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TV
“All the TV shows I’m going to be obsessed with in 2025”: Stylist’s entertainment director on what she’s hyped about
5 days ago
14 min read
2025 sees the return of some long-awaited US series, adaptations of novels about brilliant women and smart new comedies. Here’s what Stylist’s entertainment director Helen Bownass is most excited about.
From One Day and Nobody Wants This to Baby Reindeer and Ripley, we were blessed with some excellent TV series in 2024. And, there’s be even more televisual treats to become obsessed with in 2025.
There’s the return of several powerhouse blockbuster series, adaptations of beloved novels and unique new depictions of what it is to be human right now.
Here’s everything I’m getting giddy about…
The White Lotus, season three
Rich people in swanky hotels are shown in all their weirdness in this third instalment of this brilliant TV series.
Our holidaymakers will be headed to Thailand, and the show’s creator, Mark White, has promised that this season will be “longer, bigger, crazier”. And there’s another new cast to get obsessed with including Jason Isaacs (Harry Potter), Aimee Lou Wood (Sex Education), Carrie Coon (The Gilded Age), Parker Posey (Lost In Space), Patrick Schwarzenegger (Gen V) and Blackpink singer Lisa.
I’m particularly excited about the return of spa therapist Belinda (Natasha Rothwell), the confidante of Jennifer Coolidge’s grieving Tanya.
Watch weekly on Sky and Now
Adolescence
Fans of Boiling Point will be thrilled about the arrival of this ambitious and unique new crime drama that my colleague Kayleigh describes as “a terribly addictive blend of breathsucking tension, suffocating dread and genuinely stunning meditations on human nature.”
Filed in real-time and in a single shot, it centres on the story of 13-year-old Jamie Miller (Owen Cooper), who is arrested for the murder of a girl from school. Stephen Graham plays his father, Eddie. They’re joined by Ashley Walters as Detective Inspector Bascombe, and Erin Doherty (again) as the psychologist working on his case. This won’t be an easy watch.
Watch on 13 March on Netflix
Protection
Siobhan Finneran has played the sister of the TV’s best police officer (Catherine Cawood in Happy Valley), and now she’s getting her own set of cuffs as she takes the lead in a thriller inspired by a true story.
She plays Detective Inspector Liz Nyles, who finds herself at the heart of a security breach within her witness protection unit and has to juggle her loyalty to the force with that to her family and the man she’s having an affair with.
Watch on 16 March on ITV
The Residence
It’s been too long since we’ve seen Orange Is The New Black star Uzo Aduba on TV so the arrival of The Residence is perfect. Created by Shondaland, Aduba plays Cordelia Cupp, an eccentric detective and keen birdwatcher, who has to solve a crime in the White House. And it sounds perfect.
Watch on 20 March on Netflix
The Studio
We’ve had The Franchise, and now The Studio another big-budget TV drama is lifting the curtain on life on a film set.
Seth Rogen, Catherine O’Hara, Kathryn Hahn, Ike Barinholtz, Olivia Wilde and Chase Sui Wonders star in a brilliant-looking 10-part series about the newly appointed studio exec (Rogen) of the failing Continental Studios.
Watch on 26 March on Apple TV+
The Last Of Us, season two
I couldn’t be more thrilled about the return of this excellent 2023 drama.
Bella Ramsey and Pedro Pascal are back running through the post-apocalyptic world plagued by mushroom zombies. They’ve found safety in Joel’s (Pascal) brother’s settlement in Wyoming for now, but for how long? (Clue: not long.) Caitlyn Dever and Stylist cover star Catherine O’Hara also join this series.
Watch on 14 April on Sky and Now
The Stolen Girl
Since her brilliant turn in One Day, I’ve been intrigued to see what Ambika Mod will turn her hand to next. And we’ve got our answer.
She’ll star alongside Holliday Grainger and Denise Gough in a new psychological thriller, an adaptation of Alex Dahl’s bestselling novel Playdate. Elisa, a mum of two, has her world turned upside down when she lets her daughter, Lucia, spend the night at a new friend’s house. When she collects her the next morning, she learns the home is a holiday rental and Lucia has disappeared.
And soon everything begins to unravel…
Watch on 16 April on Disney+
The Night Manager, season two
Eight years on from the first series of the hit BBC drama, the spy thriller returns.
