TV Guide’s Matt Roush says he had to sift through an embarrassment of riches of shows that he watched online or on TV this year. But he did manage to narrow them down to pick his favorites from 2025.
He said he focused on the shows and events that lingered the longest in his mind.
10. “Severance” on Apple TV: Where the “outie” real lives of Lumon employees are separated from the drudgery of their “innie” cubicle existence. Roush admits he sometimes didn’t understand everything he saw on this show. But he also told WTOP that there’s nothing quite like “that weird, little, surrealistic show.”
9. “The American Revolution” on PBS: Roush calls Ken Burns’ 12 hour documentary about America’s birth a “necessary testament to public TV’s essential place in our cultural landscape.”
8. “Andor” on Disney+: Roush said this ”thrilling prequel to the Star Wars movie Rogue One fulfills the intellectual property potential of the renowned sci-fi franchise’s many TV and streaming spinoffs.”
7. “The Diplomat” on Netflix: Roush called the third season of this show the most entertaining political drama since “The West Wing.”
6. “Pluribus” on Apple TV: Better Call Saul’s Rhea Seehorn stars as Carol, a misanthrope who fights back against a suddenly transformed cheerful world. Roush thinks she’ll win an Emmy for the role.
5. “Adolescence” on Netflix: A four-episode series about the fallout from when a teenage boy kills a classmate. Many of the episodes are done almost in a single take, and Roush said it’s “one of the strongest things Netflix gave us all year.”
4. “Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversary Special” on NBC: SNL stars past and present gathered in February to mark the iconic late-night’s show’s half-century milestone.
3. “Alien: Earth” on FX: Roush calls this a “smart, scary and impressively epic reimagining of the sci-fi horror franchise.”
2. “The Studio” on Apple TV: Roush said the “Hollyweird in Seth Rogen’s rollicking and masterful satire” is apropos of modern-day corporate film-making. He said it was a “really clever series … that had a really good year.”
1. “The Pitt” on HBO Max: Roush’s favorite show of 2025 stars Noah Wylie, of “ER” fame, as the head of a hospital room in Pittsburgh. He called it “an instant classic” that recreated the medical drama. “Great acting, just great production. One of the great genres of television and they just took it over the edge. It was an amazing series,” Roush said. The next season of “The Pitt” arrives on Jan. 8, 2026.