The best television programs and new series from 2025 (previously)

Clockwise from top left: The pictures, CompensationPresent The traitorsPresent American Ur projectsAnd Frequent side effects.
Photo illustration: vulture; Photos: Apple TV+, Euan Cherry/Peacock, Matt Kennedy/Netflix, Adult Swim, Warrick Page/Max

Great television is neither locked up nor defined by the genre. This is true for both the medium in general and here at Vulture in particular, where we are proud to give the label for everything, from grim and herstery prestige dramas to Campy Reality competitions to Weirdo animations and all points in between. Even the dust TV genres, the medical procedure, proved that the goods can still deliver it in 2025. Each of this year’s early outstanding series is in their shape, tone and its attraction and together present the width and depth of the best that has to offer television.

All titles are listed after the season premiere, with the latest publications at the top.

Photo: adult swimming

In this swimming cartoon for adults created by Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely, a good -hearted and noble naturalist discovers a rare fungus that, under certain circumstances, can heal every disease in a miracle way … even death. The discovery pushes him into the center of a conspiracy in which the American government and a big pharma corporation are involved, both try to stop his efforts to produce the mushroom on the scale to free the world of the disease. King of the Hill‘S Mike Judge and Greg Daniels are as executing producers (the judge, as CEO of Pharma, reliably deliver a service that is reliable). Bonus points for the psychedelic sequences of the show, which are typically populated by strange miniature humans, which look like twisted western versions of Hayao Miyazaki’s strange little boys. –Nicholas quah

Photo: Apple TV+

The first season of Compensation It ended on such an intensive cliffhanger that it temporarily stopped the oxygen flow to most spectator heads. Then the show made the cruelest thing possible: it did not come back for three years. When the second season of this dense and deeply strange workplace thriller finally fell on Apple TV+, expectations were understandably high. These ten new episodes meet and often surpass them.

The serial creator Dan Erickson, director Ben Stiller (he takes care of half of the episodes of the season), and her colleagues have delivered a surreal, meticulously rendered Odyssey, the deeper into the cult-like environment in Lumon, the shadowy biotech company, which has a team of separated employees, their work and personal life completely consecrated from each other are. As members of this team-brand S. (Adam Scott, in a career best performance), Helly R. (Britt Lower), Irving B. (John Turturro) and Dylan G. (Zach Cherry) continue to examine what is really going on in this hostile company. The craftsmanship in this show, from idiosyncratic production design to carefully composed cinematography, is sterling at every level. And while it feels right to describe Compensation As a drama, it has a really great, twisted sense of humor, which is particularly suitable for these dark times. If you did not succeed during the Office Memorial Service, in which the employees were instructed, “take nine seconds” to remember a former colleague, I’m sorry, but you may be not a Lumon material. –Jen Chaney

➼ Read Kathryn Vanarendonk’s Checking of Compensation and Erin Qualies Reviews of the season.

Photo: Matt Kennedy/Neflix

No, Peter Berg and Mark L. Smith’s coarse -grained representation of the American West in American Ur projects Is not perfect. There may be too many moments that feel derived The RevenantAnd Betty Gilpin could have had more to do. But it is a purity how committed American Ur projects is bad for his thesis of “American history”. Our pop culture was in a mode, pioneers and settlers to romantize that American Ur projectsWith his existence to enter Mormonian history and reject the idea that violence in the name of the profit is justified, feels like compensation for the scales. Taylor Kitsch gives one of the most structured appearances of his career, Shea Whigham has a ball with Kim Coates, and the series actually takes the time to present the shoshone with depth and context. All beautiful recordings of the extensive American landscape are beautiful, but American Ur projects Never forget us that these countries are soaked in blood. –Roxana Hadadi

➼ Read Roxana Hadadis full Checking of American Ur projects and Keith PHIPPS Reviews of the series.

Photo: Warrick Page/Max

Some elements of The pictures Feel surprising and refreshing, because you are a return to a kind of television that has made streaming bad in a unique way: a long season, a strong feeling of individual episodes, with an uncomplicated and inappropriate drama premise. These functions alone are designed so well that that The pictures It would be worth it. But The pictures Is astonishing beyond this baseline. With a real-time logic and a minimal minimal music value of the emotion courses, two things can stand out: the immediacy of the medical crises and the outstanding performance of the show, in particular Noah Wyle, Katherine Lanasa and Taylor Dearden. The pictures Would be an outstanding point in TV history at all times. After years of streaming it seems almost wonderful. –Kathryn Vanarendonk

➼ Read Kathryn Vanarendonk full Checking of The pictures and Maggie Femonts Reviews of the series.

Photo: Euan Cherry/Peacock

To be honest, Lala’s outfits are enough to get this show in our best of the year. This little tutus! But even put the continued Sartorial splendor of Alan Cumming and his stylish buddy aside. The traitorsThe entertainment value as a social experiment is constantly increasing. Since the series has completely reoriented reality TV promis, it has become a fascinating analysis of how the stars of this genre bend into their shame and align themselves on the networks that were famous for them. The traitors Now a layer of meta tension has weighted the argument between fractions by the way these people define themselves. With such reality TV knowledge These people from their appearances in other series. That’s fun! And it is just a bonus that has messed up so much this season, of arguments that spend most of the time mutually spending each other with Tom Sandoval, in order to somehow convince us with its conversion into a changing banana shell. –Rhinoceros

➼ Read Tom Smyth Reviews of the season.