Paste Power Rankings: The 5 Best TV Shows on Right Now (October 28, 2025)
From the biggest streaming services to the most reliable broadcast networks, there are so many shows vying for your time and attention every single week. Lucky for you, the Paste Editors and TV writers sort through the deluge of Peak TV “content” to make sure you’re watching the best TV shows the small screen has to offer. Between under-the-radar gems and the biggest, buzziest hits, we keep our finger on TV’s racing pulse so you don’t have to.
The rules for the Power Rankings are simple: any current series on TV qualifies, whether it’s a comedy, drama, news program, animated series, variety show, or sports event. It can be on a network, basic cable, premium channel, Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, or whatever you can stream on your smart TV, as long as a new episode was made available within the past week (ending Sunday)—or, in the case of shows released all at once, it has to have been released within the previous four weeks.
Below is what we’re enjoying right now. Happy viewing!
Best TV Shows for the Week of October 28:
Honorable Mentions: Nobody Wants This (Netflix), Talamasca: The Secret Order (AMC), Devil in Disguise: John Wayne Gacy (Peacock)
5. Murder Before Evensong
Network: Acorn TV
Last Week: N/A
This Week: The season’s penultimate episode is a perfect balance of plot and character, featuring big developments in both the murder investigation and a barn burner of a speech from Daniel about what it really means to serve others.
Faith can often be a difficult topic for our pop culture to tackle. Religion is a deeply personal issue, but it’s also an important communal activity, offering comfort to many in difficult times, support during good ones, and a ready-made set of social connections for those who might otherwise lack them. One of the few places in entertainment where themes of faith pop up fairly regularly is the world of cozy crime dramas. Maybe that’s not so surprising, given that these shows almost always deal with death or loss in some form or other, and who better to help guide a community during such disruptive times than a literal man of God? Shows like Father Brown, Grantchester, and Sister Boniface Mysteries are all popular dramas that explore questions of faith alongside their stories of murder, intentionally delving into the complex character issues that both raise. It’s a tradition that Acorn TV’s Murder Before Evensong gamely steps into. Led by former Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis—ably keeping TV’s Hot Vicar trend alive! —the show puts its own spin on the traditional elements of this particular subgenre, opting for a slightly darker overall vibe, a sprawling ensemble of supporting characters who actually get arcs of their own, and a central relationship that’s more about the unbreakable bonds of family than solving crime.
Like many of its Acorn TV brethren, the mystery at the heart of Murder Before Evensong is pretty much the least interesting part of the story it’s telling. To its credit, the show ably presents various suspects and red herrings throughout its six episodes (all of which were available for review). Still, the show is a character drama first and foremost, one that is as concerned about the lives of the residents of Champton as it is with any specifics of the crime. And while the identity of the killer is revealed by the end, the investigation is predominantly used to explore larger issues of history, prejudice, family, and community within the world of the village that, despite its period setting, will still resonate with viewers today. — Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]
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4. Only Murders in the Building
Network: Hulu
Last Week: N/A
This Week: Answers about Nicky’s murder lead to revelations about Lester’s death.
Only Murders in the Building is a show about tenets as much as it is about tenants. Yes, the Emmy-nominated Hulu comedy follows an eccentric group of characters who live in an apartment complex called the Arconia, a building that itself is a monument to old New York. But the show’s tenet is that it is about the importance of community and a chosen family. Premiering in summer 2021 when the divide between masks-on and masks-not was rapidly growing, it’s a story of three neighbors who unite to solve not just any murder, but the murder of someone with specific ties to their lives because they are people who died in their building.
In Murders’ fifth season, it’s pretty shocking that the Arconia has any tenants left, given its uptick in homicides in recent years. But it’s nice to know that the tenets of the series remain. One of the victims this season is Teddy Coluca’s Lester, the building’s doorman who—even if they didn’t always acknowledge him—was a constant presence in the lives of the show’s three leads: Selena Gomez’s suspicious Mabel, Steve Martin’s anxious Charles, and Martin Short’s exuberant Oliver.
Lester, in turn, is an embodiment of this season of Murders, and maybe also for society. The season’s best episode of the nine released to the press is, by far, its second. Written by Ben Smith and Ella Robinson Brooks and directed by series showrunner John Hoffman, it’s mostly told in flashbacks and shares the life of the humble old doorman when he thought this gig was going to be a waylay before he made it big as an actor. Smash and The OA actor Emory Cohen gives us a Lester with his own career trajectory and love life outside of just opening doors for rich people and maybe the occasional pig. Everyone deserves a chance to tell their backstories, even if most people won’t notice them. — Whitney Friedlander [Full Review]
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3. Boots
Network: Netflix
Last Week: 4
This Week: Netflix’s military-set queer coming-of-age drama is more complicated than it may initially appear.
