David Bianculli

And the character development is strong across the board.

Paul Giamatti has a standout recurring role as Bracca, an evil mercenary.

And when he and Holly Hunter share the screen, it's as much fun as any Star Trek in the series.

In the premiere episode, Bracca appears on the bridge of the USS Athena after attacking the ship, and he and the captain go at it immediately.

Passion for the original Star Trek series was kept alive by reruns as it reached new, younger viewers.

With access via streaming, especially on Paramount+, the same is true today of all the sequels.

And now, 60 years on, Star Trek Starfleet Academy has the chance to build an audience of its own.

In our fractured TV universe, the odds may be slightly against that.

But remember, the original Star Trek series never finished in the top 50.

Of everything I saw on TV in 2025, the one show I thought was the very best and has haunted me ever since was the four-part Netflix drama Adolescence.

It's the story of a young teen accused of murdering a classmate, and it's told in such a way, emotionally and technically, that I can't and won't forget it.

It's the show I recommend most highly, but with a major caveat.

It's grim, and it's almost unbearably intense.

Intensity, it turns out, is a common factor among many of my very favorite shows from this year.

HBO Max's The Pit was a medical show with an impressively credible tension factor.

So was Netflix's The Diplomat, with its unpredictable, high-stakes plot twists.

And so was FX's The Bear, even though it wasn't about life or death, just appetizers and entrees.

The Bear even calls itself a comedy, but it's not.

Much, much too dramatic for that.

A couple of my other favorite TV dramas, almost equally intense, featured ragtag, mismatched investigative teams thrown together to solve specific crimes.