TV heats up. Beyoncé gets her due. And “Sinners” conquers the biggest screen. Here are some the year’s most glorious culture moments.
‘The Pitt’ is a hit
It was the television series we didn’t know we needed: a brilliant throwback to the glory days of network TV that became a streaming darling and a multiple Emmy Award winner. “The Pitt,” the medical drama created by an “ER” executive producer, sharing a showrunner with “ER” and starring one of its lead actors, Noah Wyle, debuted in January and rapidly became a word-of-mouth hit.
Wyle, now an Emmy winner, was clearly the main draw, playing the compassionate and dependable Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch. But he was backed by a striking ensemble of actors whom viewers previously would have been hard-pressed to name, led by fellow Emmy winner Katherine LaNasa. Not for nothing did the series claim outstanding casting as part of its five-trophy haul in September. And though it’s set in Pittsburgh and was shot in L.A., we Canadians get a share of the bragging rights since creator R. Scott Gemmill is from Ontario. — Debra Yeo
‘Stranger Things’ ends big
“Stranger Things” is back for its final season on Netflix and has a stranglehold on the TV conversation like villain Vecna immobilizing a victim. I have some issues with it — static character development, illogical plotting, gratuitous violence, separating our heroes and cramming in new characters we haven’t learned to love — but the blockbuster viewing numbers and 90-per-cent positive audience score suggest this return is more upside than Upside Down. And I’ll be glued to the remaining episodes like everyone else. — D.Y.
‘The Gilded Age’ gets good
It was the year HBO period drama “The Gilded Age” stopped being a dull “Downton Abbey”-in-New-York wannabe and got addictive. So. Much. Drama. Gladys Russell’s (Taissa Farmiga) forced marriage to an English duke; Peggy (Denée Benton) getting engaged; Marian (Louisa Jacobson) botching her own engagement; Oscar (Blake Ritson) losing his lover and coming this close to admitting he’s gay; George and Bertha Russell (Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon) on the brink of a d-i-v-o-r-c-e. I’m chomping at the bit for Season 4. — D.Y.
‘Heated Rivalry’ steams up the small screen
Is “Heated Rivalry” the hottest Canadian TV series ever? It seems like an easy yes, not just because of the steaminess of its content — two male hockey players embark on a secret and very sexy romance — but because of the fever pitch of the reaction to this Crave show, which has been renewed for a second season.
If you haven’t read the raves (and the odd pan), then you clearly don’t spend any time online. It’s not that Canada hasn’t had other shows that got the world buzzing. “Schitt’s Creek,” for instance, has become shorthand for a Canadian series that made it big in the U.S. and beyond. And “North of North” has landed on best TV of 2025 lists beyond our borders. But neither of those series was an out-of-the-gate hit like “Heated Rivalry,” which was picked up before its Canadian debut by American streaming service HBO Max — allegedly because U.S. fans of the book it’s based on were so desperate to watch — and has since inked streaming deals in Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Speaking of the book, the drama’s popularity has also propelled Rachel Reid’s novel — part of her “Game Changers” series of gay hockey romances — onto bestseller lists for the first time. And if celebrating these Canadian creative successes wasn’t enough, let’s also applaud the show’s creator, “Letterkenny” scribe and “Shoresy” producer Jacob Tierney, for giving us a queer romance that doesn’t stint on the sex, but whose heroes are also compelling characters rather than the two-dimensional stereotypes that often count as LGBTQ content. So it’s elbows up and hockey sticks high for lovers Shane and Ilya. Long may we swoon. — D.Y.
A star is reborn
The Shaw Festival’s 2025 season was — to put it plainly — a dud. But if there was one bright spot in the lineup, it was most definitely Virgilia Griffith, marking her Shaw Festival debut with a luminous star turn in Pearl Cleage’s “Blues for an Alabama Sky.”
Not only was it one of Griffith’s most virtuosic performances to date, it was also the best performances I saw onstage all year: a quietly intense portrait of a woman swept up in a cyclone of her own self pity.
In the 1995 drama, Griffith played Angel Allen, a down-on-her-luck jazz singer who’s been sacked from her job, dumped by her boyfriend and spat out by the Harlem Renaissance.
