This is the 15th anniversary of my first list of 50 Wonderful Things from the year, which was published in 2010. This year, the list includes TV, movies, games, books, and a few other things I discovered in my pop culture travels.
These are not objectively the best things from 2025; they are just wonderful things. This is not meant to be comprehensive: There were far more than 50 wonderful things to admire this year, and there are far (far) more that I never saw or read or heard at all (or just haven't yet). And of course, these are pop culture wonderful things, or this entire list would be strange things my dog did.
1. In the HBO film Mountainhead, Succession creator Jesse Armstrong introduces a tech mogul by showing him riding in his fancy SUV with his sycophants, observing that he accidentally spelled the f-word with two u's when announcing a new product. He thinks this is hilarious, and the sycophants assure him that it is. This early moment, in which we learn both that this man is a giant boob and that no one around him does anything but drown him in affirmation, is very simple but very, very funny.
2. I would be hard-pressed to choose a single moment from The Pitt, HBO Max's brilliant series about a Pittsburgh emergency department. But if I absolutely had to, and if I went on delight alone, I would choose charge nurse Dana, played by the Emmy-winning Katherine LaNasa, breaking up a fight in the waiting area and then telling the combatants with disgust, "Where do people you think you are? This ain't Philly!" (The great thing is that both Pittsburgh and Philadelphia find this flattering.)
3. In the pilot of Apple TV's Pluribus, antiheroine Carol Sturka suffers a tremendous loss as part of a worldwide event that sucks most of the global population into a kind of undifferentiated hive mind. And when that hive mind first explains itself to her, it does so in the form of a man on television played by Peter Bergman. Bergman is well-known to soap fans as both Cliff Warner of All My Children and Jack Abbott of The Young and the Restless. There is something very witty about the casting of a soap icon as what the hive mind hopes is a completely nonthreatening, approachable, likable face. (This man is no longer living as himself; he's closer to what other sci-fi projects would call a pod person.)
4. Sarah Snook, fresh off Succession, found a pretty juicy role as a rich mom in the Peacock thriller series All Her Fault. Late in the show, convinced she has no choice, she makes a decision to commit a very, very satisfying crime. (Perhaps that, and not frothy entertainment, is what a guilty pleasure should be.) And everything about it, including her total commitment, is unforgettable.
5. Colman Domingo has played a lot of very noble characters in the last few years. In Edgar Wright's adaptation of The Running Man, he goes big, playing the flashy, creepy host of a dystopian television show. And while he's always been able to make me cry, it was great to see him sink his teeth into this slick showman who, despite appearances, has his own nuances.
6. I'm not here to tell you that Fight or Flight, the thriller starring Josh Hartnett as an assassin trapped on a plane with a bunch of other assassins, is high art. But when you see the label of a bottle revealed to say "TOAD VENOM," you are in good hands.
7. This was the year that a major streaming service lucked into picking up a show it did not originally make, featuring both plenty of queerness and plenty of explicit sex, and found that the response was beyond what it could have hoped for. I am speaking, of course, of The Hunting Wives, which was made for Starz and then ended up on Netflix. (We'll get there, sexy hockey people.) Featuring a marvelously out-there performance from Malin Akerman as Margo, a magnetic manipulator, it was a show that knew exactly what it was and had to be, right from the moment Margo started undressing within moments of meeting our main character, Sophie (Brittany Snow).
8. In the third Knives Out mystery, called Wake Up Dead Man, there is a very big church, and there is a very big church organ, and while you might be able to guess that there will at some point be a big organ-music joke, when it comes, it's everything it should be.
9. Jay Kelly is a story about a big Hollywood movie star coping with a lot of regret, but it's also a story about the imperiled friendship between Jay (George Clooney) and his longtime manager, Ron (Adam Sandler). There's a lot of tenderness in the last scenes they play together, which confront both the loneliness of Clooney's character and the realities of age.
10. In Guillermo del Toro's adaptation of Frankenstein, Victor's mother is introduced in a bright red dress and an enormous diaphanous veil. She stands on the steps outside the house with the veil extended into the air. It's a classic del Toro shot, saturated and luscious.
11. Richard Linklater's Blue Moon features Ethan Hawke as lyricist Lorenz Hart, drinking his way through the opening night of Oklahoma! The musical is his longtime collaborator Richard Rodgers' first project with Oscar Hammerstein, and Hart senses (correctly) it will be a huge hit and could eclipse the work he and Rodgers did together. Hawke is fantastic in the film and will get plenty of awards recognition, but save some appreciation for Andrew Scott, who plays Rodgers as a man who's neither a hero nor a villain; he is breaking his collaborator's heart because he no longer believes he has any choice.
