To the surprise of no one, the big winner during Sunday night’s Emmys was Adolescence. The four-episode British drama, about a radicalised teenage boy who murders a female classmate, was met with wall-to-wall praise when it debuted on Netflix in March, dominating news headlines and instigating wide-ranging public debate. Last night it swept the US’s most prestigious TV awards ceremony, winning trophies in all six of the major categories for which it was nominated. It was a testament to the power and reach of the British TV industry, just one year after Baby Reindeer enjoyed a similarly prolific haul.
Look beyond Adolescence, however, and the 2025 Emmys paint a curious picture of the modern TV landscape. The best drama category went to frantic medical drama The Pitt, edging out the expected winner, Apple TV+’s twisty sci-fi show Severance. (Frustratingly, The Pitt is yet to be released in the UK, despite premiering on HBO Max more than eight months ago.) The comedy categories were, meanwhile, dominated by The Studio, Apple TV+’s glossy and propulsive satire about the upper echelons of a major Hollywood film company. What’s most telling is the shows that emerged from the night empty-handed: restaurant stress-fest The Bear, a serial winner last year, got nothing for its tepidly received third season, while year three of Mike White’s lampoon-the-rich anthology series The White Lotus won in just one category (Outstanding Original Main Title Theme Music).
The Emmys reflect an uncomfortable truth about the state of television in 2025. There are plenty of good TV shows around – as many as ever before, probably, scattered across the myriad broadcasters and streaming services – but a terrible dearth of genuinely great ones. Time was, Emmy categories could be dominated by single TV shows for years at a time. Shows such as The Sopranos, The West Wing, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, Modern Family, Frasier, or older ones such as Hill Street Blues, would rack up a string of wins across several-year periods. The stark drop-off we see in series such as The Bear and The White Lotus – not just in terms of Emmy recognition, but in the intrinsic quality of the shows themselves – speaks to a biting lack of truly enduring television. Drama-wise, for instance, there has been nothing this year on the level of Succession or Better Call Saul a few years ago.
This is not to denigrate this year’s winners: The Pitt and The Studio are worthy enough victors, looking at the past 12 months. But they do have novelty on their side. Whether they can deliver multi-year runs at the forefront of the industry is another matter. Adolescence, being – nominally – a limited series (it competed in these categories, though Deadline reported that discussions for a second season are underway), doesn’t have to worry about this.
For all that show’s triumphs, it is, ultimately, necessary to view miniseries as their own artistically distinct thing. It ran for just four episodes, clocking in under four hours total. The challenges, joys and artistic possibilities of an endeavour like this are all entirely different to a long-running, serialised TV show. It’s worth noting, too, that miniseries tend to have far shorter shelf lives: when we look at the shows from two or more decades ago that remain popular and acclaimed to this day, limited series seldom factor in. To some extent, greatness is found in longevity, in the rare ability to deliver a first-rate TV show year in, year out.
With all this said, we should be wary about using the Emmys as a comprehensive signifier of the state of the TV industry. As is so often the case, some of the year’s best series have been largely overlooked – The Righteous Gemstones, HBO’s inventive and gloriously cinematic megachurch comedy, for one. Apple TV+’s Slow Horses is an example of a well-liked, well-made current-day TV show that seems to be thriving deep into its four-season-and-counting run; it was, however, barely recognised at this year’s Emmys, with Gary Oldman losing out on Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series to The Pitt’s Noah Wyle. This is, after all, the awards body that only nominated The Wire twice, a series which for years would represent the pinnacle of what the medium could achieve artistically. But more often than not, the shows that have had sustained success at the Emmys have deserved it.
There is too much talent in the world of television for this minor slump to continue indefinitely. It may be that The Pitt will go on to dominate the airwaves for the next decade, or – more likely – something else will come along of such lasting and undeniable quality that the whole pyramid is shaken up once again. This was the year of Adolescence; what we need is a TV series with a long and prosperous adulthood.
