These are the 10 best shows of 2025 so far. Did your favorite make our list?

USA Today

11-06-2025

These are the 10 best shows of 2025 so far. Did your favorite make our list?
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Watch Noah Wyle in 'The Pitt': Doctor gives advice for dying patient
In new TV series "The Pitt," Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) counsels the dying using words from a mentor.
So far, 2025 has been one heck of a year, in real life and on TV.
Current events are churning out endless eye-popping headlines, and networks and streaming services are going from Thailand to the Arctic to a galaxy far, far away to try to capture your attention and time with new and returning TV series. Already this year we've seen long-running series like "The Handmaid's Tale" come to an end, HBO devastate Pedro Pascal fans for a second time and Parker Posey's fake Southern accent take over TikTok. Plus there were some really good shows that we all watched, or maybe you missed.
From ratings juggernauts like HBO's "The White Lotus" to tiny comedies like Netflix's "North of North" to a CBS procedural ("Matlock") with way more bite than you'd expect, these are the 10 best shows of 2025 so far. You've got the rest of the year to catch up on them.
10. 'The White Lotus' (HBO)
Though not quite as transcendent as its first and second seasons, HBO's anthology wealth satire, set at a different luxury resort each year, remains one of the best shows on television, even when it isn't perfect. This year's trip to Thailand was an exercise in incivility and taboo-breaking, a cacophonous symphony of troubled souls colliding amid Mai Tais and monkeys. With a cast of great actors including Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Posey and bright new stars like Patrick Schwarzenegger (yes, the son of Arnold), writer Mike White kept "Lotus" on the edge of mayhem with every tense, stressful episode. If some fans were disappointed by its Shakespearean ending, we need only wait for the show to check into a new Lotus resort in Season 4 to get a new taste of White's pleasurably agonizing storytelling style.
9. 'Severance' (Apple TV+)
The long-awaited second season of Apple's mind-boggling workplace drama brought just as much mystic strangeness and corporate jargon as fans were expecting. If frustratingly convoluted and esoteric in its science fiction plotting, "Severance" always gets its emotions right, in no small part thanks to its talented cast, including Adam Scott, Britt Lower and the magnetic and magnificent Tramell Tillman. Stunning to watch and dizzying to think about, "Severance" Season 2 got it right in all the moments that mattered. Now once more, we wait to see what Lumon Industries will offer us next.
8. 'North of North' (Netflix)
This coming-of-age comedy set in a tiny Arctic village that's, well, north of what you think of as North probably flew below your radar this spring. But gleeful and bubbling with energy, "North" is well worth a watch. It stars the instantly magnetic Anna Lambe as Siaja, a young woman living a seemingly perfect life as a wife and mother, married her remote village's favorite son. But Siaja walked down the aisle and had a child when she was so young that she never had time to find her own identity and goals. In the opening episode of the comedy she finally takes control of her destiny, in the most awkward and humorous way possible. Full of cutesy (but not in a bad way) sitcom high jinks and set in a deeply unique but strangely familiar locale, "North" will charm its way into your heart, no matter how cold.
7. 'Apple Cider Vinegar' (Netflix)
Kaitlyn Dever won more attention for her role as a violent killer Abby in HBO's "The Last of Us," but the actress showed off considerable skill as an equally unlikable character in this ripped-from-the-headlines scammer story. As Australian "wellness" influencer Belle Gibson, who faked cancer so she could claim she cured it with the special recipes she was hawking, Dever excelled at being odious and hateful while looking pretty and perfect. The series captures the lure of "alternative medicine" for young women and the sexism in health care that often drives them to look for fantastical (and completely unproven) miracle cures.
6. 'Overcompensating' (Amazon Prime)
