Happy New Year, readers, and welcome to another year of television. In my list of 2024's ten best shows, I wrote about how every outlet's rankings differed wildly from each other in a way I hadn't seen before. (Though I will say, a surprising amount of you met our top ten with a resounding "Not bad!" Never underestimate the What We Do in the Shadows fandom.)
Now, if you'll remember, 2023's actors and writers strikes led to a relative shortage of powerhouse series in 2024. Guess where they all went? 2025. The next 12 months will see a truly stacked amount of blockbuster shows, including the long-awaited returns of The Last of Us, Andor, Severance, Stranger Things, and The White Lotus. Damn! It feels like we'll hardly have time to check out this year's promising group of newcomers—skip ahead to The Studio if you want to know which one I'm most excited for—but rest assured, we'll watch as much as humanly possible.
These are Esquire's 25 most anticipated shows of 2025.* I'm sure I'll see most of you again when Severance drops next week.
*Undated series are either confirmed for or expected to land in 2025.
We have to wait only nine days in 2025 for some beef in the streaming wars! If you're unfamiliar, a few ER heavyweights—Noah Wyle, John Wells, and R Scott Gemmill—created a new medical procedural for Max called The Pitt, in which Wyle stars.
The widow of ER creator Michael Crichton, Sherri, filed a lawsuit that essentially alleges that The Pitt is a rip-off of ER. (There's more to the story, which you can read about here.) The legal battle between Crichton and Warner Bros Television is still very much ongoing, but in the meantime? The Pitt sounds like ER crossed with 24—its 15-episode season will cover a single shift in the emergency room of a Pittsburgh hospital. And I would not miss a Wyle-starring medical drama under any circumstance.
Don't even get me started. Fans have waited so long for Severance season 2 that Esquire has a nearly 2,000-word explainer about the next batch of episodes. Following one of the best season finales in recent memory, Apple TV+ has been characteristically quiet about what's next for Lumon's heroic innies. But that's the way we like it. Just tell us what's up with the goats, okay?
Yellowjackets season 2 landed Showtime's breakout series in the doghouse I like to call When Are You Giving Us Some Damn Answers?! (Previously inhabited by Lost, Heroes, and Outer Range.) With Hilary Swank joining the cast, I hope that season 3 will bring the series back to the heights of its first season.
Saturday Night Live's 50th-anniversary season has been a hair disappointing so far, even if it gifted us not one but two great Marcello Hernandez characters (Domingo and Don Francisco). My guess is that Lorne Michaels is holding his punches for his three-hour (!) anniversary special, which I bet will bring together every living SNL great not named Chevy Chase.
The White Lotus is back! In Thailand! Season 3 will introduce a new batch of one-percenters, played by Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins, Michelle Monaghan, Parker Posey, and more. Series creator Mike White previously told HBO that the new season will be "a kind of satirical and funny look at death in Eastern religion and spirituality—it feels like it could be a rich tapestry to do another round at White Lotus." Sounds perfect, but I'll still miss Tanya.
If you're reading this list and playing "Guess Esquire's Guilty Pleasure," you're at the right place. It's Reacher. Season 3 of the Prime Video series will presumably see the hulking Jack Reacher (a stellar and also-hulking Alan Ritchson) fuck up many, many more people. And I am very excited to see how that plays out.
There's zero chance that I would leave Robert De Niro's debut as a television regular from this list. He'll front Netflix's Zero Day, which, per the streamer, "asks the question on everyone’s mind— how do we find truth in a world in crisis, one seemingly being torn apart by forces outside our control?" Okay!
Esquire covered the heck out of the Taylor Sheridan–verse in 2024, so I'll keep this list relatively light on the cowboy hats, the sound of an angry Zoe Saldaña's screaming, and ominous oil rigs. But I do have to shout out 1923, which will not only continue to track the Dutton family's explosive history but also deliver more Harrison Ford. More Harrison Ford is always a good thing.
Over the holidays, I saw the great Claressa Shields biopic, The Fire Inside, so I'm very much on a Brian Tyree Henry kick. (He plays the boxing trainer.) Add to that Esquire's deep appreciation of Wagner Moura and Apple TV+'s Dope Thief officially makes my 2025 watch list. The series will star the two actors as, per the streamer, "Philly friends and delinquents who pose as DEA agents to rob an unknown house in the countryside, only to have their small-time grift become a life-and-death enterprise, as they unwittingly reveal and unravel the biggest hidden narcotics corridor on the Eastern Seaboard." Sign me up.
I'm one of the many critics who was disappointed by HBO's The Franchise, which satirised the superhero-ification of modern cinema by following the making of a fictional Marvel-esque film. It didn't quite work, but I couldn't put my finger on why. Then I saw the trailer for the The Studio, a satire of modern Hollywood through the lens of a studio head (Seth Rogen)—and I knew it right away. Real people! The Studio tracks a fictional studio, but the stars and references are very real. Created by a host of great comedy minds (including Rogen and Evan Goldberg), just watch the way Martin Scorsese mutters, "Spineless!" in the preview and you'll know what I mean.
Every time I write this most-anticipated list, there's a moment when I simply have to drop the logline and tell you I'm watching it without a single hesitation. This year, it's the Jon Hamm-starring Your Friends and Neighbors on Apple TV+:
After being fired in disgrace, a hedge fund manager still grappling with his recent divorce resorts to stealing from his neighbors' homes in the exceedingly affluent Westmont Village, only to discover that the secrets and affairs hidden behind those wealthy facades might be more dangerous than he ever imagined.
