Wow, 2022 was a great year for TV and there’s so much I didn’t watch. There’s even more I enjoyed but wouldn’t consider “favorites” so I don’t list them here. And of course, there were a few series that I felt dipped in quality in their 2022 season so they didn’t make the list.
I’m going to group the shows by how I watched them. So, I guess I’ll also sort of be rating my favorite streaming platforms of last year as well.
Broadcast TV – Single Drunk Female (Freeform), What We Do in the Shadows (FX)
This black comedy is about a young woman moving back in with her mother and trying to rebuild her life after she flamed out as an alcoholic. It is a funny sitcom, but it also presents the consequences of drinking and alcoholism as more than just hijinks. But it doesn’t come across as an after-school special
Season Four felt like the vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows hitting its peak. Guillermo’s role expanded and we learned more about his character, Colin Robinson went through puberty, Nadja opens a vampire nightclub, Nandor gets his own genie, and Simon the Devious is back to get Lazlo’s cursed hat. Every episode was a highlight of the series.
Favorite Animes – Chainsaw Man, Spy x Family
Okay, yes there were the only two animes I watched in 2022 (haven’t caught up on My Hero Academia yet so maybe that would have been on here as well). But there was so much word of mouth about both these mangas/anime that I just had to check them out. And they didn’t disappoint.
Chainsaw Man’s adaption really captured the personalities of the manga’s characters. And while it would be impossible to match the detail of the manga’s drawings the anime made the feelings and desires of the character pop even more.
Spy x Family made me laugh more than any anime I can remember in quite some time. The three main characters are instant anime icons. And of course just top-notch animation, story-telling, and voice-acting.
Disney+ – Ms. Marvel
Everyone made a big deal about this being the first time a Marvel/Disney+ show focused on a Female of a Color, a Muslim, and a Pakistani-American. Yes, this could have just been the producers doing it to tout they were doing it. But it wasn’t just for optics, it ended up being one of the best shows on Disney+ and told a coming-of-age story that anyone could relate to. And did so by finally giving many people a heroine, family, friends, and community that reflected their own experiences.
Amazon Prime – the Boys
After the first two over-the-top seasons, it didn’t seem possible that there would be much more the Boys could skewer as a superhero satire. But the third season was the most irreverent, most graphic, and most incisive of them all. It’s probably the best season they’ll ever do, so I don’t see how they could top it yet again. But I’ve thought that before.
Peacock – Girls5Eva
Girls 5 Eva continues Tina Fey’s run of hilarious, many-jokes-per-minutes, silly parody shows. Like 30 Rock or Kimmy Schmidt what happens is so ridiculous it’s comical, but not so ridiculous to be unbelievable. And really, I think I’ll never forget “Lunch Lord” for the rest of my life.
Paramount+ – Inside Amy Schumer
Okay look, let’s get this out of the way – you either like Amy Schumer or you hate her and there are plenty of credible complaints about joke attribution in this show’s original run. But this rebooted season is different. It has a more diverse set of creators and is very clear about crediting a joke’s originator.
But more than that, when a sketch show only has a certain amount of episodes in a year, the hit-to-miss ratio is usually much higher. The number of sketches that hit is a way higher percentage than SNL just because of logistics. Also, the political satire is much sharper than both the original show’s run and the current SNL.
Paramount+ gets the edge as my favorite of all the streamers with only one show because I like to watch Serie A there sometime.
Netflix – Never Have I Ever, Stranger Things, Wednesday
Never Have I Ever continues to be a good Mindy Kaling-produced sitcom. Season 3 wasn’t as dramatic as the first season, or as funny as the second, but was a nice balance of both.
Stranger Things Season 4 links all the previous seasons together in a way that didn’t seem possible before. The possibility of an over-arching Big Bad and a mythology that brings the different storylines together explains why so many weird things keep happening in Hawkins. Crossing my fingers that the finale isn’t a letdown.
I went into Wednesday tentatively, as it didn’t seem like a good fit for the character or Tim Burton as a creator. Wednesday probably doesn’t work if you just consider it as a high school detective show. The actual mystery is just meh and the reveal is clumsily executed. But Jenna Ortega is perfect as Wednesday, and all the other actors elevate what could be rote roles. The cast is what keeps you coming back.
Hulu – Fleishman Is in Trouble, Only Murders in the Building, Reboot, Welcome to Wrexham
Fleishman Is in Trouble is probably the series that my wife and discussed and theorized about the most in 2022. I won’t spoil it here.
Only Murders in the Building Season two expanded the character list and the setting of the murder mystery plot. The detective part of the story wasn’t as satisfying, but it was funnier than ever.
Reboot is a show about reviving an old TGIF-type show on Hulu in modern times. Yes, it does feel pointedly updated, but it was also the best traditional comedy of the year.
Welcome to Wrexham sounds like a tough sell. A documentary about American celebrities buying a Welsh Soccer Team? Like we care about Ryan Reynolds having one less million dollars? But what it actually is about is the importance of AFC Wrexhman to the town of Wrexham and how the whole community is built around it. And about sports fandom in general. Tag yourself in “Types of Wrexham Supporters”.
HBO Max – the Flight Attendant, House of the Dragon, Peacemaker, the Sex Lives of College Girls, the Righteous Gemstones, Starstruck, the White Lotus
Ok, Harley Quinn would almost assuredly be on this list if I had caught up to the third season.
The Flight Attendant works because of Kaley Cuoco as the main character. A show about a flight attendant who gets caught up in multiple murders, international spies, the FBI, and the CIA mostly by accident could very easily lose the thread. But it is kept together by Cuoco and other grounded performances, that keep you from concentrating on how unbelievable the plot is.
House of the Dragon is my favorite show of 2022. It admittedly got off to a bit of a bumpy start, but by season’s end it really had everything we love about Game of Thrones – classic oneliners, conflicted characters we root for anyway, political intrigue over who deserves to rule, examination of family dynamics, and of course dragons. Hopefully, we’ll get more outright battles in future seasons and the creators don’t ruin the ending.
Peacemaker is yet another villain who becomes an anti-hero origin story. I’m honestly very tired of that trope, but this show is just so unafraid to go places that it’s worth it. And having clean-cut John Cena really lean into the Peacemaker character is quite a surprise. While the Boys is definitely skewering celebrities, action stars, and comic book franchises in general, Peacemaker is just so goofy and unafraid to make fun of its own franchise and itself.
The Sex Lives of College Girls is another show we only watched because it’s a Mindy Kaling show. We kept watching because it’s actually a good and funny show. No, I don’t think I really have anything in common with four female college roommates at an Ivy League school in 2022; but the writers have really made the audience invested in their stories and their relationships.
the Righteous Gemstones leaned into the crime/revenge plot in 2022. The criticisms of the hypocrisy of a rich preacher’s family weren’t nearly as pronounced as the characters became full-fledged characters instead of just parodies. But it worked as it got you more invested in the Gemstones themselves.
Starstruck is just a pleasant rom-com show. Of course, there’s the “main character self-sabotages herself because of her own issues” but the show doesn’t turn depressing as some other shows might.
The White Lotus season 2 was even more captivating than the first season. Are any of the characters “good”? No, but while the first season concentrated on the privileges of race and wealth, the Italian episodes really examine misogyny and sexuality. And I think it’s a more pointed commentary than the first season.
So much great stuff in 2022, and so much on HBO Max in 2022. I guess watch them before they’re taken down for tax write-offs!