By Sara Bright
It’s that time of year again. The Great Decluttering. We wipe the dust off our watchlists, delete the shows we promised we’d finish but never did, and try to make sense of the avalanche of content that 2025 dumped on our screens.
If you felt overwhelmed this year, you weren’t alone. The streaming services didn’t just release shows; they fired them at us from a cannon.
Specifically, history was everywhere. It seems that when the present gets too messy, we retreat to the past. We had Korean dynasties fighting for power, American cowboys carving out the frontier, and British aristocrats behaving badly in corsets. It was a glut of high-budget escapism.
But amidst the noise, a few things actually sang. I’ve sifted through the hours of mediocrity to find the stuff that sticks. So, put down the remote and listen. Here’s what you should have been watching, and what you need to catch up on before 2026 rolls around.
The Action That Actually Hurt
Let’s start with the punch-ups. Chief of War (USA).
I’ll be honest, I expected this to be another generic historical epic. Jason Momoa in a loincloth yelling at the ocean. But it surprised me. It’s set in Hawaii during the unification wars, and it is brutal.
The action isn’t the floaty, CGI-enhanced nonsense we’ve gotten used to. It’s heavy. You feel the weight of the weapons. It reminded me of Shōgun, but with less politicking and more visceral desperation. It treats the history of the Hawaiian archipelago with a seriousness that is long overdue. If you want spectacle that feels earned, this is it.
The Comedy That Bit Back
Comedy was thin on the ground this year. Why? Because everyone is terrified of being cancelled, or just terrified in general. But The Studio (USA) managed to find the funny in the panic.
It’s a satire about the film industry, which usually feels like inside baseball – jokes for people who know what a “best boy” does. But this one worked because it wasn’t just about movies; it was about the absurdity of modern work.
There’s a bit where they mock Martin Scorsese, and it’s so sharp you almost flinch. But then you realize Scorsese probably laughed too. It captures that specific, neurotic energy of creative people trying to make art while the money men are trying to make “content.” It’s the spiritual successor to The Larry Sanders Show, but for the age of the algorithm.
The Drama That Broke Us
If you have children, or were once a child (which covers most of us), Adolescence (UK) is a hard watch.
It’s a one-word title for a show that contains multitudes. It was filmed in a way that feels almost intrusive, like a documentary crew got lost in a comprehensive school and decided to just keep rolling.
It dissects the terrifying, silent world of teenagers. The bullying that happens on phones where parents can’t see it. The way a sweet kid turns into a monster because of peer pressure. It’s not “entertaining” in the traditional sense. It’s grueling. But it’s necessary. I found myself thinking about it for days afterwards, wondering if I ever really knew what was going on in my own head at fifteen, let alone anyone else’s.
The Thriller That Sweated
The Diplomat (Season 3, UK/USA).
I know, it’s a returning series. But Keri Russell is doing something extraordinary here. She plays a career diplomat who looks like she hasn’t slept since 2004.
This season ramped up the stakes. It stopped being just about “relationships” and started being about the actual, mechanical breakdown of the world order. It shows how fragile peace is. One wrong phone call, one misunderstood memo, and the missiles fly.
It’s anxiety-inducing television. It makes you realize that the people running the world are just as tired, petty, and confused as the rest of us. And that is terrifying.
The History That Bleed
American Primeval (USA).
Peter Berg directed this, and you can tell. Berg likes things loud and kinetic. He took the Western genre – which Taylor Sheridan has basically monopolized with Yellowstone – and stripped away the soap opera.
This isn’t about property rights in Montana. This is about the American West when it was a graveyard. It’s about the collision of cultures, the violence of expansion, and the sheer, physical difficulty of surviving. It’s not a romantic view of the frontier. It’s a horror story with horses. And it’s magnificent.
The Sci-Fi That Thought
Andor (Season 2, USA).
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Andor is the best thing Star Wars has done since Empire Strikes Back.
Season 2 doubled down on the politics. It’s a show about how you build a revolution. It’s about logistics, funding, and the moral compromises you make to fight fascism. It doesn’t have lightsabers. It doesn’t have Skywalkers. It has people in grey rooms talking about budgets and prison labour.
It sounds boring. It is electric. It proves that sci-fi doesn’t need magic to be magical; it just needs good writing.
The Horror That Worked
Alien: Earth (USA).
Noah Hawley (the guy who did Fargo) took the Alien franchise and brought it home. Literally.
Setting it on Earth was a risk. The whole point of Alien is the isolation of space. But Hawley made it work by focusing on the corporate horror. The Weyland-Yutani corporation is the real monster here; the xenomorph is just the biological weapon they can’t control.
The creature design is fantastic – properly slimy, Giger-esque nightmares – but it’s the atmosphere of dread that sells it. It feels like the world is ending, one chest-burster at a time.
The Animation That Punched Above Its Weight
Splinter Cell: Deathwatch (USA).
I’m not a gamer. I don’t care about the lore of Splinter Cell. But this anime? It’s art.
The animation style is fluid, dark, and incredibly stylish. It looks like a graphic novel come to life. The pacing is relentless. It reminds me that animation isn’t a genre; it’s a medium. And in the right hands, it can do action better than live-action ever could.
The Best Show of 2025
And finally, the big one. Pluribus (USA).
Vince Gilligan is a wizard. He gave us Breaking Bad. He gave us Better Call Saul. And now, he’s given us… happiness?
Pluribus is a weird premise. An alien signal hits Earth, and suddenly, everyone is happy. Or at least, connected. A hive mind of benevolence.
It sounds like a utopia. But Gilligan films it like a horror movie.
He explores the idea that total unity is actually total tyranny. If everyone agrees, does individuality exist? If there is no conflict, is there any humanity?
It’s unsettling. You find yourself rooting for the “bad guys” – the people who resist the happiness, the people who want to be miserable and selfish and alone. It flips the script on every utopian sci-fi trope.
It’s the show of the year because it asks the question we’re all secretly asking in our hyper-connected world: wouldn’t it be better if we just disconnected? And the answer, according to Gilligan, is “yes, but it will cost you everything.”
2025 was a lot. It was noisy. It was expensive. But in the cracks of the content machine, there were stories that mattered. Stories about resistance, about history, about the messiness of being human.
My advice? Skip the mediocre comedies. Ignore the generic procedurals. Watch Andor. Watch Pluribus. And maybe, just maybe, go outside for a bit. The real world is starting to look a lot like the TV shows, and we probably need to pay attention.
