The Best Stuff I Watched In 2025

A few notes before we dive in:

• This is a list of the best stuff I watched in 2025, ranked from ten to one, with mostly TV shows included but also a couple of movies
• I don’t have Andor on the list because I’m not a Star Wars guy; I don’t have The Pitt on the list because I don’t do well with stuff set in hospitals; The Studio was probably the toughest cut I made; I love Slow Horses so much and this season was great but making these lists is always hard; Peacemaker was good, too; the Naked Gun reboot was so much better than it had any right to be; Always Sunny is somehow still awesome all these years later and the Abbott Elementary crossover was a blast; I’m glad South Park is having another moment but I really did not wanna deal with all that this year, subject-matter-wise; I almost held this list until after I watched the new Knives Out movie but, apologies to Rian Johnson, content waits for no one; I very seriously debated putting the Super Bowl on the list, in part because I already threw out the rules related to movies/TV and in part because watching your favorite football team dismantle a dynasty for three hours is really a lot of fun, but if I decided to include it I realized I would kind of have to put it at number one, and while I am willing to display a pretty outrageous amount of insufferable Philadelphia fandom on the internet, even I looked at that and thought “perhaps a bit much,” so just know that I did that for you
• Do not yell at me

Okay, here we go.

TEN: The Chair Company

I was a little skeptical of all of this before it started. I didn’t know if the stuff that made I Think You Should Leave work — abrasive characters, absurd premises, kind of a lot of shouting — would play over a season-long narrative. I was pleased to be wrong. Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin cooked here. It all got extremely weird and dark in spots, especially near the end, but had enough of a silly through-line that it held together.

Honestly, the main reason this show beat out The Studio for the tenth spot was the line about having “the worst pillow in town.” I stand by my decision.

NINE: A Man on the Inside

Possible recency bias at play here, but I really do love this show. The second season was sweet and silly and cutting and heartfelt and featured Jackee Harry a little bit and made for just a lovely Thanksgiving weekend watch.

Apparently, Mike Schur and Ted Danson are pretty good at making television comedies. We will continue to investigate this going forward.

EIGHT: Severance

Notes:

• What a weird and devious television program
• I had a lot of fun doing weekly blogs about season two for Vulture
• I still need Dylan to push his glasses up on his nose

Moving on.

SEVEN: Pluribus

Uggggggggghhhhhhhh I hate trying to rank shows that are still airing when I’m making these lists. Like…

On one hand: I suspect if I were making this list a few weeks later, the show would end up much higher, if only because it’s been great so far, and I trust the people involved to bring it home.

On the other hand: It’s not really fair to give one show credit for a kickass first half of a season while punishing other shows for letting up on the gas down the home stretch.

I dunno, man. Seven seems like a reasonable compromise.

SIX: Murderbot

I am generally not a big science fiction guy, so I was surprised at how much I loved this little show. I got so into it that I actually started reading the books it was based on. I really did not expect “a TV show set in space where Alexander Skarsgard plays a security robot that hacks its own operating system and just watch to be left alone to binge his beloved soap operas” to be something that makes my year-end list, and I especially did not expect it to be the kind of thing that makes me cry a little at the end.

And yet!

FIVE: The Righteous Gemstones

Notes:

• I don’t think any show in recent memory had more fun with the English language than this one, and the final season included a few more turns of phrase that will stick with me a long time, like referring to the movie Castaway as “the Tom-Hanks-by-hisself one” and when characters described Internet research as “doing some look-em-ups”
• Judy Gemstone is a Hall of Fame television character and I hope one day we let Edi Patterson become a huge star
• I am going to miss the heck out of this show

Come back soon, Danny McBride.

FOUR: Black Bag

A 90-minute spy movie directed by Steven Soderbergh where Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett play a married couple that smolders across the screen in leather jackets and turtlenecks in an attempt to thwart a plan set in motion by any number of people that may or may not include their boss, as played by Pierce Brosnan.

Yeah, dude. That is some extremely For Brian stuff right there.

THREE: Taskmaster

I was extremely late to Taskmaster, the British game/panel show that has been airing for about 800 seasons. I became intrigued when I heard Jason Mantzoukas would be the first American contestant. He’s always so sharp and chaotic that the idea of him on a task-based reality show seemed to be a perfect fit. And it was. I don’t think any show I watched in 2025 brought me more joy on a week-to-week basis. Just an absolute mess. What a treasure.

Yes, I am almost fully Taskmaster-pilled now. I’m working my way through the archives slowly, usually around bedtime. The season with James Acaster was probably even better than this one. I would like to see him and Mantzoukas go on a cross-country road trip together.

TWO: One Battle After Another

Notes:

• As I’ve said a bunch of times, my favorite premise for a movie or TV show is “a bozo develops a purpose,” and DiCaprio is just incredible here as a bumbling burned-out revolutionary who is raising a daughter and up to his scruffy neckbeard in danger related to a group of festive racists
• Benicio del Toro is so freaking cool
• I was so locked in watching this movie in the theater that I let my posture in my wheelchair go to shit to such a degree that I hurt my neck so bad that I had to start physical therapy again to try to un-crank all the muscles in there

Hard to think of a higher compliment than that, really.

ONE: The Lowdown

Another bozo with a purpose, this time played by Ethan Hawke, who sunk his teeth into the role of a dirtbag journalist — I’m sorry, “truthstorian” — who was… well, also up to his neckbeard into a mess involving some racists. Really just a great year for bozos thwarting racists. Big fan of that, in general, and also of this show, which was yet another banger from Reservation Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo.

I've been banging the drum for this show for months now, so it feels fitting to slot it in at number one. If you’re looking for a fun season of television to binge over the holidays, I really do recommend giving it a shot.