Every Scripted Show Nominated for a 2025 Series Emmy, Ranked

At their best and most pure, the Emmys ought to be a recommendation engine, where the TV industry presents its picks for the best of the best and encourages the home audience to go back and watch anything good they might’ve missed while they were busy with Love Island earlier this year. The TV Academy nominated 21 total shows across Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Drama Series, and Outstanding Limited Series or Anthology. I don’t think they nominated any outright bad shows, but some are certainly more worthy of their nominations than others. And since the way I show love and appreciation is by making lists, I’ve decided to rank all 21, from worst to best. These rankings are based on the season they were nominated for only. And I have done my best to bridge the apples-to-oranges nature of comparing dramas, comedies, and limited series. Be thankful I didn’t decide to include the talk and reality shows or you’d be in for some real chaos.

Platform: Netflix
2025 Emmy nominations: 10

Returning for the first time since 2023, Black Mirror delivered what you’d expect: a series of parables and dark prophecies about our technological future. I can’t say for sure how much of my low ranking here is attributable to the fact that the terrifying technological present has made the show less novel or, whether after seven seasons, these stories have simply become less impactful and more predictable.

Platform: Hulu
2025 Emmy nominations: 7

I was riding so high on Only Murders in the Building after its musical-themed third season; it was the perfect example of a show taking a big swing to ward off stagnation. I respected the swing the show took in season four, decamping to Los Angeles to deal with a film adaptation of the titular podcast. Unfortunately, rather than stay in L.A., the show became bicoastal, keeping one foot in the Arconia with a new cadre of eccentrics (and yes, Richard Kind in an eye patch was a highlight). But the resulting season had to juggle far too many elements, and only a few of them worked: Molly Shannon as a harried Hollywood producer — yes. Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis, and Eva Longoria as the actors playing Charles, Oliver, and Mabel — no. The longer the season went on, the more tiresome it became, culminating in a massive “who cares” of a killer reveal. If history is any indicator, the odd-numbered seasons of Only Murders are the good ones, so there’s reason to be optimistic for the fifth. But this one was a real dud.

Platform: HBO
2025 Emmy nominations: 16

It’s not that I think The Last of Us took some great dip in quality in its second season. The actors were across-the-board great, including some excellent new additions in Kaitlyn Dever, Catherine O’Hara, and Jeffrey Wright. But once the Big Thing happens in the second episode, the season becomes narratively unbalanced and too unsatisfying. That the show brings Joel back for a flashback episode feels like an admission that Ellie on her own doesn’t have enough story to fill up a full season while we wait for the confrontation with Abby that comes much further down the line. Once the entire series is complete, there’s every chance season two will age better in closer proximity to what comes next. We’re not there yet.

Platform: Netflix
2025 Emmy nominations: 11

This got tagged as trash by many, and unsurprisingly so, as the Monster(s) series sits at the nexus point of two trends that are morally unfashionable at the moment: true crime and Ryan Murphy. There is certainly a layer of ick that pervades this often gleeful depiction of the 1989 murder of Jose and Kitty Menendez by their sons, Lyle and Erik, and the media circus that followed. But while Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan take liberties with the Menendez case, their decision to tell the story from multiple and often contradictory angles is a satisfying one. Cooper Koch was rightly praised (and Emmy nominated) for his frighteningly malleable turn as Erik Menendez, but I thought it was too bad that Nicholas Alexander Chavez (as coked-up alpha brother Lyle) and Ari Graynor (as attorney Leslie Abramson) were passed over.

Platform: Netflix
2025 Emmy nominations: 3

The title of this rom-com turned out to be a dare that a bunch of viewers — and certainly a critical mass of Emmy voters — took Netflix up on. Nobody Wants This nails the fundamentals: two strong leads in Adam Brody and Kristen Bell and at least a few supporting characters who pop. The premise — handsome young rabbi meets shiksa with a sex podcast — got the show in hot water over whether its POV denigrated Jewish women (creator Erin Foster converted to Judaism to marry her husband, leading to a lot of raised eyebrows about the show’s autobiographical nature), but what the show needs more than refuge from the takes is simply to be funnier. It’s not unfunny. It just should be more funny. Brody and Bell have the “rom” part nailed; they could use some help on the script level when it comes to the “com.”

