The best 6 TV performances I've seen so far this year

There may be only one thing more subjective than picking the best series on TV so far this year: tallying the best small screen performances yet in 2025.

That's partly because the audience's love for individual performances can be boosted by a lot of factors an actor doesn't have much control over, including great writing, audience affection for certain kinds of characters, canny directors, and the kind of lucky pop culture timing that puts people right at the zeitgeist's center just as they're ready to offer their best work.

Still, television is a medium that is mostly about spending time with performers and characters you find compelling, welcoming them into your home — or your smartphone — with an intimacy that's different from movies on a giant theater screen. And though it's been less than five months, TV this year has been packed with towering performances on programs you can still go back and savor, like a good book pulled off a library shelf.

So, to help your future viewing, here's my short list of who has triumphed on screen so far this year.

Tramell Tillman, Severance (Apple TV+)

Tramell Tillman in "Severance."

(

Apple TV+

)

Even before his jaw-dropping performance in this year's season finale — leading a marching band through a seriously HBCU-inspired musical number inside the offices of Lumon Industries — Tillman made his mark as devoted department manager Seth Milchick.

Milchick had a lot going on during the show's second season inside the cult-like corporate culture of Lumon: anger over constant humiliations, frustration over bizarre racial microaggressions, ambivalence over some of the extreme actions he had to commit. All of it to keep in line Lumon employees, whose work memories were "severed" from their home lives.

But Tillman often managed to communicate all this complexity with few words, emotions playing across his face as he constantly seemed to reconsider whether it was all worth it. A proud Black man struggling with the world's worst middle management job.

Carrie Coon, The White Lotus (HBO)

Carrie Coon in "The White Lotus."

(

Fabio Lovino

/

HBO

)

To be honest, I've never been a fan of The White Lotus, which seems to celebrate as much as critique wealth with its twisty stories of privileged white folks at exotic getaways. And I didn't much buy how it resolved the storyline for Coon's character this year — leading her to decide in the season finale that spending a vacation with toxic friends, who made her feel terrible about her life choices, was somehow life-affirming.

But I do value how Coon delivered the monologue that sold this arc to viewers, telling her friends tearfully, "We started this life together. ... I look at you guys and it feels meaningful. ... I'm just happy to be at the table."

It was an amazing example of a performer's ability to turn an awkward storytelling curve into a cathartic experience with a spellbinding performance.

Uzo Aduba, The Residence (Netflix)

Uzo Aduba in "The Residence."

(

Jessica Brooks

/

Netflix

)

Move aside Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot; ardent birder/police consultant Cordelia Cupp now stands as one of fiction's most compelling detectives, thanks to Aduba's magnetic performance in Netflix's White House-set whodunit.

The show was the surprise hit of the spring, using a mystery surrounding the murder of the head usher to explore the lives of those who work as maids, butlers, cooks, plumbers and more in the president's home.

Aduba's turn as Cupp was the quirky, stylish center for a story that rode the line between absurdist comedy and complex mystery, presenting a confident woman brashly solving the crime while waiting impatiently for everyone else to finally admit she's always been the smartest person in the room.

Noah Wyle, The Pitt (Max)

Noah Wyle in "The Pitt."

(

Warrick Page

/

Max

)

Fans may fixate on a showy moment from the program's 13th episode, when Wyle's Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch collapses in a ball of tears and regret after failing to save the life of an important patient.

But in truth, Wyle owned just about every scene from the very first minutes of this series, which offers 15 hour-long episodes played out in real time covering a monstrous 15-hour shift in an emergency room in Pittsburgh. As the staff handled everything from a child's birth to casualties from a nearby mass shooting event, Wyle quickly outpaced any comparisons to his well-known stint decades earlier in the cast of NBC's popular drama ER — presenting "Dr. Robby" as a damaged, experienced, down-to-earth pro with little in his life but his job, facing one of the most challenging work days of his life.

Owen Cooper, Adolescence (Netflix)

Owen Cooper in "Adolescence."

(

Netflix

)

This show has won praise for many things — from its technique of telling every episode in a single, unbroken shot to its exploration of incel culture among high school-aged boys and the searing effectiveness of lead actor, co-creator and co-writer, Stephen Graham. But it's Cooper who sealed this show's excellence with his emotive, percolating performance as Jamie Miller, a young man accused of murdering a female classmate. (Graham plays his father, Eddie.)

In the show's third episode, when Jamie meets with a forensic psychologist seven months after the murder, Cooper masterfully renders the young man's unpredictable flips between a cagey charm and volatile anger, particularly when questioned about his feelings for girls.

Given that Cooper had no professional acting experience before this role, it's a tour-de-force that leaves your mouth open in wonder and heart torn over whether to feel sorry for Jamie or fear him. Or both.

Catherine O'Hara, The Last of Us (HBO) and The Studio (Apple TV+)

Catherine O'Hara in "The Last of Us."

(

Liane Hentscher

/

HBO

)

She's been a towering comedic actress since her days in the mid-1970s and '80s, cracking wise with legends like Martin Short and Eugene Levy on the Canadian cult classic Second City TV series, also known as SCTV. But O'Hara has shone most recently as a powerhouse supporting actress, lending a compelling, edgy energy to roles as a post-apocalyptic therapist in HBO's The Last of Us and a deposed movie studio executive-turned-producer on Apple TV+'s The Studio.

On HBO's zombie drama, she's a wryly funny, no-nonsense figure in a massively dark story. For Apple TV+'s Hollywood satire, she's a breezily competent player who knows exactly how over his head Seth Rogen's Matt Remick — the guy who took her job — truly is.

But in both roles, she's the perfectly calibrated combination of funny and dramatic required to make things sparkle, a testament to her status as one of the best supporting players in the business.

Copyright 2025 NPR