2025 TV preview: The shows to add to your new year watchlist

Looking back at 2024 in TV and comparing it to our preview for the year, it’s safe to say that things turned out pretty well on balance.

We’d assert that seven of our initial picks lived up to expectations, while only two outright disappointed, and one caused an almighty split befitting these polarised times. We’ll leave it up to you to figure which ones fit into which categories.

Alternatively you can get with the New Year spirit and look forward to (hopefully) better times. We’re choosing to do just that, and the following 2025 TV preview offers plenty of reason for good cheer.

It’s a list that packs hotly anticipated follow-up seasons, ambitious movie spin-offs, and exciting original productions. We’re not going to lie, it’s a pretty genre-heavy collection, with stacks of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror. Escapism certainly seems to be the order of the day right now, doesn’t it?

Experience tells us that there will be several shows that swing in from left field and knock us sideways, but based on what we know the following series are going to be big in 2025.

Indeed, it is going to be such a big year for consequential TV, we haven’t even found space to include the final seasons of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Bear, among others. Whoever said that the era of great TV had passed?

Top 10 upcoming TV shows of 2025

Severance Season 2

The first season of Severance was one of those unexpected TV happenings that we referenced in the introduction, landing on the little-watched Apple TV+ from out of nowhere and completely blowing us away. It was nigh-on perfect. Season two of this quirkily stylish slice of workplace sci-fi has reportedly experienced some production issues, but we’re hopeful that Ben Stiller can thread the needle and pull us deeper into the show’s delicious mysteries. To be any more specific would risk spoiling things for the many people who missed season one. If that’s you, go and watch it now.

The Last of Us Season 2

Fans of the Sony PlayStation game series that The Last of Us is closely based on will be approaching the second season with mixed feelings. There’ll be excitement, because the first season of post-apocalyptic drama was the kind of pitch-perfect adaptation that few dared hope for. But there’s also trepidation, because the second game upon which this follow-up season is based has been extremely divisive. Even those who loved it (raises hand from behind cover) will be steeling themselves for a gruelling story in which it can be difficult to know who – if anyone – to root for.

It: Welcome to Derry

No, this isn’t the Derry Girls spin-off of your dreams. Sorry about that. Rather, Welcome to Derry is a prequel to the excellent 2017 and 2019 It movies, which were themselves adaptations of Stephen King’s 1986 horror novel. This new nine-episode series is set in the 1960s, before the events of the first It chapter, while we’re also promised the origin story of Pennywise the psychotic trans-dimensional clown. It’s being developed by the people behind those earlier movies, and Bill Skarsgård is returning as the child-killing antagonist. Sold.

Daredevil: Born Again

It’s fair to say that Disney’s attempts to transition Marvel’s cinematic dominance to the small screen have been largely unsuccessful. What’s interesting about Daredevil: Born Again is that it’s a continuation of a pre-existing Netflix show, which ran for three mostly successful seasons (and assorted spin-offs) from 2015 onwards. The encouraging news is that the core cast is returning – Charlie Cox, Vincent D’Onofrio, Deborah Ann Woll, Elden Henson, and even Jon Bernthal – but it remains to be seen if the gritty action-drama style that marked the earlier seasons makes it through the Mickey Mouse filter.

Andor Season 2

A long time ago (2022) in a universe far, far away (Pinewood Studios, London)… an overtly political Star Wars TV show was made that unified fans in love and positivity. It’s a fantastical story alright, but it also just so happens to be true. The first season of Andor rocked, taking the primary-coloured Star Wars universe and stirring in some shades of murky grey. With the mauling that subsequent Star Wars spin-offs have received (fairly or otherwise), and with The Mandalorian now seemingly bound for cinemas, one suspects that Andor has become Disney’s only TV hope.

Alien: Earth

After 2024’s Alien: Romulus returned some sorely needed credibility and hope to a beleaguered franchise, we’re a whole lot more excited about Alien: Earth. It also helps that Noah Hawley is helming the show. Having made a resounding and wholly unexpected success of the Fargo TV show, he’s as close to a safe pair of hands as it’s possible to get in this game. We’re also liking the sound of a prequel series set two years before the events of the original Alien film.

The Studio

Where does Hollywood’s ultimate stoner, Seth Rogen, find the time (and drive) to complete all of his myriad projects? We don’t know, but The Studio suggests that he isn’t slowing down any time soon. Rogen writes, partly directs, and stars in this Apple TV+ dramedy that sends up Hollywood in all its vacuity. Rogen plays the new head of a beleaguered old school studio as it struggles to compete with the streaming era. If nothing else, the celebrity cameo factor looks to be strong with this one.

A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

Now that House of the Dragon has at least begun to redeem the tarnished Game of Thrones brand (in televisual terms at least), fans are likely to be a lot more receptive to this new spin-off series. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is an adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas. Set some 90 years before Ned Stark and his entourage set off for King’s Landing at the outset of GoT, it promises to be a somewhat lighter, lower stakes affair than either of the preceding series.

Stranger Things Season 5

Nine years is a long time for any modern series to run, but when that series involves a cast of kids who have literally grown up in front of our eyes, it’s extra special. To point out that Stranger Things has never been as good as its first series would be churlish given the almost universal good will that continues to flood its way from an avid cross-generational fanbase. This final season of ’80s-referencing sci-fi fantasy will doubtless bring out the sniffles in kids and adults alike.

Untitled Vince Gilligan Apple TV+ series

It feels a bit strange including a series about which so little is known. We don’t even have a title for Vince Gilligan’s next TV project, but the mere association of the Breaking Bad creator's / X-Files writer's name is more than enough for us. Add in a modern day Albuquerque, New Mexico setting, not to mention Rhea Seehorn starring in the main role, and it would seem to be a natural follow-on from Better Call Saul. However, early murmurings of a vaguely sci-fi nature have us excited for something just a little bit different.

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