Platform: Hulu
2025 Emmy nominations: 4

Full disclosure: At the outset, I thought Paradise looked so dumb. There have been so many postapocalyptic shows (Silo, Fallout, Snowpiercer) in which humanity has to exist in some kind of metaphorical bubble (or a literal bubble, if you’re Under the Dome). The concept of an artificial Perfect American Town built deep inside a mountain to protect selected citizens from a vaguely articulated disaster event was one thing, but to add a murder-mystery element to that, and the murder victim is the president? A hat on a hat on a hat on a hat! Somehow, though, Paradise turns out to be compelling popcorn TV, punctuated by its two Emmy-nominated performances: Sterling K. Brown is all leading-man intensity as the Secret Service agent determined to get to the truth, while Julianne Nicholson’s Machiavellian deep-state operator manages to be delicious in her villainy as she also maintains a shred of her former “good” self.

Platform: HBO Max
2025 Emmy nominations: 14

Oh, Hacks. I want to defend you against your harshest critics, even if I often agree with them. It doesn’t bother me that what we see of Deborah Vance’s comedy doesn’t scan as comedy-legend caliber, or that her conflicts with Ava are predicated on tired generation-gap premises. At its best, Hacks is a workplace comedy in which the workplace is the entire comedy-industrial complex, and I like watching Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder maneuver within those environs. My frustration comes from how shockingly repetitive the show is formally. Just an endless loop of Deborah and Ava working well together, breaking up because of a betrayal, warily reuniting because of necessity, discovering that they work best together, then breaking up because of another betrayal and starting the cycle all over again. After four seasons of this, it’s hard to just enjoy Deborah and Ava for who they are, and I’m forced to dwell on things like how Megan Stalter’s unbearable Kayla is somehow the fourth lead on this show.

Platform: ABC
2025 Emmy nominations: 6

Four seasons in, Abbott Elementary is doing exactly what a good network sitcom should: settling into place as a reliable but decreasingly remarkable part of a regular TV diet. And yet: To be able to pull out an episode as creative as that It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia crossover is proof that Abbott is still more than worthy of its continued place of Emmy prominence.

Platform: FX
2025 Emmy nominations: 13

It’s thematically appropriate that The Bear has become the hot stove of the TV-awards conversation: Touch it and you’ll get burned. Season three — the one that aired last summer — was where the deeply predictable backlash kicked in. It was a comedy that not only wasn’t funny but wasn’t even attempting to be a comedy. There were some real highlights, and I want to give creator Christopher Storer and his team extra credit for their ambition. But lots of characters spent the season spinning their wheels, and even good individual episodes like the Tina flashback (featuring Ayo Edebiri’s Emmy-nominated direction) seemed too obviously a tactic to pad out the season.

Platform: FX
2025 Emmy nominations: 6

In its final run, What We Do in the Shadows proved it could still deliver some of TV’s biggest laughs. Placing Guillermo and Nadja in a corporate setting yielded multiple strong episodes (a tip of the cap to Tim Heidecker as their jackass boss), as did Laszlo’s attempt to play Dr. Frankenstein. The series finale — nominated for a writing Emmy — was a creative way to play the “we all know there’s no ending that will satisfy everyone” card by “hypnotizing” the audience into accepting one of a myriad of final acts. It will remain an enduring shame that this show garnered only one acting nomination (for Matt Berry last year).

Platform: Netflix
2025 Emmy nominations: 2

The Diplomat is not a sophisticated political thriller, though it does its best to fake it. Keri Russell’s performance as the new U.S. ambassador to the U.K. — or is she on the fast track to vice-president? — sits right in her sweet spot of capable-yet-irritable operator, and her scenes opposite David Gyasi (as her U.K. counterpart and possible love interest), Celia Imrie (as a master manipulator), and especially Allison Janney (as a hurricane in female form) crackle with an urgent chemistry.

