Perusing various ‘Best TV Shows of 2024’ listicles, as I often do when procrastinating writing essays, it was hard to ignore that many television critics were unsatisfied with the year’s offerings. In the uncompromising words of The New Yorker, , “2024 was an exceptionally weak year for television.” Eagerly awaited new seasons of shows like ‘The Bear’,’ The Umbrella Academy’, and ‘House of the Dragon’ as well as new shows like ‘The Acolyte’ and ‘The Ones who Live’ came out with mixed reviews. Even if you’re just a casual watcher of TV, you may have noticed this decline in quality.
The state of TV in 2025 remains deeply intertwined with the lasting effects of COVID-19 on the entertainment industry. With the shut down of TV production in early 2020, actors, lighting directors, prop makers, and a host of other industry professionals found themselves out of work. According to Deadline, an estimated 60% of shows that were set to be released in 2020 were delayed, with a further 10% of planned dramas and comedies being scrapped entirely.
The 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes also play a huge role in the state of TV in 2025. In 2023, for the first time since 1960, these two unions came together in a strike united by issues like streaming residuals, minimum pay, and limitations against the use of AI, which continue to affect workers in 2025.
Indeed, the rise of streaming services has profoundly shaped the landscape of TV in the past ten-plus years and continues to do so in 2025. Despite the negative effect of COVID-19, there was also a 23% increase in digital streaming in 2020, demonstrating the disconnect between the high demand for TV content and the treatment of people involved. The streaming model is based on convenience, particularly the availability to access entire seasons of shows on demand. While in 2007, Netflix was the only streaming service, today, there seems to be an endless list of new platforms, with increasingly ridiculous names. Why stream your mediocre series from Sky when you could watch through ‘Tubi’, or even ‘Freevee’? With competition for viewership intensifying in the so-called ‘streaming wars,’ these platforms are vying to monopolise even more of your time.
For example, Netflix introduced video games as well as coverage of sporting events like the Paul vs Tyson fight and Christmas NFL games, each attracting 65 million viewers. According to Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters, his expansion of content types is intended to increase Netflix’s share of revenue in the countries and genres that they serve. Indeed, across streaming services, recent critically acclaimed and creative shows like ‘Severance’, ‘Squid Game’, and ‘The White Lotus’ are the exception, not the norm.
Like in the film industry, the 2024 TV industry saw an onslaught of sequels to established franchises- including ‘The Walking Dead’, ‘Dune’, ‘Star Wars’, and ‘The Lord of the Rings’, to name a few. These ventures are meant to capitalise on existing fandoms, but generally receive lukewarm reviews, very rarely rising above their status as blatant cash grabs.
Even when it comes to originals, many shows also underestimate the intelligence of their audience. It is certainly true – as I can personally attest to – that there is an appeal to watching TV in the background while doing other tasks. However, increasingly, streaming services cater to this instinct, prioritising what ‘The New Yorker’’s Kyle Chaka defines as ‘ambient television’. This TV doesn’t require your constant attention, but is still entertaining enough to keep you watching. Like disappointing sequels, these ‘ambient’ TV shows are not putting real effort into creating an engaging storyline and characters, instead prioritising viewership numbers above all else. Perhaps the paragon of this genre of TV is Netflix’s ‘Emily in Paris’, characterised by thin plots, lackluster character development, and easily resolved conflicts: essentially, style over substance.
Whilst ‘Emily in Paris’ is consistently renewed, genuinely creative shows like ‘The OA’, ‘Kaos’, and ‘Our Flag Means Death’, which have unique storylines, imaginative visuals and diverse characters are cancelled. This is a testament to the fact that streaming services are not on the side of creativity and the audience, but are placing financial gain above all else.
In 2025, the state of TV will likely continue to be dominated by the profit-seeking ventures of streaming services. If any truly great shows emerge, it will be due to the passion of the creatives involved, not the content machine. To find creative shows among the avalanche of content, it’s best to go back and rediscover shows that have fallen by the wayside, because they didn’t necessarily present a financial boon for their streaming services.