10 best TV shows of 2025, according to Rotten Tomatoes
2025 has been a great year for TV. We’ve seen the return of favourite shows such as the long-awaited Stranger Things season 5, as well as Apple TV comedy Plantonic. And new favourites have burst onto the scene too, like Seth Rogen’s The Studio and Bosch spin-off Ballard. Across Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus and the rest of the many TV channels and streaming services, there has been more than enough to keep TV fans occupied. But which series came out on top? Rotten Tomatoes has ranked the best TV shows of 2025, all of which received a perfect 100% critics score on the review aggregator, along with impressive audience scores too. If you’ve not already watched them, you might find your next binge-watch on this list – there are plenty of under-the-radar gems alongside the fan favourites too. (Picture: AP)
10. Ballard – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
Ballard is the spin-off to Bosch, a popular American police procedural series, and first episodes landed on Amazon Prime Video in July. The 10-episode crime thriller quickly shot to the top of the streaming chart to grab the coveted number one spot, and has been compared to Netflix’s Dept Q and Apple TV’s Slow Horses – both of which were also major TV hits this year. Ballard stars Maggie Q as Renée Ballard, who has been shunted to the basement with other LAPD misfits. She’s soon opening decades-old murder files and making breakthroughs, as well as uncovering a wide-reaching conspiracy in the department itself. Reviewing the show for Variety, Aramide Tinubu wrote: ‘Smartly acted, beautifully paced and genuinely engaging, “Ballard” is a thrilling ride from start to finish.’(Picture: AP)
9. Code of Silence – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
Starring Rose Ayling-Ellis, Charlotte Ritchie, and Andrew Buchan, this crime drama made waves among viewers when it first aired on ITV1 in May. Its plot follows Alison, a deaf caterer working to support herself and her mother, who is asked by police to help lipread conversations with highly dangerous criminals. Strictly Come Dancing 2021 winner Rose, who was born deaf, takes the lead, with viewers heaping praise on the series. @RyanGlendenning wrote on X following the first episode: ‘WOW! What an incredible first episode of Code Of Silence. Rose Ayling Ellis is fantastic and the script has been written perfectly. Loving the inclusion of BSL and subtitles to make the drama inclusive for all and raise much needed awareness within the deaf community’. Meanwhile, Charlotte Ritchie, who plays DS Ashleigh Francis, previously told Metro that she hopes the thriller will ‘have a legacy like Line of Duty’. (Picture: ITV)
8. Common Side Effects – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
This 10-episode adult cartoon sees two friends unravel a plot to hush up the existence of a rare fungus that could cure all of the world’s diseases. Along with a perfect 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, Common Side Effects has a seriously impressive 91% audience score too. Reviewing the series for New York Magazine, Roxana Hadadi wrote: ‘This animated world may revolve around a fantastical fungus, but it contains all of our real-world frustrations, as well as our questions, about what we can actually do to improve how normalized our miseries have become.’ (Picture: Channel 4)
7. Platonic: Season 2
Starring Seth Rogan and Rose Byrne, Apple TV Plus comedy Platonic follows a pair of former college best friends who get back in touch as they approach midlife. The pair fell out when stay-at-home mum Sylvia (Byrne) told the now recently divorced Will (Rogan) that she didn’t think he should marry his fiancée. As they reconnect, their chaotic friendship begins to consume their lives. The show drew a lot of comparisons to 1989’s When Harry Met Sally, but it isn’t a rom-com. In fact, it subtly subverts the genre. In season two, the pair once again grapple with making their co-dependent friendship work, now that Will is in a committed relationship. (Picture: AP)
6. Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light: Season 2 – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
This popular historical drama, hailed as a ‘masterpiece’ by fans, is based on the trilogy by late writer Hilary Mantel about the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance), advisor to King Henry VIII (Damian Lewis) in the Tudor court. The second season almost didn’t happen at all after the celebrated author unexpectedly died of a stroke in September 2022, but, fortunately for fans, the creative team finally agreed to continue as a memorial to Mantel instead. Vogue praised the performances in their review of the second season, writing: ‘[Mark] Rylance is one of our greatest living actors, and the emotions he holds in his face are manifold. His delivery of Mantel’s dialogue – modern, intelligent, bristling with implication and subterfuge – is mesmerizingly clear.’ (Picture: BBC/Playground Entertainment/Nick Briggs)
5. Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Season 2 – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
Adapting a popular book series into a television show can often prove trickier than expected, but Disney has evidently done a great job with their re-telling of Rick Riordan’s best-selling series. It tells the story of a 12-year-old modern demigod, Percy Jackson, who’s coming to terms with his newfound divine powers when the sky god Zeus accuses him of stealing his master lightning bolt. Praising the second season, Variety’s review read: ‘In a darker Season 2, which boasts much higher stakes for the trio, Rick Riordan’s expansive world is only getting juicier and more robust.’ (Picture: Disney)
4. Long Story Short – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
Despite its 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, Netflix comedy Long Story Short flew under the radar when it was released in August. Created by the team behind BoJack Horseman, the 10-episode series follows a middle-class Jewish family reflecting on their intensely religious upbringing. The Guardian went so far as to declare Long Story Short is ‘so funny and clever it could run forever’ in its four-star review, while the Financial Times hailed it as a ‘bittersweet masterpiece’. (Picture: Netflix)
3. The Narrow Road to the Deep North – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
Based on Richard Flanagan’s 2014 Booker Prize-winning novel, the Amazon Prime series follows Australian doctor Dorrigo Evans (Jacob Elordi), who is haunted by his past affair with his uncle’s wife as he reckons with his time as a prisoner of war building the Burma railway. Both audiences and critics heaped praise on the series, with The Guardian writing: ‘You never doubt the show’s realism, or the compassion underpinning it. This is less about the theatre of war than the psychological stain it leaves.’ Meanwhile, critic Rebecca Onion wrote for Slate: ‘It’s gorgeous, ugly, and stirring, with parts that seared themselves into my brain, and it got me to read a really good novel.’ (Picture: BBC/Curio Pictures/Sony Pictures Television)
2. The Chair Company – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
Viewers hailed The Chair Company as ‘one of the year’s funniest shows’, and clearly the critics loved it too. The eight-episode series, co-created by and starring Tim Robinson, sees Ron Trosper (Robinson) investigate a far-reaching conspiracy after an embarrassing workplace incident, marking the former Saturday Night Live alumnus’ return to TV after his success with the sketch show I Think You Should Leave. Writing for The New Yorker, Molly Fischer praised: ‘An unexpectedly expansive, even heartwarming, vision of cringe comedy, while Shirley Li for The Atlantic wrote: ‘The clearest distillation yet of what makes Robinson so compelling as a performer.’ (Picture: HBO)
1. Pee-Wee As Himself – 100% Rotten Tomatoes score
Top of the Rotten Tomatoes ranking, with a seriously impressive 93% audience score to go alongside its perfect critic’s score, is this documentary about the life of comedian Paul Reubens, the man behind the iconic character Pee-wee Herman. It sees the star, who died aged 70 in July 2023, open up for the first time about being gay. With over 40 hours of interviews, Pee-wee As Himself delves into the man behind the beloved character, including his ‘many, many secret relationships’. Critics heaped praise on the show, calling it ‘wonderful’, ‘marvellous’ and ‘bittersweet’. (Picture: AP) Add Metro as a Preferred Source on Google Add as preferred source
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