"Of everything I saw on TV in 2025, the one show I thought was the very best, and has haunted me ever since, was the four-part Netflix drama Adolescence. It's the story of a young teen accused of murdering a classmate, and it's told in such a way, emotionally and technically, that I can't and won't forget it. It's the show I recommend most highly, but with a major caveat."
"Intensity, it turns out, is a common factor among many of my very favorite shows from this year. HBO Max's The Pitt was a medical show with an impressively credible tension factor. So was Netflix's The Diplomat, with its unpredictable, high-stakes plot twists. And so was FX's The Bear, even though it wasn't about life or death, just appetizers and entrees. The Bear even calls itself a comedy, but it's not. Much, much too dramatic for that."
"A couple of my other favorite TV dramas, almost equally intense, featured ragtag, mismatched investigative teams thrown together to solve specific crimes. One, HBO's Task, was headed by a brooding, intelligent guy with lots of emotional baggage, played by Mark Ruffalo. Another, Netflix's Dept. Q, was headed by a brooding, intelligent guy with even more emotional baggage, played by Matthew Goode. And maybe it's just me, but this year I definitely gravitated to dramatic shows that made me uneasy."
"It was another great season for Netflix's Black Mirror, and the end-of-year final episode of another dark Netflix fantasy series, Stranger Things, is eagerly awaited by many. Including me, because I've seen all the new episodes leading up to it, but the finale is being kept under wraps. Stranger Things has been around since 2016 almost a decade but other terrific genre productions were new takes on old ideas. Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein, on Netflix, was an excellent and very different adaptation. And what Noah Hawley did by reinventing the Alien movie franchise, for the FX TV series Alien: Earth, was thrilling and, at"
Adolescence, a four-part Netflix drama, follows a young teen accused of murdering a classmate and delivers relentless emotional and technical intensity. Intensity is a recurring trait across acclaimed 2025 shows, from HBO Max's medical drama The Pitt to Netflix's diplomatic thriller The Diplomat and FX's culinary series The Bear, which reads as far more dramatic than comedic. Other standout dramas include HBO's Task and Netflix's Dept. Q, both led by brooding, emotionally burdened investigators. Black Mirror enjoyed a strong season, Stranger Things' finale remains highly anticipated, and genre reinventions from Guillermo del Toro and Noah Hawley impressed.
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