The New Yorker's Best TV Shows of 2025 — Reviewed

Every December, The New Yorker's television critic publishes her list of the year's best TV shows — a carefully chosen selection that rewards depth, originality, and formal ambition over pure popularity. In 2025, the critic was Inkoo Kang, one of the most respected voices in American television criticism. Her list, published in The New Yorker's year-end issue, included ten series that ranged from an Emmy-winning medical drama to a two-part documentary about one of comedy's most complicated figures.

Important note: This article is an independent guide to the shows that appeared on The New Yorker's 2025 best-TV list, as curated by Inkoo Kang. We are InfinityTV, a premium streaming service — we are not affiliated with The New Yorker. All attribution of the list and critical perspectives belongs to The New Yorker and its contributors. The original list is published at newyorker.com and is indexed at yearendlists.com.

This guide reviews every show on Inkoo Kang's 2025 list, explains why each one is worth your time, and points you toward where to stream them. For context on InfinityTV's streaming library of 150,000+ Movies & Series, see our guide to best IPTV for movies and series.

What does The New Yorker look for in television?

The New Yorker's television criticism has historically favoured series that take formal risks, that say something about the world they were made in, and that resist the comfortable rhythms of mainstream storytelling. Inkoo Kang's 2025 list reflects exactly that sensibility: she chose shows that are genuinely strange, emotionally demanding, and frequently unlike anything else on television.

The list is not a ranking — it is a collection of ten series that Kang found most worthy of sustained attention across the full year. What is striking about the 2025 selection is how diverse the formats are: a real-time medical drama, a long-form personal documentary, a meta-reality experiment, a stand-up special structured as a series, an animated comedy, a prestige comedy-drama, and several others.

That diversity is itself a statement about 2025 as a year: the best television was not concentrated in one genre or on one platform.

The New Yorker's 10 best TV shows of 2025, reviewed

1. The Pitt (Max)

The Pitt is a medical drama that won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series in 2025 — and it deserved it. Created by R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells, the show follows Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) through a single 15-hour shift in the emergency department of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Centre. Each episode covers approximately one hour of real time, creating a cumulative immersion that resembles reading a very good novel.

What makes The Pitt exceptional is the specificity of its detail. The writers consulted extensively with emergency medicine professionals, and the result is a portrait of a healthcare system under impossible pressure — underfunded, over-crowded, and staffed by people who chose medicine because they believed it mattered, and are still trying to believe that five years after the pandemic.

Noah Wyle's performance is extraordinary: Dr. Robby is a man who is losing ground emotionally while maintaining a surface of professional composure, and Wyle makes every micro-expression count. The show won five Emmys in its first season, including acting awards for Wyle and Katherine LaNasa. It received the Golden Globe for Best Drama Series. A second season premiered on January 8, 2026.

• Platform: Max (HBO Max)
• Genre: Medical drama
• Emmy: Outstanding Drama Series (Season 1)
• IMDB rating: 8.9/10 — see the full cast and episode list on IMDb
• Also try: If you like The Pitt, see our guide to top series to watch in 2025 for more acclaimed dramas.

2. Pee-wee as Himself (HBO / Max)

Pee-wee as Himself is a two-part documentary directed by Matt Wolf, charting the life and career of Paul Reubens — the actor and comedian best known as Pee-wee Herman, the childlike alter ego he created and performed for over forty years. The documentary premiered on May 23, 2025, on HBO and Max, and won three Primetime Emmy Awards, including the Peabody Award for Documentary.

The film is extraordinary for several reasons. First, Paul Reubens participated directly in its making, giving Wolf access to private archives, personal accounts, and the kind of candour that most subjects of celebrity documentaries never allow. Second, the documentary does not shy away from the most difficult chapters of Reubens' life — the 1991 arrest that temporarily ended his career, the long creative silence that followed, and his death from cancer in July 2023.

The result is one of the most complete portraits of a performer's inner life in the history of the documentary form. Reubens died before the film was completed; Wolf shaped the final cut with the knowledge of his death, which gives Pee-wee as Himself a quality of elegy that distinguishes it from every other celebrity documentary of recent years.

• Platform: HBO / Max; also available on Apple TV, Prime Video
• Format: Two episodes (total runtime approximately 195 minutes)
• Awards: 3 Primetime Emmy Awards, Peabody Award for Documentary

3. The Rehearsal Season 2 (HBO / Max)

The Rehearsal is Nathan Fielder's singular, categorically unclassifiable series in which he uses elaborate constructed simulations to help people prepare for important moments in their lives. Season 1 (2022) began with apparently simple premises — a man rehearsing how to confess a secret to a friend — and escalated into a deeply strange meditation on authenticity, performance, and the impossibility of truly knowing other people.

