From streaming to broadcast, it’s safe to say that television had a fantastic year in 2025.
Read on to see our picks for the five best Prime Video shows of 2025.
A spinoff of the hit show Bosch, Ballard follows Detective Renée Ballard (Maggie Q), who heads up a new division at the LAPD. The newly created cold case unit of the Robbery-Homicide Division is meant to solve the city’s decades-old cold cases. Despite being underfunded and understaffed, Ballard and her team work at solving these unsolvable cases. Ballard blends episodic cases with a long-running arc related to corruption within the police department.
Ballard has been hailed as a worthy sister series to Bosch, led by a scene-stealing turn from Maggie Q. The series is a smart, well-paced crime procedural with fantastic writing and great performances all around, while managing to execute a timely message about systemic failures within law enforcement.
Based on the popular Jack Reacher book series, this crime series stars Alan Ritchson as the title character, a former U.S. Army military police officer who now chooses to live his days as a drifter. However, Reacher has a particular set of skills: impressive strength, superior intellect and a host of other special abilities. As he travels across the United States, he finds himself encountering many dangerous characters. The first season sees him mistakenly arrested for murder and teaming up with the local police to unravel a web of conspiracy.
Reacher’s third season is its best yet, boasting a formidable 98 percent critic’s score on Rotten Tomatoes. With a more engaging locale, compelling new enemies and a surprisingly good sense of humor, Reacher season 3 indulges in its very best instincts and delivers exciting action and great character drama.
This adult animated superhero show follows teenager Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun), whose father (J.K. Simmons) just happens to be the most powerful superhero on the planet. Shortly after his seventeenth birthday, Mark finally begins to develop his own powers and must defer to the guidance of his father, Nolan AKA Omni-Man, to hone them and become a hero himself. However, Mark begins to learn that his father isn’t as noble as he grew up believing him to be.
The third season of Invincible was highly acclaimed by critics, who praised the show for expanding its exploration of moral complexity and developing a stronger character arc for Mark. Overall, the season was considered thematically richer and more entertaining than the previous two seasons, and it concludes on a note that nicely leaves the door open for more developments in the upcoming fourth season.
This spinoff of Prime Video’s hit superhero satire series The Boys takes a look at the young heroes of the Godolkin University School of Crimefighting. There, young adult superheroes put their skills and morals to the test by competing with one another for the school’s top spot, which comes with a chance to join the elite superhero team the Seven. In the show’s first season, the school’s dark secrets come to light, forcing its students to make choices about the kind of hero they want to become.
Gen V continues its status as an incredibly well-made spin-off that works as a fitting continuation of The Boy universe while also being a solid story on its own. Ambitious, provocative and violent, the show also expands upon themes established in its first season with complexity and nuance while welcoming a compelling new villain played by Hamish Linklater.
The first season of Fallout centered on Lucy (Ella Purnell), a survivor of the apocalyptic wasteland known as the United States and living in an underground bunker along with the rest of humanity. However, when her father (Kyle MacLachlan) is kidnapped by wasteland raiders, Lucy leaves the safety of her bunker (also known as a vault) to search for him. Along the way, she meets Maximus (Aaron Moten), a squire of the Brotherhood of Steel, and a ghoul bounty hunter (Walton Goggins).
The Emmy-nominated series returned recently for its second season, and critics have applauded it for being a major step-up from an already terrific first season. The show broadens the scope of its dystopian world with brilliant cinematography and riveting performances, with the acting spotlight being put on Goggins in particular. Ultimately, Fallout delivers everything someone could want from an entertaining but mature sci-fi series and a faithful video game adaptation.
