My Top 100 TV Shows of 2022
1. Severance (Apple TV+)
As a filmmaker, Ben Stiller has largely fared better when he's done full-on comedy (Zoolander, Tropic Thunder) than with things that take themselves a little more seriously (Reality Bites, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty). But it feels like he's really reached a new level as a director in his recent TV work on "Escape At Dannemora" and especially "Severance." Sort of a droll office satire mixed with a bleak sci-fi hypothetical, with a surprisingly charming romance between Christopher Walken and John Turturro, "Severance" artfully doled out hints at the truths that had been hidden from characters whose entire lives had been split into two personalities, making the story a fascinating puzzle to unravel.
2. Abbott Elementary (ABC)
Every once in a while a new show seems to singlehandedly breathe new life into the old network sitcom format. And even though "Abbott Elementary" is a mockumentary in the style of "The Office" and "Modern Family" that's been in vogue for less than twenty years, it feels in some ways like a throwback, a workplace sitcom that mixes sweet earnest moments with a steady stream of barbed one-liners. Casting is everything in a show like this, and it feels like Tyler James Williams, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Janelle James, and Lisa Ann Walter arrived in Quinta Brunson's ensemble at the exact right moment in their careers to play the characters they'll hopefully be inhabiting for the next 5-10 seasons.
3. Station Eleven (HBO Max)
"Station Eleven" showrunner Patrick Somerville was previously a writer on "The Leftovers," the HBO series about a world where 2% of the Earth's human population had mysteriously vanished. And his adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's novel Station Eleven then operated as sort of an equally poignant inverse, a story about a world where a virus had wiped out all but 1% of Earth's human population. Watching a show about a far deadlier pandemic while living in the COVID age could have been a massive bummer, but instead it felt life-affirming, a beautiful vision of what can survive and persevere in the worst of circumstances. The first episode of "Station Eleven" aired the day before I posted my 2021 TV list, and it's already enjoyed a year of accolades, but I wanna make sure it doesn't get lost in that slippery area between two years.
4. What We Do In The Shadows (FX)
Probably the most consistently funny show of the last few years, and it felt like every week there was some deranged counterintuitive Matt Berry line reading that got stuck in every viewer's head. But the fourth season will probably be remembered as the season Laszlo raises the reincarnated child Colin Robinson, and the amazing payoff of the whole recurring "Go Flip Yourself" joke.
5. The Bear (FX/Hulu)
I thought Jeremy Allen White was a standout in the cast of "Shameless," but one season of "The Bear" seemed to do more to raise his profile than 11 seasons on his previous show, which is funny since they're practically the same character: a brooding, ambitious young guy in Chicago with a complicated family situation trying to work his way to a better life. But as someone who spent several years working in sweaty, noisy kitchens, I appreciate how much "The Bear" captured the the texture and the rhythms of that life like no TV show has really done before.
6. Amsterdam (HBO Max)
One of the biggest stories in television in the last few months has been the collapse of HBO Max: after a few years of racking up Emmys and word-of-mouth hits almost as reliably as HBO proper, the Warner Bros. corporate chiefs started slashing budgets, canceling already renewed shows, and pulling dozens of shows off the streaming platform, from animated cult hits like "Infinity Train" to even big hits like "Westworld." In retrospect, the canary in the coalmine was "Amsterdam," a beautifully understated show about the daily lives of a Mexico City musician and his actress girlfriend as they squabble, break up, and share custody of the stray dog they took in together. It disappeared from HBO Max just 3 weeks after it premiered, and I feel like one of the only people who got to see this absolute gem of a show. And then a major motion picture called Amsterdam came out a couple months later, which probably didn't help in terms of the show ever attaining any kind of renown.
7. Dead To Me (Netflix)
The storylines on "Dead To Me" are absurd as any soap opera, but the performances by Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini have always elevated the show and given its strange core friendship a real sense of emotional truth, from the first season it felt like a culmination of both actresses' careers. And it was really bittersweet that Applegate was able to continue filming the third and final season of the show after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and close out the narrative on one of her greatest roles.
