Juliette's Best of 2025

I am writing this through a fog of flu, so here’s hoping it all makes some kind of sense! As ever, my body has reached the end of the year and given up, and there are some nasty flu strains around this year. But the big news is that I am going part time at my main job next year, to be available for school runs and teacher training days, and to spend more time on writing and content creation, so with any luck I might finish next year with a tiny bit more energy!

Anyway, on to the Best of 2025…

Movies

I basically haven’t seen any. :( There were a lot of films I wanted to watch this year – the F1 Movie, Downton Abbey, Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, and probably half a dozen more I’ve forgotten about. But the only films I’ve actually managed to watch were The Thursday Murder Club, which I enjoyed a lot, and the new Guillermo del Toro-directed Frankenstein, because I was covering it on my YouTube channel and it therefore counted as work. I’m hoping to catch up on the others over the Christmas break, as they’re all on streaming services now, and I’m determined to actually get back to the cinema and watch more movies next year! I’ll have to start with Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, which I don’t really want to see as it sounds like a weird and kinda gross adaptation of a miserable book, but I know a video about a recent movie release is likely to perform well on YouTube so I’ll be reading the book, watching the film, and making sure to talk about it!

Current shows

I’m not doing much better at keeping up with TV shows either! I did watch and enjoy Alien: Earth, which was very good, and of course I watched and enjoyed the latest season of Doctor Who, though the ending was clearly messed up by behind the scenes changes, and it’s always a shame when that comes through so obviously in the storytelling. Still, it was an enjoyable season with some fun episodes. Wednesday also came back with another season this year, and actually gave Thing a backstory, which was a bit of a surprise, but quite well done.

I’m also still a fan of Drive to Survive – I know a lot of Formula One fans don’t like the show for various well-founded reasons, but I enjoy it, and it’s what got my husband into F1 and has allowed us to enjoy watching the season together and see Lando Norris win, to my delight and my husband’s disappointment, so I’ll always be grateful to it! They did an episode this year where they basically got five drivers to vlog a race weekend, which I really enjoyed.

The first part of the year was dominated by watching various incarnations of the sitcom Ghosts, which I was covering on my YouTube channel. The German version was really good, and is actually my favorite so far – a really nice combination of spooky, sad, and funny. I haven’t yet seen the new Greek or Australian versions though – the YouTube algorithm started to think that was the only thing anyone wanted to see me talk about, so I’ve strategically stepped back a bit! I do want to catch the Greek and Australian versions at some point, though, and I’m still watching the American one too.

New to Me

I started watching Penny Dreadful a few weeks back, and have now watched the first two seasons, with only the third to go. It’s a brilliant show, one I’ve been meaning to watch for ages, and it’s a shame it only lasted for three short seasons.

Over Christmas we’ve also been watching the Tim Allen sitcom The Santa Clauses, because my husband is a big fan of the original movie. It’s good fun, very seasonal!

Dropout

I’m still watching a lot more on Dropout, the streaming service started up by Sam Reich after he bought College Humor, than anything else. We got into it via the geeky quiz show Um Actually, but my favorite show is probably the improv show Make Some Noise. I also enjoy Game Changer a lot, and the new show Crowd Control, which, like Make Some Noise, has been spun off from Game Changer, is a bit cringy at times but a lot of fun too. These are the sorts of shows I used to watch on regular TV – the BBC’s panel shows, and Whose Line Is It Anyway? on Channel 4 – but I’m finding them available a lot more on Dropout these days.

Star Trek

The year started with the TV movie Section 31, which I thought was fine – it was flawed, it wasn’t Star Trek’s finest hour, but I didn’t think it was terrible. I was entertained while I was watching it.

Strange New Worlds is my second favorite Star Trek series of all (behind Voyager) and although season three wasn’t quite as brilliant from start to finish as season two, it was still very good. And we finally got a proper Ortegas episode!

The trailer for Starfleet Academy is out now, and although I would still rather have had Captain Seven of Nine and Star Trek: Legacy, it does look intriguing. I’m looking forward to seeing the Doctor back in live action after many years.

YouTube

I’m still watching a lot of YouTube on the TV as well. I’m especially enjoying Kate and Dan in a Van’s tour of Scotland, and Niamh Mackinnon’s Cozy Vlogs from the Isle of Skye – I’ve been watching lots of Scotland this year.

I’m looking forward to…

Fallout season two is out now and I am super excited to watch it – hopefully we’ll be able to see it over the Christmas holiday. Doctor Who spin-off The War Between the Land and the Sea is also out now and seems to have been pretty well received so I’m looking forward to finding time to watch that too. I started watching the Motherland spin-off Amandaland earlier this year and then, as ever, didn’t find time to finish it so I want to catch that too, as the Christmas special promises to reunite Absolutely Fabulous’ Joanna Lumley and Jennifer Saunders, and that was one of my favourite sitcoms of the 90s.

As well as Starfleet Academy in January, I’m sure I’ll also be watching A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and then the final seasons of Outlander in March and The Boys in April.

Top Ten Episodes

10. Amandaland: House Party
9. Ghosts (US): Soul Custody
8. Ghosts (France): The Beginning of the End
7. Wednesday: This Means Woe
6. Doctor Who: Lucky Day
5. Star Trek Strange New Worlds: Terrarium
4. Game Changer: One Year Later
3. Drive to Survive: In the Heat of the Night
2. Alien Earth: Mr October
1. Ghosts (Germany): Rätselhafter Fall