2025’s list of TV shows recognized by TV Pulse Magazine share something in common.
In a year divided by ideologies, cynical business models, technologies that serve to divide and isolate us, or even make us doubt the nature of our reality, themes of connection, expression, empathy, art, family — both found and otherwise — and our shared humanity bubbled to the surface across the TV landscape.
From found families in shows like Peacemaker and The Nighty Nein, to questions about technology, connection, and society in Adolescence and Black Mirror, to themes on art and individualism in The Studio and Pluribus, 2025 was a year that truly reflected the changing landscape of the media we consume, and posed questions about who we want to be, and what we want our future to look like.
Let’s take a look.
10. THE MIGHTY NEIN
(Prime Video)
The Mighty Nein arrived in 2025 as a darker, more emotionally complex evolution of Critical Role’s animated universe. Rather than offering a straightforward fantasy romp, the series focuses on flawed, haunted characters whose personal struggles shape the story as much as the larger plot. It’s that grounded, human messiness that gives the show a unique edge that adds new dimensions to the characters and stories first introduced in Vox Machina.
That edge is backed up with myriad little details including the inclusion of some striking spellwork (we don’t often see the nuts and bolts of magical processes on TV, and even more rarely still in animated fare), a slew of atmospheric environments, and a cinematic feel that elevates both action and quieter emotional beats. Meanwhile, Nein’s slower, deliberate pacing gives room for world-building and character moments to land, making the sharp turns into horror or intensity (episode 5, “Little Spark” we’re looking at you!) feel especially impactful.
The Mighty Nein stands out in 2025 for its willingness to be bold: morally gray, visually rich, and unafraid to sit with the hard parts of its characters’ journeys. It’s one of the year’s most compelling entries, not just in adult animated fantasy, but in TV.
9. PEACEMAKER
(HBO Max)
Season 2 of Peacemaker builds on its first outing by leaning harder into character-driven drama, emotional stakes, and the consequences of trauma and identity, all while hanging onto the dark humor and violence that have defined the show over 2 seasons.
Peacemaker doesn’t shy away from messiness. Our anti-hero, Chris Smith, is forced to confront guilt, loss, and the possibility of alternate lives this season, and through those conflicts, the series brings surprising vulnerability to its zany mix of gore, comedy, and absurdity.
Meanwhile, the supporting cast and new characters pitch in with moments of levity, tension, and emotional grounding, giving the chaotic story a human center. Shout out to Tim Meadows as A.R.G.U.S. agent Langston Fleury, a man with an absurd case of Bird Blindness, and a habit of very inappropriately nicknaming his teammates, and to Joel Kinnaman for his nerdy other dimension cameo as Rick Flag Jnr.
Riotously silly, splashily violent, and surprisingly tender, Peacemaker Season 2 stands out in 2025 as a bold, messy, and emotionally resonant reinvention of what a comic-book show can be.
8. BLACK MIRROR
(Netflix)
Black Mirror is one of those shows that when it returns periodically, immediately tends to take up space in every magazine’s end of year lists. The Netflix show was back this year, following a 2 year hiatus, with 6 new episodes and a warning (which we didn’t heed) to maybe not watch the first episode “Common People” first.
While the show offered a typically bold and diverse collection of stories, there were some true standouts, including Paul Giamatti’s extraordinary and heartbreaking turn as Phillip in episode 5 “Eulogy”, in which a heartbroken man is encouraged to examine his pain through a series of photos and key memories. Giamatti’s performance and “Eulogy’s” bitter sweet ending made this one to remember.
The crew of the USS Callister also returned with the crowd pleasing “Into Infinity” while Noir lesbian love story “Hotel Reverie” fell just short of “San Juniperno’s” surprising and tender 2016 entry.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned, difficult to watch, and deeply disturbing “Common People” served as a reminder of the unintended consequences and impacts to society of shiny new technologies, social trends, and the loss of empathy and connection — all hallmarks of the series.
If ever we needed a shot across our AI-complacent bow, we know Black Mirror will give it to us.
7. THE BEAR
(FX & Hulu)
Last year we said the worst season of The Bear is still makes for the very best TV, and yes, we’re sticking to our guns, even in the aftermath of Carmy and Clair’s cringe-indicing and ridiculous refrigerator break-up in Season 3.
This year the show returned with the same core cast led by Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, but delivering a more restrained, textured take compared to its earlier, frenetic highs.
Maybe less of a critical darling than in previous years, The Bear still delivers brilliant moments of emotional weight, the yin and yang of ambition vs self-destruction, and the messy humanity at the heart of every crisis.
The show’s quieter but mature 2025 arc earns it a place among the year’s most thoughtful dramas, even if it no longer dominates award shows as it once did.
6. ADOLESCENCE
(Netflix)
Adolescence burst into the 2025 conversation with a ferocity that few series do. The 4-part limited series, written by the brilliant Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne, tackles toxic masculinity and teenage pressure with a potent cocktail of rawness, intimacy, heartbreak and urgency.
Presented in a one-shot style, with each episode unfolding like a play in a continuous and unbroken scene, the series refused to let the audience look away.
Its impact has been undeniable. within weeks, Adolescence surged into Netflix’s Top 5, racking up over 114 million views and prompting cultural conversations about responsibility, violence, technology, and accountability among youth.
Adolescence stands out as fearless and vital television, unflinching in what it shows, demanding empathy, and reminding us that some stories need to be uncomfortable to matter.
5. ANDOR
(Disney+)
Andor was the show that tricked casual Star Wars fans into watching a slow burn political thriller with superior acting, great dialogue, and fascinating developments, and we loved every second of it.
Season 2 took everything that made the show special — a sense of gritty realism, political tension, character-driven drama — and escalated it without losing any of the subtlety of season one.
