What to Watch in ’25

Amidst all of the hoopla surrounding “favorite crime fiction of 2024” lists, The Killing Times has more quietly posted a four-part feature championing what its editors contend are “The Top 20 Crime Dramas of the Year.” Shows making that British Web site’s roll include The Jetty, Fargo (Series 5), Ellis, Dalgliesh (Series 3), Rebus, Black Doves, and Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office. Top honors, though, go to Netflix’s seven-episode black comedy, Baby Reindeer, which I have somehow managed not to watch at all—a slight to put right soon.

You can check out this countdown of favorites (complete with trailers) in four separate posts: 20-16, 15-11, 10-6, and 5-1.

Then just today, The Killing Times issued its “most comprehensive” preview of crime dramas awaiting broadcast or streaming in 2025. Figuring among the many are some that caught my particular attention: Towards Zero, based on a 1944 Agatha Christie novel of that same title; Playing Nice, about “two couples [who] discover that their toddlers were switched at birth in a hospital mix-up,” and starring former Grantchester vicar James Norton; A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, which finds the lovely Lucy Boynton playing the last woman to be executed in the United Kingdom following the murder of her lover; The Puzzle Lady, “based on the best-selling books by American author Parnell Hall”; Department Q, “an adaptation of the novels of the same name from Danish author Jussi Adler-Olsen”; and the third and final season of Bosch: Legacy, starring Titus Welliver.