The Top 10 Hacking TV Shows In 2025

Are you looking for the best hacking TV shows to watch in 2025?

In this blog, we're counting down the 10 must-watch hacking series to binge this year. Whether it’s cracking systems to save the world, or causing just enough chaos to keep it interesting, these shows will leave you thinking, “Damn… I wish I could do that.”

They’re fast-paced, high-stakes, and packed with keyboard wizardry and, of course, always racing against the clock. Let's dive in.

Jump To The #1 Best Hacking TV Show To Watch In 2025

#10. CSI: Cyber (2015-2016)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 5.5 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 34% (Critics), 37% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

Kicking things off is CSI: Cyber.

Think of it as a spinoff of the original CSI series, but instead of focusing on traditional forensics like trace evidence and ballistics, it centers around cybercrime investigations. It swaps the microscopes for malware and replaces DNA with digital footprints.

FBI Special Agent Avery Ryan leads a specialized cybercrime task force hunting down digital criminals across the country.

The cases are weird and wonderful, ranging from ransomware in baby monitors to cyberstalkers hacking smart fridges.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

CSI: Cyber does dial up the Hollywood drama of tech drama and flashy interfaces, but in doing so, it highlights real-world threats. We're talking about DDoS attacks, identity theft, mobile malware, IoT hijacking, and the digital breadcrumbs we all leave behind. Sure, it's exaggerated, but the dangers are legit.

The show highlights the profound impact of technology on our lives and how criminals exploit this dependence.

#9. StartUp (2016-2018)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.8 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: Not Available (Critics), 89% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

This one is for all you entrepreneurs out there who are thinking about launching a start-up.

StartUp is all about three unlikely allies. A desperate banker, a brilliant coder, and a Haitian gang leader, who together end up forming the most chaotic tech startup imaginable.

Their goal is to launch GenCoin, a decentralized cryptocurrency that’s intended to revolutionize finance and challenge the status quo. Of course, it doesn’t go smoothly. Because instead of investors and press conferences, they’re dealing with FBI agents, gang wars, stolen servers, and more shady backers than a phishing email on payday.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

StartUp may be crypto-oriented, but make no mistake, the hacking in it is very real. From encrypted wallets and code breaches to rogue agents and digital sabotage. This show dives into how fragile tech empires really are when someone smarter (or meaner) wants to rip them apart.

It's got stolen IP, compromised servers, insider threats, and a whole lot of shady backdoor dealings, aka, a Tuesday in the cybersecurity world.

It’s not just “let’s hack the mainframe!” nonsense either. The risks are realistic, the coding isn’t painful to watch, and it captures the paranoia of building something that every hacker wants to burn to the ground.

#8. Halt and Catch Fire (2014-2017)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 8.4 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 90% (Critics), 91% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

This show rewinds the clock to the 1980s, back when the internet was just a weird idea and personal computers were still the size of microwave ovens.

The show follows a scrappy bunch of misfits. A rebellious coder, an ex-IBM salesman, a visionary engineer, and a few others, all trying to disrupt the tech industry before it even knows it needs disrupting.

It’s about chasing innovation, blowing up norms, and occasionally torching your personal life in the process.

Before Silicon Valley had billionaires, it had rebels with floppy disks and something to prove.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

Halt and Catch Fire isn't your modern-day hacking show.

It’s a deep dive into hardware hacking, firmware manipulation, reverse engineering, and good old-fashioned brute-force tech sabotage. The real deal stuff.

We see BIOS reverse engineering, firmware manipulation, homebrew computers, BBS systems, and code that actually means something.

These characters aren’t just dreamers. They're builders, breakers, and system benders. If you want to understand how the tech rebellion began, this is your time machine.

#7. Devs (2020)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.6 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 82% (Critics), 78% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

Devs is a mind-bending, tech-thriller that asks the question: "What if your employers, could predict every move you made? Right up to your last breath?"

The story follows Lily Chan, a software engineer who works at a tech giant called Amaya. The company runs a secret division called “Devs” that’s uses quantum code to simulate reality with terrifying precision.

When Lily’s boyfriend mysteriously dies after being promoted to Devs, she starts digging. What she uncovers is a mix of terrifying math, creepy cult-like leadership, and a machine that knows what you're going to do before you do.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

The hacking in Devs isn’t your typical keyboard-mashing chaos, it’s philosophical, predictive, and deeply unsettling. Think system-level manipulation, surveillance overreach, encryption-breaking, and code that doesn’t just spy on you, it forecasts your every move. Literally.

