The Best TV Shows of 2022

I always put incredible pressure on myself to come up with the perfect Top 10 list — which held doubly true this year, since it will be my final one at Variety. (Bittersweet, surreal, but true!) After scouring our TV calendar to make sure I didn’t miss anything and going back over my own reviews for inspiration, I ultimately had to go with my gut.

First up is “Mo,” a sly surprise from Netflix that I hope gets rewarded with a second season, stat. It’s not fair that in making a show that accurately reflected his own life, comedian Mo Amer was also issuing a challenge to most Netflix viewers to leave their preconceived notions at the door. Yes, he’s a Palestinian refugee struggling to get from one day to the next in Houston, Texas — and yes, his life and perspective on all the above is frequently crass, bizarre and very funny. As produced by Ramy Youssef and directed by Solvan Naim, “Mo” made for one of the most compelling and unlikely shows of the year. It established Amer as a singular comedic voice, made clever use of Houston as a setting, and drew attention to a people and experience that rarely gets much in the way of onscreen nuance. For as much as I love to complain about there being Too Much TV, a series like “Mo” provides a sharp reminder of why that’s not always a bad thing.

In going over which shows premiered this year, I was genuinely startled to realize that “Abbott Elementary” had kicked off in January. Quinta Brunson’s ABC comedy about a hardworking, charismatic group of Philadelphia teachers was so immediately realized, so immediately sure of what it was and where its strengths lie, that it feels like it’s been on for years rather than months. With that impressive feat in mind — and the fact that it’s become impossible for me to choose a favorite performance between Sheryl Lee Ralph, Janelle James, and Lisa Ann Walter in particular — there was no question that “Abbott” belongs on this list.

One of the best shows about being a frustrated teenager (/parent/nun) took its final bow this year in the perfectly strange, silly and profound way we’ve come to expect from it. Lisa McGee’s “Derry Girls” is so much fun, and so attuned to the particular humiliations and joys that come with growing up, that I ended up saving it for a time when I didn’t have to consider it “work” and could more purely enjoy it on its own terms. (Martin Scorsese and I have that in common, I’d like to think.)

That’s how I found myself, months after these episodes first premiered and the night before this Top 10 list was set to be published, crying on the couch to this lovely series finale and realizing I had some adjusting to do. I knew we couldn’t have forever with Northern Irish teens Erin (Saorise-Monica Jackson), Orla (Louia Harland), Claire (Nicola Coughlan), and Michelle (Jamie-Lee O’Donnell) — plus English boy James (Dylan Llewellyn) and surly Sister Michael (Siobhán McSweeney) — but the time we did get was exactly bittersweet enough.

Though my instinct was to call Jerrod Carmichael’s newest standup special one of the year’s best surprises, that basic moniker seems too trite for what he actually pulled off with “Rothaniel.” As directed by Bo Burnham, and performed at a New York City jazz club for a small audience that had no idea what was coming, “Rothaniel” sees Carmichael coming into himself as both a comic and a person. His mid-show reveal that he’s gay became the headline, but the way in which he built himself up to say and examine it was as unforgettable as it was, intentionally, uncomfortable. The day he recorded this special, Carmichael admitted he didn’t have all the answers for himself, his family or his audience. He wasn’t entirely settled, or maybe even ready, to have this conversation with any of them. But he was at least determined to acknowledge the truth, and in doing so, he was as frank and funny as he’s ever been.

When I see Sharon Horgan’s name in the writing/producing credits of a show, I know I’ll probably love it. Whether in the dearly departed relationship comedy “Catastrophe” or this year’s underrated spooky drama “Shining Vale,” her particular combination of blunt acidity and unexpected sweetness hits all the right notes for me like few others can muster. But I was still surprised by the sneaky staying power of “Bad Sisters,” her perfectly twisty, turny, fucked up and emotional take on the Belgian series “Clan.”

Transplanting the action to Horgan’s native Ireland, the black comedy (co-created by Brett Baer and Dave Finkel) brings together four sisters — played by herself, Sarah Greene, Eva Birthistle and Eve Hewson — in a desperate plot to save their endangered sister Grace (Anne-Marie Duff) from her abusive husband, John Paul (Claes Bang). Balancing the extremes of John Paul’s sadistic instincts with the furious, aching heartbreak it inspired, “Bad Sisters” seamlessly melded a zany murder mystery with a wrenching story of a family in crisis. It was so successful that Apple+ has now commissioned a second season to follow the first season’s excellent ending — which would worry me under most any other circumstances (see: “Big Little Lies”), but at this point, in Horgan I trust.

