The year 2025 is only a few months old and it has already left most of us feeling, in a word, wrecked. Oddly, and thankfully, the only thing that seems to be working better now than it was in recent years is television. After the extended challenges of COVID and the WGA and SAG strikes, and despite current "economic hardships" plaguing the industry, TV is suddenly better than it has been in quite a while. While it is entirely too early to pull together a best-of-the-year column, but how about one honoring the best of the year to date?
Comeback of the Year to Date: Broadcast Television
I use the word "comeback" with caution, because there are those among us who continue to assert that broadcast never went away. Here's a shout-out to the many broadcast series which have given us outstanding episodes in 2025, including but not limited to CBS' Matlock, Elsbeth and Ghosts; NBC's St. Denis Medical, and ABC's Abbott Elementary, Will Trent, High Potential and 9-1-1. More than one person has tried to convince me that traditional broadcast formats have been running out of gas. From where I sit, their tanks are practically full.
Show of the Year to Date: Max's "The Pitt"
It will take a lot to steer me away from naming Max's major medical drama The Pitt (pictured at top) as my top program of 2025. Its first season was a monumental (if dramatically overstuffed) achievement that invited inevitable comparisons to the classic ER as it chronicled a beyond-hellish 15-hour shift in the emergency room of an underfunded Pittsburgh hospital. Every performance in its cast of dozens was first rate, and every character felt fully realized, even those who were only on screen for a few minutes per episode. The casting executives who worked on this show should get all the industry honors, and if the cast isn't honored as Best Ensemble in a Drama Series at next year's SAG Awards there might be a problem. Star Noah Wyle certainly deserves industry wide recognition during the next award season.
I'm tempted to refer to The Pitt as "ER on steroids," though I have to admit that even at its most breathtakingly intense (the multi-episode arc in which a shooter at a nearby concert turned the emergency room into a mass-casualty crisis center) no single episode of The Pitt grabbed me with the same force as "Love's Labor Lost," an episode from ER's first season about childbirth gone horribly wrong that debuted way back on March 9, 1995. It still haunts me. The Pitt will undoubtedly stay with me for years to come, as well.
Most Talked About Program of the Year to Date: "The White Lotus"
For most of 2025 the world has been on fire, in more ways than one. Amid the madness came the third and easily the most talked about season of HBO's The White Lotus (pictured above), featuring such startling spectacles as incest between young adult brothers; a sexually hyperactive white heterosexual male explaining to a dear friend that he decided he wanted to be a young Asian female (and what he did about it); a desperate businessman dreaming about killing his family to protect them from financial hardship and then attempting to poison them all; drug-fueled parties; deadly snakes; a known killer intimidating potential new prey; a mass casualty event, and more. It was the season that launched many a meme and set record ratings. But I keep thinking about a few odd details that bugged me during the finale. Why were trees bearing poisonous fruit growing on luxury resort property? Why was everyone acting like nothing unusual had happened the morning after a shooting with multiple casualties (especially the friendgroup, who witnessed much of it up close)? Also, where were the police? Why didn't Tim Ratliff think to rinse that poisonous goop out of son Saxon's blender? And why did his other son, Lochlan, make himself a drink in that same blender even though it was filthy? Yuck.
Big Swing of the Year to Date: CBS' "Beyond the Gates"
CBS in February successfully launched Beyond the Gates -- the first new daily broadcast soap opera to come along since NBC's Passions -- this one with a predominantly Black cast of characters. In defiance of long-held industry assumptions, viewers showed up for it! As with any soap, whether that audience stays, builds or declines will depend 100 percent on the writing. As with CBS in primetime, CBS in daytime continues to build upon and enhance established broadcast traditions in ways its competitors could learn from. (Meanwhile, I wonder if the instant interest in Beyond the Gates is fueling those social media rumors about ABC reviving All My Children or One Life to Live. The network could do much worse. In fact, it has, several times over.)
Sophomore Sensation of the Year to Date: Apple TV+'s "Severance"
For too many years now, the men and women who control television have prioritized "high-concept" storytelling over damn near everything else. This hasn't worked out very well in the long term. High concepts often get old fast, run out of steam, strain to maintain whatever they got going at the start, etc. Far too many take a narrative nosedive after their overstuffed pilots, while those that enjoy successful first seasons often flatline in their sophomore years. So, it has been interesting to see Severance take-off in season two, especially following a two-year absence from Apple. It quickly became one of the two most talked about returning series of the year to date (the other being season three of The White Lotus).
Speaking of sophomore slumps I'm already worried about Hulu's dandy sci-fi thriller Paradise. It was riveting during its first few episodes, but I thought its own far-fetched internal logic began to collapse in the final chapters of its initial eight episodes. The performances -- especially that of series star Sterling K. Brown -- should power it through any narrative problems when it returns for season two.