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<\/p>\nHow much TV does our TV critic watch? Inkoo Kang reveals how she picks her favorites of the year\u2014and why 2025 felt a little lacking. Plus:<\/p>\n
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Illustration by Joanne Joo<\/p>\n
Caroline Mimbs Nyce
Newsletter editor<\/p>\n
This was not a particularly good year for TV. Our television critic, Inkoo Kang, told me that she\u2019d probably rank it as the weakest she can remember in her time working as a critic.<\/p>\n
Luckily, there were still some bright spots: Kang\u2019s list of the Top Ten shows of 2025<\/a> is out now. Some of her choices may surprise you. Prestige shows such as \u201cThe White Lotus,\u201d \u201cSeverance,\u201d and \u201cAdolescence\u201d didn\u2019t make the list, but \u201cThe Real Housewives of Salt Lake City\u201d did.<\/p>\n I called Kang to discuss her process, her picks, and why \u201cHousewives\u201d made the cut.<\/p>\n This conversation has been edited and condensed.<\/p>\n How do you approach putting together a \u201cbest TV\u201d list?<\/p>\n Every time I finish a season of television, I put it on a spreadsheet. If I think that a show has a pretty good chance at being in the running for the Top Ten, I will add a little note.<\/p>\n I probably should also have a list of the shows I gave up on midway through, but I think it would just be too long of a list. If I feel like something doesn\u2019t really have a lot of promise, and it\u2019s not in the cultural conversation, then there\u2019s no reason for me to keep watching.<\/p>\n So how much did you watch this year?<\/p>\n A lot less than I usually do. I only finished about three dozen seasons\u2014but I want to specify finish. It\u2019s not the same as watch, or try out. But, in other years, I finished a lot more. My spreadsheet says that, in 2022, I finished more than a hundred seasons of TV.<\/p>\n Part of it is that there are fewer shows coming out. And part of it is that it was a pretty dispiriting batch of shows.<\/p>\n You don\u2019t seem that jazzed about the year.<\/p>\n There are so many different business-based reasons for TV being bad right now. First of all, there\u2019s been a big contraction in the industry. Because there are fewer shows, executives and creators are making safer bets, which leads to less interesting programming over all. And then, on top of that, the effects of 2023\u2019s labor strikes are still being felt quite a bit, because the production process can be quite long.<\/p>\n How long have you been writing about TV? And where would you rank this year?<\/p>\n About eleven or twelve years. I would place this as probably the worst year since I have been working as a TV critic.<\/p>\n Wow.<\/p>\n Again, I think there are a lot of business reasons for that. One of the things that made TV such an interesting medium to write about for so long were these crazy streaming wars. People were willing to put a ton of money into TV programming, because there was such a fierce competition for attention.<\/p>\n It just happened to be this fun, crazy, incredibly unsustainable time in television. And the party has come to an end. That\u2019s really what it feels like at the moment.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s talk a bit about what you did like this year. What were your standouts?<\/p>\n