The television critics of The New York Times recently presented their lists of the best shows of 2025. Now they focus on the year’s best individual episodes, which remain the fundamental units of television even in our binge-obsessed era. (Listed alphabetically by series title.)
‘Adolescence’
Episode 3
The single-take strategy of this British drama — each of the four episodes was executed in one continuous shot — was calculated to increase the levels of intensity and dread in a story about a teenage boy who is accused of murdering a girl in his school. It could also give the production a tinge of self-consciousness that worked against the depictions of raw emotion. The method was a perfect match, however, for this episode, which is largely a brilliant duet between Owen Cooper as the boy, Jamie, and Erin Doherty as a psychologist whose job is to assess whether Jamie understands what he has been charged with. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE
‘American Masters’
‘The Disappearance of Miss Scott’
The documentarian Nicole London’s profile of the musician, actress and activist Hazel Scott is a vital piece of artistic biography and a dismaying testament to how easily achievement can be lost to history. Possessed of protean talent and boundless charisma, Scott was a star from the 1930s into the 1950s and the first Black performer to have her own TV show. But a run-in with the House Un-American Activities Committee derailed her career and led to a self-imposed decade of exile. Scott is now largely forgotten, consigned to the vast necropolis of YouTube; London’s effort to re-establish her cultural equity is blessed work. (Streaming on PBS.) HALE
‘Apocalypse Hotel’
‘Wag Your Tail, but Never Wag a Shift!’
An episode in which a survivor ventures across a dangerous landscape on some personal mission is an evergreen feature of the postapocalyptic drama. This jaunty, quietly adorable anime series offered a poignant variation on the format. Forced to take a day off, Yachiyo, a robot front-desk clerk obsessed with her own dependability, walks through an empty Tokyo — humans having fled hundreds of years before — scanning junk piles of fellow androids for a replacement part she badly needs. Along the way, rather than battle predators, she tries on clothes, plays arcade games and takes in what is left of the sights of Ginza — a day-tripper among the ruins. (Streaming on Crunchyroll.) HALE
‘Dying for Sex’
‘It’s Not That Serious’
Death, you could say, is the end of everything. But in the finale of this limited series about Molly (Michelle Williams), a woman whose terminal diagnosis leads to a journey of sexual self-discovery, it is also the last great adventure. Remarkably frank about the process of death, rather than simply the abstract idea of it, “Serious” — elevated by Paula Pell as a frank and hilarious hospice nurse — was as sad as you would expect but also funny, honest, cathartic and mind-altering in ways you had to see to believe. (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK
‘Exterior Night’
Episode 5
This cerebral drama from Marco Bellocchio recounts the 55 days of the Moro affair, in which the Italian statesman Aldo Moro was kidnapped and killed by the Red Brigades, from the perspectives of politicians and pundits, terrorists and journalists, clerics and cops. The most wrenching story is that of Moro’s wife, Eleonora (Margherita Buy), who begins the episode complaining to a priest about the deadening effect of politics in the family’s life while the sounds of sirens and helicopters outside herald her husband’s abduction. (Streaming on MHz Choice.) HALE
‘Mo’
‘A Call From God’
For two seasons, “Mo” was a sharp, endearing comedy of displacement, as the Palestinian American Mo Najjar (Mohammed Amer) struggled to keep a life together and pursue his business dreams in Texas while navigating the immigration system. The series finale ends with a homecoming of sorts as Mo, green card newly in hand, flies with his family to visit their ancestral homeland under Israeli occupation. As soon as he lands, he is met with a new set of walls, barriers and questions about his right to be in the place where he is. But he also finds a measure of joy and belonging as he at last gets the chance to see the world that shaped his mother and his deceased father. It made for an ending in keeping with the spirit of the too-short series: big-hearted but not mawkish, sharp but not bludgeoning. (Streaming on Netflix.) PONIEWOZIK
‘The Rehearsal’
‘Pilot’s Code’
In Season 2, Nathan Fielder turned his reality-TV high concept — that all difficult life situations can be handled through elaborate practice sessions — to the airline industry. And “Pilot’s Code” was his most ambitious stunt flight. On the hypothesis that there must have been some formative experience that led the pilot Chesley Sullenberger, known as Sully, to pull off his famous emergency landing on the Hudson River, Fielder doesn’t just study his life. He re-enacts it, a bravura speed-run that involves Fielder in a bald cap and diaper as Baby Sully, breastfeeding from an enormous puppet mother. The episode is not just a meditation on nature and nurture but also an exquisitely crafted comic setup that builds to the greatest — and quite likely only — punchline built around the Evanescence song “Bring Me to Life.” (Streaming on HBO Max.) PONIEWOZIK
‘Severance’
‘Woe’s Hollow’
Corporate retreats can be excruciating. But if yours don’t involve reading stories of weird company lore in a frozen wilderness, or end with one co-worker holding another’s head underwater, count yourself lucky. Streaming TV’s most loopily disorienting show outdid itself with the story of an ORTBO (Outdoor Retreat Team Building Occurrence — what, you’ve never heard of it?) that paid off with the surprise that one of Lumon Industries’ severed employees was hiding a secret. Special credit goes to John Turturro as Irv, for a mild-mannered demeanor that gives way to rebellious fury; to Britt Lower, for a performance that subtly drops breadcrumbs toward the revelation; and to Tramell Tillman as Milchick, for pulling off the most spectacular ermine-white outerwear combo in the great outdoors. (Streaming on Apple TV.) PONIEWOZIK
‘South Park’
‘Sermon on the ’Mount’
Trey Parker and Matt Stone had avoided satirizing Donald Trump on the grounds that too many other people were already doing it. But as one institution after another — networks, universities, law firms — began kowtowing to the demands of the Trump 2.0 administration, they unleashed all hell, as well as heaven. Jesus Christ, Satan and the residents of our favorite dysfunctional Colorado town came together in this defiantly juvenile defense of free expression. If the responsible adults were afraid to speak out, Parker and Stone suggested, then maybe it was a job for animation’s serial offenders. (Streaming on Paramount+.) PONIEWOZIK
‘Win or Lose’
‘Coach’s Kid’
That terrifying locus of childhood anxiety and shame, youth sports, was the subject of Pixar Animation’s first original (non-spinoff) TV series. The episodes trace the week before a middle school softball team’s championship game from multiple perspectives: an umpire with dating woes, a coach with anger issues, a bored younger brother. The opener presents us with Laurie, the coach’s daughter and the team’s weakest player; she carries her lack of self-esteem on her back, literally, in the form of an elastic blob with a never-ending supply of put-downs. For the person who remembers going through an entire season without a hit, Laurie is an uncannily authentic creation. (Streaming on Disney+.) HALE
James Poniewozik is the chief TV critic for The Times. He writes reviews and essays with an emphasis on television as it reflects a changing culture and politics.
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