It was a performance made all the more impressive given that the material was by no means a star vehicle — a play that was laboured and overstuffed, with too many unbelievable twists. But in Griffith’s capable hands, none of that mattered. — Joshua Chong
Beyoncé (finally) wins album of the year Grammy
Fifth time’s the charm! After coming up just short (some would say robbed) in the Grammy’s category four times since her famous loss to Taylor Swift in 2010, Beyoncé finally won the big one in February with “Cowboy Carter,” her first official foray into the country genre. The pop legend told NPR that the inspiration for the album was sparked by feeling unwelcome in country spaces. Her lead single, “Texas Hold ‘Em,” made her the first Black woman to ever top Billboard’s country chart. — Savannah Ridley
‘Hamnet’ and ‘One Battle After Another’ go head-to-head
“Oft expectation fails, and most oft there where most it promises,” Shakespeare cautioned in “All’s Well That Ends Well.” The lesson haunts awards season as reliably as a bad sequel.
Consider “Hamnet.” Chloé Zhao’s Shakespeare-inspired drama seemed destined to waltz off with best picture at the March 15 Oscars until Paul Thomas Anderson crashed the party with “One Battle After Another.”
“Hamnet,” starring Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal, premiered to reverent applause at the Telluride Film Festival, then took TIFF’s People’s Choice Award, a golden harbinger of the Oscar. (Zhao’s 2020 film, “Nomadland,” was nominated for six and won for best picture, actress and director.) The story of the grief that birthed “Hamlet” felt like destiny wrapped in Elizabethan linen.
Then Anderson decided to skip the fests and go rogue. “One Battle After Another” stormed into theatres, a sprawling, combustible epic about revolutionaries and reactionaries, with Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn and newcomer Chase Infiniti sparking off one another like Molotov cocktails. Critics from Toronto, New York and L.A. crowned it best of the year; the freewheeling National Board of Review agreed. The film now leads the Critics’ Choice Awards race with 14 nominations and the Golden Globes with nine. “Hamnet,” suddenly all too mortal, trails with 11 and six.
All of which proves the Bard had a point about expectations — they’ll make fools of us every time. Yet Oscar season is a sucker for late plot twists. This time last year, Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner, “Anora,” looked spent after so-so critics’ ballots, followed by a single Critics’ Choice win (best picture) and a Golden Globes shutout in January. Then came the Hollywood ending at the Academy Awards: five Oscars, including best picture, for Baker’s $6-million indie.
Could “Hamnet,” my favourite film of the year, pull off a similar resurrection? Maybe. But it and “One Battle After Another” still have challengers — “Sinners,” “Sentimental Value” and “Marty Supreme” among them — eager to take them on.
The Oscars race is shaping up as a proper drama of its own, filled with ambition, rivalry and that most treacherous of forces: expectation itself. — Peter Howell
‘Sinners’ — a winner on the big screen
Forget about the latest “Avatar”: this supersized, blood-soaked, Depression-era vampire thriller was the year’s best argument for the big-screen experience. The YouTube PSAs featuring director Ryan Coogler waxing ecstatic about various exhibition formats and the importance of differently sized perforations in the film strip fused technological jargon with evangelical zeal. For Torontonians who ventured out of the downtown to core to find IMAX 70-mm screenings, the sheer scale of dynamism of Coogler’s image-making proved worth the drive to Vaughn.
Between Michael B. Jordan’s adroit dual performance as identical twin entrepreneurs — one naughty, one nice, both with their eyes on the prize — and the creepy, resonant metaphor equating bloodsuckers with the forces of cultural appropriation, “Sinners” delivered the goods, leveraging shock against sociology beneath a brilliantly curated soundtrack of jazz and blues standards.
Coogler now has a blank cheque for life; his passion project’s outsized box-office success despite the lack of any previous IP was one of the happiest Hollywood stories of the year. — Adam Nayman
Canadian artists get their elbows up
As the saying goes, few things can unite a nation like a common enemy.
During Donald Trump’s first term as U.S. president, Canadians seemed comfortable playing the role of the concerned neighbour, watching from a safe distance as he wreaked havoc south of the border. That attitude shifted dramatically at the start of 2025, when a newly re-elected (and newly emboldened) Trump began threatening to annex Canada and turn the country into the “51st state.”
