Shows from 2025 that Entertained the Hell Out Of Me
I am not snobbish about the television shows I watch. I don't declare a new series to be a failure if it isn't the second coming of The Wire. Sure, some shows are just watchable, while others make me count down the days until the next episode. Good old Netflix still releases some quality stuff all at once, and you can binge the whole season in a weekend.
Here are my top picks from the past year. You'll see that I'm partial to shows that are made in or take place in the UK. Six of my top 10 selections fit that bill. I've subscribed to Acorn and Britbox for years. Those shows also fall off the back of trucks and into Usenet and torrent sites just like their American counterparts. IYKYK
- Blue Lights - This was the third season of a BBC police drama centering on three officers, some Protestant, some Catholic, at the beginning of their careers in the Police Service of Northern Ireland in Belfast.
- Mayor of Kingstown - I'm so glad Jeremy Renner didn't die when that snow plow ran over him, so he could keep making this show about an ex-con who becomes a fixer and a mediator between the police, the gangs, and the incarcerated in a Michigan town. I spent eight long years working in a prison, and this show is as realistic as it gets for staff and inmates.
- Trespasses - In another show taking place in Northern Ireland, Gillian Anderson leads a stellar cast in a drama set in the worst days of The Troubles in the seventies about a relationship between a Catholic school teacher and a married Protestant barrister.
- The Diplomat - This show, about the American ambassador to the UK and her husband, played by Rufus Sewell, a Brit portraying an American, has more plot twists per minute than any show on television. It's as addictive as crack, and I always run out of episodes before I run out of interest.
- The Institute - We like Stephen King adaptations in our house, particularly when they are as well done as this mini-series. It poses some interesting questions about how much evil is acceptable to stop an even worse evil.
- Dept. Q - Matthew Goode plays an emotionally damaged detective returning to work in the Edinburgh (Scotland) police department after being shot in an ambush at a crime scene. Prickly and hard to get along with, he's exiled to the basement and assigned to cold cases, including the 3-year-old missing persons mystery at the center of the show.
- The Righteous Gemstones - This was the last season of HBO's televangelist spoof, and I'd never watched it before. I found it to be exceptionally funny, profane, shocking at times, and as well written as it could be. Danny McBride plays the same character he plays in everything he's in, which is fine because he's funny as hell.
- MobLand - Helen Mirren playing the coke-sniffing murderous wife of Pierce Brosnan's Irish gangster character, who happens to be Tom Hardy's boss - sign me up for every episode. The whole show drips with tension, and the characters are like members of the Sopranos with posher accents.
- Adolescence - Every performer is at the top of their game in a four-part drama about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a female classmate. Nothing seems contrived, and some of the scenes are hard to watch as the adults struggle to make sense of what happened. Steven Graham is amazing as the boy's father.
- The Pitt - I've only really liked a couple of medical shows: the first couple of seasons of Grey's Anatomy, and the Freddie Highmore drama about an autistic surgeon, The Good Doctor. This show about the emergency medicine practiced in a teaching hospital in Pittsburgh was better than both of those. I could have watched it in one 15-hour marathon. The show takes place in real time, covering the events of a single double shift on the first day of training for three medical students.
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