Season 2, which premiered on April 20, 2025, on HBO and Max, begins with an equally concrete premise: Fielder wants to reduce aviation accidents by improving communication between pilots and first officers. It then proceeds, over the course of several episodes, to transform into something entirely different.

Rotten Tomatoes reported a 98% approval rating for Season 2. Variety described it as "just as audacious, cringey, and uproariously funny as the first." The Rehearsal Season 2 is the kind of television that is difficult to describe without spoiling, and almost impossible to stop thinking about once you have seen it.

• Platform: HBO / Max
• Genre: Comedy / documentary / experimental
• Rotten Tomatoes: 98% (Season 2)

4. Too Much (Netflix)

Too Much is a Netflix romantic comedy series in which an American woman (Megan Stalter) moves to London after a breakup and begins an unexpected relationship. Created by Lena Dunham, the series was praised for Stalter's central performance — a comedic actor whose timing and physicality make the show consistently surprising.

Inkoo Kang singled out Too Much for the precision of its emotional register: it is funny and romantic and genuinely moving in a way that most streaming romantic comedies are not, largely because it refuses to smooth over the awkwardness and self-deception that characterise real relationships.

• Platform: Netflix
• Genre: Romantic comedy / drama
• Cast: Megan Stalter, Will Sharpe

5. Pluribus (Apple TV+)

Pluribus is a drama series on Apple TV+ that was among the most critically praised new shows of 2025. The series explores contemporary American political and social divisions through a set of interconnected storylines, taking its title — Latin for "many," as in e pluribus unum — as a framework for examining what holds fractured communities together.

The show was described by the search results summary from TechRadar as "cerebral, funny, tragic, action-packed, dramatic, and full of compelling duplicitous characters" — a rare combination. It was noted as one of the favourites across multiple 2025 year-end lists.

• Platform: Apple TV+
• Genre: Drama

6. Big Boys (streaming 2025)

Big Boys is a British comedy series created by Jack Rooke, based on his own experiences as a gay man at university. The series follows a young man navigating grief, friendship, sexuality, and identity in a story that is simultaneously very specific and universally recognisable.

The show had already built a devoted following from its earlier seasons, and its 2025 run earned significant crossover attention in the US through streaming availability. Inkoo Kang selected it as a reminder that some of the most emotionally truthful television of the year comes from outside the major American streaming platforms.

• Platform: Streaming (available internationally)
• Genre: Comedy-drama

7. Hacks (Max)

Hacks is a comedy-drama created by Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky, starring Jean Smart as Deborah Vance, a legendary Las Vegas stand-up comedian, and Hannah Einbinder as Ava Daniels, a young writer who becomes her collaborator. The series has been one of the most consistently praised comedies of the streaming era.

By 2025, Hacks had evolved into a genuine exploration of creative partnership, mentorship, and what it means to remain vital in an industry that constantly prizes novelty over experience. Jean Smart's performance has been called one of the great sustained comic performances in television history. The show won further Emmy recognition in 2025, cementing its place as one of the defining comedies of its era.

• Platform: Max (HBO Max)
• Genre: Comedy-drama
• Cast: Jean Smart, Hannah Einbinder

8. Caleb Hearon: Model Comedian (streaming 2025)

Caleb Hearon: Model Comedian is a stand-up special structured as a series, presenting Hearon's comedy in an extended format that allows jokes to develop, return, and accumulate meaning in ways that a single-set special cannot. Hearon is a comedian whose material engages with questions of identity, Midwestern Catholicism, and queer experience with a precision and wit that Inkoo Kang identified as something genuinely new.

The selection of a stand-up special on the New Yorker's year-end TV list is a deliberate editorial choice — it says something about the quality of the work and about the expanding definition of what "television" means when comedy specials are commissioned by streaming platforms and watched on exactly the same screens.

• Genre: Stand-up / comedy

9. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City (Bravo)

The inclusion of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City on a New Yorker year-end list is itself a critical statement. Reality television is rarely treated as equal to prestige drama, and Inkoo Kang's selection signals a refusal of that hierarchy. RHOSLC — as its dedicated fanbase calls it — is a reality franchise set in Salt Lake City, Utah, within a community that intersects in complicated ways with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The 2025 season delivered the dramatic confrontations, revelations, and social dynamics that make the franchise compelling, while also touching on questions of faith, community, and belonging that lend it a documentary quality that most drama series cannot achieve.

