, our very reluctant hero, pushes back against efforts to enter the fold and become “out of many, one.” Plur1bus asks us to consider what it means to be human: never to know sadness or true joy, or to ever have another spontaneous moment. Is it worth it for a life of relative ease and limited pain? To his great credit, Gilligan offers no easy answers. Apple TV has reported that Plur1bus is the most-watched series in its history. I can’t help but think that if a show this patient, thoughtful, and cerebral can be this successful, then maybe there is hope for us after all.

6) Task (HBO MAX): Set in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, and in the Mare of Easttown Universe, Task starts slowly, but soon builds to a finale that is every bit as powerful as its Kate Winslett-starring predecessor. Show creator Brad Ingelsby once again expertly weaves together the personal demons of those on both sides of the law with their occupations. Mark Ruffalo stars as an FBI agent prone to the bottle due to a horrific family tragedy. Tom Pelphrey is the man he’s chasing, a small-time criminal stealing from a drug-dealing biker gang who has more on his mind than financial gain. Emilia Jones plays Pelphrey’s put-upon niece, who acts as a surrogate mother to his children while he is out robbing low-rent leather jacket-wearing Harley riders. As great as Ruffalo and Pelphrey are, it is Jones (all but unrecognizable from her breakout role in Coda) who provides the heart and hope in Task. That being said, the final moments of Task, featuring Ruffalo at family court, are the most moving I saw all year. Task is coming back for a second season. I’m not sure how they took this one, but after Mare and season one of Task, in Ingelsby I trust.

5) A Thousand Blows (Hulu): Steven Knight’s House of Guinness (Netflix) may be his gaudier, more heavily stylized, and better-promoted series, but it’s his look at the early years of professional boxing in London that is his true prestige entry of 2025. It’s actually a bit reductive to call A Thousand Blows a “boxing series,” especially when it so incisively covers the struggle of the classes in late 19th century London, the plight of women in an age of man that offers them little agency beyond pickpocketing and selling themselves, and perhaps most impressively, the Caribbean migration of men and women looking for a better life only to find themselves under the boot-heel of racism. Stephen Graham is a physical and emotional beast, a bare-knuckle fighter who refuses to civilize, at a high cost to himself. Erin Doherty is just as good as a Madame/ringleader of female thieves who is never quite worthy of anyone’s trust. Last but not least, Malachi Kirby is excellent as a Jamaican immigrant navigating a strange new world where he quickly learns the rule of “No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs.” There is a lot going on in A Thousand Blows, but it all hangs together due to the fierce intensity of the writing, direction, editing, and crafts that place you in a time where some lived with grime under their nails, some with not a speck of dust on their fingers, and a few in-between. In that way, A Thousand Blows resonates in our current day as one of the most significant movements of wealth from the many to the few is underway.

4) The Pitt (HBO MAX): Aside from a few swear words and some emergency room nudity, HBO’s The Pitt is the one show on my top-ten list that genuinely feels like a classic network show from the ‘90s. The fact that The Pitt stars Noah Wyle as an emergency room doctor and one of the series’ producers is John Wells (also of ER fame) breeds familiarity, but, to the show’s great credit, not contempt. If Wyle feels like an older, savvier, but more distressed version of his Doctor Carter from NBC’s long-running hit medical drama ER, that may well be by design. What’s fascinating is how fresh the show feels while tugging at the hem of nostalgia’s garment. The simple fact is the show is so well written, performed, and, well, urgent, that all sense of ceremony is replaced by bracing drama. Within the cast, there are a few relatively familiar faces, but every one of them is worth remembering (particularly the head nurse, played by Katharine LaNasa). The show’s conceit of being told in real time, with each of its sixteen episodes representing one hour of a double shift at the hospital, is delivered with nerve-rattling fervor. The Pitt is also a very timely show that presents an underfunded urgent care unit with an overworked staff working against the healthcare system that should be supporting the doctors, nurses, and patients, but often doesn’t. Despite its conventions, The Pitt feels like it’s breaking new ground somehow. Even if I can’t explain the “how.” What I do know is that if the broadcast networks shot the same show and dropped a handful of curses and artfully avoided showing anyone’s exposed bits, a series like this would restore luster to network television.

