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YOU’VE HOPEFULLY ALREADY taken note of the best films and books to watch out for in 2025 – but what about the series we’ll all be chatting about this coming year?
From returning series to brand new shows, we’ve compiled this list of 11 of the most-anticipated shows due to hit our small screens this year.
There’s still time to swot up on the first season of Severance and get very excited about its return to our screens. The first season was a bit of a slow burn, with an incredible finale that resulted in a fervent fanbase.
The series is based at the offices of biotechnology company Lumon Industries, where some employees – including lead character Mark Scout, played by Adam Scott – undergo a ‘severance’ procedure where their work and personal memories are separated.
As you might expect, a company that offers this service is a strange place to work indeed.
Across shows like The White Lotus (Season 2) and One Day, young British actor Leo Woodall has proven that he has the charm and talent to play many types of characters. In Prime Target we’ll get to see another side to him when he plays a brilliant young math postgraduate, Edward Brooks, who realises that if he succeeds in finding a pattern in prime numbers, he will hold the key to every computer in the world.
However, he also soon figures out that someone is trying to destroy his idea, and this puts him in the path of Taylah Sanders, a female NSA agent, played by Quintessa Swindell.
There are some Irish faces here too, like Stephen Rea and Fra Fee – as well as the always great Sidse Babett Knudsen (Birgitte Nyborg in Borgen).
In season one of The Night Agent, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) was an FBI employee who had to sit by a mysterious phone in the White House, waiting for it to ring. When it did ring, it catapulted him into some pretty dangerous territory.
In season two, the stakes are even higher than before. If you’re a fan of thrillers about political conspiracies, there’s still time to catch up on season one (and it’s already been renewed for a third season).
This brilliant show flew a little below the radar here, but it really deserves a watch. It’s the story of a group of teenage girls who go on a soccer trip – but their plane crashes in the wilderness.
To survive, they have to make some seriously dark decisions (and we mean seriously dark). These decisions have ramifications decades on, when some of the surviving adult women make contact with each other.
There are layers of mystery here, a bit of folk horror, and loads to enjoy.
Colour us excited for the return of The White Lotus – but what does creator and writer Mike White have in store for us this time around? What we know so far is that it’s set in Thailand, that new characters include ones played by Carrie Coon, Walton Goggins and Parker Posey, and that Natasha Rothwell will return as spa manager Belinda Lindsey.
Hopefully this will be as wild and juicy as the previous seasons, which saw nefarious behaviour left, right and centre.
If you’re a fan of ‘inside Hollywood’ films like The Player, then this will be quite the treat for you. Seth Rogen plays Matt Remick, who has just been appointed as head of the embattled Continental Studios. But he finds himself having to balance creative and commercial interests, with his role getting trickier by the day.
Catherine O’Hara and Kathryn Hahn also star, so this should be quite the fun watch.
Fans absolutely lapped up this Star Wars offshoot, created by Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton) and starring Diego Luna as thief-turned-rebel spy Cassian Andor. The series will all lead up to the events of the 2016 film Rogue One, so season two will see us learning more about Cassian’s journey.
Not much information has been released about what to expect so far, but with Gilroy at the helm we can expect great things.
Dubliners might have spotted Jenna Ortega in 2024 when the actor was in town to film the second season of Wednesday alongside Catherine Zeta-Jones (Morticia Addams), and Luis Guzmán (Gomez Addams). The first series of this Addams Family spin-off was absolutely huge on Netflix, and garnered 12 Emmy nominations in the US.
In series two, expect more supernatural mysteries as Wednesday Addams (Ortega) attends Nevermore Academy – with guest stars including Joanna Lumley and Steve Buscemi.
We’re still waiting on the exact date that this will arrive on Netflix.
While there isn’t an official release date yet for this series, it has to be included on a list of anticipated shows for this coming year. The first season of The Last of Us (the screen adaptation of the game of the same name) was an absolute phenomenon that catapulted Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey to a new level of fame.
Season 2 takes place five years after we last saw Joel and Ellie, during which they lived a life of peace and safety. But soon their past catches up with them.
Given how grim but compelling season one was, we can surely expect things to reach even higher levels of tension this time around. Season two is expected on our screens in the first half of 2025.
We’re still awaiting more info on what this series will look like and the date it will hit RTÉ One, but safe to say there are many eager people waiting to watch this. It’s based on the story of the Marian Keyes creations the Walsh sisters, and is being described as “a comedy about serious things – a pacey, brutally honest, and uncompromisingly funny exposé of the realities of being an Irish sister”.
Set in Dublin, it follows the lives of Anna, Rachel, Maggie, Claire, and Helen, as well as their devout mother and bemused father, as they navigate their late 20s and early 30s.
Stefanie Preissner (Can’t Cope, Won’t Cope) has adapted the novels and heads the writing team, while Kefi Chadwick (Rivals, Death in Paradise) is also involved with writing two episodes.
Irish actor Peter Claffey is the big star in this latest series from the Game of Thrones universe – in more ways than one, as he plays the character Ser Duncan The Tall (Claffey is 6ft 5).
You’ve no doubt spotted the Galwegian and former rugby player in Bad Sisters, and now is his chance to lead a TV show. The series is based on the Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas by George RR Martin, which are set around 90 years before his A Song of Fire and Ice series.
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