12. The film Good Fortune stars Keanu Reeves as Gabriel, a guardian angel who arranges for Arj (Aziz Ansari), a gig economy worker, to swap lives with a tech mogul played by Seth Rogen. The reach of the film sometimes exceeds its grasp when it comes to talking about wealth, but I liked the moment of honesty when Gabriel says to his supervisor that his intent was to show Arj that wealth would not solve all his problems. The complication: "It seems to have solved most of his problems."
13. The Paul Greengrass thriller The Lost Bus, based somewhat loosely on real events during the California wildfires of 2018, went to Apple TV after a very short theatrical release. And that's a shame, because the fire sequences are probably best experienced on a big screen. But what still comes through are some strong moments from Matthew McConaughey as a school bus driver and a very nice supporting performance from Ashlie Atkinson as his dispatcher. Their reunion, after a long ordeal in which they couldn't make contact, is subtle and moving.
14. Ethan Hawke had a stellar year between Blue Moon and FX's The Lowdown, from Reservation Dogs creator Sterlin Harjo. In the latter, Hawke plays Lee, a self-described "truthstorian" who digs around in the corrupt and sometimes violent goings-on in his hometown of Tulsa. In one episode, Peter Dinklage shows up as an old friend Lee sees once a year for one day, and by the time they reach the end of a day together, the relationship seems as rich and real as many bonds that we watch for much longer.
15. The final months of Stephen Colbert's The Late Show have been frustrating and bittersweet as it approaches its end. But at the Emmy Awards, not only did Colbert's show win its first Emmy, but he and the staff received a flood of love and support that were richly deserved.
16. One of my favorite surprises of the year was Lurker, the story of a creepy hanger-on who works his way into a pop singer's entourage and the two end up in a complex relationship in which they are both, to varying degrees, using each other. There are a couple of moments when it suddenly becomes clear just how far this man is willing to go to retain his position within the singer's inner circle, and they are dark and unnerving.
17. Few movies pull off the combination of genuine horror and irresistible comedy as well as Weapons, Zach Cregger's story about the aftermath of a night when a raft of schoolchildren simply run off and disappear. Late in the film, as everything is reaching its conclusion, a chase through the neighborhood starts with chaotic window-breaking and ends up with shades of both Benny Hill and one of the stoning sequences from The Handmaid's Tale.
18. The horror film Together stars Alison Brie and Dave Franco as a couple that stumbles into a cave in the woods and soon thereafter discovers that their bodies are fusing into one. It's quite a blunt metaphor for the challenges of maintaining your identity and individuality in a relationship, but there are some very cool visuals (and a lot of pretty gross squelching) involved, and some very nice notes of dark comedy. You'll need those when the saw comes out.
19. It was very, very wise to include Krypto the dog in the new Superman movie.
20. I just loved seeing Meg Stalter tear into a very good role as a rom-com heroine in Netflix's Too Much. Romantic comedy, and romance in general, is more present on television than in theaters at the moment. At the end of one episode, her character, Jess, and the guy she's very into, played by Will Sharpe, just lie back and listen to music, and it's exactly the kind of laid-back scene that a story like this needs.
21. One of the best documentaries of the year is My Mom Jayne, Mariska Hargitay's look at the life of her mother, Jayne Mansfield, who died when Mariska was a toddler. The film is rigorously fair and loving to a wide swath of people, including Hargitay's parents, the biological father she met as an adult, and her siblings. At one point, she speaks with regret about having asked her biological father's other children to keep the secret of how they were related to her. It's a fascinating piece about family, with loads of compassion for everybody.
22. The fourth season of The Bear brought another chaotic big family gathering, this one Tiffany and Frank's wedding in the seventh episode, "Bears." Eventually, the whole family plus some important friends wind up huddled under a table together (big table). But my vote for the best moment at the wedding is a small one where Tiffany (Gillian Jacobs) dances with Jimmy (Oliver Platt), and he assures her that although she got a divorce from Richie, she's still part of the Berzatto family. "Unfortunately for you," he says, "you're a Bear forever."
23. The two-part documentary Pee-wee as Himself had a lot of marvelous archival material about Paul Reubens as his career grew and as he became hugely popular for the work he did as Pee-wee Herman. It covered the pain he experienced when he was arrested and widely villainized. But it's also a story about documentary film itself, as filmmaker Matt Wolf navigates Reubens' ambivalence about cooperating with the project. The recording of a message Reubens left for Wolf shortly before he died is as strong a statement as you'll see from someone who truly wanted to tell the story of his life, his own way.
24. It's very easy to become cynical about awards shows — they've earned it. But every now and then, you get a moment like Jeff Hiller accepting an Emmy for his fantastic work on HBO's Somebody Somewhere, clearly gobsmacked to have won, and it just about makes the whole thing worthwhile.
