The Best New TV Shows and Streaming Series of 2025 (So Far)

Already renewed for a second season, this episodic rearrangement of Alan Alda’s 1981 romcom charts the quarterly getaways (just imagine!) of three couples (Tina Fey and Will Forte, Steve Carell and Kerri Kenney-Silver, Colman Domingo and Marco Calvani) whose dynamic is tested by an assortment of inconvenient midlife maladies. Despite Fey’s writing credit, this isn’t the chaotic comedy you might expect. Its strength lies not in laughs but in the depth and relatability of the central sextet — by turns moving and absurd — and its well-observed depiction of how relationships flux and evolve over time. 

Length of binge: 4 hours 13 mins

📍 The Four Seasons: the filming locations behind Tina Fey’s feel-good show

For anyone who found grim-faced survival epic The Revenant too cheery, screenwriter Mark L Smith is back to really crank up the bleakness in this real-life western series. Constructed with maximum period detail in New Mexico, it recreates the little-known 1857 Mountain Meadows Massacre that set a ruthless Mormon militia, Utah settlers and Shoshone warriors at odds in spectacularly violent fashion. Veteran action-thriller filmmaker Peter Berg sends his Friday Night Lights muse Taylor Kitsch into this unforgiving landscape as a reluctant saviour for Betty Gilpin’s doughty homesteader. Not exactly fun but consistently gripping. 

Length of binge: 5 hours 4 mins

Robert De Niro takes on civil liberties in a Netflix thriller that examines America’s complex relationship with objective truth. As a former president yanked out of retirement to head up an emergency committee to root out domestic terrorism, De Niro is on fine form, juicing up New York crowds with a rousing speech one minute, and blithely torturing civilians the next. The stacked cast also includes such heavyweights as Jesse Plemons, Joan Allen, Angela Bassett, Matthew Modine and Connie Britton. At a bite-sized six episodes, Zero Day is both an enjoyable binge romp and a soberingly prescient glimpse at America’s possible future.

Length of binge: 5 hours 6 mins

📍 Zero Day filming locations: Where does Robert De Niro’s cyber-thriller unfold?

It’s rare for a third season to slap as hard as the first run, and even rarer to leave you actively gobsmacked. Comedian Jack Rooke’s beloved uni sitcom pulls both of those things off with a final stint that’s every bit as funny, silly and touching as before, as protagonist Jack (Dylan Llewellyn), bestie Danny (Jon Pointing) and the gang navigate a final year at Brent Uni. This time the strain of relationships, mental health and the threat of being thrust into adulthood hangs over them like a dark cloud. A gut-wrenchingly perfect bit of television – and if we started out hoping it would never have to end, we finished knowing it has to end here.

Length of binge: 2 hours 33 mins

Animation wizards Pixar deliver their answer to Rashomon. The eight-part series takes us into the high-stakes world of middle school softball, each episode sliding into the perspective of a different character in the same week leading up to The Pickles’ championship game. The skittering viewpoint deals with everything from avoidant attachment to crippling anxiety and financial struggles, via sentient blobs of sweat, imaginary armour and gravity-linked self-esteem. Not quite a home run, but a comfortable slide into third. 

Length of binge: 2 hours 47 mins

There’s something quite unsettling about chuckling aloud at a show built around poverty, child abandonment and the crumbling welfare state. This adaptation of Janice Okoh’s play Three Birds coats its central tragedy — three Black teenagers (and one chicken) abandoned on a Birmingham council estate — with a glossy layer of warm-hearted comedy and subtle character work as the trio cover up their mother’s disappearance so as not to be separated. With three outstanding central performances (Chenée Taylor, Kaydrah Walker-Wilkie, Akins Subair), this is a bravura Brummy tale that warms the cockles while it breaks your heart. 

If the notion of indie club snogging while wearing battered DMs and listening to The Jesus and Mary Chain stirs some wistful memories, then this four-part adaptation of Jane Sanderson’s ’80s-soaked novel is definitely for you. Jim Sturgess/Rory Walton-Smith and Teresa Palmer/Florence Hunt play Cure-crossed lovers Daniel and Alison, whose aborted teenage romance rekindles decades later (thanks to a none-more-Gen-X Facebook reunion), prompting a timeline-twining narrative of what was, what is, and what might have been. Palmer and Sturgess are great, but it’s Hunt and Walton-Smith who really sell it – all angsty longing, stolen glances and unforgivably floppy hair. An unexpected treat.

