The 20 Best TV Shows of 2022
Reading Time: 8 minutesWho even leaves the house anymore? The good stuff’s on TV.
As movie theaters become ever more focused on four-quadrant blockbusters designed to offend as few people as possible, TV has become a playground for experimentation. At least for now—if the streaming service buuble didn’t pop in 2022, it’s definitely leaking. As Netflix stock cratered and HBO Max tried to figure out how it fits into a post-merger mega-corp, good shows are getting cancelled despite viewership that would have been fine a year ago. Even some major successes landing in the danger zone because no one wants to pay for them.
Still, for the moment, there’s treasure to be found both on streamers and even on networks, and hopefully that will remain the case even if the choices are likely to contract a bit in the next few years. The success of something like Squid Game last year also opened the door to imports—it certainly hasn’t escaped programmers that Americans will watch foreign shows if sufficiently motivated. Even if English-language productions do get a little less interesting going forward, there’s literally a whole world of TV out there just waiting for us.
This is the first of three Taika Waititi-adjacent shows on this list, so fair warning that there’s a lot of love for the kiwi filmmaker here, even though his mostly fine 2022 Thor movie won’t be on many best film lists. Reservation Dogs gets a lot of credit for its North American Indigenous representation (characters, cast, as well as behind-the-scenes), deservedly so given the lack thereof pretty much anywhere else on television. But it’s also a great show—a true dramedy that manages to bring both solid laughs and moments of heartbreak. It deals with issues and emotions common to rural teenagers who dream of going elsewhere, yet specific to these Oklahoma Rez teenagers. Rather than finding itself in the traditional sophomore slump, the second season actually got better.
Where to stream: Hulu
It’s been a while since we’ve had an Anne Rice adaptation on the screen, and this could easily have been yet another nostalgia trip in an era that’s already got plenty of that thank you very much. Instead, the AMC series takes the meat of Rice’s novel and rebuilds it from the ground up. Louis is played brilliantly by black actor Jacob Anderson, and the character’s skin color in 1910s New Orleans is near merely incidental: he both finds advantage in his family’s social status among the black elite, and discovers that his vampiric powers mostly serve to further set him apart from white society. Sam Reid plays Lestat, a seductive, cunning abuser in his codependent relationship with Louis; the queer subtext finally made text—what was daring to suggest in 1976 would feel like a missed opportunity in 2022. It’s appropriately sumptuous and sexual, a no-brainer for a successful Rice adaptation, but it’s also not afraid of gay villains and deeply unhealthy relationships, making for an impressively well-rounded bit of representation.
Where to stream: AMC+, Prime Video
Like Parks and Rec or The Office, Abbott Elementary has already established itself (in just its second season) as one of the great workplace rockumentary comedies, but has so far been the most consistent of the three. The Emmy win (and moving speech) for the great Sheryl Lee Ralph became a viral moment, but only because it was so well deserved by an actress representing an incredibly talented and brilliantly funny cast.
Where to stream: Hulu (all episodes), HBO Max (season one only), ABC (recent episodes)
The ‘tween-aimed Owl House is wrapping its three-season run shortly, ending as a show that’s both sweet and groundbreaking. Teenager Luz Noceda finds herself trapped in the Demon Realm, where she befriends Wendie Malick’s nonconformist witch, Eda Clawthorne, who undertakes to teach the non-magical Luz everything she can about magic. Busting open the doors for LGBTQ representation on Disney, the show is chock full of queer characters and has remained both creatively offbeat and adorable throughout its run.
Where to stream: Disney+
In a depressingly straight superhero-media landscape, Legends of Tomorrow soared past its rocky origins as a dumping ground for supporting characters from other DC shows and became something altogether weirder, and way more queer. Just in the last season, the show’s cast included multiple gay, bisexual, and ace characters among its line-up. That all alone is praiseworthy, but season seven saw the team of well-meaning losers traveling stylishly cross-country while trapped in the 1920s, trying not to break any timelines while doing things like accidentally killing J. Edgar Hoover. Unceremoniously cancelled (along with almost every other CW original program), the best of CW’s superhero shows went out with its usual blend of solid character work and goofiness.