The show’s pithy title (“boots” as in boot camp, as metonym for the military itself, and as intensifier in queer ballroom slang—“boots the house down”) is quasi-funny in the way the rest of the show is quasi-funny; expect a few chuckles but no guffaws. But even though we take detours into the motivations and inner journeys of the other recruits and instructors (Boots could reasonably be deemed an ensemble piece), Cameron and Sgt. Sullivan’s interior battles prove the most philosophically and emotionally rich. While I won’t spoil exactly what Sullivan’s dealing with, suffice it to say that the decorated soldier’s icy exterior and preoccupation with “killing” the “enemy inside of you” promises Cameron a model of the type of man he could become, for better or worse. All he has to do is suppress his inner Cameron, literalized by a sarcastic, swishier Cameron that appears intermittently to both hype him up and neg him—think Smeagol vs. Gollum but twinkier.
2. Slow Horses
Network: Apple TV+
Last Week: 3
This Week: The penultimate episode of Slow Horses Season 5 turns an obvious conclusion into a satisfying twist.
Everyone in Slough House is stuck. It’s professional purgatory for the service’s biggest screw-ups, all of whom are trapped in various messes of their own making. But even though their inability to move forward serves a purpose, stagnation also eventually leads to decay. Season 4 was a high point for Slow Horses. It was the show’s most emotionally affecting outing yet as River and his grandfather (Jonathan Pryce) found themselves in the crosshairs of an assassin-siring monster who turned out to be River’s long-lost father (Hugo Weaving). Not every season can (or should) be as personal, but it’s a major narrative development, and it didn’t just affect River and his grandfather; it also indirectly resulted in Marcus’ (Kadiff Kirwan) death. So it’s the type of season that demands action and movement in the aftermath, more so even than previous installments that saw Slough House agents die. And in that regard, it’s initially difficult to be dropped into a new story that mostly hinges on the question “No self-respecting woman would willingly date Roddy, right?” and not wonder if the show is as stuck as its titular slow horses.The good news is, the series doesn’t totally ignore the bomb dropped on River last season, nor does it gloss over the aftermath of Marcus’ murder. In fact, Slough House is under construction when the show returns, both a subtle reminder of what happened and an apt representation of the current states of those most affected by the prior season’s events. Understandably, Shirley (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) isn’t coping well with Marcus’ death, but she throws herself into protecting Roddy since she couldn’t do the same for her friend. Meanwhile, River has compartmentalized his trauma and chosen to prioritize work instead of processing that the health of his grandfather, the man who raised him, has declined significantly in recent months, or that his actual father just tried to kill him. All of this puts a strain on his already complicated relationship with Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), yet another father figure of sorts. It all makes sense in terms of the characters, and yet there are instances when one wishes they could spend just a little bit more time with them in the in-between moments. — Kaitlin Thomas [Full Review]
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1. The Diplomat
Network: Netflix
Last Week: N/A
This Week: The third season of Netflix’s hit political drama is full of high-stakes intrigue, even if some of its character work suffers as a result.
Netflix’s The Diplomat isn’t the sort of political drama that cares too much about the inner workings of state bureaucracy or that gets overly idealistic about the people who populate the global halls of power. Instead, it treats politics as something deeply personal, an extension of the lives of those who serve, and a reflection of the choices (for both good and often very ill) they must make along the way. The show is full of intelligent banter and surprising twists — very few of which would likely ever actually happen in the real world — but what makes it stand out has always been the characters at its center and the messy relationships they share. Which is why it’s so frustrating that, in its third season, The Diplomat so frequently foregrounds plot concerns over emotional depth.
Season 3 picks up moments after the shocking events of the previous finale, which saw Ambassador Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) inform Vice President Grace Penn (Allison Janney) that she was aiming to replace her due to her involvement in a false flag attack on U.K. soil, a chat that took place just as President Rayburn (Michael McKean) dropped dead. Suddenly, Kate and her former diplomat husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) are two of the only people who know the treasonous truth about a woman who just so happens to have ascended to the most powerful position on Earth. Drama immediately ensues on a global scale, as the Wylers manuever to salvage their individual and collective relationships with Grace, protect themselves professionally, and figure out what the fallout from Rayburn’s death means for both their public lives and their marriage. —Lacy Baugher Milas [Full Review]
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