Jon Hamm has famously skulked through America’s wealthier suburbs under false pretenses before on the small screen. But Coop, the ex-finance bro at the heart of Apple’s crime caper, is a different animal to Mad Men’s darker-hued Don Draper. Sure, he tries to make ends meet when he loses his hedge fund job by ripping off his friends’ mansions for watches and jewellery they’re too rich to miss. But the fun here is in watching a man flailing around to maintain a lifestyle he never valued in the first place – and trying to stay out of jail in the process. Amanda Peet (the ex) and Hoon Lee (the business manager) are standouts in a consistently enjoyable nine-ep run. 

A father and son bonding on a road tip along the Sussex coast might sound like wholesome fare, but this six-part series is based on the 2009 book by Nick Cave and is as bleak and unsettling as that would imply. A maniacal Matt Smith stars as the titular misogynistic man-whore, who snatches up son Bunny Junior (Rafael Mathé, heartbreaking) after his wife’s suicide and embarks on a hedonistic crash course in how not to parent. The result is a gloriously grubby rendering of skewed masculinity with a fascinating, flawed character study at its heart. 

Outrageous political dramas have lost some bite in a Trump 2.0 world, but The Diplomat’s blend of batshit geopolitics and soapy shenanigans continues to be its secret sauce. That, and the magnificent love/hate chemistry between Keri Russell‘s diplomatically maladroit envoy and on-screen husband Rufus Sewell. Allison Janney takes over as America’s maverick-in-chief this time, tensions rising dramatically between the US and Rory Kinnear’s delightfully obnoxious PM. The TV of equivalent of a box of crackers – occasionally salty, but also comforting and moreish.

And so, the best dressed character on television – Natasha Lyonne’s charmingly cynical Charlie Cale – returns. After proving his modern mystery mettle with Knives Out, director Rian Johnson created this wisecracking, small screen vehicle for Lyonne’s unique brand of anti-hero, following Orange Is the New Black and Russian Doll. Series two sees this campy homage to the 1970s detective show stripped of the jeopardy that hovered over first tranche of episodes, but in its place comes even more guest stars (Cynthia Erivo, Katie Holmes, Carol Kane, Gaby Hoffmann, the unmistakable voice of Steve Buscemi), leftfield, cultish references and a refreshing lack of any romantic narrative whatsoever.

This campus comedy from internet personality Benito Skinner balances raunch, heart and youthful anxiety on a par with Sex Education and Derry Girls, only with Gen Z energy. (Hello, Charli XCX cameo.) Drawing from his own experiences, Skinner plays a closeted jock determined to stay that way during his first year at university, a plan complicated by a handsome classmate and a budding friendship with his would-be beard. Skinner proves he’s more than just a ‘content creator’, while co-star Wally Baram looks poised to make an Ayo Edebiri-like breakthrough. One of the year’s sweetest surprises.

Whisk a generous helping of Game of Thrones into a thick batter of The Rings of Power and you’ll have a mixture that’s very close to this wonderfully knotty fantasy saga, adapted from the late Robert Jordan’s shelf-busting 15-book series. This season proves the best yet, the story picking up the pace in a tale of political strife, gore-flecked battles, and scheming sorceresses in fabulous frocks. With dense lore, epic scale and an outstanding supporting cast (Meera Syal’s Verin and Shohreh Aghdashloo’s Elaida being particular standouts), this is old school high fantasy spiced up with Thrones-inspired slaughter and shagging.

The set-up is stronger than the payoff but Noah Hawley’s Alien spinoff series is still a noble attempt to stretch the franchise beyond its intergalactic settings and ask: ‘what would it be like if there was a xenomorph in your backyard?’ Bottle episode ‘In Space, No One…’ is essentially a vinyl re-press of Ridley Scott’s Alien – not a criticism – and the Fargo creator does another nice job of holding the spirit of the franchise close while branching off in interesting new directions to deposit creepy new alien species into a world run by arrogant tech tycoons. Albeit, the cat doesn’t fare quite so well here.

The final season of Danny McBride’s farce about a superstar televangelist family in the Deep South starts out in typically juicy and unpredictable fashion, with Bradley Cooper cameoing as a wicked Civil War-era conman-preacher – the great-great-granddaddy of the Gemstone family’s patriarch. With its slapstick violence and characteristically dark-but-goofy humour, this show is already a modern classic. And season 4 deepens the story in an audacious, dramatic style.

