From Celebrity Betrayers to The Brutalist Film via Bad Bunny – Our Summary of the Arts That Mattered in the Past Year

It’s time to reflect on a year of betrayal and sin, of chart-toppers and daring comedies, with a now annual overview of the year’s most noteworthy culture. Traditionally, numerous roundups are currently published – covering movies and LPs, television series, books and interactive entertainment, theatre, comedy and dance. Some of those already counted down, others will announce their number ones in the next few days, so keep an eye.

The following roundup by comparison is unashamedly partial, and far from as all-encompassing as many extensive lists: there are many records we never got around to hearing, and series we’re still only halfway through. Yet it is hoped it will provide a taste of a year that, notwithstanding multiple difficulties, was a remarkably good one for culture. Let's begin the show!

TV

Beyond scheming to transform the theatrical experience, a leading platform was producing TV series at its customary rapid clip. Much of its output vanished from our collective memory within days appearing on the homepage. Still, one Adolescence felt lasting, a remarkably smartly written and acted drama, not to mention a national conversation-starter. My streaming series of the year though was The Eternaut, an from Argentina end-of-the-world drama that depicted the apocalypse with unsettling precision, all while grappling with the country’s unstable history. It is recommended to catch up on it over the holidays if you can; it’s only six parts. Another international series that impressed proved to be Mussolini: Son of the Century, a darkly compelling portrayal of Il Duce’s rise, which attempted to “draw in” the audience into grasping his allure, before leaving them feeling uncomfortably implicated when his control tightened.

It was a strong year for TV humor. With How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge), the lead actor and the writing team succeeded to find one more fertile direction for the character to explore, as he got involved in “men’s mental health” and much more elsewhere. In its second series, Such Brave Girls solidified its status as the most daringly unflinching comedy around, and viewers laughed at much of an Hollywood send-up The Studio, which has also felt increasingly topical with every actual merger and worrying AI “innovation”. Comeback series of the year, without a doubt, was South Park which, in its most recent iterations, embarked on a hilarious scorched-earth assault of the political era. Nobody was spared, not least its president.

Alien: Earth featured its own surprising scene-stealer – a sheep with a gruesome little octopoid creature lodged in its eye. Not everyone vibed with the showrunner's offbeat take on the series, but it certainly creeped me out like few other series this year. Though, there were sequences that came close in a new epic video essay Shifty, a unsettling and sometimes very amusing examination of the fracturing of our common reality. Finally, it’s hard to argue for anything other than The Celebrity Traitors being the biggest show of the year, in the UK at least. It might have gone so awry – too cosy or stage-managed – but it felt as addictive as any of the non-celebrity series.

And here are five great TV installments to watch: LOL Last One Laughing UK; Louis Theroux: The Settlers; Pluribus – We Is Us; Severance – Cold Harbour; Slow Horses – Tall Tales

Music

Two longstanding favourites released eagerly awaited new albums in 2025, and they were both as good as expected. Cotton Crown by the Tubs expanded upon the sharp, incisive jangle of the band’s first album with moments of poignant introspection by singer about a late mother. And the delightfully freewheeling Getting Killed, by ascendant band Geese was nothing less than a sensation, earning the band fans from across the spectrum almost instantly.

Meanwhile, an album no one expected to ever be released – Let God Sort Em Out by long-dormant rap duo Clipse – did miraculously arrive and was maybe even better than hoped, full of wonderfully cutting lines and featuring some of an iconic beatmaker’s best work in a long time. If that album felt like a welcome nod to the past, the fractured, frantic Stardust by a Motor City legend, Danny Brown, sounded beamed in from some strange future, thanks to the rapper smartly collaborating with some of the most daring producers in electronic music. Producer Blawan’s SickElixir was even more jarring, a collection of garage, bass and dubstep tracks that sounded as if they had been put through a blender and reassembled – but, in a good way, of course.

There were tons of great albums for those who like things on the crunchier end of the spectrum. Deftones are probably as popular as they’ve ever been, and their latest LP, Private Music, was as satisfyingly pummelling as anything in their back catalogue. Another highlight was Last Leg of the Human Table, the new album by four-piece Cloakroom, which was described by most reviewers as atmospheric rock, but sounded more like 90s alternative supported by a heavy rhythm section. And Chrome Dipped, by Australian group Civic, pushed garage rock to its gnarliest, most abrasive extremes. On It’s a Beautiful Place, duo Water From Your Eyes spiked their art-pop with 90s alt-rock and techno, a mixture that might not have worked but absolutely did. And Wolf Alice, now probably Britain’s biggest rock group, also evolved on the 70s soft rock-tinged The Clearing – an album that felt stadium-sized.

And listed below are five great songs to check out: Bad Bunny – Nuevayol (visual of the year!); Bar Italia – Fundraiser; Model/Actriz – Cinderella; Turnstile – Birds; Underscores – Music

Cinema

It feels like a long time ago now, but the first part of the year brought some great late-arriving films to cinemas, in particular two films that explored the nuances of the Jewish experience in wildly different ways: a director's hefty The Brutalist, about a survivor's difficult encounter with post-war America; and an actor-director's funny, caustic A Real Pain, where the star and a co-star played mismatched cousins embarking on a heritage tour around Poland. Completing the year is a director's Marty Supreme, starring a star as a troubled ping-pong prodigy. A wild joyride through mid-century New York life, it doubles up as the best film about competition of the year and will be a major Oscars contender.

Britain’s film industry