Whether these were genuine threats or hollow expressions of brinkmanship amid an escalating trade war, I leave to the political analysts to determine. But for those living in the Great White North, Trump’s rhetoric became a galvanizing force, inspiring Canadians of all stripes to come together in defence of their sovereignty; to revitalize our sense of patriotism; to boycott American goods and support homegrown companies; to swap our “sorries” with various four-letter words. All that was missing was a catchphrase.
In March, Toronto-born comedian Mike Myers appeared on “Saturday Night Live.” As the credits rolled, Myers undid his vest to reveal a T-shirt with the words “Canada is not for sale.” Looking into the camera, he mouthed the words “elbows up” — a reference to hockey legend Gordie Howe’s aggressive style of defence. The clip went viral, inaugurating what we now call the “Elbows Up” movement, and prompting other Canadian artists and celebrities to embrace this prickly new version of national pride.
That same month, Blue Rodeo frontman Jim Cuddy performed “We Used to Be the Best of Friends,” a song inspired by Trump’s tariff threats, at a massive “Elbows Up” rally in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. By the spring, rock legend Neil Young started taking shots at Trump from both the stage and the streets. And by the fall, a group of high-profile authors and filmmakers, including Margaret Atwood, Omar El Akkad, Atom Egoyan and Jay Baruchel, penned essays for an anthology titled “Elbows Up!: Canadian Voices of Resilience and Resistance.”
As we enter 2026, Trump’s annexation threats have receded, though Canadians remain anxious about tariffs and other forms of economic and political uncertainty. But if there’s a silver lining to these chaotic 12 months, it’s the reminder that we’re ultimately all on the same team (except Wayne Gretzky). — Richie Assaly
The Coldplay couple unites the world
Memes come and memes go. In our hyperdigital age, most crop up for a day or two, then quickly melt away forever, like a tentative layer of snow following an early winter snowstorm in Toronto. But once in a blue moon, a meme rises above the ephemera of the doomscroll, spreading like a benign virus to every corner of the globe, bringing with it laughter and joy that somehow transcends borders, language and class.
It was July in Foxborough, Mass., where tens of thousands had gathered for a Coldplay concert. Midway through the show, during what the band calls the “Jumbotron Song,” cameras scanned the audience for smiling fans, and eventually landed on a cuddled-up middle-aged couple. Almost immediately, their faces changed. The woman’s jaw dropped, and she spun away from the camera, her hands covering her face. The man ducked out of the frame. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re just very shy,” Martin quipped to the audience. And, yeah, it was an affair.
It was at this moment that the “Coldplay couple” was born. Within hours, the clip had gone ultra-viral, uniting the world in a shared sense of common mirth and schadenfreude — the latter amplified once it was revealed that the man was the CEO of a billion-dollar tech company, while the woman was in charge of the company’s human resources.
Viewed hundreds of millions of times on social media, the clip became the subject of countless memes and kiss-cam parodies at sporting events, while the couple themselves were immortalized with T-shirts and Halloween decorations. In a darker turn, the couple was also the subject of public shaming, even death threats. Months later, most of us have forgotten the details that emerged in the wake of the scandal. But the all-too-human moment that gave birth to the meme will live on forever. — R.A.
‘Too Much’ is the funniest show of the year
Lena Dunham scored a generation-defining hit with the millennial touchstone “Girls” — and hadn’t produced anything to equal it since it ended in 2017. Until now. The writer-director-actor came roaring back with “Too Much,” one of the best shows of the past few years, which is uproariously funny, swooningly romantic and heart-tuggingly sad. Fearless Meg Stalter leads a packed cast that includes dreamboat Will Sharpe as her quirky paramour, along with Richard E. Grant, Naomi Watts, Rhea Perlman, Andrew Rannells, Rita Wilson and Adèle Exarchopoulos, plus guest turns we wouldn’t dream of spoiling. While we’re wistful there’s only one go-round with these characters (Dunham felt a single season was all the story needed), we’re grateful for those 10 exquisite episodes. — Briony Smith
A wig steals the show
This was a big year for memorable costumes, from Bob’s ratty bathrobe in “One Battle After Another” to the twins’ matching ensembles in “Sinners.” Breakout horror villain Aunt Gladys from “Weapons” came out on top, fit-wise, thanks to her smeared red lipstick, ghostly pallor and oversized eyewear. Her crowning glory? A flaming-red curly wig that abruptly ends in a set of baby bangs more terrifying than any jump scare, and is destined to feature in Halloween costumes for years to come. — B.S.