Springing forth from the pen of Mare of Easttown’s Brad Ingelsby, this seven-part thriller pits a burned-out FBI agent (a suitably bedraggled Mark Ruffalo) against Tom Pelphrey’s band of binmen-turned-robbers. As you’d expect from Ingelsby, the hillbilly Heat dynamic is shrink-wrapped in chaotic family drama as the pair’s dysfunctional home lives threaten to come apart at the seams. It lacks some of Mare’s dark sense of humour (though Gen-Z clashes among Ruffalo’s ramshackle task force raise some smiles), but Pelphrey crackles as the sad-eyed robber and Coda’s Emilia Jones steals every scene she’s in as his put-upon niece/full-time child minder.

Chris Lang’s propulsive cold case drama remains the jewel in the crown of British network ITV, with Sinéad Keenan entering her second year as DCI Jessie James after stepping into Nicola Walker’s boots. This time, James finds herself dealing with an alt-right pundit, an autistic labourer, an Afghan refugee, and a recently unearthed cadaver. The joy, as ever, is in watching Lang weave these disparate threads into a satisfyingly serpentine narrative, here touching on everything from British immigration policy to the corrosive influence of the culture war. 

Length of binge: 4 hours 41 mins

The title conjures images of a guns-blazing animated sci-fi spectacle, but this sardonically funny and deeply odd show from the creators of American Pie is something else entirely. Based on The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, it’s a quirky space oddity concerning the existential travails of a self-hacked security robot (Alexander Skarsgård), whose absolute contempt for humankind butts up against its impulse to keep a band of inept terraformers alive, eye-rolling as it does so. Throw in a space sitcom show-within-a-show and you have something quite unlike anything else on television.

Peaky Blinders’ showrunner Steven Knight returns to dark historical crime dramas, this time in Victorian London but still with the same texture and grit. Fresh from Jamaica, best friends Hezekiah (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall) are pulled into the unregulated world of bare-knuckle boxing. There’s lots of blood, class snobbery and a colourful gang of female thieves called the Forty Elephants who find a use for Hezekiah’s particular set of skills. But, standing over it all like a colossus, is a ripped Stephen Graham as ‘Sugar’ Goodson, the emperor of the bare-knuckle boxing world who delivers maximum intensity in minimum screen time. It may be Disney+ but Graham doesn’t pull any punches. 

Length of binge: 5 hours 10 mins

📍 Showrunner Steven Knight on how A Thousand Blows makes 19th century London cool as hell

‘Squid Game meets Shōgun’ is a hard elevator pitch to top. In late 19th century Japan, 292 former samurai are lured by a huge cash prize into a game where they must travel to Tokyo via assorted checkpoints, fighting to the death along the way. What it lacks in Squid Game’s acid satire, this more than makes up for in elaborately staged chambara action – aided by the fact that the show’s star, Junichi Okada, is also the action choreographer. Epic in scale, brutal in execution and (very) bloody good fun.

Reliably brilliant in every episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and as the damaged daughter in Hacks, Kaitlin Olson has finally landed a lead worthy of her immense talent. In this remake of a French series, Olson plays a ‘high potential intellectual’ – her IQ is 160 – who uses her advanced cognitive abilities to help clay-footed detectives solve crimes. A fashion-forward fusion of Monk and The Mentalist with a manic mother-of-three? It has a lot of potential. 

Length of binge: 9 hours 16 mins

This cute and sassy romcom emerged as a surprise hit for Netflix last year. Kristen Bell and Adam Brody are the mismatched couple at its core: he, a sexy, basketball-playing rabbi; she, a gentile sex podcaster. Not a pairing the Hinge algorithm would have instantly landed on but fertile comedy ground, nonetheless. The first season’s will-they/won’t-they frisson is replaced by a smart relationship study marinating in cultural clashes and post-honeymoon-period chill. Bell and Brody are a delight, and Timothy Simons and Justine Lupe really shine as the pair’s siblings.

Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson’s girls-in-the-wilderness cannibal drama returns with a more focused third instalment after a meandering season 2, the feral teenagers drawing steadily closer to the macabre Lady of the Flies cult teased in the very first episode. There’s still a sense the the writers are making it up as they go, with no clear destination in mind, but this is a hell of a fun ride regardless, with superbly batty oddball Misty (Samantha Hanratty/Christina Ricci) the gold-plated MVP in both past and present timelines.

Prestige television was built upon the legacy of morally dubious men, but even among antiheroes a creepy serial stalker is a hard one to root for. But Netflix continues to pull it off with this deliciously silly series based on Caroline Kepnes’ novels. This final series sends Penn Badgley’s Joe back to the Big Apple with minted new wife Kate (Charlotte Ritchie). It’s not long before Joe’s inner psycho reasserts itself, though, leading to lasso-assisted garrottings to kidnapping mix-ups. And, thanks to the fact that his victims are almost always more dreadful people than he is, you’ll be on board every step of the way. 

Length of binge: 8 hours 35 mins

📍 Follow in Penn Badgley’s footsteps to season 5’s key Big Apple hotspots

Hugh Bonneville is dogged real-life cop Brian Boyce, a decade into his hunt for the perpetrators of the 1983 Brink's-Mat gold robbery, at the time Britain’s biggest ever heist, and the gold itself. In the second series of Neil Forsyth’s purposeful, period-evoking BBC crime drama, the criminals are hiding in plain sight – the smarmy John Palmer (Tom Cullen), ferrety Charlie Miller (Sam Spruell) and their accomplices – which gives an enthralling procedural edge to this second season, and final, season. The sunkissed Tenerife locations bathe these coldly desperate men in an incongruous but apt golden light. Gripping stuff. 

Length of binge: 5 hours 47 mins

If Star Trek has at times been criticised for being unduly earnest, it’s not an accusation you can level at Strange New Worlds. It ricochets between zombie horror, pre-nuptial farce, and a batty murder-mystery that riffs on the janky production values of ‘60s Trek. Driven by a crew populated with compelling leads, the wild unpredictability means you never know what you’ll get from one episode to the next. When it comes to boldly going, Strange New Worlds is proving the most intrepid Trek of all.

If you’re on the lookout for a cosy crime caper to warm the cockles on a Sunday night, look elsewhere. This grim story of murder, incest and child abuse is not the for the faint of heart, adapted from the similarly twisted novel by Erik Axl Sund. However, if you can get past the tricky subject matter, this is a fiendishly well-constructed serial-killer thriller, complete with a captivating, Lecter-like unsub and the fiercely enjoyable pairing of Eve Myles and Katherine Kelly as the detective/ psychologist duo trying to stop the killings.

Length of binge: 4 hours 50 mins

If there is one thing you can expect from Dan Fogelman, it’s an emotionally-charged twist. So sit back, grab some popcorn, and pull out any other self-care stop you need to mentally prepare yourself because Paradise delivers one of those after another. This Is Us showrunner delivers a genuinely fresh take on yet another US President show that’s part murder-mystery, part political thriller, and is peppered with tantalising clues and jolting flashbacks. Sterling K Brown is natural as ever as a Secret Service agent detailed to protect James Marsden’s persuasive President (his finest performance this side of Jury Duty). Not one to miss.

Length of binge: 6 hours 52 mins

Booker Prize-winning author Marlon James turns his hand to screenwriting with this five-part adaptation of his own novel, in which former Scotland Yard detective Millie Black (Tamara Lawrance) returns to her native Kingston to take a job on the Jamaican police force. Directly inspired by James’ policewoman mother, Black is an unflappable force of nature, one who ends up butting heads with Joe Dempsie’s Met detective, drawn to her patch by a jurisdiction-twisting murder. While the crime thriller at the heart of this show is largely by-the-numbers, its elevated entirely by both Lawrance’s performance and the distinctive setting, rendered with love and detailed familiarity by Jamaican-born James. 

The Wire meets Ozark and then sits on a whoopie cushion in this darkly funny Apple TV crime thriller. Two layabout ex-con friends, Ray (Eternals’ Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny (Narcos’ Wagner Moura), attempt to rip off a drugs gang only to find themselves pincered between a ruthless drug lord and the DEA. Reliant on wits dulled by addiction, the pair’s attempt to negotiate those two cat-and-mouse games has a tragicomic quality. Somehow finding time between his big-screen blockbusters, Ridley Scott gets the ball rolling, with a chaotically funny pilot episode.