What set this season apart was its refusal to rely on the hallmarks of traditional franchise spectacle. There are few, if any, overt Star Wars tropes of Jedi or melodramatic heroics. instead, against a backdrop of rising stakes, betrayals, and the emotional weight of resistance, Andor rooted its tension in character, ideology, and the human cost of rebellion.
4. THE PITT
(HBO Max)
The Pitt redefines what a medical-drama can be: raw, urgent, and emotionally unvarnished.
Beneath the sterile lights of the hospital corridors and the chaos of emergency cases, the show navigates grief, burnout, and human frailty with a realism rarely seen on TV.
Its characters are not heroes cloaked in perfection, but people under pressure, vulnerable, desperate, and deeply flawed. The series doesn’t shy away from showing the cost of saving lives, whether it’s mental, physical, or moral, and the result is a drama that unsettles you long after the final credits.
The Pitt succeeds for how it reclaims nuance, pain, and compassion as sources of storytelling strength in a genre too often flattened by clichés. We originally wrote that the series redefines the medical drama genre, and we continue to stand over that statement.
3. THE STUDIO
(Apple TV)
There’s no business like show business. No, really. The Studio‘s debut season, offering a satirical behind-the-scenes look at art vs product in modern Hollywood, not only wowed critics, but snatched 23 Emmy nominations (the most ever for a freshman comedy), winning 13, and resetting the bar for what satire can accomplish.
At its center is Matt Remick (Seth Rogen), a cinephile-turned-studio head who must navigate the brutal tension between corporate demands and his own passion for meaningful art.
A sharp comedic bite, long, complicated continuous takes, mock movie trailers and movie scenes, and cameos from A-list contributors (Martin Scorsese, Ron Howard, Zac Efron, Charlize Theron, Bryan Cranston, Olivia Wilde, Zoë Kravitz, Quinta Brunson, Adam Scott, Anthony Mackie, Jean Smart, Ice Cube, and Sarah Polley, to name but a few) who help blur the lines between fiction and reality, all serve to elevate what could have been pretty standard comedic material to loftier heights.
The result is a show that doesn’t just set out to mock the entertainment industry, but highlight its changing nature in the era of influencers, mindless action franchises (The Kool-Aid movie? The Jenga movie?), and digital format.
In one episode director Sarah Polley’s critical ‘Golden hour’ sunset shot is ruined repeatedly by Matt’s excited meddling in her direction. However, Polley who desperately wants to use an expensive Rolling Stones song in the final scene that can only be bankrolled by Matt, is willing to put up with his behavior — until he inadvertently ruins the take in spectacular fashion for the last time, and is booted from the set. The show’s credits roll with the Stones’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want playing cheekily in the background.
The Studio invites laughter, but also introspection about art, commerce, ambition, and compromise. It’s the most brilliant, self-aware, and downright entertaining series about the Biz we’ve seen in years.
2. SEVERANCE
(Apple TV)
We’ve spoken about it before, but Severance is one of those shows that offers a rare blend of concept, tone, and execution. Season 2 cemented its place as one of 2025’s essential TV experiences. The show’s central sci-fi premise (employees at Lumon Industries undergo a procedure that splits their memories into “work selves” and “outside selves”) became a deeply resonant lens on identity, free will, and the psychological toll of corporate life.
While Season one explored our “innies” at the relative start of their new lives, Season 2 showed them in true adolescence, questioning, refusing, and eventually rebelling against Lumon’s cult-like ideologies.
Severance uses its premise as an existential exploration. The sterile, retro-futuristic offices contrasted with the snowy outside world, the calculated symmetry of cinematography, the muted palettes, the deliberate framing all reinforce the show’s themes of control and duality.
And yet the show somehow still balances all that weight with dark humor, odd rituals (waffle parties, snowy retreats, goats, marching bands), absurdity, and humanity in a tightrope walk of tone few shows manage so deftly.
By demanding patience and engagement, and trusting its viewers to sit with ambiguity, regret, and dread Severance reminds us that television can still be daring, intimate, and profoundly unsettling in the best possible way.
1. PLURIBUS
(Apple TV)
In Pluribus, the show’s unflinching dissection of groupthink, free will, grief, consent, loneliness, and the collapse of individuality all take center stage.
The series imagines a world devolved into a single echo chamber, or hive mind, where critical thought, individuality, and moral complexity are souvenirs of a bygone era, thanks to an alien virus that tunes every living person into the same cooperative mental wavelength.
As fantasy romance author Carol Sturka finds herself in a new world where only she and 11 other people scattered across the globe are immune, she begins an uphill battle to restore humanity to its previous messy self. However, not everyone wants to be saved.
Pluribus, from Vince Gilligan (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul) is one of those shows ripe for dissection and discussion. Its unhurried format, peppered with easter eggs about future episodes, and startling cameos (John Cena, Albuquerque major Tim Keller) offer the perfect antidote to the Marvelization of media, in which every scene is punctuated with a backflip, a punch, and a witty quip. Instead Pluribus leaves breathing space for speculation and rumination.
Is the show a metaphor for how generative AI is purging humanity of creative individualism? Or perhaps it’s a study in grief? (The other survivors embody the classic 7 stages through denial, acceptance, anger, bargaining etc.) Series star Rhea Seehorn speculated it might even be about female rage.
Whichever way we choose to cut the cake, we can see that Pluribus is not ambiguous or nebulous in any respect to any of its various messages. It just asks that we sit, tune our TikTok-addled brains into a different frequency and enjoy the deliberate slow burn, clever character development, and carefully evolving storyline. And you know, maybe think up some ideas of our own?
Pluribus is a show that releases us from the prison of our AI-generated content, doom-scrolling, TikTok dopamine-hit, Marvel fight-scene brains.
That makes it one of the boldest and most necessary shows on television this year.
