We like to watch

Whether you like mind-bending sci-fi, high-stakes medical drama, thoughtful animation or deeply horny hockey romance, television in 2025 had something for all tastes. The Free Press arts team weighs in with their favourites from a variety of streaming services.

Pluribus, Season 1

Nine-episode first season premièred Nov. 7 on Apple TV+ (new episode weekly)

Carol, we simply cannot wait to find out what happens to you next.

Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul creator Vince Gilligan has returned to his favourite haunt of Albuquerque, N.M., for his latest sci-fi-ish series that circles back to his roots as a writer/director of The X-Files.

Saul star Rhea Seehorn is Carol Sturka, a fantasy-romance writer seemingly left to fend for herself and find out what has happened to the rest of society after an alien virus has seen them morph into smiling, creepily pleasant, talking-in-plural peons with a serious case of hive-mind mentality. Suitably freaked out, Carol sets out to determine what has come over people, and what she can do to reverse it.

Apparently Gilligan’s original idea was for Pluribus’s lead to be male, but he flipped the script after working with Seehorn, who played Kim Wexler brilliantly in Better Call Saul. And thank goodness he did: perpetually snubbed come awards season for her work in Saul, Seehorn’s somehow even better in Pluribus, which has already been picked up for a second season.

— Ben Sigurdson

Andor, Season 2

Streaming on Disney+

Hearing fans argue over the best Star Wars instalments can be like listening to adults squabble over the favourite flavour of baby food.

While original trilogy purists tend to be the most resonant, they often overlook an obvious truth: it is, like almost everything else SW, essentially a hokey space opera for kids.

Enter TV series Andor, a comparatively mature spy thriller about an ambivalent rebel (Diego Luna) and the Galactic Empire bureaucrat plotting to ensnare him. He and his rebel comrades are depicted somewhat cynically: a mix of opportunists and idealists, whose cause, however noble, exacts awful collateral damage on the very oppressed people they seek to champion.

Andor also gets at a problem comically overlooked by so many other SW entries: what the eff is a galaxy-sized colonial empire up to apart from the anti-rebel machinations of its evil goth daddies? It examines the lives of the smaller people who keep its dizzying administration running: some zealous, some pragmatic, most at least a little morally grey. This is a world occasionally beyond good and evil — and beyond SW’s magical “force,” as absent here as Vader and Palpatine.

If Andor is still baby food, it’s with many a chef’s garnishes.

— Conrad Sweatman

The Chair Company

Streaming on Crave

Hoping to portray quarterzipped competence after delivering a staff-wide address, Ohio mall developer Ron Trosper (Tim Robinson) is miffed when his office chair falters in front of a full auditorium. Rather than brush the indignity off as the product of chance, Trosper takes it as an indication of insidious corporate malfeasance. From the seat of his pants, Trosper for the first time reads the fine print, searching for conclusive proof that Tecca, a well-guarded office supply manufacturer, greenlit a shoddy product under shady circumstances.

Was the chair’s obsolescence planned? How far up from the legs has the rot of conspiracy spread? And when does the first Wendy’s Carvers — an upscale offshoot of the fast-food mainstay — start shaving ham?

Like Detroiters — co-creators Zach Kanin and Robinson’s cult series about two modern-day admen (Robinson and Sam Richardson) raised on low-budget, regional commercials — The Chair Company gets its juice from an absurd network of interconnected merchandisers, entrepreneurs and franchisees seeking to control their fate during a livewire race to get to the bottom of what could be, and likely is, nothing at all.

Co-starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Lake Bell and legendary SNL writer Jim Downey, The Chair Company is an extremely low stakes, paranoiac thriller starring television’s newest awkward king.

— Ben Waldman

The Pitt, Season 1

HBO Max

Streaming on Crave

This fast-paced medical procedural drama from R. Scott Gemmill is very much a spiritual sequel to ER, the long-running medical procedural drama that first put Noah Wyle in scrubs as Dr. John Carter, the bright-eyed med student-turned-seasoned leader at Chicago’s County General. (The two shows have more than Wyle in common: Gemmill wrote and produced on ER, and they share an exec producer in John Wells.)

Here, Wyle dons the stethoscope as Dr. Michael (Robby) Robinavitch, the attending physician of the overcrowded, understaffed emergency department of the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, a.k.a. “the Pitt.” The season takes place over a 15-hour shift from hell, each episode covering an hour, and Dr. Robby is still grappling with the loss of his mentor, who died during the pandemic.

