The best TV of 2025
From Mo to Man Like Mobeen, our columnist shares her favourite shows of the year
It’s been thrilling to see Muslim life treated as universally relatable on our screens throughout 2025. We’ve watched shows that have been exciting and funny — and truly devastating when necessary. The past year brought us a loose constellation of documentaries, drama and comedy with Muslim talent in front of and behind the camera, and stories that insist on complexity where other media fed us silence or caricature.
Gaza: Doctors Under Attack (Channel 4)
Gaza: Doctors Under Attack is the most urgent of these works and the hardest to watch. It found a home on Channel 4 after the BBC refused to broadcast it, which is telling in itself. The film documents a pattern — bombing, raids, detention, torture — that has repeated itself across Gaza’s hospitals. What elevates this documentary beyond reportage is its intimacy. The testimony of Dr Khaled Hamouda, for example, whose family was almost entirely wiped out in successive strikes, is not framed for shock but allowed to unfold with unbearable restraint, making it all the more unbearable to witness. This is an essential record of atrocities and of the lives we should grieve.
Mo (Netflix)
Mohammed Amer’s semi-autobiographical series has always balanced precarity with humour, but in its second season the backdrop darkened. The hostile architecture of Trump-era immigration policy presses in on every joke, every small hope. And yet Mo endures as a stubbornly specific Palestinian-American man whose warmth, pride and cultural fluency are framed as assets rather than liabilities. The miracle of Mo is not that it makes heavy points lightly, but that it trusts its audience to sit with the contradiction of laughing through trauma. The final episode, which sees Mo’s family finally get to visit relatives in the West Bank, ends on 6 October 2023. It is a profound moment in what was the year’s best TV series.
Forever (Netflix)
Forever, Mara Brock Akil’s luminous adaptation of Judy Blume’s novel, is a tender story without being naive. Set in Los Angeles in 2018, it follows Keisha Clark and Justin Edwards — two Black teenagers circling first love with awe and terror. Brock Akil treats young intimacy as something sacred and formative, not as a spectacle or cautionary tale. It is rare to see adolescence and blossoming sexuality portrayed with this much care — rarer still when it centres Black joy alongside Black vulnerability.
Down Cemetery Road (Apple TV)
From tenderness to paranoia, Down Cemetery Road marks another genre turn. Adapted from Mick Herron’s novel, the series stars Emma Thompson as Zoë Boehm, a private investigator whose prickly intelligence cuts through an Oxford conspiracy that spirals outward after a gas explosion on a quiet street. Ruth Wilson’s anxious art restorer provides the entry point, while Adeel Akhtar steals scenes with relish. The dialogue crackles, the unease accumulates and the plot twists land. It has all the joy of pulp and all the satisfaction of prestige viewing.
#1 Happy Family USA (Prime Video)
Animation becomes a vehicle for diasporic anxiety in #1 Happy Family USA, Ramy Youssef’s adult cartoon, set against the false optimism of the new millennium that is quickly dashed one September morning in 2001. Patriarch Rumi Hussein believes assimilation will shield his family; the US, of course, has other plans. What follows is a sharp study of conditional belonging, where loyalty is demanded but never quite accepted. Youssef’s gift is refusing bitterness. Even as the show skewers American exceptionalism, it remains deeply affectionate toward its characters, who are flawed, loving and painfully recognisable.
Muslim Matchmaker (Disney+)
Reality television takes a softer turn in Muslim Matchmaker. Matchmakers Hoda and Yasmin truly guide clients through the cultural, religious and emotional considerations that shape Muslim marriage — without moralising or rigidity. Their humour and pragmatism ground the series, allowing awkward dates and unexpected chemistry to unfold naturally. It’s not an ambitious show but a fun and charming one, gently countering the idea that matchmaking is filled with mercenary arrangements, not hopeless romance.
Big Zuu & AJ Tracey’s Rich Flavours (Sky)
Love of food is the bridge in reality show Big Zuu & AJ Tracey’s Rich Flavours, where the cousins/rappers/chefs and general delights tour the world sampling its most extravagant cuisine. What could have been television of pure excess is instead anchored by curiosity and warmth. Whether eating luxury haggis in Scotland or eye-watering pizzas in New York, the series works because it is as interested in people as it is in price tags. Zuu and AJ’s chemistry keeps things buoyant.
Man Like Mobeen (BBC Three)
Man Like Mobeen, in its fifth and final season, remains one of British television’s strangest and most compelling hybrids. The jokes come thick and fast, but beneath them sits a volatile mix of crime drama and social critique. It is messy, jarring, often confusing and all the better for it. Mobeen refuses to be tidy or purely comic, mirroring the contradictions of the world it depicts.
