Adam Scott stars in the second season of Severance. Photo / Apple TV+
Returning hits like Severance and The White Lotus inspired plenty of chatter, but did they make our top TV list?
The first half of 2025 saw the return of strike-delayed hit shows, like Severance, The White Lotus and The Last of Us, that took turns dominating the cultural conversation. But only one of them made our top TV list.
Read on to find out which one and to see which other series, new and old, scripted and nonfiction, impressed our television critics the most (listed alphabetically).
A prequel series to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) – and arguably the most acclaimed Star Wars story of any kind since that film – Andor offered one of TV’s deepest explorations of the political realities and human costs of rebellion. Its two-season run wrapped up in May.
“Prequels are often where dramatic tension goes to die,” James Poniewozik writes. “How invested can you be in a story whose outcome you already know? The genius of Andor, created by Tony Gilroy, is to make that knowledge an asset.”
Written and directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda (Shoplifters), this Japanese period drama is visually sumptuous and emotionally meticulous in its depiction of four sisters grappling with controlling men and their complex relationships with one another.
The series “is the full package: a detailed, human-scale domestic drama with plenty to say, fascinating characters to say it and the stylishness to make it sing,” Margaret Lyons writes. “The downside is that other shows feel paltry and thin in comparison. The upside is everything else.”
This animated conspiracy thriller revolves around a magic mushroom miracle drug, an unconventional environmentalist who wants to heal the world with it and the various bad actors – Big Pharma, sinister mycologists – trying to stop or control him. And a tortoise.
The series “is as rare and precious as the miraculous mushroom its hero, Marshall (Dave King), discovers in the jungle,” Lyons writes. “Smarts, humour, style and perspective rarely align so harmoniously. Not a lot of shows have as much to say, and fewer still say it with such panache.”
In May, the documentary series Couples Therapy, which follows Dr Orna Guralnik’s sessions with couples in various forms of crises, wrapped up its fourth season.
“Some pairs seem so ill-suited one wonders how they got this far in the first place, while others seem tragically root bound, unable to change any of the patterns in their lives — until now, of course,” Lyons writes. “The magic of the show is that through Dr. Guralnik’s patience and probing, people change before our eyes. Revealing oneself is difficult; understanding oneself is even more challenging.
“This season’s four couples were pulled in different directions — toward the altar, toward divorce, toward quiet, toward disclosure — but each relationship was transformed. Most shows go to great lengths to gin up this amount of conflict and revelation, but Couples Therapy manages it with a few well-placed ‘hmm’s.”
The first television series by great Italian film-maker Marco Bellocchio, Exterior Night, revisits the 1978 kidnapping and killing of politician Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades. (Bellocchio explored those events previously in his 2003 film Good Morning, Night.)
“Moro’s abduction and death was a watershed moment in the ‘years of lead,’ when politically motivated bombings, shootings, kidnappings and assassinations convulsed Italy and other European countries,” Mike Hale writes. “But it is a story that can speak to anyone who has a sense of living in perilous times. As a character in Exterior Night says, a society can tolerate a certain amount of crazy behaviour, but ‘when the crazy party has the majority, we’ll see what happens.’”
Based on the novel by Bernardine Evaristo, this British miniseries follows an elegant Londoner named Barrington Jedidiah Walker (Lennie James) who is devoted to his wife, his children and his best friend and lover of many decades, Morris (Ariyon Bakare). The series alternates among characters’ perspectives and uses flashbacks to trace Barry and Morris’ relationship back to its early days in their native Antigua.
“Loverman is polished and literary, practically silky – sublime, even,” Lyons writes. “It’s natural to be baffled by other people’s choices: Why would you do that? Why didn’t you say anything? Why would you stay? Why would you leave? A lot of contemporary shows – even plenty of good ones – fall back on pat just-so stories for their characters’ backgrounds, but the picture here is deeper and fuller than that. Fear and pain, love and loyalty: they’re never just one thing.”
In this comic sci-fi thriller, based on the novel All Systems Red by Martha Wells, Alexander Skarsgard plays a jaded robot that is charged with protecting a crunchy space commune but would rather just watch pulpy soaps.
“The real killer app of the story, adapted by Chris and Paul Weitz, is the snarky worldview of the artificial life form at its centre,” Poniewozik writes. “Skarsgard gives a lively reading to the copious voice-over, but just as important is his physical performance, which radiates casual power and agitated wariness. Murderbot is odd, edgy, unmistakably alien, yet its complaint is also crankily familiar. It just wants to be left in peace to binge its programs, like Chance the Gardener if he had guns in his arms.”
This two-part HBO documentary details how performer Paul Reubens created his beloved alter ego, Pee-wee Herman, and how the character’s fame affected the rest of his life.
“What unfolds, over more than three hours, is in part a public story: how Reubens channeled his genius into an anarchic creation that bridged the worlds of alternative art and children’s TV, then had his life derailed by trumped-up scandals that haunted him to the end,” Poniewozik writes.
“It is also partly a spellbinding private story about artistry, ambition, identity and control. What does it mean to become famous as someone else? (The documentary’s title refers to the acting credit in Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, as a result of which Reubens remained largely unknown even as his persona became a worldwide star.) And what were the implications of being obscured by his creation, especially for a gay man in a still very homophobic Hollywood?”
With its “24”-like hour-by-hour structure, The Pitt infuses the familiar pleasures of a medical show with fevered intensity and narrative references to the pandemic and contemporary social issues.
“The Pitt generated old-school melodrama out of a simple understanding: The ER is where people end up when something goes wrong, either with the body individual or with the body politic,” Poniewozik writes. “And what is wrong with the American corpus? Buddy, take a number; the waiting room is full.”
In its second season, this trippy workplace drama deepens its mysteries and expands its emotional palette as the mentally “severed” employees, their loved ones and their bosses battle (sometimes literally) over competing agendas and the future of Lumon Industries. The show finally returned in January, nearly three years after the end of Season 1.
“Its makers seem to have used every second of the absence productively,” Poniewozik writes. “The season takes new turns while remaining the most ambitious, batty and all-out pleasurable show on TV, an M.C. Escher maze whose plot convolutions never get in the way of its voice, heart and sense of humour.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: The New York Times
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
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