When Andor season 1 ended in the ancient times of November 2022, it felt like a fork in the road: Will this show everyone how to foster great franchise storytelling in the streaming era, or is it just a blip? I genuinely believed the former, but in the following years, I've seen some things. (*Cough* Agatha All Along, *sneeze* The Acolyte, *hack* the trailer for the monstrous-looking Inside Out spin-off series.) Where was I? You know, I'm just happy that I have the chance to see my boy Cassian Andor stick it to some Stormtroopers one last time in season 2.
Squid Game season 2 was a very solid effort, given that its creator admitted to losing teeth from the stress induced by the making of it. Star Lee Jung-jae was great, as always, and the series managed to conjure up a few more thrilling games without making anything feel overwrought. My only complaint is that the final episode felt like more of a mid-season ending than a season finale. Let's just hope that season 3—which will end the series, supposedly for real this time—will deliver on the promise of that mid-credits cliff-hanger.
If you haven't played the Last of Us video games, I hate to say that nearly anything I write about season 2 will ruin the story for you. Here's what I can relay: Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, and Pedro Pascal's killer jacket will return, along with new additions Kaitlyn Dever and Catherine O'Hara. Let's leave it at that.
I love Glen Powell, but I really need to see the man in something where he's simply maxing out his big doofus energy. Chad Powers is exactly that project. The Hulu series will follow the same general premise of Eli Manning's 2022 "Chad Powers" prank, during which he went undercover as a walk-on at Penn State and proceeded to look like his Super Bowl–winning self. Chad Powers will track a burnout quarterback as he dons prosthetics to join a new team under a different name. Thank you for hearing my plea, Glen.
It feels like I've read about the production of Noah Hawley's Alien series for as long as I've authored this list, which is a not-insignificant amount of time. We'll finally see it this year—and it sounds pretty damn awesome. Read the logline for yourself:
When a mysterious space vessel crash-lands on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and a ragtag group of tactical soldiers make a fateful discovery that puts them face-to-face with the planet's greatest threat in FX's highly anticipated TV series Alien: Earth from creator Noah Hawley.
Between this series and Alien: Romulus, life is good right now if you're an Alien fan.
Say it ain't so! The Stranger Things kids are full-blown adults, and it's time to end the series and let this IP die a slow death of a thousand spin-offs. I'm (mostly) kidding. I love Stranger Things, fully believe that Gaten Matarazzo is a national treasure, and am very excited to see how the story ends in season 5.
How many more Game of Thrones–verse series will HBO deliver before George R.R. Martin even mumbles a release date for The Winds of Winter? Too many. The next show will adapt Martin's Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, which follow a knight and his squire's adventures in Westeros. Spoiler alert: Martin hasn't finished writing this series either! And the author says that he won't continue Dunk and Egg until he wraps The Winds of Winter. Help.
To everyone who said I ranked Hacks too highly in my year-end television list, I say: Are you watching Hacks? HBO's comedy about the comedy world is the best comedy on television right now. Season 4 will see Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) feud on a much bigger stage—as the former's late-night career truly begins.
While we're quibbling about my 2024 rankings, here's another comment I received: The Bear didn't deserve the second spot. Season 3 disappointed a lot of fans, sure. But between the admirably experimental premiere, the Ayo Edeberi–directed episode, and the continuing peak-career performances from the main ensemble, The Bear remains the best show on TV in my book. Bring on season 4, which might just go down as the final referendum on Carmy's soul.
What if I told you that Kate Hudson will play a Jeanie Buss analog in a Netflix series created by Mindy Kaling and executive-produced by Jeanie Buss? What if that show also starred Jay Ellis, Scott Evans, and... I shit you not... Chet Hanks? Would you respond and say that it's the best show of 2025 sight unseen? Yes. Yes, you would.
The Esquire entertainment team has zero idea how The Rehearsal will deliver a second season, given that its first devolved into a enticingly bizarre meditation on the artifice of reality television and the trials of (meta) fatherhood. But it's happening! And we welcome it. Nathan Fielder will always find a way to out-weird himself.
Bill Skarsgård is currently terrifying you as Count Orlok in Nosferatu, but fear not! He hasn't forgotten his humble beginnings as Pennywise. He'll return as the killer clown in HBO's It: Welcome to Derry, a prequel that HBO says "expands the vision established by filmmaker Andy Muschietti in the feature films IT and IT Chapter Two."
We'll see another six episodes of Black Mirror later this year, starring a new assortment of actors: Issa Rae, Paul Giamatti, Awkwafina, Rashida Jones, and more. Oh, are you wondering why I included a still from season 4's Star Trek–inspired "USS Callister" episode? Season 7 will give it a sequel, with the great Cristin Milioti set to return.
No one—except for Kelly Reilly, apparently—knows what the hell will happen in the future of Yellowstone. Following the season 5 (or series?!) finale in December, my money's on Taylor Sheridan starting clean(ish) with The Madison. The series will introduce the Clyburns, who move from New York City to the Madison River Valley of Montana after the death of their patriarch. The Madison is set in the same universe as Yellowstone, and Matthew Fox and Michelle Pfeiffer will star. Send a yeehaw in Sheridan's direction and maybe we'll see it by the end of the year.