3) The Bear (FX): It has become somewhat popular to take shots at The Bear as a show that hasn’t held up well since its instant classic season two. I will not be joining that chorus. The fourth season of Jeremy Allen White’s haunted (by his own family, both living and dead) chef trying to keep himself and his restaurant afloat, isn’t quite a sea change for the show, but it should, for all time, end the “is it a drama or a comedy?” argument. The Bear is and has always been a drama, but this last season makes it most plain. The situational humor is dialed down and replaced by Allen White’s Carmen Berzatto, finally facing down his inner turmoil, and leaving him on the brink of making a life-changing decision that would set aside all he has ever known professionally. The final scene of season four between Carmen, his wavering partner Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), and Richie (Ebon Moss-Bacharach) is as close to a sequence in a John Cassavetes film as I’ve seen on television. It is raw, naked, emotional, and heated. It’s also tremendous. I would have been perfectly happy with The Bear ending with season four. Show creator Christopher Storer has promised a season five. He’s going to have a lot to live up to.

2) Dying For Sex (FX): Series lead Michelle Williams is mainly known for her work on film, as her five Oscar nominations will attest, but she has never been better than she is here, in this very accurately titled show. Williams’ Molly is a dying woman who has never had the kind of sex that has brought her true pleasure, and her last wish is to pursue that desire at all costs. This means leaving her husband and seeking out suitors while managing a fatal illness. Dying For Sex blurs the line between comedy and drama so well that classification is beside the point. The show is remarkably funny, moving, and sad in ways you both expect and don’t. Dying For Sex (created by Elizabeth Meriwether and Kim Rosenstock) is endlessly inventive, wrong-footing you in all the right ways. At its center, Dying For Sex is a show about last chances, final acts of agency, and perhaps most importantly, friendship. While it is to Williams’ great credit that even when Molly is at her most selfish, she remains sympathetic and redeemable, her task would surely have been a much heavier lift without Jenny Slate as her best friend, Nikki. Slate’s sweetly heartbroken look into the camera may be the best last scene of any show this year. We should all, at least once in our lives, have a friend like Nikki.

1) Adolescence (Netflix): Sometimes the most hailed program of the year deserves its every huzzah. Such is the case with Stephen Graham’s remarkable limited series Adolescence. I refer to Adolescence as Graham’s because the stocky middle-aged Brit co-created, co-produced, co-wrote, and is the leading actor of this staggering show. Graham has long been a reliably excellent character actor, but 2025 will be remembered as his year. Graham delivered a blistering performance in A Thousand Blows as a violent man, but here, he gives a wrenching and often tender performance as a father coming to terms with the violence of his young son. Adolescence may have been Graham’s baby, but his creation is more than generous to those in front of and behind the camera. Owen Cooper, as his son, gives one of the great child performances in recent memory. His stand-alone episode standoff with Erin Doherty’s social worker (yes, Doherty and Graham both had one hell of a year with this and Blows on their resumes) is so disturbing as to nearly be intolerable. The intensity of Adolescence is ratcheted up by the fact that every episode is a single shot. There is only “action” and “cut” in each installment of the series. I was so caught up in the storyline that I’m almost embarrassed to say that I didn’t even notice the technique until the third episode. Then again, maybe that’s just a statement about how involving Adolescence is. Speaking of statements, without being too heavy-handed, Adolescence speaks with clarity about mental health (particularly of our youth), what it is to be a boy trying to become a young man, and what the first signs of dangerous incel behavior might look like. Adolescence may have only taken up four episodes of my time, but no show spent more time in my chest and mind. Adolescence is the best show of the year.