Length of binge: 6 hours 23 mins

Move over Scandi noir, here comes a sweary new tartan version of the crime procedural – and it’s a blast. Filming in and around Edinburgh, The Queen’s Gambit showrunner Scott Frank reinvents crime writer Jussi Adler-Olsen’s curmudgeonly Copenhagen detective Carl Morck as a PTSD-afflicted Auld Reekie cop and sets him and his team of Department Q misfits on the case of a long-missing lawyer (Chloe Pirrie). Played with sardonic relish by the usually charming Matthew Goode, he’s meant to be a hard man to like. But he’s a killer character to follow through the Georgian halls and gritty estates of the Scottish capital in a crime drama that delights in throwing him (and us) off the scent. 

Length of binge: 8 hours 10 mins

📍 The surprising Edinburgh filming spots behind Dept. Q

How are you, asks Alan Partridge in his healing journey through Britain’s mental health crisis (in association with Flench & Sons Tanning Centres). Steve Coogan’s talkshow host-turned-radio DJ-turned-voiceover artist for Saudi camel milk brings his customary insight into human behaviour – which is to say, none – as he heads across the land for a series of hilariously awkward encounters with baffled Brits. The highlight is episode 4 when Alan heads to the Peak District ‘with nothing more than my stick camera and obviously some clothes’ to ponder the big questions, before squabbling with a barmaid over some crisps and falling down a hill.

One of the best queer dramas of the past decade, trans activist Paris Lees’ pitch-perfect adaptation of her memoirs follows teenage misfit Byron (Ellis Howard) as they escape a dysfunctional family and find a tribe in Nottingham’s rowdy LGBTQ+ scene. It’s a wild ride that zooms by in a flash, leaving you deeply invested in its tight-knit band of rogues and outcasts. Lees evokes the hedonistic edge and sense of optimism of Blair’s Britain that’s a gritty but hopeful passport to a vivid moment in time.  

Length of binge: 6 hours 12 minutes

📍What It Feels Like For A Girl soundtrack: all the Y2K bangers from the BBC trans drama

‘Stumbles with culinary dissonance’ reads the Chicago Tribune review of Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) eponymous eatery – a criticism could also be levelled at the maligned third season of Christopher Storer’s high-stress kitchen drama. This fourth outing, however, harnesses the show’s knack for precisely engineered chaos. Along with renewed momentum and a clearer focus, there’s a big, beating heart at work here, providing beautiful character moments and satisfying pay-offs while showcasing the phenomenal ensemble cast. When it comes to people furiously bellowing at each other while cutting asparagus, The Bear is the best in the biz.

Length of binge: 6 hours 9 mins

Jack Whitehall shows a range – let’s be honest – we didn’t know he had in this unexpectedly terrific Highsmithian thriller from Rev. creator James Wood. The stand-up and Fresh Meat star plays Adam Healey, a seemingly charming and accomplished manny who worms his way into the lives of venture capitalist Jamie Tanner (David Duchovny), his fashionista wife Nat (Carice van Houton) and their three children – before unpicking them in ruthless style. Always smartly written and acted, Malice occupies that space between prestige telly (the Greek locations are tdf) and something altogether trashier. It’s a six-hour binge that will fly by.

Does Steven Knight not sleep? The Brit currently rivals his compatriot Jesse Armstrong as one of the most prolific screenwriter/showrunners at work (look out for his Disney+ period boxing drama A Thousand Blows and a Peaky Blinders movie The Immortal Man to come). His World War II special forces origin story really hits its stride in a second season full of punkily ferocious Band-of-Brothers-on-Red-Bull energy. Jack O'Connell leads the way as the maverick SAS unit’s iconoclastic, poetry-loving leader Lieutenant Paddy Mayne in an eight-episode run with heart as well as muscle. Roll on season 3.

Length of binge: 5 hours 45 mins

Seven years after Netflix’s Daredevil series was unceremoniously yanked from our screens, Charlie Cox’s take on Marvel’s crimson vigilante makes a welcome return, bringing Vincent D’Onofrio’s growling Kingpin along for the ride. Part reboot, part follow-up, this once more sees lawyer-by-day Matt Murdock wrestling with the ethics of his crime-fighting alter ego and serving out justice both within and without the courtroom, while in a Trumpian turn, Kingpin is elected mayor of New York. Despite a troubled production that saw the entire show retooled, this hits all the right beats, with compelling parallel arcs as both hero and villain wrestle with their (very) violent natures. Not one for the kids.

