"Fourteen years ago, Emily Nussbaum, one of my esteemed predecessors in the TV-critic chair, notoriously titled her Top Ten list " I Hate Top Ten Lists." I've seldom felt the same. I'm not much of a holiday person, but, for most of the time that I've been a working critic, I've loved the end-of-year ritual of sorting the so-so from the superb and the overhyped from the justly praised, pruning my favorites down to a most-deserving few."
"But, in 2025, I can't say that curating such a roundup was much fun. This year, as executives backed away from the kind of risky, ambitious programming that marked the last golden age of television, the industry's decline was evident from its output. TV felt smaller. There were few epics like " The Last of Us" and "Alien: Earth," which, while entertaining, were ultimately constrained by their source material."
Executives retreated from risky, ambitious programming in 2025, producing smaller, less adventurous television output. The decline showed in a scarcity of epic series and an overall sense that TV felt smaller. Several high-profile prestige shows — including Severance, Andor, Adolescence, The Bear, The White Lotus, and The Studio — registered as ponderous, shallow, or both. Straightforward sitcoms were notably rare as the comedy ecosystem migrated online and became increasingly niche and sometimes incomprehensible. End-of-year curation felt less rewarding amid uninspired offerings. Traditional standards of innovation, ambition, execution, distinctiveness, and relevance remained important even as evaluative yardsticks shifted.
Read at The New Yorker
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