At the end of the adaptation of John Le Carré’s novel we saw death, betrayal, military action and capture, and expect more of the same high-octane thrills as Tom Hiddleston reprises his role of former soldier turned hotel manager.
Excitingly, Olivia Colman will also be back as spy Angela Burr.
Date tbc, BBC One and Prime Video
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Wild Cherry
This has the makings of a perfect series: rich women in a luxury estate, toxic secrets and friendships gone wrong. We’re very ready for the release of Wild Cherry.
Written by Nicôle Lecky, who also created the excellent Mood, it’s about best friends Lorna (Carmen Ejogo) and Juliet (Eve Best), who live in a gorgeous gated community with their teenage daughters (who are also best pals). But when the schoolgirls get implicated in a huge school scandal and the mothers are forced to see how far they’d go to protect them, it causes their relationships to fracture.
Big Little Lies has some competition…
Date tbc, BBC One
This City Is Ours
Sean Bean, one of our finest acting talents, heads up a new crime drama set in Liverpool. He plays Ronnie, the leader of an organised crime gang that brings shipments of cocaine into the country.
When Ronnie starts thinking about retirement his friend and fellow gang member Michael (James Nelson-Joyce ) also starts thinking about a new way of life. But it sets off a chain of events that leads to a power struggle for control of the empire between Michael and Ronnie’s son James (Jack McMullen).
Watch in spring on BBC One
The Other Bennet Sister
2025 marks the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, so I’m hopeful we’ll also see the arrival of this brilliant-sounding BBC coming-of-age story.
It’s based on Mary Bennet, often considered the forgotten sister in Pride And Prejudice. And we’ve been given this tantalising description of what to expect from the BBC: “Unlike her sisters, Mary isn’t your typical period drama heroine. She is awkward, anxious, preachy, full of facts, a terrible singer… overlooked by her mother and seemingly destined to an empty dance card for the rest of her life… until Mary takes matters into her own hands.”
Date tbc, BBC One
Black Mirror, season six
I’m both thrilled and terrified by the return of Black Mirror – largely because it means I have to confront my own relationship with technology and the world at large.
We don’t know much about the content yet, but we do know there’s an all-star cast including Peter Capaldi, Emma Corrin, Issa Rae, Awkwafina, Paul Giamatti and Tracee Ellis Ross.
There will also be a sequel to the beloved series 4 finale USS Callister, which features a Captain Kirk-like figure aboard a starship.
Time for me to get reflective, I guess.
Date tbc, Netflix
Hostage
Netflix gives great political thriller, and the hits keep coming with Hostage.
Suranne Jones plays Abigail Dalton, the UK prime minister. She is being visited by the French president, Vivienne Toussaint (Julie Delpy), who is desperate for re-election.
When Vivienne is blackmailed, and Abigail’s husband is kidnapped, the two leaders are forced to abandon their rivalry and work together.
Date tbc, Netflix
Wednesday, season two
It’s a good year for returning hit series, as we’ll finally get the sequel to Jenna Ortega’s breakout 2022 drama about a teenage goth.
Wednesday returns to Nevermore Academy where Ortega has promised that things will get even darker.
While the plot details are highly guarded, we do know the supporting cast is even more starry this time around, as Catherine Zeta-Jones and Emma Myers return. We’ll also see appearances from Billie Piper, Steve Buscemi, Joanna Lumley, Thandiwe Newton and Lady Gaga.
Date tbc, Netflix
How To Get To Heaven From Belfast
While we’re still not over the end of Derry Girls, we’re taking some comfort from the fact its creator, Lisa McGee, has had time to write a new show about a group of women.
How To Get To Heaven From Belfast stars Roísín Gallagher, Sinéad Keenan and Caoilfhionn Dunn as childhood friends who get an email about the death of the estranged fourth member of their school group. They embark on a journey together to piece together that past, as well as confront the way that life now might not meet expectations.
Date tbc, Netflix
Riot Women
Sally Wainwright, the genius creator of Happy Valley, is back with another BBC drama about women in the prime of life.
Joanna Scanlan, Rosalie Craig, Tamsin Greig, Lorraine Ashbourne and Amelia Bullmore lead the excellent cast of women who come together to form a punk band to enter a talent show, but then realise they have a lot of unsaid things to express and a lot of questions they demand answers for.
Think The Full Monty meets We Are Lady Parts and you might be close.