8. Peacemaker (HBO Max)
When the deeply mediocre Suicide Squad came out in 2016, I would not have guessed that it would spawn a far more enjoyable sequel, and an even more enjoyable spinoff series. But John Cena is honestly one of the funniest people in show business right now and this is the perfect vehicle for him, with one of the best opening credits sequences in recent memory. The DC Extended Universe has given us a lot of dour, dimly lit movies, but it also gave us "The Peacemaker" and "Harley Quinn," a couple of the funniest shows on TV.
9. As We See It (Amazon Prime)
One of the best things about the expanded TV landscape is that there's more and more room for different groups of people to tell their own stories that didn't have many opportunities before. But it still felt unique and unprecedented for three actors on the autism spectrum to lead the cast of "As We See It" and give such a nuanced, messy, funny and heartfelt depiction of life for autistic adults trying to live their own lives with jobs and romantic relationships. It made me really sad to hear that Amazon canceled "As We See It" a couple months ago, but the one season they got to make is an incredible triumph.
10. Ramy (Hulu)
A lot of comedians star in autobiographical sitcoms where they play characters with the same name. But Ramy Youssef said recently that he regrets deciding to give the main character in his show his own name, which I get, because holy shit does this show get dark sometimes. I mean it's also a really funny show, and I don't assume that everything in this show is based in reality because of the name, but I kind of hope that less than 10% of the stories in "Ramy" are from his own life.
11. Mo (Netflix)
After giving Mohammed Amer a supporting role in "Ramy," Ramy Youssef co-created another show with Amer in the lead role. And while "Mo" sometimes went off the rails with attempts at a thrilling plot, it's in many ways just as good as "Ramy," as well as probably television's greatest love letter to the city of Houston .
12. The Dropout (Hulu)
2022 felt like the year that every network tried to make its own The Social Network, with shows like "WeCrashed" and "Super Pumped: The Battle For Uber" documenting the rise and fall of 2010s tech entrepreneurs. But "The Dropout" was by far the jewel of this trend, thanks in large part to Amanda Seyfried, whose performance as Elizabeth Holmes was so good that Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence backed out of playing Holmes in a competing feature project.
13. Julia (HBO Max)
Speaking of the difficulty of playing someone who's already been depicted onscreen well, Sarah Lancashire had her work cut out for her playing Julia Child just a decade after Meryl Streep did so in Julie & Julia. And while I never thought I'd watch two different fictionalized versions of Julia Child's life story, it's even more remarkable that the second one with the less famous lead would be the one I'd really connect with. David Hyde Pierce and Neuwirth are both also wonderful in "Julia," I'd love to see more of the "Frasier" cast getting together without Kelsey Grammer in tow.
14. Minx (HBO Max)
There are so many shows on TV in recent years following the A League Of Their Own formula (including a pretty good "League" series) of going back a few decades to tell the stories of fictional women trailblazers ("Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," "Physical," "GLOW") that I kind of wish we had more shows like "Julia" telling the stories of real women who did actual remarkable things in their time. But I think "Minx," the story of a fictional female pornographer in the 1970s, is one of the best of these kinds of shows because Joyce Prigger (Olivia Lovibond) is trying to do something completely different from what she ends up accomplishing, and the show gets a big comedic charge out of that, it's not some wish fulfillment thing about an imaginary pioneer. HBO Max recently canceled "Minx" while its second season was in production, but there still seems to be some optimism that we'll get to see it elsewhere.
15. The Kids In The Hall (Amazon Prime)
Music is more important to me than comedy, but it's probably closer than I realize, and The Kids In The Hall are my comedy Beatles, I worship the ground they walk on. And the long-awaited 6th season of the troupe's titular sketch show, after decades of tours, a movie, and a murder mystery miniseries, was something I didn't think I'd ever see. But it was a hell of a reunion album, with the Canadian quintet's signature subversive cultural commentary getting updated for the 2020s with, surprisingly, a lot more full frontal nudity.
