The Best and Worst TV Shows of 2025: A Year of Peak Prestige and Painful Misses

The TV Cave Article
6 days ago
3 min read

Sci-fi hallway, office, rainy city. Text: "The TV Cave's Best & Worst TV of 2025." Blue, gray, and orange tones. Mysterious and dramatic mood.

If 2025 proved anything, it’s that television remains wildly unpredictable. For every prestige drama that dominated group chats and awards predictions, there was another series that launched with hype, burned through goodwill and quietly disappeared from the cultural conversation. Streaming platforms kept flooding the zone, legacy networks fought to stay relevant, and viewers were left sorting the gems from the genuine disasters.

This year delivered some of the best TV shows of the decade bold, challenging and endlessly bingeable while also unleashing a batch of baffling misfires that felt algorithmically generated or simply half-baked. From sci-fi triumphs to franchise fatigue, here’s our take on the top 10 best and worst TV shows of 2025, ranked by impact, execution and whether anyone will still be talking about them next year.

⭐ The 10 Best TV Shows of 2025

1. Pluribus (Apple TV)

Woman in a yellow jacket holds a phone to her ear, looking tense. She sits on a sofa with a chunky knitted blanket in a dimly lit room.

The rare high-concept series that actually sticks the landing. Pluribus blended ambitious world-building with emotional storytelling, earning near-universal praise and quickly becoming a benchmark for prestige sci-fi television.

2. Adolescence (Netflix)

Woman in blue shirt sits, holding hands with a standing boy in white, in a room with bean bags. Tense, somber atmosphere.

Dark, unsettling, and impossible to shake, Adolescence tapped into cultural anxieties without feeling exploitative. Netflix doesn’t always get “serious drama” right, but this one landed hard.

3. Andor (Disney+)

Man in black jacket walking through a forest encampment with scaffolding structures. Calm, focused mood; people in the background.

Proof that Star Wars can still be smart, political, and genuinely gripping. Andor continued to elevate the franchise, favoring tension and character over fan service.

4. The Pitt (HBO)

Man with a beard wearing a dark hoodie and stethoscope stands in a hospital setting, looking pensive. Background includes medical supplies.

A bruising, emotionally raw drama that leaned into HBO’s strength: complicated characters making terrible decisions. Not always easy to watch, but consistently compelling.

5. Severance (Apple TV)

Man and woman in business attire hold each other in a tense hallway scene. White walls and ceiling lights create a stark, dramatic atmosphere.

Still one of TV’s most inventive series, Severance remained a watercooler staple in 2025, balancing corporate satire with existential dread better than almost anything else on air.

6. When Life Gives You Tangerines (Netflix)

Two people stand at a vegetable stall, one in a red tracksuit and another in a blue uniform. Green cabbages are visible, with Korean text in the background.

A quieter hit, but a powerful one. This character-driven drama earned its praise through thoughtful writing and performances that linger long after the credits roll.

7. Invincible (Prime Video)

Two animated characters in superhero costumes sit in a ruined diner booth with debris around. They appear to be in a tense conversation.

Animated superhero TV doesn’t get much better. Invincible continued to raise the bar with shocking twists, emotional depth, and a willingness to actually change its characters.

8. Dept. Q (Netflix)

A man with a beard and focused expression stands indoors. Soft lighting and blurred background with warm tones create a contemplative mood.

Gritty, procedural, and unapologetically bleak, Dept. Q found an audience craving smart crime drama without glossy shortcuts.

9. Slow Horses (Apple TV)

Man with glasses talks on phone, wearing coat and scarf. Urban street with buildings in background. Overcast mood.

Gary Oldman’s grumpy spymaster remained one of the most entertaining figures on television. The series continued to prove that spy stories don’t need spectacle to be effective.

10. The Studio (Apple TV)

Man with glasses in a brown jacket looks concerned. He's in a lively outdoor market with blurred people and colorful stalls on a sunny day.

A sharp satire of Hollywood excess that felt uncomfortably accurate. The Studio thrived on insider humor and clever writing, earning its place among 2025’s best TV shows.

💩 The 10 Worst (or Most Disappointing) TV Shows of 2025

1. All’s Fair (Hulu)

Two women in red and magenta suits stand in a bright room with curtains and a city view. They appear composed and confident.

A critical punching bag from the moment it premiered. Tonally confused and poorly written, All’s Fair quickly became synonymous with “what went wrong?”

2. The Copenhagen Test (Peacock)

A man in a leather jacket holds a gun in a dim, foggy alley. Four figures walk away with smoke and brick walls in the background. Tense mood.

A strong premise sunk by sluggish pacing and underdeveloped characters. Viewers stuck around hoping for a payoff that never really arrived.

3. Monster Season 3 (Netflix)

Man in red plaid coat and cap looks into distance, standing outdoors. Snow-covered ground and bare trees in background, with overcast sky.

Franchise fatigue hit hard. The installment lacked the urgency and insight that once made the series essential viewing.

4. Prime Target (Prime Video)

Man in gray suit holding a red notebook, looking upward thoughtfully in a bright, modern room with white grid ceiling panels.

Despite big ambitions, this thriller failed to find its identity. The result was a show that felt both overproduced and undercooked.

5. Citadel: Diana (Prime Video)

Close-up of a woman with a bob haircut, tear on her cheek. Moody expression, dim background. Dark hair, neutral top.

Another attempt to stretch the Citadel universe thinner than anyone asked for. Glossy, expensive, and mostly empty.

6. Stranded on Honeymoon Island (BBC)

Two people sit on a log, smiling and talking on a sunny beach with palm trees. A water bottle is on the sand beside them. Relaxed mood.

Reality TV can be trashy fun, but this was just tedious. A flimsy hook couldn’t sustain an entire season.

7. The Genius Game (UK)

Man in a blue suit holds a small cube, standing in a room with wooden hexagonal shelves. Background features warm lighting and curtains.

A competition series that wanted to be clever but ended up confusing. Complexity isn’t the same as intelligence.

8. Celebrity Bear Hunt (Netflix)

A man leads a group of four people in outdoor gear along a pebble path. They walk toward a rustic building, surrounded by sparse greenery.

More gimmick than game. The novelty wore off fast, leaving little reason to keep watching.

9. Untamed (Netflix)

Two men outdoors, one in a brown jacket, the other in ranger uniform and hat. They're standing with trees in the background, looking serious.

Ambitious but messy, Untamed never found tonal balance, bouncing between genres without mastering any of them.

10. Countdown (Prime Video)

Man and woman walking outdoors with serious expressions. Emergency lights flash in the blurred background against a mountainous landscape.

Countdown promised a high-stakes, ticking-clock thriller but delivered a bland, predictable procedural weighed down by clichés and flat characters.

Final Take

The best TV shows of 2025 reminded audiences why the medium still matters, delivering bold storytelling and genuine cultural moments. The worst offerings, meanwhile, served as cautionary tales about overextension, franchise obsession, and mistaking content for creativity.

Whether you spent the year obsessing over prestige dramas or hate-watching questionable reality experiments, 2025 had something for everyone sometimes against their will. One thing’s certain: television isn’t slowing down, and neither is the conversation. Let us know which shows you loved, which ones you bailed on, and which you’re still arguing about long after the finale.

The TV Cave