Platform: HBO
2025 Emmy nominations: 23

After pulling off the high-wire acts of class-conscious character satire and murder mystery in seasons one and two, it was inevitable that Mike White’s show would sooner or later lose its footing, so credit to season three for terminating the suspense. The White Lotus had its moments, of course — Parker Posey’s maintained mood of distress and dismay, all packaged in that ridiculous Durham accent; that Carrie Coon monologue that exists better in isolation than in context — but the seams struggled to hold it all together as satisfyingly as the previous seasons had. The finale-episode shoot-out felt like an act of throwing up one’s hands and admitting defeat at the hands of a runaway plot.

Platform: Apple TV+
2025 Emmy nominations: 7

Shrinking has maintained the psychology practice of Harrison Ford’s Dr. Paul Rhoades as its nominal central base, but increasingly (and to the show’s benefit) it has become TV’s best hangout comedy. This alignment has allowed the supporting cast to shine, with Michael Urie and Jessica Williams joining Jason Segel and Ford as acting nominees, and key players like Christa Miller, Ted McGinley, and Wendie Malick orbiting freely. It hasn’t all worked (adding co-creator Brett Goldstein to the ensemble as the sad-sack drunk driver responsible for Jimmy’s wife’s death was a mistake I hope the show is able to back out of in season three), but as Cougar Town was at its best, Shrinking is a multigenerational story about gathering your network of emotional support and then hanging out with them every minute of the day.

Platform: HBO Max
2025 Emmy nominations: 24

My extreme disinterest in a spinoff series about a character from The Batman that I found to be a superfluous waste of Colin Farrell’s valuable time was only matched by my surprise at how much The Penguin gripped me. Kudos to showrunner Lauren LeFranc for navigating the waters of franchise IP, taking the handoff from Matt Reeves’s film and telling a completely independent story. A story, it should be noted, that for significant stretches isn’t even the titular Penguin’s story. As good as Farrell is at operating under all those prosthetics, Cristin Milioti walks away with the season as a spurned mobster’s daughter, and LeFranc doesn’t wrest the narrative away from her unless she absolutely has to. Mob stories are a dime a dozen these days, and superhero yarns are probably worth even less, but The Penguin told a dark, twisty, operatic tale of at least two sociopaths, and it was riveting.

Platform: Apple TV+
2025 Emmy nominations: 5

Slow Horses is the most digestible show on television, and I could not mean that more complimentarily. In its fourth season, the format remains in lockstep with the three that preceded it: The discarded MI5 agents at Slough House, led by the somehow-ever-more-slovenly Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) are embroiled in a new unfurling terrorist threat, and one of their own (Jack Lowden’s River Cartwright) is on the run. While the individuals within Slough House — and the handful of higher-ups at the Park, like Kristin Scott Thomas’s coolly capable Diana Taverner — develop their characters over the course of the series, the discrete plots told over a tight six episodes are TV’s best approximation of reading a really satisfying spy novel. This season had several gnarly shoot-outs, the addition of new characters played by Hugo Weaving (as an American!) and Battlestar Galactica’s James Callis (as a sniveling little weasel, if you can believe it), plus, yes, new scenes of Lamb farting to punctuate a scene. Bring on season five!

Platform: Netflix
2025 Emmy nominations: 13

Over the course of four episodes, creators Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne deliver a gripping, challenging miniseries. A 13-year-old boy is accused of stabbing a female classmate to death, and over the course of four episodes, the tale becomes thornier and more troublesome, as the culprit is revealed not only to be the child but the pervasive toxic misogyny that seduces boys before their parents even know it’s a threat. The bravado of Adolescence’s visual gimmick, where each episode is presented as a single take, is often more showy than it is effective, but when it does click into place, as it does in the show’s counseling session, it’s really thrilling.