16. Bust Down (Peacock)
We tend to think of Lorne Michaels as a staid patriarch of mainstream comedy, someone who's guided the careers of a lot of brilliant comedians and comic actors but maybe guided them towards safer and more formulaic work at times. Now and again, though, Lorne Michaels puts something fiercely original on television and lets a new generation express itself -- it happened 30 years ago with "The Kids In The Hall," and it happened this year with "Bust Down," a profane and remarkably quick-witted sitcom about four friends working shitty jobs in a casino. Sadly, we only got 6 episodes of "Bust Down" with the show's four creators and stars before one of them, Jad Knight, died at the age of 28 in July.
17. Yellowjackets (Showtime)
Only half of the first season of "Yellowjackets" had aired when I put it high up on my 2021 list, so it feels right to rate the second half the season highly as well. But I don't have much to add, I'm just excited to see the new episodes in March.
18. Hacks (HBO Max)
My #1 show of 2021 had a strong sophomore season. But it also felt like it completed a story arc for Deborah and Ava so satisfyingly that I wouldn't mind as much if it gets canceled soon in the ongoing HBO Max chaos, much as I'd like to spend more time with these characters.
19. Reboot (Hulu)
"Reboot" is, much like "Hacks," sort of a long joke about the generational differences between boomer comedy and millennial comedy, with Paul Reiser as the creator of a schticky popular old sitcom and "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend"'s Rachel Bloom as his estranged daughter who tries to reboot the show into something more contemporary. Just a fantastic cast, including Judy Greer, Johnny Knoxville, and Fred Melamed, although Calum Worthy's fantastically creepy depiction of a former child star's arrested development is probably the show's greatest performance.
20. Atlanta (FX)
A lot of shows wound up going years between seasons because of COVID-19, but "Atlanta" was off the air for almost 4 years, and decided to up the ante by airing its two final seasons in the same year, with creator Donald Glover hyping up "Sopranos"-level television during the long hiatus. Probably no show could live up to those kind of expectations being piled on it, but "Atlanta" put a lot of great stuff on the air this year, some of which resembled the first two seasons and some of which felt like the writers cramming one-off stories and experiments into the show that they might never get a chance to make into a movie or whatever.
21. The Old Man (FX)
Movies like The Expendables or the last decade of Liam Neeson's career attest to the enduring appeal of seeing really old guys play implausibly tough badasses. And it's extremely satisfying to see Jeff Bridges play a retired spy who can outsmart or just straight up destroy anybody. But "The Old Man" has great quiet stretches of simmering tension and slowly played out reveals, that really make the show gripping.
22. Gaslit (Starz)
HBO is running its own Watergate miniseries, "The White House Plumbers," next March, with a different cast playing many of the same people, and it'd really be a coup if HBO can't outshine the jobs Starz just did with this story. Julia Roberts and Sean Penn headlined "Gaslit," but I think the show had one of the strongest ensembles of 2022, and Betty Gilpin, Shea Wigham, Ahna O'Reilly, Hamish Linklater, and Chris Bauer deserve a lot of credit for breathing new life into a familiar story.
23. Andor (Disney+)
George Lucas deserves a lot of the blame for prequels becoming a bankable way to extend the life of a franchise, and we're now inundated with all sorts of deeply unnecessary prequel shows about the nurse from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or the parents of the brothers from "Supernatural." But a couple decades after The Phantom Menace, we're starting to get some pretty good Star Wars prequel stories, including Rogue One and the prequel to Rogue One, "Andor." Instead of a bunch of fan service and reverse engineered foreshadowing of things we've already seen, "Andor" fills out the world with its own fascinating chapter in the story, including Andy Serkis giving one of the best performances I've seen in anything Star Wars.