Lily Chan, is not your classic hoodie-wearing hacker, but make no mistake, she shreds through digital walls, rewires surveillance systems, and goes head-to-head with a company playing god with quantum code.

There’s hacking, corporate cover-ups, and existential dread, all wrapped in eerie silence and gold-plated tech bro vibes.

#6. 24 (2001–2010)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 8.4 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 87% (Critics), 87% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

This show follows Jack Bauer, an agent in the Counter-Terrorist Unit (CTU), who spends every waking moment trying to prevent catastrophic events. Like the name suggests, 24 plays out in real time, each season covers a single 24-hour day, with each episode representing one intense hour.

Jack keeps busy trying to prevent destructive events like political assassinations, cyberterrorism, bioweapons, and nuclear threats.

He's forced to bend the rules, go rogue at times, and make impossible moral decisions. All while the clock is ticking in the background. Literally.

It's gritty, suspenseful, and rarely lets you catch your breath.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

Enter Chloe O'Brian.

She is a hacking powerhouse. Her character brings the hacking muscle to the show. She handles the digital battlefield, and Jack handles the physical one. She effortlessly does things like decrypting files, rerouting satellites, spoofing IPs, and pulling off digital miracles while barely looking up from her screen.

Together they make the ultimate cyber-physical tag team!

They cracked encrypted networks, intercepted live comms, and uploaded malicious code faster than you could say "threat neutralized."

#5. Arrow (2012–2020)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.5 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 68% (Critics), 59% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

Arrow is primarily a DC superhero action series, centered on billionaire playboy-turned-vigilante Oliver Queen. He returns home after being presumed dead, trades the party life for a hood, a bow, and a long list of corrupt people who seriously need an attitude adjustment. It’s moody, action-packed, and filled with masked vigilantes, family drama, and rooftop monologues.

The show kicks off a whole universe of caped chaos and slowly pulls in time travel, magic, and enough brooding to power Gotham for a year.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

So while Arrow isn't a “hacking show” per se, it does feature one of the slickest hackers on TV, Felicity Smoak.

While Oliver is off punching his way through problems, Felicity’s the one actually solving them with a laptop, a caffeine addiction, and the attitude of someone who knows every one of your passwords.

She breaks into secure servers, writes custom malware, decrypts government databases, fakes identities, tracks GPS pings, and even disables missiles mid-flight (because why not?) Her hacks are quick, snappy, and laced with sarcastic one-liners.

#4. Criminal Minds (2005-Present)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 8.1 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: Not Available (Critics), 83% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

Criminal Minds is a series that follows the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). The team dives into the psychology of criminals, profiling criminals, predicting their next move before they strike again.

They cover a range of cases from serial killers to cult leaders, kidnappers to all round creeps.

It's part psychological deep dive, part procedural thriller, and always just a little too believable.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

Even though Criminal Minds isn't a hacking tv show, while the team is out kicking down doors and staring at murder boards, Penelope Garcia is back at HQ doing the real magic, funneling the entire internet through her keyboard at lightspeed.

She deep dives into satellite feeds, criminal records, and encrypted comms like it’s nothing.

You name it. Traffic logs, dark web forums, bank logs and social networks. She's in.

She doesn’t just hack systems... she hacks the plot, saving the day before half the team’s even found the whiteboard markers.

#3. Silicon Valley (2014-2019)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 8.5 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 94% (Critics), 93% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

Silicon Valley is about an awkward and anxious coder named Richard who creates a revolutionary data compression algorithm.

With an invention like this, he should be an instant millionaire, but instead, he is dragged into the cutthroat world of startups, where backstabbing CEOs, clueless investors, and tech bros in branded hoodies are all out to steal his idea.

Richard tries to build his company, Pied Piper, while constantly being sabotaged by the very ecosystem that’s supposed to support innovation.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

This is a comedy, but the show is soaked with accurate hacking references. We're talking techniques like social engineering, data breaches, scraping confidential code, building backdoors, and reverse engineering apps.

The characters even dabble in ransomware, DDoS attacks, and insider sabotage, all while the stakes are disguised with awkward silences and corporate satire. It also captures how tech founders sometimes have to “ethically gray” their way out of a crisis (or into one).

The show nails how fragile even the most brilliant software can be when egos, greed, and lazy security collide.

#2. Black Mirror (2011-Present)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 8.7 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 83% (Critics), 80% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

Black Mirror is a dark anthology series that rips into our love affair with technology. Especially the consequences of when it turns against us.

Every episode is a standalone “what if?” nightmare, where some shiny new tech either gets hacked, abused, or spirals so far out of control that society doesn’t stand a chance.