Platform: Apple TV+
2025 Emmy nominations: 27

Taking a 33-month break between the finale of season one and the premiere of season two might have proved fatal for another series, but Severance was able to establish new stakes for its central quartet and then plunge them into far more complicated waters. The love pentagon that developed between Innie Mark S., Helly, Helena Egan, Outie Mark S., and Gemma was so twisty and complex it seemed to discourage social media’s favorite pastime, unhinged shipping. Meanwhile, Tramell Tillman’s Mr. Milchick went on his own journey of self-discovery. As any good second season does, Severance plumbed deeper, explored further, traveled to chilly seaside towns and back in time to reveal the fate of its presumed-dead wife. Not all of it satisfied, but the central conundrum of Innies versus Outies trapped inside a corporate cult remained as compelling as ever.

Platform: Apple TV+
2025 Emmy nominations: 23

The movie business is facing a treacherous and possibly bleak future, and while The Studio is acutely aware of that, its response is to pull back the curtain and reveal utter lunacy. One thing I loved about its first season was that it never leaned on one aspect of Hollywood for too long. Yes, there’s debauchery, sure the studio-tentpole-development process is stupider than you ever imagined, and it turns out Ron Howard is a mean little bastard. But the show lightly bounces between these observations, with only Seth Rogen’s inept but earnest studio head as the constant. Does The Studio eviscerate Hollywood enough for everyone’s tastes? No. Is it a surprise Hollywood is embracing it? Of course not. But it’s the flat-out funniest of the nominated comedies this year, and I support it breaking through the Emmy walls like the Kool-Aid Man (in theaters next summer).

Platform: FX
2025 Emmy nominations: 9

There’s no way a show about a woman (Michelle Williams) dealing with her terminal-cancer diagnosis could be anything but maudlin. Even knowing that Williams’s character responds to her diagnosis by embarking on a sexual awakening, it still seems like the show is destined for maudlin. And yet Dying for Sex never is, even till the very end, even as the tears are running down your face. Williams and the Emmy-nominated-yet-still-underrated Jenny Slate are the main attraction here, but key supporting turns by Esco Jouléy, Sissy Spacek, Rob Delaney, Jay Duplass, and the deeply slept-on David Rasche, along with some late-inning relief pitching by Paula Pell, are all so incredibly good. If you avoided this show because you were worried it would make you feel like crap, I encourage you to reconsider.

Platform: HBO Max
2025 Emmy nominations: 13

The longform, procedural, network-style medical drama is back, baby — and this time it’s got that HBO sparkle. The Pitt is so many great things at once: a return vehicle for Noah Wyle (Emmy nominated for the first time since 1999), a showcase for a crackerjack ensemble cast (Katherine LaNasa’s much deserved nomination stands in for a good half-dozen castmates who should have joined her), and a satisfying 15 episodes that never felt like one story stretched out over many hours. Cases flowed through the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center’s emergency room at a steady pace, some dispatched within a single episode, others playing out over three or four, and the stories unfold at their own pace, keeping the audience at a very effective imbalance throughout. And even with the green farm kid getting fluids splashed on him all season or the seemingly stalwart senior resident showing himself to be a heel, you felt like you were watching a group of professionals doing their best in trying circumstances. An inspirational show for our time.

Platform: Disney+
2025 Emmy nominations: 14

Andor is also an inspirational show for our time, albeit in a very different way. Over the course of two seasons, we saw the radicalization of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) from disaffected thief to committed leader of a rebellion. Creator Tony Gilroy was unafraid to expand the field in season two, with Andor himself often taking a back seat to the expansion of characters like Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) and Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), not to mention those within the Empire. Gilroy’s talent as a writer helped make Andor TV’s most satisfying multicharacter drama, but his verve as a showrunner is what took Andor to its greatest heights: a show that called out genocide by name and reclaimed the Star Wars legacy as a battle cry against fascists above all.

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