I suppose you all know me as a music and movie guy. I don’t write about television very much. That’s mostly because I don’t keep up with TV shows very well. I very rarely watch shows as they come out; I’m always behind. I also find writing about television tricky. But I do watch TV, and I love a lot of shows.

This year I actually made an effort to keep up with new TV and to watch more of it. So, I thought it would be fun to make a Top Five list of my favorites. Four of them are new series that debuted in 2025, and one of them is a little bit older, but it did run a new season this year. That was my one rule – the season that I’m talking about how to have run this year. Technically, show #4 originally aired in 2024, but that was in England; it didn’t air in the US until 2025, so I’m counting it. And here we go.

5. Slow Horses: Season 5

Slow Horses is about an inept group of MI5 agents who have severely screwed up in one way or another (but not badly enough to actually get fired), and are now relegated to Slough House – a sort of detention center for screwups. It is run by Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), an unkempt, heavy-drinking, chain-smoking elder statesman who was once a great agent but is now sick of it all.

Each season naturally finds this team of goofballs solving a real, major case, almost by accident. Season Five finds them embroiled in a terrorist plot, an assassination attempt, and a group of incels. It is a tad overstuffed, and the characters are starting to drift from their designated personalities, but it more than makes up for those flaws with added comedy. Gary Oldman is a treasure, but the rest of the cast is wonderfully fun as well.

4. Ludwig

David Mitchell’s comic persona is that of a well-educated, middle-class, slightly stuffy bloke who’d mostly like to be left alone. Ludwig was custom-made for that persona. He plays John Taylor, a reclusive puzzle maker whose twin brother is an Oxford police detective. When that brother disappears, his wife (Anna Maxwell Martin) calls upon John to help her find out what happened. Being identical twins, John pretends to be his brother initially to grab some notebooks from his desk at police headquarters. But quickly he’s swept up into a murder mystery. And because murder mysteries are like puzzles, he quickly solves it.

Each week brings a new murder, or puzzle, and John is able to solve it. Mitchell is an absolute delight, and the puzzles are great fun. I liked this season so much I almost immediately watched it again.

3. Task

I’m a huge fan of crime dramas. I’m obviously not the only one, as there are approximately eight kajillion of them out there. And that’s the thing; the popularity of the genre means there is a blueprint for it. At their most basic, crime dramas involve someone committing a crime and someone else trying to catch them. There are all sorts of variations on that basic outline. And that’s the other thing; because there is a blueprint and because there are so many of them, crime dramas can feel like a comfortable pair of socks. You put them on, and as long as they keep your feet warm, you don’t really think about them again. You only notice them when they’ve got a hole in them or they are exceptionally warm and soft.

To wear out that metaphor, crime dramas are something you can throw on, enjoy, and never think about again. They are only memorable when they are exceptionally bad, or really good. The Task is excellent. Mark Ruffalo stars as Tom Brandis, an FBI agent who has been having a tough time of it lately. His family life is in chaos, and he’s suffered a recent personal tragedy. As such, we find him, at the start of the show, taking kind of a break. He’s off active duty and spends his work hours at job fairs recruiting for the FBI.

But then his boss calls to say she needs him to head up a task force to catch someone who’s been robbing drug houses run by a local biker gang. The show follows Brandis and his task force (made up of state, county, and local police) and the thief (an incredible Tom Pelphrey.) Task doesn’t do anything new with the genre, but everything is working at such a high level I have no complaints.

2. The Pitt

It is impossible to talk about The Pitt without comparing it to ER. Both shows are set in emergency rooms and follow the absolute insanity that takes place there. Both are set inside teaching hospitals, so you get a mix of attending physicians, residents, beginners, and students. They were both produced by John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill, and they both star Noah Wylie. Each series also balances big, complicated cases with smaller, simpler ones, as well as their big emotional beats with more light-hearted ones.

The biggest difference between the two is that ER aired on NBC and The Pitt is an HBO show, which allows The Pitt to be more graphic (in its language, its gore, and its explicitness – at one point we get a close-up view of a doctor trying to pull a baby out of its mother’s vagina.) It is also set during one twelve-hour shift, with each episode lasting just under sixty minutes in length.

Much like Task, this show doesn’t necessarily do anything new with its genre, but it is so incredibly well produced, well made, and acted that after one season I’m just about ready to call it the best medical drama TV has ever produced. Even better, they’ve already shot the second season, and it airs early next year.

1. Pluribus

Up until just today I was all set to make The Pitt my number one show of 2025. It is so good I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I watched it this past spring. I immediately loved Pluribus when it started airing last month, but I wasn’t ready to have it knock The Pitt off its (presumed) top spot. Then its season finale dropped this morning, and Holy Moly was I blown away.

This is a show that’s actually best watched if you know nothing about it. So I won’t talk about its plot so that you can come to it completely fresh. I will say it was created by Vince Gilligan (who also created Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul), and it stars Rhea Seehorn (who also starred in Better Call Saul). It is nothing like those two shows other than the production values are incredibly high and it never does what you expect it to do.

Every episode is surprising. I had absolutely no idea what it was going to do next, and yet I happily followed along. It is utterly original, unique, and brilliant. Seehorn is magnificent, and I love that her character feels completely real. She’s a hero, but utterly human, good but also selfish and flawed. I cannot wait for the next season to come out.

And that’s it. I won’t say these were the absolute best TV series that aired this past year. I didn’t watch every series that aired in 2025. Not even close. But these are five series I utterly enjoyed. What shows did you enjoy?