Where to stream: Netflix
Given its (nebulously) Latin American setting, it’s tempting to describe the Los Espookys vibe as ‘magical realism,’ but it’s more apt to say that the show operates on a logic entirely its own, set in a world where the dreamy and weird are just parts of everyday life. The premise here is that group of teens use their love of horror movies to solve problems for people, often by scaring them when they need it most, in a world already full of the charmingly bizarre. Think Twin Peaks with more charm and (generally) lower stakes, although the gang does find itself involved in a presidential election by season’s end. The show was cancelled by HBO following this season, though there’s perhaps some hope of a revival elsewhere.
Where to stream: HBO Max
The sweet coming-of-age drama is the gay/bisexual teen love story that we all needed right about now: while it never soft-peddles the dangers of homophobia, it likewise doesn’t wallow in tragedy. Kit Connor and Joe Locke deliver two of the year’s most sensitive (and often funny) performances in a show that’s nearly all smiles without feeling treacly.
Where to stream: Netflix
The year’s other queer romantic comedy is rather less expected, the pitch being a wacky pirate comedy based (loosely) on the real-life story of Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby), a gentleman who took to piracy despite having barely been on a boat before. It plays as a bit of a workplace comedy with two men in the middle of midlife crises: Bonnet, and legendary pirate Blackbeard (Taika Waititi). Developing slowly over the course of the season, though, is what becomes a surprisingly effective love story that grounds the comedy in surprising ways.
Where to stream: HBO Max
One of TV’s sharpest, goofiest comedies pulled into 2022 with another great season, this time finding the gang all trying new things: Nadia opens a nightclub, Nandor makes a series of increasingly dumb wishes, Guillermo cares out a bit of independence, and Laszlo finds himself an unexpected father and, in one of the most memorable episodes of the season, winds up on his favorite home-makeover TV show. Of course, it all comes apart magnificently, making it very clear that none of these people is likely to change anytime soon.
Where to stream: Hulu
By the time the Internet was going apeshit over a Marvel character twerking with Megan Thee Stallion, it was clear that She-Hulk wasn’t just another MCU show, but had the makings of a cultural phenomenon. Where the Marvel movies have begun to feel stale, 2022’s TV offerings (this one and Ms. Marvel) offered plenty of heart and a playfulness that the blockbuster film slate struggles to match. Tatiana Maslany leads a stacked cast, but She-Hulk‘s secret weapon was, of course, Patty Guggenheim’s perpetually buzzed party girl Madisynn King. Jen sets herself apart from her raging cousin thusly: ‘I do it pretty much every day because if I don’t, I will get called emotional, or difficult, or might just literally get murdered. So I’m an expert at controlling my anger because I do it infinitely more than you.’ That established, it grounds the silliness that’s to come.
Where to stream: Disney+
Departing judge Megan Thee Stallion was missed in season three of the voguing reality competition show, but Keke Palmer more than ably steps up to join the judges of one of the tightest, most purely entertaining reality competition shows on TV. The judges (and guest judges like Leslie Jones, Kelly Rowland, and Issa Rae) are a huge part of the fun here, and the fights between them are almost as intense as the competition.
Where to stream: HBO Max
Perfectly satisfying as a one-off, this Natasha Lyonne Netflix series proved there was more to say with Nadia and Alan. While season one forced them into a time loop, here the two are confronting generational trauma by way of Quantum Leap-ing into the lives of their ancestors. What at first feels a little sloppier than that first series reveals itself, over time, to be both deeper and more empathetic, exploring the roots of psychological damage while coming to terms with the truth that the people who hurt us are often the most hurt themselves.