25. If you're the kind of person who looks at expensive house listings either with envy or with resentment, you might enjoy Best Offer Wins, a thriller novel about a woman who gets way too into her house hunt. Way too into it. Believe me.
26. The film The Life of Chuck comes from a Stephen King story, and it was directed by horror director Mike Flanagan. But rather than a conventional horror story, it's about how awareness of your mortality influences the way you live your life. The most promoted sequence involved Tom Hiddleston dancing in the middle of a street to a busking drummer, but I also have a big soft spot for Mia Sara, playing Chuck's grandmother, teaching him to dance in her kitchen.
27. It's quite something that Final Destination Bloodlines manages to stay a very (very) goofy horror movie with very (very) goofy death scenes, but also manages quite a touching final scene featuring coroner William Bludworth, played by Tony Todd, a horror icon who died before its release. The franchise's utter commitment to the bit and total lack of self-seriousness doesn't prevent it from delivering a gut-punch farewell to one of its recurring actors. "Life is precious," he tells the kids trying to cheat death. "Enjoy every single second. You never know when."
28. The Black Mirror episode "Common People" stars Rashida Jones as a woman with a devastating illness. Chris O'Dowd, who plays her husband, agrees to have her consciousness stored on a kind of subscription service, making her a hostage to the company he pays to keep her going. At one point, she even starts spouting advertisements, which, of course, they can only avoid by upgrading to the Plus subscription. It's funny, but also ... a little too real, which is the Black Mirror promise.
29. One of my real surprises of 2025 was Companion, a horror movie about a young woman named Iris who takes a weekend trip with her boyfriend and some other friends and ends up learning some very hard truths about her relationship. Jack Quaid, playing the boyfriend, understands exactly how to deploy a self-congratulatory nice-guy affect in a way that really, really makes you want him vanquished.
30. The Studio, starring Seth Rogen as a new movie executive who wants to make good movies but is a coward at heart, won a slew of Emmys, and for good reason. Of its many cameos from directors playing themselves, I have a special fondness for Ron Howard losing it in a conference room, suddenly becoming a rage monster and swearing a blue streak.
31. I absolutely loved the costuming of Uzo Aduba on The Residence. Playing detective Cordelia Cupp, Aduba is dryly funny and (of course) brilliant at deduction. But she also spends most of the run of the series in a fabulous suit all in gorgeous brown shades, done with tweed and knits and buttery leather, and it's the most divine combination of throwback and perfectly modern that I saw this year.
32. Kate Hudson's performance is the biggest asset in Song Sung Blue, based on the true story of a married couple who performed a Neil Diamond tribute act for years. And she really, sincerely, seems like she could be an uncool but awesome Wisconsin mom.
33. Many clips of people talking on podcasts are just not as interesting as they are cracked up to be, especially if all the people involved are famous. With that said: Will Arnett talking on Conan O'Brien's podcast about the text messages they exchanged after O'Brien's parents died is very, very funny and not something you would see from just anybody. To say the least.
34. Sinners is an extraordinary film; it ought to win best picture and probably won't. Many people have played dual roles in films; very few have done it as successfully as Michael B. Jordan. The very first time we see twins Smoke and Stack, director Ryan Coogler not only shows them in the same complex shot, but he has them pass a cigarette back and forth. It's a great character introduction, but it also allows the audience to take a beat to see that yes, they very convincingly look like brothers standing next to each other; and no, that illusion is not going to collapse easily the first time anything crosses a boundary between them.
35. Haven't yet watched the David Byrne Tiny Desk Concert? What are you waiting for?
36. I happen to be a Phillies fan, but I also am from the D.C. area, and the Nats are my local team. So it is my joy to tell you that I saw no baseball clip this year more entertaining than this catch from Nats center fielder Jacob Young.
37. The best surprising thing I saw at a live event this year was at a Slow Horses panel I moderated at New York Comic Con. I had actually been looking at the line to get in earlier, thinking, "I wonder if people dress up as Slow Horses characters. What would that look like?" And then, during the Q&A, a penguin asked a question and explained that he was dressed as one of the penguins who ... well, it would be a spoiler if I told you. Suffice it to say that it's hard to create an authentically great moment at an event like that, but it happened.
38. As someone who loves a straightforward thriller, I very much enjoyed Drop, which finds Meghann Fahy playing a single mom who goes on a first date and suddenly finds herself at the mercy of an unseen person who's texting her and demanding she kill her date if she ever wants to see her son alive again. It is an absolutely ludicrous idea, but Fahy is so much fun that the movie kind of cooks, including in the closing sequence where she inevitably has to fight for her life.