Wyle is obviously a standout here with his richly textured portrayal of a tortured doc trying to rise to the occasion, but these kinds of shows live or die based on the strength of the ensemble cast — and The Pitt delivers. In particular, Katherine LaNasa is note-perfect as Dana Evans, the grizzled-vet charge nurse with a heart of gold, as is Taylor Dearden as Dr. Mel King, a smart, sensitive new-to-the-ER resident. (Dr. Mel King is also one of the most nuanced representations of neurodivergence I’ve seen on TV.) The Pitt returns in January for Season 2.

— Jen Zoratti

Adolescence

Streaming on Netflix

There are many reasons this harrowing, heartbreaking four-part British limited miniseries about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a classmate swept the Emmys in September. It features an astonishing performance from newcomer Owen Cooper as the young offender Jamie Miller — toggling between babyfaced innocence and the hard edge of teendom — and another from series co-creator Stephen Graham (Boardwalk Empire, Line of Duty) as his father.

Each episode focuses on a different stage of the event: Jamie’s arrest and police questioning; the detectives’ visit to the boy’s school; his meeting with a psychologist (Erin Doherty, fantastic) while in detention; and his family dealing with the aftermath of his actions. With neither melodrama nor sensationalism, it tackles the epidemic of violence among young males, the pernicious influence of social media and the impossible responsibility of parenthood.

It’s also a bravura technical achievement; each one-hour episode is a “oner” — shot by cinematographer Matthew Lewis in a single fluid take from start to finish, with no edits — lending a sense of urgency and momentum.

— Jill Wilson

Common Side Effects, Season 1

Where to watch: Adult Swim, Prime Video, Apple TV (with additional purchase)

The elusive blue angel mushroom can cure every imaginable human ailment: dementia, sludge spots, gunshot wounds and even death. Marshall Cuso — an altruistic fungi expert with a potbelly and a perpetually open shirt — wants to share his revolutionary discovery with the world, but Big Pharma has other plans.

This 10-episode animated series takes a critical look at capitalism, government collusion and the pharmaceutical companies that make billions while the public gets sicker and sicker. It’s topical social commentary in a tender, entertaining package.

Created by animator Joe Bennett (Scavengers Reign, one of the most beautiful shows I’ve ever watched) and writer Steve Hely (30 Rock, The Office), Common Side Effects was nominated for an Emmy this year and boasts a 100 per cent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The series, which debuted in February on Adult Swim, is executive produced by King of the Hill collaborators Greg Daniels and Mike Judge, who also voices several characters.

The fast-paced, half-hour episodes are funny, dark and deeply human.

After finding the blue angel mushroom in the Peruvian Highlands, Marshall (voiced by Dave King) and his pet tortoise, Socrates, run from hired guns and a pair of lovable DEA agents while searching for the ideal place to grow the fungi stateside. Along the way he reconnects with a high school lab mate, who has her own motives, and shares his dwindling stash with friends and strangers in need of medical assistance.

When consumed, the mushrooms open up a liminal world inhabited by strange visions and tiny alien creatures. It’s unclear if the mute beings are friend or foe, or if the experimental treatment is too good to be true.

Common Side Effects has been renewed for a second season, so hopefully the show’s legions of fans won’t have to wait too long for answers.

— Eva Wasney

Heated Rivalry, Season 1

Streaming on Crave, new episodes Fridays

Set your screens on sizzle mode for Crave original TV series Heated Rivalry, the scandalous Canadian hockey romance that’s making waves across the globe.

Written and directed by Letterkenny’s Jacob Tierney, the six-episode series (the finale is out on Boxing Day) is based on Nova Scotia author Rachel Reid’s smutty but cute queer male romance novels.

Delving into the blossoming relationship between hockey rivals Shane Hollander, star player of the Montreal Metros, and arrogant Russian Ilya Rozanov of the Boston Raiders, viewers follow the pair as they make their way through the ranks from rookies to team captains.

Forced by the homophobia inherent in hockey to conceal their desire and feelings, the lovers hide their passionate trysts for years, meeting in secret where things often quickly turn steamy. The duo’s enmity in the rink as they grapple for the puck makes for fiery bedroom action with very little left to the imagination.

Fans of the books were nervous the series would tone down the smut, but their fears proved unfounded, as the show remains true to its horny roots.

And so what if some of the sex scenes seem a bit gratuitous at times? It’s no worse than what most of us encountered when watching Babygirl, and setting this queer romance in a macho sports setting makes it feel revolutionary.

The series is now streaming on Crave in Canada, HBO Max in the United States and Australia, and Neon in New Zealand. A second season was confirmed earlier this month when the two leads — Connor Storrie (Rozanov) and Hudson Williams (Hollander) — revealed the news on Instagram.

— AV Kitching