24. She-Hulk: Attorney At Law (Disney+)
Just as "Andor" and 'The Mandalorian" stand out among Disney+'s more forgettable Star Wars series, "She-Hulk: Attorney At Law" joins "WandaVision" as one of the few MCU series that has its own texture and sense of humor and offers something more than padding out the mythology. And somehow even established MCU characters like Mark Ruffalo's Hulk and Charlie Cox's Daredevil fit into the show's cartoony reality in ways that worked better than they had a right to.
25. Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty (HBO)
The Los Angeles Lakers became the hot topic of television in 2022, with HBO's big budget series prompting an official response in the form of a Hulu docuseries, as well as docuseries about Magic Johnson and Shaquille O'Neal and a forthcoming Kobe Bryant series on Netflix. Not being an NBA buff, I don't know what's true and what isn't in "Winning Time" (and it sounds like quite a bit wasn't), but Quincy Isaiah, Solomon Hughes, Tracy Letts, and Jason Clarke are fantastic. It's sad that the long Adam McKay/Will Ferrell partnership ended after McKay refused to cast Ferrell as Jerry Buss...but McKay was right, John C. Reilly needed to be in that role for the show to work.
26. Night Sky (Amazon Prime)
27. The Baby (HBO)
28. Russian Doll (Netflix)
29. Fleishman Is In Trouble (FX/Hulu)
30. South Side (HBO Max)
31. The English (Amazon Prime)
32. Barry (HBO)
33. Girls5Eva (Peacock)
34. The Righteous Gemstones (HBO)
35. Only Murders In The Building (Hulu)
36. The Boys (Amazon Prime)
37. Servant (Apple TV+)
38. The Offer (Paramount+)
39. Reservation Dogs (FX/Hulu)
40. The Time Traveler's Wife (HBO)
41. Bad Sisters (Apple TV+)
42. The Staircase (HBO)
43. Grace And Frankie (Netflix)
44. Better Things (FX)
45. Rap Sh!t (HBO Max)
46. We Own This City (HBO)
47. Billions (Showtime)
48. Welcome To Flatch (Fox)
49. Evil (CBS)
50. Wolf Like Me (Peacock)
51. So Help Me Todd (CBS)
52. A League Of Their Own (Amazon Prime)
53. Sex Lives of College Girls (HBO Max)
54. The White Lotus (HBO)
55. Rutherford Falls (Peacock)
56. Moon Knight (Disney+)
57. Trying (Apple TV+)
58. The Flight Attendant (HBO Max)
59. Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (Netflix)
60. The Resort (Peacock)
61. Ziwe (Showtime)
62. Breeders (FX)
63. Workin' Moms (Netflix)
64. Avenue 5 (HBO)
65. Shining Vale (Showtime)
66. The Rehearsal (HBO)
67. Life & Beth (Hulu)
68. The Afterparty (Apple TV+)
69. Flatbush Misdemeanors (Showtime)
70. Rick And Morty (Adult Swim)
71. Killing It (Peacock)
72. Starstruck (HBO Max)
73. The Gilded Age (HBO)
74. Search Party (HBO Max)
75. Home Economics (ABC)
76. Ghosts (CBS)
77. Mythic Quest (Apple TV+)
78. Los Espookys (HBO)
79. Never Have I Ever (Netflix)
80. The Patient (FX/Hulu)
81. Our Flag Means Death (HBO Max)
82. The Peripheral (Amazon Prime)
83. Westworld (HBO)
84. American Auto (NBC)
85. Last Week Tonight (HBO)
86. Made For Love (HBO Max)
87. Bob's Burgers (Fox)
88. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon Prime)
89. Harley Quinn (HBO Max)
90. The Legend of Vox Machina (Amazon Prime)
91. Women Who Rock (Showtime)
92. Saturday Night Live (NBC)
93. Loot (Apple TV+)
94. Inside Amy Schumer (Paramount+)
95. Rings of Power (Amazon Prime)
96. For All Mankind (Apple TV+)
97. Five Days At Memorial (Apple TV+)
98. Irma Vep (HBO)
99. Black Bird (Apple TV+)
100. Warrior Nun (Netflix)
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on Thursday, December 15, 2022 at 4:14 PM.
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