Date tbc, BBC One
Stranger Things
After almost a decade we’ll be paying a final visit to Hawkins, Indiana, with the fifth season of Stranger Things, the cultural phenomenon of the decade.
Set in autumn 1987, the final adventure will see the return of evil Vecna, who the gang thought they’d defeated in series four. And we’ll learn about the fate of Max (Sadie Sink), who was left in a coma.
Episode one (of eight) is called The Crawl, and it’s going to be intense.
Date tbc, Netflix
Too Much
Eight years after the finale of the generation-defining comedy Girls, Lena Dunham returns to our TV screens with another sure-to-be-excellent series.
Lightly based on her own life, it stars Megan Stalter as Jessica, a New Yorker who moves to London after the breakdown of a relationship she thought was forever. Her life spiralling, she plans to live like a Brontë sister until she meets Felix (Will Sharpe). He’s a “walking series of red flags” but there’s an irresistible connection…
It can’t come soon enough.
Date tbc, Netflix
Agatha Christie’s The Seven Dials
A practical joke at a party in a posh English house goes very wrong when one of the guests ends up murdered.
And the only person that can work out whodunnit is the sparky Lady Eileen ‘Bundle’ Brent (played by the brilliant Mia McKenna-Bruce). Helena Bonham-Carter, Martin Freeman, Nabhaan Rizwan and Corey Mylchreest also star in this adaptation of the Christie classic by Broadchurch creator Chris Chibnall.
Date tbc, Netflix
The Walsh Sisters
Marian Keyes’s ever-beloved Walsh family is coming to our TV screens, 30 years after we were first introduced to them. And we couldn’t be more ready.
Part-based on Rachel’s Holiday and Anybody Out There, it will star Derry Girls’s Louisa Harland as the troubled Anna Walsh. She’ll be joined by Caroline Menton as Rachel, Danielle Galligan as oldest sister Claire, Máiréad Tyers as Helen and Stefanie Preissner as Maggie, ‘Mammy’s favourite’.
And this isn’t the only Keyes novel being brought to life: Netflix is also working on an adaptation of Grown Ups.
Date tbc, BBC One
Watch now…
Playing Nice
James Norton takes the lead in this psychological thriller by Malpractice writer Grace Ofori-Attah and adapted from the bestselling novel by British thriller author JP Delaney.
It’s a family drama like no other when Peter (Norton) and Maddie (Niamh Algar) discover that their toddler was accidentally swapped at birth with the child of Miles (James McArdle) and Lucy (Jessica Brown Findlay). It’s a story about navigating the horrific dilemma of whether they should keep the sons they raised or their own biological children and how much they can all trust one another.
Watch now on ITVX
Missing You
New year, new Harlan Coben. As is now tradition, the crime writer gifted us an adaptation of another of his books, Missing You, to kick off 2025.
Slow Horses star Rosalind Eleazar plays Detective Kat Donovan. Eleven years ago, Kat’s fiance, Josh, disappeared without a trace, and then one night, while swiping on a dating app, she spots his face and her world implodes.
Jessica Plummer, Ashley Walters, James Nesbitt, Sir Lenny Henry, Steve Pemberton, Lisa Faulkner and Coben regular Richard Armitage also star.
Watch now on Netflix
The Traitors
After that series two dramatic finale that saw Harry dupe Molly into thinking he wasn’t a traitor and walking away with £120,000 the anticipation was high for this year’s skullduggery and bad behaviour.
And season three with its warring girl gang of Traitors, wildly suspicious Faithfuls, and excellent Claudia Winkleman looks, doesn’t disappoint!
Watch now on BBC iPlayer
Amandaland
Motherland almost comes back with a spin-off series about its most nightmarish character.
Post-divorce Amanda (Lucy Punch) has been forced to downsize and move to Harlesden (Or So Ha as only she calls it). As well as the indignity of having to live near Wormwood Scrubs prison she’s also got to parent two teenagers and all the drinking and social media that involves, as well as endure the bitchy comments from her own mother (played by Joanna Lumley).
Watch now on BBC iPlayer
Apple Cider VInegar
Grifters are back on Netflix. And we’ve never been more ready.
In this ‘true-ish’ story Kaitlyn Dever plays Belle Gibson, an Australian influencer who claims she’s cured her brain cancer with wellness. She goes on to build up a wellness empire, before it emerges she never had cancer at all.
