It's customary to celebrate the best television at the end of each year.
But what were the absolute turkeys that Pomona reviewed this year?
Pomona runs down the Worst Ten shows we watched in 2025, with a few dishonourable mentions thrown in - just for the hell of it.
And, let's be honest, it was hell....
10. SECRETS OF THE CONCLAVE (BBC2)
Sometimes a documentary comes along that promises so much on the strength of its title alone.
'Secrets of the Conclave' was one such documentary, coming at the end of a year when the world and the Catholic Church said goodbye to a popular Argentinian Pontiff and elected its first American Pope.
Fresh from Edward Berger's Oscar nominated thriller 'Conclave,' BBC viewers could also have been forgiven for believing they were in for a real treat with insights in this show beyond those depicted in the movie.
How wrong they were.
What they got instead was a series of Cardinal interviewees who mostly stated the obvious and whose insights included that on becoming Pope, Leo XIV won't be able to go for a pizza again.
Pass the Pepperoni, please.
9. HOUSE OF GUINNESS (Netflix)
Steven Knight made a name for himself with the Birmingham period gangster drama 'Peaky Blinders' and the Tom Hardy car based movie 'Locke'.
But his work has increasingly become a parody of itself - full of overblown characters in period costumes, incredulous plots and a punk ethic that when you start to scratch the surface proves ultimately shallow.
His new Netflix series 'House of Guinness' was no exception.
Full of sound and fury signifying nothing, the drama about Ireland's biggest brewery family looked great and traded off a sexy Irish soundtrack that included acts like Fontaines DC, the Murder Capital, the Stunning, Kneecap, Lankum and The Mary Wallopers.
However, despite all the slick visuals and sounds, this English writer's rewriting of Irish history was far fetched and was about as believable as 'Darby O'Gill and the Little People'.
8. SMALL TOWN, BIG STORY (Sky Atlantic)
Steven Knight wasn't the only offender when it came to onscreen Oirishness.
Sky Atlantic's comedy drama 'Small Town, Big Story' promised loads with its tale of an Irish border community haunted by a supernatural occurrence while also coping with a major swords and shields TV drama being filmed on its doorstep.
From the fevered mind of Chris O'Dowd, the miniseries had an accomplished cast that included its creator and also Paddy Considine, Eileen Walsh, Susan Lynch and Christina Hendricks of 'Mad Men' fame.
However it failed to land a single laugh and was about as entertaining as the flu.
O'Dowd, in particular, was a huge letdown as he tried to channel some sort of Hibernian Alistair Sim vibe with a toothy performance that required lots of fillings.
7. THE LAST OF US, S2 (Sky Atlantic)
After a superb first season, hopes were high for the HBO spin-off of the popular video game.
However the follow up series of Craig Mazin's hit show was mind numbingly dull and repetitive.
It didn't help that a beloved major character was disposed of early on in its run.
However the quality of the storylines also dramatically plunged, with Pedro Pascal, Bella Ramsey, Kaitlyn Dever and Gabriel Luna feeding off scraps.
Even the appearance of guest stars like Jeffrey Wright and Joe Pantoliano could not distract from the fact that what was once a real treat had become a bit of a bore.
6. FEAR (Amazon Prime)
2025 was another year when British television viewers continued to hold out hope that there would be another series of 'Line of Duty'.
Their wish finally came true in November with the announcement that the police corruption show would return for a seventh series on BBC1.
As they patiently waited, 'Line of Duty' fans still had to put up, though, with a lot of underwhelming fare from its stars.
From the third series of Vicki McClure's preposterous ITV bomb disposal drama 'Trigger Point' to Adrian Dunbar's pedestrian detective show on the same channel 'Ridley', they disappointed.
But neither of these shows was as poorly written as Martin Compston's dull Glasgow home invasion thriller 'Fear' on Amazon Prime.
Playing out like a poor man's version of the 1990 movie 'Pacific Heights,' this tale of a yuppie architect and his wife feeling terrorised by Solly McLeod's quirky neighbour was derivative and dull.
And while it might have been the sort of drama that would in the past have wound up on BBC Scotland or Channel 5, you could hear both channels' commissioning editors breathing sighs of relief they'd missed out on this turkey.
5. RIOT WOMEN (BBC1)
And the winner of 2025's naffest drama series is...