Length of binge: 7 hours 7 mins

A new Hirokazu Kore-eda in early 2025 – who knew? The Palme d’Or-winning filmmaker behind Shoplifters surprise-dropped a new Netflix series in January, and it’s exactly the delicate, family-orientated work you would expect from the man they call Ozu’s heir. Set over several months in 1979, Asura concerns four sisters whose lives are transformed after their elderly father has an affair. The exemplary cast offers a Who’s Who of J-cinema greats, too, including six-time Japanese Academy Award winner Rie Miyazawa.

Length of binge: 6 hours 52 mins

Barrelling into its third series with sirens wailing, Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson’s Belfast-set police series remains BBC drama at its most electric. Following a gaggle of beleaguered front-line responders as they navigate law-enforcement in post-Troubles Northern Ireland, the show now adds Michael Smiley as smug intelligence officer Colly, and pits our band in blue against a drugs gang. If you’re looking for a show that scratches that Line Of Duty itch while also blending unbearably tense drama with sectarian grudges, heroic levels of inter-office shagging, and improbable Westlife karaoke, then this BAFTA-winning series very much has you covered. 

If you were wondering if The White Lotus might have peaked with its sensational second season, Mike White kindly asks that you hold his margarita. Shifting its luxurious locale to Thailand, season 3 manages to be the most provocative instalment yet, dipping its toe in a thematic jacuzzi of incest, toxic masculinity, sexual boundaries, soured friendships, old grudges, and of course, murder. White’s line-up of the grotesquely privileged is more twisted than ever (Jason Isaacs, Aimee Lou Woods and Walton Goggins standouts), and while it happily cops to accusations of being in no hurry to get where it’s going, the series’ feature-length finale is a jaw-dropping destination that’s worth sticking around for.

Length of binge: 8 hours 35 mins

📍 All the Thailand filming locations in The White Lotus season 3

If you’d somehow forgotten why this Korean-language drama grew to become Netflix’s most-watched show, the brutal, bloody game of ‘hide and seek’ that kicks off this final season offers up a handy reminder. Hwang Dong-hyuk’s blackly comic satire on capitalism and greed pulls zero punches (or blades, or bludgeoning poles) as Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) attempts to end the games for good. More acidly damning than ever in its depiction of humanity, season 3 still manages to let the odd glimmer of humanity shine through. A satisfying conclusion to a cultural phenomenon, with a final scene that will knock you backwards.

Length of binge: 6 hours 8 mins

Nathan Fielder thrives in the absurd. In Nathan For You, he built a reputation for being an unreliable host who orchestrates bizarre, meta-comedic stunts (see: Dumb Starbucks). The Rehearsal takes things further, using elaborate simulations to help real people prepare for deeply personal stress-inducing situations. Season two narrows its focus to pilots, Fielder’s latest obsession, attempting to prevent airline disasters by improving cockpit communication. As it did in the previous season, it spirals into full Synecdoche, New York territory, with the line between reality and performance constantly blurred. The only constant? The raw, often heartbreaking sincerity of Fielder’s subjects. 

Length of binge: 3 hours 48 mins

Justin Kurzel’s darkly poetic adaptation of Aussie novelist Richard Flannagan’s majestic World War II novel is an excoriating vision wrought from the blood, bone and wasting flesh of Digger POWs in the jungles of wartime Burma. Jacob Elordi is cocksure young medic Dorrigo Evans, whose spark is snuffed out as he proves powerless to prevent his comrades dying at the hands of their Japanese captors. Ciaran Hinds is the present-day Dorrigo, now a successful surgeon but still haunted by the trauma of the past. Both are note-perfect, with able support from Odessa Young, Essie Davis and Simon Baker. 

Notorious frenemies Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) return in Hacks season four, doubling down on TV’s most toxic partnership, now set against the cutthroat backdrop of late-night television. Daniels has blackmailed her way to head writer, Vance is desperate to make the show a success and their poor agents are trapped in the crossfire like kids in a messy divorce. Their animosity seeps through the screen and is a masterclass in cutting insults and excruciating microaggressions. But between the scenes that make you audibly wince, Hacks continues to sharpen its satirical observations on the Hollywood elite while dissecting what it truly means to ‘make it’ in the business.

