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Asura
In a bizarre move, Netflix released this series by Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda – the Palme d’Or winner renowned for movies such as Shoplifters and Nobody Knows – with absolutely no fanfare this year. But Asura was a total knockout – a rich and sumptuously shot drama about four sisters in the 70s who discover that their dad has been having a lifelong affair. It was so good, in fact, that it might even be the most beautiful show they’ve ever released. Talk about selling yourself short. Watch it on Netflix.
#1 Happy Family USA
Not content with creating TV’s best sitcom about life as a young, 2020s US Muslim, Ramy Youssef decided to create TV’s best sitcom about life as a super-young 00s US Muslim. Packed with retro references to appeal to nostalgic millennials, and full of dark comedy about the US’s anti-Muslim bent in the wake of 9/11, it was a idiosyncratically satirical joy. Easily one of the funniest shows of the year. Watch it on Prime Video.
Common Side Effects
It’s not often that the year’s best conspiracy thriller is a cartoon. But that might just be the case, given the phenomenal watchability of Mike Judge’s animated tale of fungi expert Marshall, who finds a mushroom that cures all illnesses and even brings people back from the dead. When big pharma weigh in to stop his discovery ruining their profits, it becomes a wild, blackly comic tale of guns, death and love – plus how deeply in thrall the US is to profit. If this phenomenal show was an acted drama, it’s hard not to believe that it would’ve been one of the most watched shows of the year. Watch it on Channel 4.
Mix Tape
A gorgeous romantic drama that had everybody digging out their own mixtapes and sharing smile-raising memories. Pitched as One Day but grittier, the four-parter followed teenagers Daniel (Rory Walton-Smith) and Alison (Florence Hunt) falling in love in Sheffield, in 1989. Twenty years later, Daniel (Jim Sturgess) has stayed put and is a music journalist, while Alison (Teresa Palmer) is a successful novelist in Sydney – but unanswered questions from the past reconnect them. Each performance was affecting as dark truths unravelled and, crucially, the soundtrack was full of back-to-back bangers. Watch it on BBC iPlayer.
Once Upon a Time in Space
From the makers of similar oral histories of the Iraq war and the Troubles, this dazzling documentary managed a remarkable trick. It was both a grand survey of the vaulting ambition of the space race and a very personal, emotional history explaining what becoming an astronaut actually meant to the few people who managed it. The indelible tales include African American astronauts who felt that their acceptance on to space exploration programmes showed that the times really were changing, a female astronaut who (temporarily) said goodbye to her very young child and the story of a lovely friendship between a Russian astronaut and an American one. The best bits of this series are genuinely unforgettable. Watch it on BBC iPlayer.
Everybody’s Live
What made John Mulaney’s live weekly Netflix talkshow so absorbing was its full embrace of the medium. Shows like this tend to operate best when they find a groove, but Mulaney resolutely rejected this notion, preferring constant change to suffocating comfort. He’d let segments grind to a halt so that he could interview John Cale. He hosted a whole episode blindfolded. The climax came with his decision to fight two boys at once. Nothing else on TV in 2025 was quite this magnetic. Watch it on Netflix.
Chad Powers
On paper, Glen Powell’s comedy was certifiably bananas. It was the story of a disgraced yet talented American footballer who (for genuinely inexplicable reasons) decides that his way back into the game should be to swaddle himself in complicated prosthetics and pass himself off as someone else. As creepy as this sounds, Powell managed to completely sell it, playing both sides of his split personality with the right amount of winning charm. Watch it on Disney+.
The Horne Section TV Show
In an age when television comedies are still defined by a sense of trauma, The Horne Section was the antidote. A brazenly silly 1970s-style sitcom about Taskmaster’s Alex Horne and his band trying to put on a weekly chatshow from his house, the show was loaded with big-name guest stars (John Oliver, Reggie Watts) having the absolute time of their lives. The whole thing was about as gleefully stupid as television gets. More please. Watch it on Channel 4.
Long Story Short
Following BoJack Horseman – one of Netflix’s all-time great shows – should have been an impossible task. However, Raphael Bob-Waksberg managed to return with something even more layered and complicated. An animated comedy about a Jewish family, Long Story Short spent its episodes flitting backwards and forwards through the years, leaving viewers to fill in the gaps of what happened in the interim. Something this personal and ambitious should have been watched by far more people. Watch it on Netflix.
Reunion
In an era of cookie-cutter crime dramas, Reunion felt like a real curio. Starring Matthew Gurney as Daniel Brennan and written by deaf scriptwriter William Mager, it put deafness at the heart of its story and utilised British Sign Language to dramatic effect. Reunion didn’t feel tokenistic in any way; instead, Daniel’s struggles to communicate – and various institutional failures to accommodate people with his needs – contributed to the air of despairing menace he exuded. As he returned from prison and attempted to reconnect with his daughter Miri (Rose Ayling-Ellis), his tragic backstory emerged gradually and the drama that resulted was nuanced, intriguing and eventually explosive. Watch it on BBC iPlayer.
Wayward
The eminently lovable Canadian standup Mae Martin has been a breezy Taskmaster star and charmed the pants off us in their tender and hilarious – if trauma-inflected – romcom Feel Good. So a bleak, supernatural thriller about a terrifying institution for troubled teens wasn’t exactly their most obvious next move. But Wayward was such a masterly invocation of the chilling ambience of small-town life, in which everyone seems to know something you don’t (aided by Toni Collette’s spooky turn as the local academy’s head, Evelyn) that it felt like the work of a seasoned horror writer. Martin’s presence brought the warmth and comic relief that was much needed with such dark fare driving the plot – and turned it into a must-watch. Watch it on Netflix.