Underpinning every thigh-slapping comedy bit in Amazon's raucous and irreverent college comedy "Overcompensating" is a deeply real understanding of the messy and imperfect way that human beings transition from flailing young teens into flailing young adults. Set in our TikTok times, "Overcompensating" could represent anyone's college experience, even if they're not as a timid gay jock trapped in the closet like protagonist Benny (Benito Skinner, also the series' creator). Benny and pal Carmen's (Wally Baram) hilarious and relatable journey through their freshman year is a cringeworthy pleasure, funny and feeling and backed by great beats from Charli XCX (also a producer and guest star). Just look away during all the vomit and defecation gags.
5. 'Matlock' (CBS)
Who knew that what seemed like a generic broadcast reboot (of the 1980s Andy Griffith legal drama) could be so darn inventive and creatively ambitious? Led by "Jane the Virgin" creator Jennie Snyder Urman, the new "Matlock" is everything you hope for from a CBS procedural, and so much more: Surprising, heartfelt, witty, thrilling and deeply thoughtful. Its compelling case-of-the-week legal stories and adorable cast of characters would be enough to make it good, but it's the chemistry between leads Kathy Bates (a shoo-in for an Emmy nomination) and Skye P. Marshall that makes the series soar. In the second half of the first season, "Matlock" only became smarter, more self-assured and more driven in its storytelling as Matty's (Bates) personal investigation collided with her new professional life and family.
4. 'Sirens' (Netflix)
Netflix's limited series from "Maid" creator Molly Smith Metzler, based on her 2011 play "Elemeno Pea," is a delight for the senses, a chewy melodrama about the haves and the have-nots unwillingly clumped together. Featuring stunning performances from Meghann Fahy ("The White Lotus"), Milly Alcock ("House of the Dragon") and Julianne Moore, "Sirens" is deliciously campy with a bright beautiful setting and bold costume design that is worth a thousand words. The story and symbolism might occasionally get hazy, but the series has a song that will grab you instantly and keep you until its bitter end.
3. 'Adolescence' (Netflix)
A quiet British crime drama about the dangers of online male toxicity to young boys ballooned through the sheer power of its storytelling to become Netflix's second-most-watched English language series of all time, outperforming "Stranger Things" and "Bridgerton." The moment you set your eyes on the four-part limited series (each episode is filmed in one tantalizingly long single shot), you can't look away from the everyday horror of the story of middle schooler Jamie Miller's (Owen Cooper) brutal murder of a female classmate. In addition to setting viewership records, the series sparked deep conversations about the online "manosphere" and the dangers of social media on kids' malleable young minds.
2. 'Andor' (Disney)+
As impeccable and devastating as its sublime first installment in 2022, Disney+'s mature 'Star Wars' series is the best thing the franchise has turned out since the original trilogy, and the heart-rending second and final season only affirms that. The first season of the "Rogue One" prequel dealt with how Diego Luna's Cassian Andor was used and abused by the evil Empire and radicalized to join the Rebel Alliance that will one day name Luke Skywalker and Han Solo among its members. Season 2 asks a bigger, thornier question than just "Will you take a stand against tyranny": How will you do it? And what is worth giving up for it? Luna's haunting performance as the title character grounds the grim series, and "Andor" becomes a sadly relevant, morally gray and deeply compelling portrait of resistance amid love, friendship, trauma and everything between.
1. 'The Pitt' (Max)
In this tumultuous and uncertain year, no series has captured our national mood better than Max's 'The Pitt,' a medical drama built for the interesting times in which we live. The chaos of our real world is mirrored in the overcrowded mess of a Pittsburgh emergency room manned by exhausted health care workers who get punched in the face for all their heroic efforts. Producer John Wells and star Noah Wyle did not simply recreate their 1990s broadcast megahit 'ER'(no matter what a lawsuit by 'ER' creator Michael Crichton's estate claims). What they did was reinvent the medical drama for 2025 so that it feels both familiar and completely new. The 'real-time' structure, in which each of the 15 episodes represents one hour in a seemingly never-ending shift, adds a maximally frenetic pace to a series that's already in a genre that moves faster than the rest. And beyond the comfort of seeing Wyle back in scrubs, "The Pitt" actors are impeccably cast and infinitely likable, the makings of an ensemble that can charm an audience for years. Season 2 needs to premiere, stat.