Watch now on Netflix
Virdee
Will we ever get bored of thrillers? Definitely not when we have series like Virdee to be consumed by.
Set in Bradford, this centres on Detective Harry Virdee (Staz Nair), who was estranged from his Sikh family when he married Saima (Aysha Kala), a Muslim. As well as a personal life in crisis, at work he’s trying to stop the eruption of gangland warfare and confront his own ties to the criminal underworld.
Watch now on iPlayer
Severance, season two
The workplace drama your bosses probably don’t want you to watch, but we do, returns to Apple TV+.
At Lumon Enterprises, workers undergo a severance procedure, in which a chip is implanted in their brain to separate their memories between their work and home lives.
At the end of series one, after bringing their innies into their outside world, Mark S, played by Adam Scott, discovered his wife was alive and working at Lumon. Helly R (Britt Lower), meanwhile, revealed the process was torturous at an industry gala.
And now, the group will find out the consequences of breaking that severance barrier.
Watch weekly on Apple TV+
Prime Target
Leo Woodall’s quest for world domination continues apace with this new thriller coming to Apple TV+.
He plays Edward Brooks, a mathematician who is on the verge of breaking a code that will give him access to every computer in the world. Until he realises he has an unknown enemy who wants to stop him.
With the help of a government agent (played by Quintessa Swindell) he tries to unravel the conspiracy he’s been thrust into the centre of.
Watch weekly on Apple TV+
Miss Austen
Keeley Hawes takes the lead in a gorgeous adaptation of Gill Hornby’s novel.
The four-part series is set in 1830 and follows the life of Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra. After Jane’s death, Cassandra is on a mission to recover letters that threaten to destroy Jane’s legacy.
Game Of Thrones star Rose Leslie also stars as Cassandra’s friend Isabella, who is going through a tragedy of her own.
Watch now on BBC iPlayer
Big Boys
“Ten years ago I took a rather ramshackle comedy-theatre hour about grief and friendship to a damp cave at the Edinburgh Fringe and never thought a decade later it’d be a silly, sweet lil sitcom about a lad’s lad and a dweeby gay becoming best mates,” says Jack Rooke, the creator of the brilliant Bad Boys, which will be saying farewell after its third and final series in February.
The ‘dweeby gay’ is Dylan Llewellyn as and the ‘lads lad’ is played by Jon Pointing, and with their friends will be entering their final year at Brent University with the ups and downs that entails. There’s romance, there’s dissertations and there’s Louis Walsh leaving The X Factor, and it sounds perfect.
Watch now on Channel 4
Zero Day
A frontrunner for the award for the starriest cast of 2025, this political thriller brings together Robert De Niro, Dan Stevens, Angela Bassett, Jesse Plemons, Gaby Hoffmann, Lizzy Caplan.
RDN (as only I call him) is a former US president who leads an investigation into a nationwide cyberattack while also taking on some of his own personal demons.
Watch now on Netflix
A Thousand Blows
A Thousand Blows comes from the mind of Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight and is set in the world of illegal boxing in 1880s Victorian London (spoiler alert: it’s as stressful and violent as you might imagine).
Malachi Kirby (Small Axe) is Hezekiah Moscow, who is drawn into this criminal world where he meets Mary Carr (Erin Doherty) the leader of an all-female gang, and becomes locked in a dangerous rivalry with renowned boxer Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham).
Watch now on Disney+
Dope Girls
It’s been a while since we’ve had a great feminist drama to rile us up so I’m excited for this new one.
Set at the end of World War One, it sees a generation of men returning from war, expecting their women to get back in the kitchen after holding down the fort. Only they don’t want to.
Julianne Nicholson (Paradise) plays Kate Galloway, a single mother who starts a Soho nightclub to provide for her daughter and embraces a life of criminal activity along the way. Fight the power…
Watch now on BBC One
Toxic Town
Described as the ‘British Erin Brockovich’ this drama by Jack Thorne is based on a shocking true story. It’s set in the northern town of Corby in the 1980s, where a group of mothers challenge their town’s council over alleged toxic waste mismanagement as they believe it caused their children to develop birth defects
A brilliant cast brings the environmental scandal to life, including Jodie Whittaker, Aimee Lou Wood, Claudia Jessie, Robert Carlyle and Michael Socha.
Watch now on Netflix
Images: BBC; Apple TV+; Sky Atlantic; HBO; Netflix; Disney+, ITV
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