While the show often explores a smorgasbord of digital immortality, surveillance creep, and rogue AI, several episodes dig deep into the world of hacking, cyber intrusion, and digital sabotage.

The real threat isn’t the tech itself, but the people behind the keyboard.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

Not every episode is hacker-centric, but when Black Mirror leans into cybercrime, it doesn’t hold back. These episodes mirror (no pun intended) the darker side of real-world hacking like ransomware, hacktivism, surveillance tech abuse, and social engineering at its creepiest.

Here are some heavy-oriented hacking episodes:

• Shut Up and Dance: Hackers hijack a teen's webcam and witness him doing something compromising and blackmail him into following sinister instructions. It shows the dangers of mob-driven algorithms.
• The National Anthem: A hacker uses cyber intrusion and social media manipulation to hold a nation hostage with a grotesque demand targeting the Prime Minister.
• The Waldo Moment: A digital cartoon character becomes a political candidate, backed by invisible forces that use data manipulation and surveillance to steer public opinion.
• Men Against Fire: Soldiers’ brain implants are hacked to alter their perception, making them believe civilians are monsters. It’s a dystopian twist on military-grade augmented reality and how easily data can be weaponized when it's wired directly into your senses.
• Hated in the Nation: A tech company’s robotic bees, designed for ecological recovery, are hijacked by hackers and used to assassinate people based on social media votes. It’s a cyberpunk twist on targeted attacks and algorithmic justice.

#1. Mr Robot (2015-2019)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 8.5 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 94% (Critics), 93% (Audience)

What This Show Is About

Coming in at number one... Mr Robot! The undisputed king of hacker television and a personal favorite of mine.

Mr Robot is a psychological cyber thriller, about a young, unstable man named Elliot who works as a cybersecurity engineer by day. And by night, he is a vigilante hacker.

He's recruited by a mysterious leader of an underground group of hackers called fsociety.

Fsociety is led by an individual named Mr Robot, who asks Elliot to help destroy all records of consumer debt held by the megacorporation E Corp (or, as Elliot calls it, Evil Corp).

We're talking about wiping out every credit card debt, mortgage, loan... everything. Gone. Giving everyday people a fresh start. (If only.)

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

This show isn't just about hacking into networks and firewalls. It's also about hacking into people. The show delves into surveillance culture, corporate puppeteering, mental health unraveling, and that weird space where your inner voice might not be entirely your own.

The best part is that it's not all Hollywood fluff. The techniques used are directly from real-world penetration testing playbooks. Security professionals have praised the show for its accuracy in portraying the tech.

It's brilliantly dark, amazingly addictive, and terrifyingly familiar if you work in cybersecurity.

If you haven't watched it. Watch it!

You can thank me later.

Honorable Mention

The Hack (2025)

🎬 IMDb Rating: 7.4 | 🍅 Rotten Tomatoes: 69% (Critics), Not Available (Audience)

What This Show Is About

This one's fresh out of the gate and already turning heads. Over time, the ratings will likely grow.

The Hack is a fictional drama series that is set in the aftermath of a major government data breach. It follows a group of hacktivists, whistleblowers, and corporate insiders who expose corruption, surveillance abuse, and shady backdoor dealings, one zero-day at a time.

The tension escalates as these digital rebels navigate a world fraught with spyware, insider threats, and media manipulation.

How This Show Relates To Real-World Hacking

The Hack addresses some painfully honest themes, like mass surveillance, government snooping, and insider leaks. Rather than being on the sci-fi end of the spectrum, it focuses more on realistic threat vectors, such as spear phishing, USB payloads, metadata tracing, and social engineering. These are the tactics real hackers use when trying to bring down powerful institutions.

It's disturbingly plausible as it'll make you think twice about opening an email, question every "click here" link, and wonder if that intern with the hoodie is about to expose your secrets.

Wrapping Up

So there you have it! The top 10 hacking TV shows (and an honourable mention) featuring rogue coders, keyboard warfare, cyber vigilantes, and hours upon hours of screen time that will give your eyeballs a nice tan.

There's something for everyone, whether it's hacking into a government database, hijacking satellites, launching crypto startups from a garage, or rerouting missiles from a coffee shop's Wi-Fi. All these shows will remind you just how wildly dangerous and ridiculously cool hacking can be.

Some will make you paranoid. Others will teach you something. However, all of these will prompt you to change your passwords. Twice.

So grab the popcorn, get comfortable, and binge your way through the shadowy world of hackers, vigilantes, and digital chaos.