Adults is a young-adult ensemble comedy that premiered on FX and streams on Hulu, created by Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, two former late-night writers making their series debut. Executive produced by Nick Kroll, it follows a group of friends in their early twenties fumbling through the first stumbles of adulthood.
Set largely in one character's inherited family house in Queens, New York, the show tracks five friends, played by Malik Elassal, Lucy Freyer, Jack Innanen, Amita Rao, and Owen Thiele, as they navigate jobs, dating, health scares, and disastrous dinner parties with far more enthusiasm than competence. The comedy mines the gap between how grown-up its characters believe they are and how grown-up they actually are.
Debuting in 2025, Adults was embraced as a scrappy, joke-dense hangout comedy, with several critics comparing its friend-group chemistry to a Gen-Z Friends. It is streaming on Hulu.
We Were Liars is a Prime Video adaptation of E. Lockhart's 2014 young-adult bestseller, developed for television by Julie Plec and Carina Adly Mackenzie of The Vampire Diaries. Faithful to the novel's dreamy, unreliable narration, the eight-episode series unfolds as both a lush summer romance and a slow-tightening psychological mystery about a family with everything to hide.
Emily Alyn Lind stars as Cadence Sinclair, the eldest grandchild of a wealthy New England dynasty that decamps each summer to its own private island. Cadence, her cousins Johnny and Mirren, and the outsider Gat call themselves the Liars, and after a mysterious accident leaves Cadence with amnesia, she spends the following year desperate to remember what really happened during Summer 16. David Morse, Mamie Gummer, Caitlin FitzGerald and Candice King anchor the adult cast as the scheming Sinclair elders.
Premiering in June 2025, the series climbed to number one on Prime Video's charts and earned generally favorable reviews for its juicy family dynamics and its handling of the book's famous gut-punch of a twist. Prime Video renewed it for a second season, drawing on Lockhart's prequel novel Family of Liars. It streams on Prime Video.
Happy Face is a Paramount+ true-crime drama created by Jennifer Cacicio and developed with Robert and Michelle King, the team behind The Good Wife and Evil. It adapts the podcast and memoir of Melissa Moore, the daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson, the so-called Happy Face Killer, who murdered at least eight people in the early 1990s and taunted authorities with smiley-face-signed letters.
Annaleigh Ashford stars as Melissa, who has spent her adult life hiding her connection to her incarcerated father, played with unnerving control by Dennis Quaid. When Jesperson resurfaces claiming responsibility for an unsolved murder, Melissa is drawn back into his orbit and into a true-crime investigation that forces her to weigh a possibly innocent man's fate against her father's manipulations. James Wolk, Tamera Tomakili and David Harewood co-star.
The eight-episode series aired in the spring of 2025 and drew praise for its central performances even as critics were divided on its tone, which balanced domestic drama against serial-killer procedural. Grounded in Moore's real efforts to reckon with her father's crimes, Happy Face offers a victim-and-family-centered angle on a genre often fixated on its killers. It streams on Paramount+.
I Love LA is an HBO comedy created by, written by, and starring Rachel Sennott, marking the breakout comedian's arrival as a television auteur. Sharp, self-referential, and steeped in the anxieties of a generation, the series skewers the striving, status-obsessed culture of young creatives trying to make it in Los Angeles.
Sennott plays Maia, a floundering talent agent whose fortunes shift when she reconnects with her estranged former best friend Tallulah (Odessa A'zion), a New York influencer who moves west. Around them orbits a codependent friend group that includes Josh Hutcherson as Maia's boyfriend Dylan, Jordan Firstman as a celebrity stylist, and True Whitaker, as the show mines comedy and cringe from ambition, friendship, and the performative hustle of LA life.
Premiering on HBO and HBO Max in November 2025, I Love LA earned strong reviews for its wit and generational specificity and was quickly renewed for a second season. With Sennott's distinctive voice at its center, it captures the comedy and quiet desperation of twenty-somethings chasing relevance. It streams on HBO Max.
The Runarounds is a coming-of-age music drama created by Jonas Pate, co-creator of the hit teen adventure series Outer Banks, for Prime Video. Set in the coastal city of Wilmington, North Carolina, it follows a group of recent high-school graduates who form a rock band and chase a record deal over the course of one pivotal summer before adulthood pulls them in different directions.
The ensemble is played by the members of an actual band, led by William Lipton alongside Axel Ellis, Jesse Golliher, Zendé Murdock, and Jeremy Yun, with Brooklyn Decker and Hayes MacArthur among the supporting adult cast. As the friends write songs, book gigs, and clash over ambitions and romance, the series leans into the authenticity of performances by real musicians, blending scripted drama with genuine live-music energy.
All eight episodes were released together in September 2025, backed by an original soundtrack performed by the cast. With its sun-soaked setting and earnest focus on friendship and creative dreams, The Runarounds extends Jonas Pate's knack for youthful, propulsive storytelling into the world of a scrappy band trying to make it. It streams on Prime Video.
Murder in a Small Town is a cozy-but-crafty crime mystery created by Ian Weir, based on the acclaimed Karl Alberg novels by Canadian author L.R. Wright. Airing on Fox in the United States, it transplants the classic whodunit into the misty, close-knit setting of a Pacific Northwest coastal town, where old secrets have a way of surfacing.
Rossif Sutherland stars as Karl Alberg, a big-city detective who takes the job of police chief in the seaside community of Gibsons in search of a quieter life, only to find no shortage of murders to solve. Kristin Kreuk plays Cassandra Lee, the local librarian who becomes his confidante and love interest, while Aaron Douglas rounds out the core cast; the second season adds Marcia Gay Harden as the town's mayor. Each season builds its central investigation around the fractures beneath a picturesque surface.
