Here are some of the high-profile shows that will be crossing my glazed-but-happy TV-columnist eyes in 2025.
Squid Game (Netflix, later in 2025)
The second series of Squid Game arrived on our screens at the end of 2024. The third series airs later this year. Squid Game is about a bunch of indebted salaryfolk who must engage in a series of murderous children’s games for the pleasure of the idle rich. It is strangely relatable. It was created by Hwang Dong-hyuk as a critique of contemporary capitalism and was disseminated with the help of Netflix, which is, I believe, a workers’ collective organised along anarcho-syndicalist principles. That this grippingly subversive fable has become a million-dollar franchise with a literal quiz-show offshoot and an upcoming David Fincher-helmed English-language version speaks to what the late political theorist Mark Fisher depressingly defined as “capitalist realism”. In short, if the revolution is televised I will probably stay in and watch it.
Severance (Apple TV+, tomorrow!)
Severance is another critique of capitalism, this time from Apple TV+ – or, as you probably know it, Apple TV+ Militant Tendency. Who knew that Apple cared so much about the working man? Dan Erickson’s Severance features Adam Scott, Britt Lower, John Turturro and Christopher Walken as employees whose work personas have been “severed” from their personal lives, with dystopian results. The final episode of season one was one of the best hours of television in 2022. The show is simultaneously moving, thought-provoking and horrifying, and it’s back on our screens as of tomorrow. It’s possible the corporate leadership at Apple don’t realise that Severance depicts something disturbing and dystopian and simply intend this as an ad for some actual technology they’ll actually be introducing come Q4 of 2025. If so I will both watch the show and succumb to the inevitable.
Andor (Disney+, April)
But what of the space working class? Tony Gilroy’s Andor is the first Star Wars spin-off to make me realise that, although I like to think of myself fomenting revolution with the radical space hippies, I’d definitely be more likely to work for the Empire for the pension benefits and holiday pay. Gilroy’s evil space empire is more about well-observed oppressive bureaucracy than space sword-fights. I absolutely love that stuff.
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White Lotus (Sky/Now, February)
As we have established, the lot of the televised worker under late capitalism isn’t great. Mike White’s White Lotus contends that the “bosses” aren’t doing too well either. White Lotus is a rare critique of wealth that actually makes the pinched, status-chasing lives of the wealthy look actively unpleasant. (Only Succession really rivals it for this.) Set across a chain of “White Lotus” hotels, each series introduces us to a new cast of upper-class guests and working-class hospitality workers, as well as an unidentified corpse. Each series so far has been hilariously and darkly compelling on the subjects of power and class and entitlement. The next White Lotus series is set in Thailand and features the excellently named Parker Posey and Walton Goggins, among others. This subversively political show is probably as likely to lead to an actual chain of White Lotus hotels (for people who are willing to pay for crass luxury and death) as to actual political change. I’d say the chances of either are 50:50.
With Love, Meghan (Netflix, ?)
This Meghan Markle-fronted lifestyle show has, sadly, been delayed. (It was meant to debut on Netflix this week.) Marie Antoinette liked to dress up as a shepherdess and herd sheep, but Meghan and Harry, royalty in exile, like to dress as lifestyle gurus and impart relatable life hacks to the plain people of Tellyland. This sort of stuff, with luck: “One must be firm with one’s butler.” “Here’s how I cook risotto: ‘Hey, you, cook me risotto.’” “Don’t keep your Fabergé eggs in the same room as your thoroughbred wildebeests!”
The Studio (Apple TV+, March)
The premise of this upcoming Apple TV+ show suggests that the tech bros are now cyberbullying and taunting the Hollywood executives. It’s the story of a struggling studio executive (Seth Rogan) grappling with the rise of streaming services. “Hyuk-hyuk,” I imagine the executives at Apple said when they commissioned it. I will watch this show even though it will be filled with Hollywood figures playing “themselves”. (“Themselves” is the role Hollywood actors are worst at playing.)
Poker Face (Sky/Now, spring)
Since the dawn of time philosophers have asked one question: What if gruff, wisecracking Natasha Lyonne were Columbo? The question is now answered by this story of a lie-detecting, murder-investigating drifter who seems blissfully untraumatised by the weekly crime scenes that are her life. Simple episodic storytelling is so nice after years of overly complex prestige telly. Sometimes I don’t want to have to remember stuff.
Stranger Things (Netflix, later in 2025)
A selection of talented child actors are forced to live out the nostalgic fever dreams of Gen X forever thanks to the referentially minded, 1980s-obsessed showrunners the Duffer brothers. This I vow: young people will have to wrest pop culture from my generation’s cold, dead hands before they’re allowed it to themselves. That is the true horror of Stranger Things.
Black Mirror (Netflix, later in 2025)
“Roll up, roll up and see the fancy doohickeys and fads of the modern age! Behold a horseless carriage! Behold a moving picture that steals the soul! Behold survivable infectious diseases! It’s witchcraft, I tells ya!” That’s my carnival-barking pitch for Black Mirror 1890, a new iteration of the franchise that I propose in order to remove the pressure on that show to be one step ahead of the times. Black Mirror, Charlie Brooker’s anthology of dystopian technophobic tales, stole a jump on the zeitgeist when it originally turned up on Channel 4, back in 2011. But that’s when the smartphone (the eponymous “black mirror”) was just beginning to wire itself into our collective consciousness and people still thought tech entrepreneurs were philosophical humanitarians and not weird fascist baby men. The horrors of the new age were still surprising then. By the time Black Mirror migrated to Netflix, in 2016, our relationship with technology had soured considerably and Black Mirror’s dystopian horror seemed a little less potent. Still, the nature of the anthology format is always going to be a bit hit and miss. There are always engaging episodes.
[ Charlie Brooker on hitting the reset button in Black MirrorOpens in new window ]
Yellowjackets (Paramount+, February)
A bunch of teenage girls survive a plane crash in the mountains, engage in ritualistic cannibalism, form cultlike bonds and then do pretty well in their exams. If I know Irish Times readers, half of you are already ringing the school in Yellowjackets to discuss their educational philosophy and enrol your children. Set across two timelines, Yellowjackets is creepy, gripping fun with very entertaining performances from the 1990s teen stars turned adult humans Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis and Melanie Lynskey.
Daredevil: Born Again (Disney+, March)
There’s a small chance that Charlie Cox might retain the decent Dublin accent he used for the RTÉ drama Kin when he stars in Daredevil: Born Again. That’s the main reason I’ve put this here. The pitch for this Disney/Marvel reboot of a previous Netflix series is, basically: a man dresses in rubber and gets into fights. Add a Dublin accent to this and I’m pretty sure I know this guy.