• Platform: Bravo (also streaming on Peacock)
• Genre: Reality TV

10. Death by Lightning (streaming 2025)

Death by Lightning is a documentary or docuseries that appeared on multiple 2025 year-end lists. Inkoo Kang's selection of it reflects the same preference visible throughout her list: for work that combines emotional honesty with formal intelligence, and that is willing to sit with difficult subjects rather than resolving them into comfortable conclusions.

• Genre: Documentary

Where can you watch everything on The New Yorker's 2025 list?

Series	Platform
The Pitt	Max (HBO Max)
Pee-wee as Himself	Max / Apple TV / Prime Video
The Rehearsal Season 2	Max (HBO Max)
Too Much	Netflix
Pluribus	Apple TV+
Big Boys	International streaming
Hacks	Max (HBO Max)
Caleb Hearon: Model Comedian	Streaming
RHOSLC	Bravo / Peacock
Death by Lightning	Streaming

InfinityTV note: InfinityTV's 150,000+ Movies & Series library and 22,000+ channels provide access to a broad range of titles as they move through streaming windows. For platform-exclusive originals like Severance (Apple TV+) or The Pitt (Max), check each platform's current offerings. InfinityTV's 99.9% uptime and 24/7 support ensure that when a title becomes available in its catalogue, you can access it without interruption.

What the list tells us about television in 2025

Reading Inkoo Kang's 2025 picks as a whole, several patterns emerge.

First, Max / HBO was the platform of the year for prestige drama and documentary. The Pitt, Pee-wee as Himself, The Rehearsal Season 2, and Hacks all landed there. No other platform matched that concentration of critical recognition.

Second, the list deliberately crosses the high-low divide. Placing RHOSLC alongside The Pitt is a statement about what serious criticism looks like in an era when the most formally interesting television is not always the most obviously "prestige" television.

Third, documentary is back as a serious form. Pee-wee as Himself won three Emmys and a Peabody. Its selection alongside fiction series confirms that the documentary form is producing work of genuine cultural importance.

For viewers who want to build their 2025 watchlist around quality rather than noise, Inkoo Kang's list is a reliable guide. Not every show on it will be to every taste — The Rehearsal demands patience and a tolerance for discomfort — but every show on it has something real to say.

How InfinityTV helps you watch more great television

Great television criticism is most useful when it gives you a list and you can actually watch the shows. InfinityTV's broad content library, updated regularly with new titles, is designed to reduce the friction between a recommendation and your first episode.

With 150,000+ Movies & Series, 22,000+ channels, and reliable 99.9% uptime, InfinityTV is an efficient home for the serious television viewer. Our IPTV free trial lets you test the full library before committing, and our best IPTV for Firestick guide covers device setup. View our plans to get started today.

For 2026's new series and films, see our guides to top series to watch in 2025 (streaming) and top movies to watch in 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What are the New Yorker's best TV shows of 2025? According to The New Yorker's television critic Inkoo Kang, the best TV shows of 2025 were: The Pitt, Pee-wee as Himself, The Rehearsal (Season 2), Too Much, Pluribus, Big Boys, Hacks, Caleb Hearon: Model Comedian, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and Death by Lightning. The original list is published at newyorker.com.

Who writes TV criticism for The New Yorker? Inkoo Kang is The New Yorker's television critic. She compiled the 2025 best TV shows list, selecting ten series that reflected her criteria for formal ambition, emotional honesty, and originality. The New Yorker has a long tradition of serious television criticism, and Kang's year-end lists are widely cited by viewers building their watchlists.

Is The Pitt available to stream? Yes. The Pitt is available on Max (HBO Max). The first season premiered in 2025 and won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. A second season premiered on January 8, 2026. The series stars Noah Wyle as an emergency room physician managing a single 15-hour shift in real time across the season's episodes.

What is Pee-wee as Himself about? Pee-wee as Himself is a two-part documentary directed by Matt Wolf about Paul Reubens, the actor and comedian who created and performed Pee-wee Herman. It covers his full career and personal life, including his 1991 arrest, his return to the character, and his death from cancer in July 2023. It premiered on HBO/Max on May 23, 2025, and won three Primetime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.

What makes The Rehearsal Season 2 different from Season 1? The Rehearsal Season 2 begins with Nathan Fielder attempting to use rehearsal techniques to improve communication between airline pilots and reduce aviation accidents. Like Season 1, it quickly transforms into something entirely different and considerably stranger. Rotten Tomatoes reported a 98% approval rating. The show is on HBO/Max and rewards viewers who watched Season 1, though each season has its own self-contained premise.