One of my least favorite trends in the TV business is the "two season straight-to-series" order. After the conclusion of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," Amazon's confidence in Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino was so high that they ordered two seasons of their next creation, "Etoile," before a single episode had been produced. The show was delightful and ambitious, set in both New York and Paris with their whipsmart dialogue in both English and French, but it was a hard sell, and Amazon backed out of making a second season mere weeks after the first premiered. Lou de Laage and Gideon Glick made two extremely temperamental and stubborn artists so much fun to watch, the beauty of the choreography and cinematography always offset by the warring personalities and screwball dialogue. 

Andre Braugher may be the best actor of his generation who did all his notable work on the small screen, and it's doubly sad that he died before completing all his scenes for "The Residence," although Giancarlo Esposito did a fine job replacing him in the role. Even without Braugher, though, "The Residence" is a loopy little jaunt, a standout even in a television landscape that's currently full of comedy/mysteries. By far my favorite thing to come out Shondaland's lucrative Netflix deal, although I guess it struggled to find an audience by virtue of not being the usual Shonda Rhimes soap opera. 

The Scottish series "Dept. Q" takes on a familiar old trope -- a talented detective experiences some personal setbacks and gets assigned to pursue cold cases as he gets his life back together -- and elevates it with the quality of the writing (from Out of Sight screenwriter Scott Frank) and the acting (Matthew Goode, Chloe Pirrie, Kelly Macdonald, and others). I thought this would be a one-off like Frank's last great Netflix creation, "The Queen's Gambit," so I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was renewed for a second season. 

The fact of the matter is, "The Pitt" probably wouldn't exist if Noah Wyle and two "ER" producers hadn't first attempted to reboot "ER," before negotiations with Michael Crichton's estate broke down and Warner Bros. decided to make another show about an emergency room with the same team. A lot of people don't like that Crichton's widow is suing over "The Pitt" being similar to "ER," and obviously Crichton doesn't own the medical drama genre, but personally, I wouldn't mind if Warner Bros. had to throw them some cash or add his name to the credits, it's a weird gray area. That said, I think "The Pitt" is a better show for getting to have its own identity, taking place in a different city that's not depicted on TV as often. Wyle got to inhabit a new character that's not just Dr. Carter with a different name, surrounded with a great cast of new faces as well as Shawn Hatosy suddenly getting the breakout role of his career after 30 years as a journeyman actor. And the hour-to-hour real time format was just brilliant and made the whole thing even more engrossing. 

Another big-hearted character-driven sitcom, this one exec produced by one of the kings of the form, the late great Norman Lear. And I'm really glad this turned out to be the last project to go out with Lear's name on it instead of that terrible animated "Good Times" reboot. George Wallace is one of the funniest guys on the planet and Laverne Cox is a great foil for his avuncular charisma.

Peacock recently declined to renew "Poker Face," and Rian Johnson made a weird statement about shopping around a third season where Peter Dinklage would take over Natasha Lyonne's role as Charlie Cale. At this point Johnson's track record is strong enough that I believe that would still be worth watching, but I'm definitely going to miss the Lyonne-led version of the show. 

11. Dying For Sex (Hulu) 

"Dying For Sex" revels in the kinky titillation of the story of Molly Kochan, who relentlessly pursued sexual satisfaction in her final years with a terminal cancer diagnosis. But it's really a story of the friendship between Molly (Michelle Williams) and Nikki (Jenny Slate) driven by two great performances, poignant and bittersweet and funny, but in some ways refreshingly thorny and unsentimental. 

When a new show becomes an awards magnet, there's usually one actor that gets all the glory, and understandably Jean Smart got all the awards for "Hacks" at first. But this year Hannah Einbender finally got an Emmy for the fourth season, which was very deserved, and she used the hell out of her acceptance speech platform to boot. 

I wish A24 had the same imprimatur of excellence in television that it does in movies. I don't know anybody who watches this great show starring real life sisters Kat Sadler and Lizzie Davidson, but it's a dryly funny gem. 

A lot of people complain that streaming has killed the 20+ episodes a year structure for most of their favorite shows, but I'm glad that there's a few great network shows still going, "Abbott Elementary" chief mong them, that prove that it's still possible to do 22 episodes a season at the highest level. I also like that Ava's been humanized a little bit over time, I don't think the show would work as well if she just kept getting worse and more selfish, and Janelle James is so good at keeping that character absurd yet realistic. 

A long wait between the first and second season of a show can really stall its momentum, and some really excellent shows have never recovered from the extended pauses caused by the guild strikes or COVID. Fortunately, the nearly three year wait for the second season of "Severance" seemed to work in its favor and it went from critical favorite to genuine hit. PG County's own Tramell Tillman really got to become a star this year, but my favorite part of this season was the love triangle between Dylan G.'s innie, Dylan G.'s outie, and Dylan G.'s wife, just such a strange and entertaining use of the show's premise. 

I loved the first season of Peacemaker and initially felt a little letdown by the second season -- the new theme song's not as good, and it felt like they really rushed through developing John Cena's title character from a violent antihero into a full-on good guy. But the second season turned out to be pretty great, especially after they went for the big crazy twist in the sixth episode, "Ignorance is Chris."

Morwenna Banks has one of the more charmingly varied resumes in television -- she was a "Saturday Night Live" cast member for a few episodes, she's the voice of Peppa Pig's mother, and she developed another Mick Herron novel into a British crime series for Apple TV after the success of "Slow Horses," which she also worked on. I also love seeing Darren Boyd, who's very funny on the Apple TV comedy "Trying," play such a completely different kind of dramatic villain on "Down Cemetery Road." 

AMC developed the sci-fi comedy "Demascus" with a "Breaking Bad" producer before deciding not to air it and make the show a tax writeoff. The free streaming service Tubi is kind of a punchline, but they deserve a lot of credit for picking up this show after it was on the shelf for two years, it's definitely an odd little niche thing but I really enjoyed it. 

For a long time, most cable and streaming shows had a standard 8 or 10 episodes per season, maybe 12, but generally it was always an even number, unless some kind of production hiccup required them to add or abandon an episode. But every season of "The Righteous Gemstones" had 9 episodes, and it felt like the right number every time (although I personally didn't love that flashback episode without the main cast that opened season 4). 

45. Stumble (NBC)

46. Only Murders In The Building (Hulu)

47. Long Bright River (Peacock)

70. Saturday Night Live (NBC)

71. Invincible (Amazon Prime) 

72. Mo (Netflix)

97. I Love LA (HBO)

98. Have I Got News For You (CNN)