Lucy Letby: Beyond Reasonable Doubt
Everyone knows the tale of how neonatal nurse Lucy Letby murdered seven babies and tried to kill another seven. Or do they? This compelling, meticulous documentary – featuring the Guardian’s Josh Halliday (who has followed the case from the start) as an empathic guide to the murky affair – takes you through the flaws in the case against Letby, alternative explanations for evidence that begins to seem far from unreasonable and the lack of any obvious motive for Letby to commit these crimes. It takes little-known, but hugely problematic, issues with one of the most infamous convictions of recent years and brings them to wider attention in a compelling manner. This is documentary making at its best – not just a TV show, but a public service. Watch it on ITVX.
Down Cemetery Road
Emma Thompson was the crime drama lead Gary Oldman wishes he could be in this second TV adaptation from author Mick Herron’s novels after Slow Horses. Unfailingly likable and supremely badass, while also capable of showing genuine humanity, Zoe Boem was a fantastic entry into the world of TV detectives as she tailed Ruth Wilson around a brutal hunt for a missing child, never failing to be zippily sarcastic as bullets flew and bodies piled up. This deserved far bigger audiences, but given that the antics of the Slough House ne’er do wells took multiple seasons to rack up the viewers, fingers crossed this manages the same feat. Watch it on Apple TV.
Asterix and the Big Fight
Asterix fans have learned to avoid its animated adaptations, because you’re unlikely to ever find a patchier bunch of output. Happily, The Big Fight proved to be an exception. This series was deliberately, bracingly modern. It found an emotional backbone. It played with the form (complete with sports commentary, musical montages and a Pocoyo spoof). Plus it introduced a perfect new minor character. After all, if you live in a village with Asterix, Obelix and Getafix, wouldn’t you also want a Netflix? Watch it on Netflix.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Both Jacob Elordi and Ciarán Hinds turned out spellbinding performances as the younger and older doctor Dorrigo in this sexy second world war epic about love, trauma and the things your psyche never lets you leave behind. Adapted from Richard Flanagan’s Booker-winning novel, it confidently paired tender scenes of love and poetry-reading with harrowing images of war, showing Dorrigo’s time as a prisoner of war forced to build the Burma railway. But despite being a visceral and often horrifying watch, it simultaneously managed to be a lovely tale of longing, as Dorrigo falls for his uncle’s wife Amy – and given how it turned out, it’s no wonder he spent a lifetime yearning to feel that way again. Watch it on BBC iPlayer.
North of North
Welcome to the town of Ice Cove in the Canadian Arctic, where everyone knows absolutely everyone’s business. So when Inuk woman Siaja explodes her life by publicly dumping the town golden boy (known as King Ting), she gets it in the neck – and every other local woman starts bringing Ting casseroles as love tokens. With episodes called things like Joy to the Effing World and Walrus Dick Baseball (yes they really do play it) this was a funny, charming and super snowy sitcom about growing up and becoming yourself. Perfect winter binge-watching fare. Watch it on Netflix.
The Eternaut
Killer snow that wipes out Earth? It’s one hell of a hook for a dystopia. But Bruno Stagnaro’s gripping Argentine story, based on Héctor Germán Oesterheld’s novel, also doubled as an absolutely terrifying reflection of our world. It begins with a group of men who are safely tucked inside playing poker. They soon learn that anyone who steps outside in the mysterious snow collapses and instantly dies. As they work out how to search for fellow survivors, they soon discover what is really causing chaos … Is there any hope? A second series has been confirmed to send chills down spines once more. Watch it on Netflix.
Forever
Millennials of a certain stripe will always have an indelible bond to Judy Blume’s Forever …, the tale of teenage love that was for many a first look at sex (complete with a penis unforgettably named Ralph.) So there was much excitement when this year brought us this adaptation, which updated the action to 2018 and centred around Black students Keisha and Justin, brilliantly played by Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper (rare actors in a teen drama who actually, and thankfully, look age-appropriate). As they went on trainer shopping dates and blocked/unblocked each other, we couldn’t help but fall for them as they were falling for each other. Lovely. Watch it on Netflix.
Miss Austen
It’s been a bumper year for Jane Austen fans, as the BBC celebrated the novelist’s 250th birthday. But this lovely period drama, based on Gill Hornby’s bestselling novel, was a standout treat. Keeley Hawes played Jane’s sister Cassandra, who burned many of the private letters sent between the pair after Jane (Patsy Ferran) died. Through flashbacks to the sisters’ early years, we learn one reason that could explain why Cassie set them alight. Synnøve Karlsen, Rose Leslie and Jessica Hynes complete a wonderful cast. Watch it on BBC iPlayer.
The Assassin
Thriller concepts don’t get much more fun than following the blood-soaked trail of a menopausal hitwoman with an axe to grind. And this Keeley Hawes-starring show certainly leaned into the chaos: monster body counts, shady corporate dealings, a twentysomething son forced to go on the run with his mum while simultaneously discovering she was a hired killer, it had it all. No wonder, given that it was the latest show from the Williams Brothers – the brains behind The Tourist, The Missing and Boat Story. Watch it on Prime Video.