Length of binge: 5 hours

How in the world do you continue a streak that starts with Breaking Bad and continues with Better Call Saul? By taking a hard left turn, it transpires, as showrunner Vince Gilligan harks back to his X-Files roots with this off-beat sci-fi depicting the most chipper end-of-the-world ever conceived. A beautifully paced meditation on happiness, loneliness and individuality, Pluribus might draw upon ’50s pulp sci-fi for its concept, but this startlingly original show is quite unlike anything else on television. It also serves as a stellar (and long overdue) star-vehicle for Better Call Saul MVP Rhea Seehorn, who steps up to first billing in what is very nearly a one woman show. Unmissable.

What if your dream job turns out to be a nightmare? Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s relentlessly funny Hollywood satire plays like an update of The Player for the era of IP moviemaking, Netflix and creative decline. Rogen’s people-pleasing, cinephile studio head Matt Remick – think The Office’s Michael Scott got locked in the Criterion cupboard – has artistic vanity but no backbone, a lethal combination for a man charged with turning around his failing corner of Hollywood. The term ‘studio interference’ gets new meaning in a majestic all-one-shot second episode that sees Remick turn up to (and arse up) a crucial scene in Sarah Polley’s new movie. Call it ‘The Kid Trips Over the Picture’, it’s one of the best things on telly this year.

Length of binge: 5 hours 3 mins

For all its surface similarities to ER, what makes The Pitt so effective is everything it subtracts from the typical hospital-show formula: no music, no supply-closet trysts or much other extracurricular activity. Documenting a single shift in a Pittsburgh emergency room, with each episode representing one real-time hour, it simply jumps from one crisis to the next, from gory accidents, ODs and shootings to bugs in ear canals. Its characters – including ER alum Noah Wyle as senior physician Dr ‘Robby’ Robinavitch – emerge largely from their responses to each trauma. It’s exhilarating, exhausting and as accurate as TV has ever been in reflecting the everyday lives of first-responders. 

Length of binge: 11 hours 53 mins

📍 How a Pittsburgh trauma unit became home to a smash-hit hospital drama

Returning after an unbearably long three year absence, Dan Erickson’s darkly funny, delightfully absurd workplace mystery makes a triumphant resurgence, having lost none of its confidence. Adam Scott is back as Mark S, a ‘severed’ employee at corporation/cult Lumon, his artificially split personas offering the ultimate in work/life balance. Mesmerising and baffling in equal measure, this packs Lynchian surrealism, biting satire and ruminations on love, loss and the nature of self. Boasting charming character work and a captivating puzzle box structure, this is hands-down one of the best uses for a television.

Length of binge: 8 hours 18 mins

📍 Severance season 2 filming locations 

Re-teaming national treasure Stephen Graham with Boiling Point director Philip Barantini, each of Adolescence’s four episodes is a single continuous shot, driving home the confusion and devastation as a 13-year-old Jamie (Owen Cooper, a revelation) is arrested for the murder of a classmate in real time. Graham (who co-wrote the series with Jack Thorne) plays his father Eddie, radiating grief, rage and guilt. Each episode here takes a different perspective on the crime, from the kids at Jamie’s school, to his family, and a show-stealing, hour-long two-hander between Cooper and Erin Doherty as the psychologist sent to assess him. Devastating, awe-inspiring and hugely powerful, this compact, understated drama sets the bar for show of the year. 

Length of binge: 3 hours 49 mins

📍 How realistic is Adolescence? A police officer explains

Like an off-trajectory space craft bumping into a docking bay, Tony Gilroy’s extraordinary TV prequel didn’t lock as neatly into Rogue One’s narrative as we’d hoped. Inevitably, Cassian Andor will feel like a slightly altered version in the movie – not least because the actor playing him is nearly a decade older – but does it matter? Not a jot. Diego Luna’s proto freedom fighter now spills into the 2016 movie a much richer character for two seasons of this perfectly calibrated and politically potent series. There are meaty arcs everywhere you look, from Kyle Soller’s hapless Syril to Adria Arjona’s traumatised Bix, all eliding into an immaculate two-episode climax that provides the perfect mix of thrills and meditativeness. And is it time to hail K-2SO as Star Wars’ second best droid?  

Length of binge: 9 hours 55 mins

📍 Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy on season 2