The first season premiered in 2024 and proved popular enough to earn a second in 2025 and a subsequent renewal, establishing the show as a dependable, character-driven mystery. Its scenic setting and unhurried, human-scaled storytelling set it apart from flashier procedurals. It streams on Hulu.
Grosse Pointe Garden Society is a soapy dark-comedy mystery created by Jenna Bans and Bill Krebs for NBC. Set in an affluent Michigan suburb, it follows four members of a local gardening club who become bound together by a shared, deadly secret, unfolding its story across two timelines that gradually reveal how ordinary neighbors ended up burying a body among the flower beds.
Melissa Fumero, Aja Naomi King, Ben Rappaport, and AnnaSophia Robb lead the ensemble as the mismatched club members whose tangled personal lives — infidelity, custody battles, ambition, and reinvention — collide with a murder they must conspire to conceal. The series toggles between the crime's aftermath and the months leading up to it, doling out clues and misdirection while mining sharp comedy from the manicured hypocrisies of suburban life.
Premiering on NBC in February 2025, the series drew a solid response for its game cast and twisty structure, offering a glossy, bingeable blend of whodunit and domestic satire in the tradition of Desperate Housewives. Its single season delivered a self-contained mystery that rewarded attentive viewers. It streams on Peacock.
Platonic is an Apple TV+ comedy created by Francesca Delbanco and Nicholas Stoller that reunites the comedic pairing of Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne. The series mines big laughs and real feeling from a premise Hollywood rarely explores with such honesty: the intense, messy, entirely non-romantic friendship between a man and a woman in the throes of midlife.
Rogen plays Will, a newly divorced brewmaster, and Byrne plays Sylvia, a former lawyer turned stay-at-home mom; after years apart, the old friends reconnect and promptly become a chaotic, enabling influence on each other's lives. Their rekindled bond is warm, hilarious, and frequently disruptive to the more settled parts of their worlds, and the show treats the friendship with the stakes and scrutiny usually reserved for romance. The chemistry between the two leads, honed across films like Neighbors, anchors every episode.
The first season debuted in 2023 to strong reviews, and the acclaimed second season arrived in 2025, deepening the characters while keeping the manic comic energy intact and earning the series a renewal for a third season. Smart, generous, and genuinely funny about adult friendship, Platonic has become one of Apple TV+'s most reliable comedies. It streams on Apple TV+.
House of Guinness is a lavish historical drama created and written by Steven Knight, the mind behind Peaky Blinders, for Netflix. Set in 1868, it opens in the aftermath of the death of Sir Benjamin Guinness, the patriarch who transformed the Dublin brewery into a global empire, and traces the fortunes of the four adult children left to inherit his complicated legacy.
Anthony Boyle and Louis Partridge lead as brothers Arthur and Edward Guinness, thrust into running the business together, while Emily Fairn and Fionn O'Shea play their siblings Anne and Benjamin. James Norton co-stars as the formidable fixer Sean Rafferty, and Jack Gleeson appears as Byron Hedges, as the family navigates rivalries, secrets, romance, and the political turbulence of Ireland on the brink of change. Knight frames the brewing dynasty as a saga of power and inheritance, drawing frequent comparisons to Succession and Downton Abbey.
Premiering in September 2025, the eight-episode series became one of Netflix's most talked-about period dramas, earning warm reviews for its sweep, style, and performances and a swift renewal for a second season. Rooted in the real history of one of Ireland's most famous families, it turns the story behind the black stout into rich, character-driven drama. It streams on Netflix.
Étoile is a comedy-drama from Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, the married creative team behind Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Set in the rarefied world of professional ballet, the series follows two storied but struggling dance companies — one in New York, one in Paris — that hatch an audacious plan to survive: they will swap some of their most gifted stars for a season, hoping the exchange generates the publicity and artistic spark each institution desperately needs.
Luke Kirby and Charlotte Gainsbourg lead as the harried directors on either side of the Atlantic, with Gideon Glick, Lou de Laâge, Simon Callow, and newcomer Taïs Vinolo among the dancers and staff swept up in the scheme. True to the Palladinos' signature style, the show pairs rapid-fire, literate dialogue with a genuine reverence for its milieu, casting real professional dancers and staging extended performance sequences alongside its backstage comedy.
Released on Prime Video in the spring of 2025, Étoile was mounted as an ambitious, bilingual production shot across two countries. Despite an initial two-season order, Prime Video ultimately declined to continue the series beyond its first season, leaving its single run as a distinctive, globe-spanning ode to the art form. It streams on Prime Video.
Common Side Effects is an adult animated thriller-comedy created by Joseph Bennett and Steve Hely for Adult Swim, executive produced by Mike Judge and Greg Daniels through their Bandera Entertainment. The story follows Marshall Cuso, an eccentric, burned-out mycologist who discovers a rare mushroom capable of healing almost any ailment — even reversing death. When he reconnects with a former high-school classmate now working at a pharmaceutical giant, his miraculous find sets off a dangerous chase as powerful interests scramble to control, suppress, or exploit it.
Rendered in a lush, hand-drawn style far removed from typical adult cartoons, the series pairs paranoid conspiracy-thriller plotting with dry humor and surprising sincerity about health care, grief, and corporate greed. Dave King and Emily Pendergast lead the voice cast as Marshall and the conflicted pharma executive Frances, with Mike Judge, Danny Huston, and Joseph Lee Anderson among the supporting players, giving the show both comedic bite and genuine tension.
Debuting on Adult Swim in early 2025 and streaming on HBO Max, Common Side Effects became one of the most acclaimed animated series of the year, earning a rare wave of critical enthusiasm and a second-season renewal before its first season had even finished airing. It streams on HBO Max.
