The Best Hindi Streaming Shows of 2025

2025 has been yet another towering reminder that the finest Hindi-language storytelling continues to thrive on streaming. Many of the shows on this list rank among the very best we’ve seen since the streaming era kicked off almost a decade ago. These are distinctive, hopeful, ambitious clutter-breakers that defy convention, push boundaries, and embody what Indian streaming was always supposed to champion.

So, in no particular order — from sincere sports dramas to contemplative crime thrillers to inventive “shockumentaries” — here’s a list of the best Hindi shows of 2025.

1) Black Warrant (Netflix)

Black Warrant started the year with a bang, giving many of us hope. The tremendously crafted seven-episode series, created by Vikramaditya Motwane and Satyanshu Singh, follows the harrowing, haunting, and hardening experiences of Sunil Kumar Gupta (an excellent Zahan Kapoor), newly appointed assistant superintendent jailer at Tihar Jail in the early ’80s.

Part bleak workplace drama, part coming-of-age saga, and part friendship story, the narrative approaches Tihar as a microcosm of our society, using the lives of guards and inmates to examine the staggering corruption and indifference of our deeply fractured justice system. Black Warrant refuses to conform to conventional crowd-pleasing structures and feels like the kind of show that gets made against all odds — despite the system rather than because of it. The kind of series you’re just glad somehow exists.

2) Paatal Lok Season 2 (Prime Video)

The second season of Sudip Sharma’s landscape-defining Paatal Lok is among the most stunning pieces of storytelling to emerge from Indian streaming. With its refined sophomore outing, the series finds the coveted middle ground between arresting and meaningful — unputdownable, urgent storytelling paired with stirring philosophy.

In Sudip Sharma’s bleak, contemplative worlds, a murder investigation is merely an excuse to dive into the dark heart of the nation and examine the fractures in our society. In his work, the politics is the place is the plot. And then there are the indescribable highs of watching one of our finest actors deliver one of modern Hindi cinema’s greatest creations: Jaideep Ahlawat as Hathi Ram Chaudhary, the tragic lone warrior in an indifferent system who refuses to give up the good fight, even while knowing the war is already lost.

3) Black White & Gray - Love Kills (SonyLIV)

It wouldn’t be a stretch to say we haven’t seen anything quite like writer-director Pushkar Sunil Mahabal’s dazzlingly inventive Black White And Gray emerge from Hindi cinema. This playful, clutter-breaking “true crime” thriller is a triumph of form, plotting, and subtext — and some of the most fun I’ve had watching anything this year.

Across six deliciously bingeable episodes, the series uses the language and packaging of a true-crime docu-series to mount a compelling murder mystery, while interrogating our willingness to blindly submit to well-packaged media narratives. The thrill lies not just in following the investigation, but in investigating the show itself — constantly questioning what is true and what isn’t. This is one of the coolest, most distinctive, and most enjoyable Indian streaming shows in recent memory, keeping us on edge right up to that unforgettable final frame. And even then, the question lingers: did he do it?

4) Khauf (Prime Video)

Khauf, from creator Smita Singh, is the kind of singular, distinctive storytelling we always hoped streaming would enable. Despite its ghosts, spirits, and supernatural flourishes, nothing here is as bone-chilling as placing us on a bus in Delhi with a young woman pressed against a sea of men.

When the series simply follows Madhu — played by a terrific Monica Panwar — navigating suffocating public spaces, it becomes genuinely terrifying. Long walks down dark alleys. Metro tunnels at night. Strangers offering lifts. The constant feeling of being followed. The exhausting vigilance. The supernatural almost feels quaint compared to the everyday horrors of the city.

What is the relentless experience of being stalked, watched, objectified, commodified, belittled, and unsafe — something women live with daily — if not a slowly unfolding horror narrative? To watch Khauf is to momentarily experience what it means to live in fear.

5) Real Kashmir Football Club (SonyLIV)

The achingly sincere Real Kashmir Football Club follows the true story of two men, played by Mohammad Zeeshan Ayyub and Manav Kaul, who set out to start Kashmir’s first-ever professional football club. It’s a heartfelt underdog sports drama that finds its strength in patience, examining the nuts and bolts of building a team and a club from scratch.

Refusing to compress a difficult, messy journey into a rousing montage or package itself as a conventionally “sexy” sports drama, the series uses football as a lens to explore the lives, challenges, hope, and spirit of the people of Kashmir. If you’ll excuse a brief sporting metaphor switch, with this one SonyLIV lands yet another home run.

Special Mentions

• SonyLIV’s The Hunt — Nagesh Kukunoor’s gripping take on a historic investigation delivers a well-plotted thriller, a terrific ensemble, and a remarkably brave final episode.

• Netflix’s Bads of Bollywood — for being one of the rare shows this year that actually knew how to have fun, delivering moments of comedy gold we won’t soon forget.

• SonyLIV’s Maharani Season 4 — for its impressive consistency and for remaining this thrilling and watchable even four seasons in.