39. The best piece of sports commentary I heard this year was late in a game the Phillies were winning comfortably. Commentator and former Phillies star John Kruk, told the story of visiting the Franklin Institute (basically Philly's science museum) and learning about how easy it is to rip somebody's ear off. The entire thing could not be funnier or more delightful if it were entirely scripted.
40. I am greatly, greatly hoping that the documentary You Had To Be There: How the Toronto Godspell Ignited the Comedy Revolution, Spread Love & Overalls, and Created a Community That Changed the World (In a Canadian Kind of Way), which I saw at the Toronto International Film Festival, finds distribution in the United States soon, because it's one of the most purely delightful things I saw all year. It tells the tale of the 1972 production of Godspell that features a not-yet-famous Martin Short, Gilda Radner, Eugene Levy, Victor Garber, Andrea Martin, and musical director Paul Shaffer. There are no video recordings of the production, but all the surviving cast members appear and talk about the experience, including some surprises that will give you a glimpse of just how magical it was. Surely there is room for this film on HBO? PBS? Netflix? Come on, guys.
41. As always, the internet gave us a lot of great dogs this year, and I watched a lot of them very closely. But for sheer chutzpah, I would single out Tuffy, who loved the stick he was carrying so much that he didn't even put it down when it came time to take care of business.
42. I spent a good number of hours this year playing Tiny Bookshop on my Nintendo Switch 2. It's a game I would classify as EC (Extremely Cozy). You run a little bookstore inside a trailer, and you take it around to different parts of town and sell books. The best part is that customers ask you to recommend books to them, and you look at your inventory (made up of books that exist in real life) and see if you can find something that suits them. There is no tension, no time limit, no competition. Just trying to find exactly the right person to enjoy a novel about werewolves or a nonfiction book about the castles of Europe.
43. Late in the season of Shrinking, Michael Urie delivers the same monologue two and one-half times with all the same flourishes, and remarkably, it stays funny. That is a terrific show, and he is fabulous in it.
44. There were a lot of fun details in the quite good CNN documentary marking the 40th anniversary of Live Aid. But my favorite was that Bob Geldof admitted to having announced performers (including The Who) who had not agreed to do it, figuring that since it was a charity gig, they would have no choice but to come if they didn't want to look like monsters. And it worked.
45. Derek Cianfrance's film Roofman is based on a true story. It stars Channing Tatum as Jeffrey Manchester, a convicted armed robber who escapes from prison and ends up living in a Toys "R" Us. What I admired most about the film is its willingness to play with both sides of Tatum's tremendous charisma. On the one hand, it's easy to like Jeff, to find him winning, and to root for his love story with a single mom played by Kirsten Dunst. But in its final moments, which update the audience on the way the story has continued for the real Jeff, the film undercuts that affection and questions a culture where some criminals get to be folk heroes and other ones are forgotten.
46. The charming Canadian show North of North made its way to Netflix this year, and even if it weren't a hugely likable comedy full of warmth and wisdom, it is set in a very cold climate and thus featured some of the most beautiful coats and headwear you will ever see on TV. One would almost move somewhere icy just to wear them.
47. In a turbulent political year, one of my best reads was The Payback, Kashana Cauley's near-future novel in which several women decide to fight back against the student loan repayment industry, now backed by menacing debt cops who will come into your house and take your stuff. It's funny but also biting in its critiques, and I enjoyed every minute.
48. Stranger Things has almost concluded its run on Netflix, although in keeping with the new rule that nothing can ever end if there's money to be made, there's a spinoff coming. Its final season has been uneven and unwieldy, but there are still moments of hard-earned emotion, like Will's big speech to his friends and Dustin's reconciliation with Steve. The show's still got it when it focuses on what it does well.
49. Rose Byrne's performance as a hugely stressed-out mother in the drama If I Had Legs I'd Kick You isn't just the best reason to see the movie; it almost is the movie, together with the way the performance is shot by director Mary Bronstein. Most of the film follows her character, Linda, closely, almost claustrophobically, as she tries to manage a medically fragile daughter. She feels both plagued with guilt and wild with rage, and as the tension increases, you might expect the movie to move into the realm of conventional horror, But it's not that, quite. It's committed to her misery as all the monster she needs, and it has an ending that feels like the only one the story could ever have had.
50. We end, of course, with Heated Rivalry, the Canadian hockey romance that followed two professional players from rival teams who carry on a secret series of steamy hookups for years before they admit they are in love. It got a lot of attention for its thoughtful approach to sex, but it also stood out for its unapologetic and deeply emotional romantic tone, particularly in the later episodes, including a couple of knockout moments of connection I can't bear to spoil that underscore what romance fiction is all about and why so many people love it.
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