Well, you'll have to wait but there's no doubt Sally Wainwright's comedy drama was a contender.
Boasting an accomplished cast that included Joanna Scanlan, Tamsin Greig, Lorraine Ashbourne, Sue Johnston and Taj Atwal, this plucky tale of plucky Yorkshire women forming a plucky punk band for a bit of a lark aspired to be a bit like 'Calendar Girls' meeting 'The Commitments'.
Unlike those two movies, it was disappointingly laughter free.
It also suffered from terrible music and also annoying characters like Rosalie Craig's gifted but troubled lead singer Kitty.
Wainwright's show even had a toe curling theme tune that felt it would have been less out of place had it been deployed on a Dani Harmer teen drama on CBBC.
4. KING AND CONQUEROR (BBC1)
Steven Knight wasn't the only writer to make a haims of recreating historical events, with Michael Robert Johnson seeking to sex up the Norman conquests with this international co-production.
Harbouring 'Game of Thrones' ambitions, the show assembled a cast that included James Norton, Nikolaj William Coster-Waldau, Eddie Marsan, Juliet Stevenson and Clemence Poesy.
However a combination of poorly written scripts and an obviously low budget made for a very depressing watch.
Shot in Iceland, 'King and Conqueror' felt more like a gathering of ashen faced actors having a miserable time on a really grim shoot than a stirring historical drama.
It was a second huge blot this year on James Norton's above average CV, with his irritating turn as the Dublin hardman Sean Rafferty in 'House of Guinness,' giving us two turkeys for the price of two.
3. THE PAPER (Sky Max)
It was always going to be a huge ask for this spin-off of the US version of Ricky Gervais' 'The Office' to repeat that show's success.
But you would like to think it would have landed some gags.
Relocating the faux documentary crew that filmed 'The Office' in Scranton to Toledo, it saw Domhnall Gleeson take on the role of a newspaper editor trying to keep a city publication afloat.
But the show was alarmingly devoid of gags, despite the efforts of Gleeson, Tim Key, Chelsea Frei and Oscar Nunez, whose sole brief appeared to be revisit the character of Oscar Martinez in the original who would spend his time insisting he wouldn't be filmed.
Worse still, we were subjected to the depressing spectacle of the Italian actress Sabrina Impacciatore saddled with the most irritating comedy character since Mr Poppy in the 'Nativity' movies.
This was a dud by every measure.
2. FUNBOYS (BBC3)
And yet... 'The Paper' managed to not be the worst sitcom to land on our screens this year.
Hang your heads in shame Rian Lennon and Ryan Dillon who managed to get the greenlight for an alleged rural Northern Irish comedy about the 'Inbetweeners' style adventures of three culchies.
Stretched over four half hour instalments, its 'Give My Head Peace' style acting managed to make those episodes feel bloated.
Jokes about Ele McKenzie's sexually voracious Englishwoman Gemma were incredibly regressive and an episode in which Jamie Demetriou also appeared left you wondering if he was being blackmailed to appear on it.
The show also featured the most toe curling opening credits of any show for manys a year which looked like it was straight out of a 1980s Australian soap.
1. HOSTAGE (Netflix)
Here was a Netflix thriller that was so preposterous and poorly acted you might have been forgiven for thinking it was a French and Saunders spoof.
'Hostage' cast Suranne Jones as an earnest British Prime Minister whose earnest medic of a husband, played by Ashley Thomas, was kidnapped by not so earnest baddies while doing earnest work for Medicins Sans Frontiers.
Julie Delpy, meanwhile, was a bed hopping, populist French President drawn into this crazy situation while visiting Downing Street because the PM's husband was captured in French territory.
Weighed down by leaden dialogue and preposterous plot twists, it's hard to believe an Oscar nominated screenwriter Matt Charman was behind this mess of a show.
And while Jones and Delpy foundered, pity the likes of Martin McCann, Lucian Msamati, Mark Lewis Jones, Vincent Perez, Jehnny Beth and Thomas who also struggled with scripts that were as much rooted in reality as 'Balamory'.
Dishonourable Mentions: PROTECTION (ITV); THE DONALD TRUMP SHOW (Channel 4); THE GUEST (BBC1); ALL HER FAULT (Sky Atlantic)
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