Where to stream: Netflix
If watercoolers were still a thing, this is the show that people would be chatting about—so instead it’s the one that’s all the talk of social media the morning after. Mike White’s show isn’t necessarily better in its second season than it was in its spectacular first, but it does cast its net a bit wider. More importantly, it seems to have caught on, which is glorious: in a media landscape in which everything is so carefully calculated to encourage people to buy, The White Lotus reminds us in a million different ways that the rich are terrible, we’re terrible for idolizing them, and that we all deserve what’s coming to us. It’s refreshing to find a show that’s as challenging as it is wildly entertaining.
Where to stream: HBO Max
It’s a tired phrase, but this is certainly the kind of TV that they don’t make anymore: a big, epic, sumptuous, drama that spans years and locales to tell a story that’s both big (the legacy Japan’s occupation of Korea) and intimate (at heart, it’s the story of a single woman’s life). It’s a stunningly beautiful technical achievement, full of brilliant performances (with Youn Yuh-jung at the head of great cast) and cinematography to beat anything else on TV. The opening credits alone are a feast.
Where to stream: Apple TV+
I mean, sure, it’s the most stressful show on TV—you can practically smell the sweat (and beef) in the rundown Original Beef of Chicagoland taken over by Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy Berzatto in the pilot, as he flees from the world of much finer dining. It’s a bit like a dramatized Kitchen Nightmares, and the stakes feel more real than real life. Maybe it’s just that we love watching people suffer, or maybe it’s the catharsis that comes from seeing people come through the fire (more or less); either way, it’s one of the year’s best (and most meme-able) new series.
Where to stream: Netflix
The sort of queasy, awkward, deliberately uncomfortable experiment Nathan Fielder is conducting here is not going to be to everyone’s taste, but when it works, it’s alternately howlingly funny and heartfelt. Fielder’s premise involves hiring actors to help people rehearse difficult real-life situations (reality and fiction blur very quickly). Manipulative? Messy? Eye-opening? …Yes? It’s fascinating TV, love it or hate it.
Where to stream: HBO Max
There’s a lot going on in Dan Erickson’s science fiction psychological thriller, in which the titular ‘severance’ refers to a chosen break between work and home memories. The production design is gorgeously stark and retro, while the show very smartly deals with the costs of avoiding grief, and, even more, paints a portrait of the ways in which our work/life balance has become absurdly, horrifically one-sided. The sci-fi trappings can’t obscure the ways in which this feels very contemporary.
Where to stream: Apple TV+
I’m not sure that we needed a $462 million adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s ephemera (that’s just for this first season), but I’m not sure that we didn’t, either. Given that fantasy in television has tended more toward the political machinations and inbreeding Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon, it’s refreshing to come across something a bit more old-school. It’s hard to see, from this early vantage point, how the planned five-season arc will play out, but the first chapter managed to introduce both new and familiar characters into a world that feels like Tolkien, but that with its own quirks and rhythms. Mostly, 2022 feels like a good time for stories of Hobbits (or, rather, Harfoots in this earlier period), and it doesn’t hurt that every penny spent looks to have made it to the screen.
Where to stream: Prime Video
Better Call Saul‘s conclusion represents something faintly miraculous: a spin-off that’s, in many ways, even better than the once-in-a-generation series that preceded it. On its own, it stuck the landing; as the conclusion(?) of a broader franchise? It’s a shocking achievement.
Where to stream: Netflix
A soap opera in southern gothic style set at a strip club in a Mississippi backwater? I was sold in the first season on the premise alone. Season two upped the stakes for the employees at The Pink, now struggling to make ends meet in the midst of the pandemic. The secret ingredient is creator and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Katori Hall, who very deftly blends juicy soap opera elements with an appreciation for the talents of these dancers, as well as deft commentary on the struggles of poor and Black Americans in the South. Season two’s biggest through line involves the complicated romance between nonbinary club owner Uncle Clifford and closeted rapper Lil Murda, a storyline that brings all the show’s many strengths to the fore. The season also saw a couple of appearances from secret sauce Megan Thee Stallion, who similarly boosted She-Hulk with just a few minutes of screen time.
Where to stream: Starz