I binge watch TV series in a week — here are the 11 best series of 2025

I love a good TV series. Along with reading a good book, it’s the best way to wind down after a busy day dealing with work and looking after children. You can see my pick of the 7 most under-rated shows on Netflix here and the best books I’ve read since 2020 here.

A good TV series can make you momentarily forget about what’s going on in your life and, if it’s really good, it may even tempt you to put down your second screen and stop doom-scrolling.

I’ve looked back at the best shows I’ve seen released on TV and streaming platforms in 2025, covering BBC, ITV, Netflix, Disney, Sky and Now TV. There’s enough to keep you going here until 2026 at least.

This stunningly good Netflix series tells the story of Belle Gibson, a so-called “wellness influencer” from Australia who claimed to have beaten brain cancer using alternative therapies and nutrition. The real-life Gibson started getting famous in 2013 thanks to blogging about her “cancer battle”, ganing a large Instagram following and launching a brand called The Whole Pantry.

Then journalists uncovered inconsistencies in her story. It’s excellent from start to finish and shows the impact “wellness influencers” on social media can have on real people by also following the sub-plots of two other characters who choose to go against medical advice in their attempts to cure cancer with alternative therapies.

When The Bear first came out on Disney to widespread acclaim, I wasn’t sure about it at all. Of course, there were great bits, which were moving and funny. But it was also quite shouty and angry. Through the next three series, though, the latest of which appeared in 2025, it evolved into something which evoked more emotions than just frustration and stress. It’s a beautiful show, with fantastic characters (the fringe characters are some of the best and the A-list cameos are epic!). It’s often hilarious, often sad, still sometimes stressful and frustrating, but ultimately joyful and a reflection of the difficulties and choices we all have to face as humans.

White Lotus, which was made by HBO but which you can view on Sky or Now TV, is pure entertainment at its very best. Season 3 came out in 2025 and is set in Thailand (the first two were in Hawaii and Italy). A couple of characters from Season 2 re-emerge to continue a couple of plot lines but, other than that, it’s a whole new setting and plot. Parker Posey is hilarious and bonkers as Victoria Ratliff and there are other big names like Jason Isaacs and Walton Goggins. The Sam Rockwell cameo and monologue is a particular highlight.

Unforgotten is a superb and very under-rated detective series on ITV focusing on cold cases. Every series has been gripping and the 2025 version is no different. While Happy Valley got all the headlines, Unforgotten ploughed on quietly (and I prefer it to the huge BBC hit). Every series starts with the discovery of a body (or what’s left of it) and the introduction of a handful of suspects. Then the detectives (played by Sanjeev Bhaskar and Sinead Keenan in the 2025 series) try to piece together the tragic story behind it. The 2025 case begins with the discovery of a ribcage in London marshland.

This Netflix documentary is astonishing both for the story it tells and the access it gets to the lead players. Leon Panetta, former CIA director, is interviewed at length, as is Robert O’Neill, the US Navy Seal who claims to be the man who pulled the trigger and finally shot the world’s most wanted man. The bravery of the Seals is remarkable, flying into Pakistan at night before being dropped from a helicopter into a heavily fortified compound where they believed (but didn’t know for sure) the world’s most feared terrorist was hiding. They had no idea whether they would get out alive. O’Neill recounts how he walked into a room and found himself face to face with Bin Laden and with an instant life-or-death decision to make.

Another astonishing documentary available on BBC iPlayer, which makes you wonder how the Kinahan name isn’t as infamous as the Gottis and Capones of this world. The Kinahan family is accused of rising from a small street-dealing drugs gang in Dublin in the 1980s to become one of the world’s biggest drug cartels, believed to be worth £1bn. The US government has offered millions of dollars in reward for information about them with former US Ambassador to Ireland, Claire Cronin, saying: “The Kinahan trans-national criminal organisation has been accused of a wide range of heinous crimes, all around the world, including murder, trafficking in firearms and narcotics.”

This epic documentary tells the story in extraordinary depth, with archive footage, including police surveillance videos from the UK, and contributions from former and serving police officers, witnesses and crime journalists.

This Netflix drama has been called “the closest thing to TV perfection in decades”. Regardless of whether that’s going too far or not, Adolescence is definitely the most talked-about series of 2025. It tells the story of 14-year-old Jamie, who is accused of murdering his classmate, and the impact his actions have on his family. In a world where many boys and young men take their behaviour cues from the likes of Andrew Tate, it’s unsettling to say the least. It stars Stephen Graham as Jamie’s dad, so you know the performances are going to be world class. But perhaps most remarkably of all, each of the four episodes was shot in a single take. It’s incredible television.

This Netflix Western doesn’t so much show you how violent the Wild West was as grab you by your collar and beat you about the head with it. It’s relentless and I worried at first that it was just violence for the sake of violence. But then I realised that of course this is how brutal life must have been in a place where there were barely any of the things (laws, communities) that we recognise today as the fundamentals of society and where there was a strong chance that anyone you came across wanted to kill you. American Primeval is set in 1857 Utah and tells the story of a mother and son trying to reach her husband at a remote settlement. Looming in the background is Brigham Young and his Mormon militia, trying to conquer everything in their path.

This Netflix comedy by Tina Fey tells the story of three affluent couples in their 50s (or thereabouts) who have been friends since forever and meet up every year to go on holiday. You have the solidly married couple for whom “complaining is our version of sex”, the amazingly dressed gay couple facing their own mortality and the couple who drop the early bombshell that the rest of the series tries to deal with. It’s funny but not laugh-out-loud hilarious. It’s nice, relaxing television — particularly when you’ve spent the rest of the year watching ultra-violent Westerns and documentaries about terrorists and gangsters.

For someone who turned their back on reality TV after the first series of Big Brother in the early 2000s, The Traitors on the BBC could not have surprised me more. Twenty-two people enter a Scottish castle, three of them are then chosen as traitors and have to “murder” everyone else without being found out to win a significant amount of money at the end. A brilliant premise brilliantly delivered, this is fantastic adult entertainment but my young daughter loves it too. Brilliant all-round.

Untamed’s opening scene is as striking as any you’re likely to see. Two climbers are making their way up the sheer rockface of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park in California when a young woman comes hurtling from the summit above them and gets tangled up in their ropes. From there, it’s down to Eric Bana’s special agent to find out who she was and whether she left that clifftop of her own accord or by someone else’s. It’s weaker than most of the other series in this list, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a solid and enjoyable whodunnit. The biggest star of this Netflix show is the incredible scenery.