There’s a lot of great TV coming in April 2025. You’ll find new shows like Hulu’s Dying for Sex and Apple TV+’s Government Cheese along with returning shows like Doctor Who (Disney+, April 12), Godfather of Harlem (MGM+, April 13), and You (Netflix, April 24). It’s going to be a busy month for TV lovers!
All the aforementioned shows are worthy of being added to your watchlist this month. However, the five shows below are so exciting that you won’t want to miss the episodes when they release. They include four returning shows, one for its final season after a 2.5-year hiatus, and a brand-new series starring Jon Hamm.
Need more recommendations? Then check out the best new shows to stream this week, as well as the best shows on Netflix, the best shows on Hulu, the best shows on Amazon Prime Video, the best shows on Max, and best shows on Disney+.
It has been more than 2.5 years since The Handmaid’s Tale delivered its fifth season, and the story is finally ending with the sixth and final season this month. The story, based on the Margaret Atwood novel of the same name, takes place in a dystopian future whereby a theocratic regime has taken over, forcing child-bearing women to serve as handmaids for the infertile wives of wealthy commanders. June (Elisabeth Moss) is desperate to escape and get back to her husband and her daughter, and she eventually leads the charge for a revolt.
By season 5, June has escaped to Canada, but she remains traumatized by her experiences and hellbent on revenge. Plus, the folks in Gilead aren’t satisfied with letting her get off that easily. The stakes are raised higher as June ends up with Serena (Yvonne Strahovski) and baby Nichole, both fleeing, while Luke (O-T Fagbenie) lets himself get arrested so she can get to safety. The story in The Handmaid’s Tale has long since diverted from Atwood’s writings that inspired the first season, leaving fans guessing as to where it ends. But like Atwood’s heartwrenching story, The Handmaid’s Tale is a deeply troubling tale about societal downfall into oppression and cruelty masked by religion.
Stream The Handmaid’s Tale on Hulu.
Earning several Primetime Emmy Awards through its three-season run to date, Hacks is back for season 4. The story centers around Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a stand-up comedian looking to reinvent her act for modern times. She is paired with young comedy writer Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) to help. Despite coming from completely different generations of comedy, Deborah and Ava become a formidable pairing.
With an almost a perfect Rotten Tomatoes critics score, Hacks is one of those shows worth binge-watching. Both leads deliver fantastic performances with amazing chemistry. The guest cast keeps you consistently entertained with the eclectic mix of personalities, including Julianne Nicholson, Michaela Watkins, and Eric Balfour.
Sometimes, wasteful extravagance isn’t really noticed until you no longer have the means to partake. This is the situation with Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) in Your Friends and Neighbors. He’s a hedge fund manager whose life is upended after losing his job. Due to murky contract stipulations, he can’t work in the field again for the foreseeable future. With two teenage kids, a mortgage on a house he no longer even lives in, and other struggles, the mounting bills and the personal toll everything is taking on Coop aren’t just going to disappear. The walls are closing in on him. One day, however, he gets a ridiculous idea: his elitist friends have so much more money and material things than they know what to do with. Would they really miss it if he stole a thing or two?
Naturally, Coop’s actions start to get out of hand, and every move he makes opens another Pandora’s Box of problems. Your Friends and Neighbors is as much a story about a man’s descent into darkness as it is a wake-up call about greed and excess, told through Coop’s inner monologue narration. It’s when you do everything right and think you have it all that you lose sight of what’s actually important. Your Friends and Neighbors is arguably one of Hamm’s best roles since Don Draper in Mad Men, bringing you back to the suave, businessman swagger for which he first became known.
Stream Your Friends and Neighbors on Apple TV+.
It’s finally here. After an almost two-year wait, The Last of Us is back this month with its second season. Based on the Naughty Dog video game franchise of the same name, our reviewer calls it the “most faithful video game adaptation that has ever been produced.” Pedro Pascal returns as Joel and Bella Ramsey as Ellie, an unlikely smuggler and teenager duo navigating the post-apocalyptic, virally infected wasteland together. Adapting the story from The Last of Us Part II, season 2 is set five years later as the pair continue their journey.
They encounter new people, and tensions run high. That’s especially so given that, based on the trailer, Ellie presumably learns about that big lie Joel told her to save her life. Earning eight Primetime Emmy Awards for its first season (of an impressive 24 nominations), The Last of Us has been one of the most anticipated show returns this year.
Stream The Last of Us on Max.
It’s only going to run for two seasons, and fans have waited almost three years for the return of Andor, one of many new shows within the Star Wars universe. As a prequel to Rogue One, Diego Luna stars as Cassian Andor, with the first season focusing on telling the story of his journey to becoming a revolutionary. Our reviewer calls it a “thoughtful, slow-developing story.” Season two chronicles the next four years in his life, leading up to the events in Rogue One, another prequel to 1977’s Star Wars.
Follow Andor as he goes from thief to a core member of the Rebel Alliance, who fights back against the Galactic Empire. Season 1 received universal acclaim and three Primetime Emmy Awards. Season two is poised to be a fitting end to the compelling story that technically marks the beginning point of this massive franchise.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?