Brrace yourself—between Severance, The Bear, White Lotus, and much more—the upcoming year on the small screen is unbelievably stacked.
Happy New Year, readers, and welcome to some other television year. In my list of the ten most sensible programs of 2024, I wrote about how media ratings differ greatly from others in tactics that I had never noticed before. Let’s say, an unexpected number of you have responded to our top ten with a “bad!”
Now, if you remember, the actors and writers of 2023 led to a relative dearth of the Powerhouse series in 2024. Guess where everyone went? 2025. The next 12 months will see a number of blockbuster shows stacked up, adding the long-awaited returns of The Last of Us, and separately, Stranger Things and The White Lotus. Condemn! It looks like we’re going to have a little time to check out this year’s promising lineup of newcomers—head to the studio if you need to know which one I’m most excited for—but rest assured, we’re going to be looking at as many as humanly possible.
Here are the 25 maximum Esquire screens expected of 2025. * I’m back as your maximum when layoff drops in a few weeks.
*Undated series are shown 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 of sadness so far, even if it hasn’t given us two wonderful Marcello Hernandez characters (Domingo and Don Francisco). I’m guessing Lorne Michaels is holding his punches for his three-hour anniversary special (!), which I bet I’ll be circulating every single and every living SNL not called 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 gambling on Esquire’s Guilty Blueprint, you’ve come to the right place. It’s access. Season 3 of the premiere video series will possibly see the Hulking Jack Reacher (a star-studded Alan Ritchson as well.
There’s no chance I’ll abandon Robert De Niro’s beginnings as a TV resident on this list. It will provide zero day on Netflix, who, according to the streamer, “asks the query that considers everyone: how to locate the fact in a global in crisis, torn apart through forces beyond our control?”It is ok!
Esquire covered the complete verse of Taylor Sheridan in 2024, hence I stayed with this relatively soft list on cowboy hats, the sound of the screams of an angry Zoe Saldaña and the disturbing oil platforms. But I will have to cry 1923, which will not only continue touring the explosive history of the Dutton family, but also deliver more Harrison Ford. No more Harrison Ford is intelligent.
Over the holidays, I watched the great Claressa Shields biopic, the fireplace inside, so I’m very much into a kick Brian Tyree Henry. (He plays the boxing coach. ) Add to the deep assessment of this scales of Wagner Moura and Dope Thief of Apple TV officially makes my surveillance list in 2025. The series will set the two actors like, according to The streamer, “Philly Friends and criminals who stand up as DEA agents to borrow an unknown space in the countryside, just for their short time to become a life-and-death business, as they accidentally reveal and discourage the largest hidden narcotics parlor on the East Coast.
I am one of the many critics who have been disappointed by the HBO franchise, which satirized the superhero of fashionable cinema through the making of a fictional wonder movie. . Then I saw the studio trailer, a satire of trendy Hollywood through the lens of a studio head (Seth Rogen), and I knew it right away. The study follows a fictional study, but the stars and references are very real. Created through a host of wonderful comedy minds (including Rogen and Evan Goldberg), just look at the way Martin Scorsese mutters, “Spinless!” I mean.
Every time I write this list of the most awaited, there comes a time when I simply have to put down the logline and tell them that I am watching it without hesitation. This year it’s time for the movie Your Friends and Neighbors starring Jon Hamm 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 latest Us video games, I hate to say that almost everything I write about Season 2 will ruin the story for you. Here’s what I can convey: Bella Ramsey, Pedro Pascal, and Pedro Pascal’s Killer Jacket will be returning, as well as new additions Kaitlyn Dever and Catherine O’Hara. Leave that, just click here if you need to know more.
I love Glen Powell, but I really want to see the boy in anything where he is at the top of his wonderful energy. Chad Powers is precisely that project. The Hulu series will adhere to the same general premise of the “Chad Powers” joke by Eli Manning, which made incognito as Walk-on in Penn State and made him look like the same winner of the Super Bowl. Chad Powers will adhere to a Quarterback exhaustion while putting prostheses to enroll in a new team with another name. Thank you for listening to my plea, Glen.
I feel like I’ve read Noah Hawley’s output of the Alien series since I’ve had this list, which is not insignificant. Despite everything, we will see it this year and it will be tremendously fantastic. Read the line through yourself:
When a mysterious area sends blocks on Earth, a young woman (Sydney Chandler) and an organization of tactical soldiers in Ragtag make a fateful discovery that puts them face to face with the greatest risk of the planet in the expected television series of FX: Alien: Author’s land Noah Hawley.
Between this series and Alien: Romulus, life is smart right now for a foreign 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 put pirates on my year-end TV list as well, I say: do you look at hacks?HBO’s comedy about The Global of Comedy is recently the most productive television comedy. The fourth season will see Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) arguing in a much larger scene, as it begins last night on the first night.
As we play around with my 2024 ranking, here’s another comment I received: The Bear didn’t deserve second place. Season 3 disappointed many fans, of course. But between the admirably experimental premiere, the Ayo Ezeri-directed episode, and the uninterrupted performances of the main ensemble, The Bear remains the most productive TV show in my book. Launch of season 4, which would possibly be the definitive referendum on Carmy’s soul.
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