What were the highlights from 2025 — here’s just six of the great shows we’ve watched
We’ve covered the many crime shows we watched in 2025, now we turn to the so-called big shows. Here’s six of the more prominent titles — we could have easily listed more. This includes the excellent Pluribus, which hadn’t finished its run when we compiled this list. Similarly, the final season of Stranger Things technically doesn’t air until early New Year’s Day 2026 in the UK, but does promise just over two hours of thrills for fans seeing in the New Year.
Our highlights from 2025 (alphabetical order — we can’t pick a favourite)
We’ve focused on cult shows, as you might expect, and notice how many are on Apple TV. There’s also three shows in their sophomore season, and all have more to come. The only downside is many of these won’t resurface again until 2027, but we’re sure next year will bring equally as many highlights.
Foundation season 3
Looking again at our review, we still feel it’s accurate — good did indeed get great. The season brought the story of the Foundation’s founding to a close, dealt with various additions to the canon (such as the clone Emperor(s)), brought the Mule and Second Foundation into the story and led nicely into the future seasons. Fans of the books looking for the original twist should still have been satisfied with how the writers updated the story and there’s plenty here to both like and look forward to more of.
Gen V season 2
The world of The Boys and Gen V is getting very intense as the parent series comes to an end next year. While Gen V may have arbitrarily changed some student alliances to keep interesting characters in play and tries for a twist that failed, there’s more emotional depth than season 1, more significant crossover into the storyline of The Boys and this is a good example of a sophomore season find its groove.
Murderbot season 1
The only debutante in this year’s list, Murderbot surprised us by just how funny it could be and pleased us for its relatively short episodes. Some rock solid science fiction tropes (android’s breaking free of their shackles, evil corporations…) mixed with some dry performances made this another show we were glad to see renewed.
Severance season 2
After too long a gap from season 1, Severance season 2 arrived in a raft of well thought out publicity, including when the severed floor came to Grand Central Terminal, surprising New Yorkers with a surreal office pop-up during rush hour:
While the season had a very different pace from season 1, and started to explain just what is going on, it still felt like compelling viewing. Another sophomore success.
Slow Horses season 5
What can we say that hasn’t been said already? You either love Slow Horses or haven’t watched it yet. That said, in some ways this felt the least polished of the five seasons so far, yet had some strong character exploration and made better use of some secondary characters, whilst perhaps underusing a few others. London was once again under threat, and more importantly Slough House was on the verge of closure. Did Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) save the day? There’s a season 6 next year, which rather answers the question!
Wednesday season 2
Could Wednesday repeat the massive success of season 1? Inevitably not, but still plenty to enjoy as Jenna Ortega, Emma Myers and many, many more returned to Nevermore Academy with foes old and new. We had a lot more of the Addams family as a whole, including some surprising backstory for Wednesday’s parents, some new faces and a few threads from season 1 tied up (a little). Like many of the show listed, it seems we will have a two year wait for more. Until then we shall have to satisfy ourselves with repeats.