Look, no one is more surprised to see a “Star Wars” prequel to a prequel on this list than I am, but “Andor” forced me to concede the obvious. In tracing the journey of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) from loner mercenary to the diehard rebel of “Rogue One,” “Andor” paints a detailed, convincing picture of how fascism spreads, clamps down and inspires uprisings. What Tony Gilroy’s series occasionally lacks in episodic structure it more than makes up for in careful characterization and admirable worldbuilding. It took an unusually shrewd approach to establishing its place in the enormous “Star Wars” universe, which can otherwise can rely too heavily on branded lore and the get-out-of-jail-free card that is The Force. Throw in precise production design, epic directing and excellent supporting turns from the likes of Genevieve Reilly, Fiona Shaw, and Stellan Skarsgård and you’ve got yourself a party that not even I, a snobby critic absolutely exhausted by TV’s constant stream of IP spinoffs, could turn down.

When a show comes out the gate swinging as hard and assertively as “Hacks” did in its first season, there’s always the chance it’ll fall off some creative cliff in its second. Instead, co-creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky built upon the series’ existing strengths (i.e. Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder’s chemistry, the absurdity of Hollywood, the toxic dreamland that is Las Vegas) and unveiled brand new ones (i.e. the nuances of bringing a stand-up set on the road, the terrible adrenaline rush of risking failure, Carl Clemons-Hopkins’ ability to unravel in equally terrible and hysterical ways). Throwing almost all its characters off their game made both them and “Hacks” writ large work harder to get to the other side, making for a season that I was surprised to like even better than the first. While most hanging threads seemed to wrap up by the final episode, I can’t wait to rejoin the restless denizens of “Hacks” in Season 3 as they inevitably work trickier, wilder angles to get what they truly want.  

At the beginning of this year, staring down a TV calendar stuffed to the brim with true crime and scripted recreations of true crime made me want to commit some true crime of my own. After experiencing every larger-than-life event through the panicked eyes of Twitter for over a decade, the last thing I wanted to watch on television was more of the same, sparkling stars and meticulous wigs be damned. But there’s always an exception to the rule, and in 2022, “The Dropout” is mine. As helmed by Elizabeth Meriwether and anchored by stunning performances from Amanda Seyfried, Naveen Andrews and an astonishingly deep bench supporting them both, “The Dropout” is slicing and efficient in its portrait of one-time Silicon Valley darling Elizabeth Holmes. It contextualizes her fatalistic ambition without excusing it and acknowledges the sexism she faced without creating a simplistic #girlboss narrative. It stares deep into Seyfried-as-Holmes’ unnervingly wide eyes and into the cash-hungry soul of the online tech boom, expertly peeling back both subjects’ layers to reveal the damning truth underneath.

(Also: if I had any further doubt that “The Dropout” was one of my most memorable shows of the year, please consider the telling/embarrassing fact that its unusually catchy soundtrack snuck Alabama’s “In a Hurry (And Don’t Know Why)” into my Top 5 most-listened songs of the year. Alabama! Seyfried earned that Emmy on that lipsync alone, don’t @ me.)

I’ve been joking all year long about putting the Premier League on my Top 10 Shows of the Year list, if only because I’ve devoted the better part of my Saturdays to it and that time had to count for something. But as last season came to an especially dramatic close, the highs and lows became more extreme, and my devotion to Tottenham Hotspur (my adopted club of choice) grew, that joke became less of a punchline than the truth. What had started as a way for me to turn off my over-analytical TV brain became a hobby, then an obsession, and now just a fact of my life. I’ve hardly been more invested in TV this year than while watching Tottenham race to an unlikely Top 4 finish (COYS), or Liverpool and Manchester City putting on masterclasses any time they clashed, or Leeds narrowly escaping the devastation of relegation. If my number one show weren’t so remarkable — or, to be frank, if Tottenham wasn’t such a stressful team to support, what was I thinking?! — there was a very real chance that the Premier League would’ve been my number one show of the year.

In the end, it could only be “Reservation Dogs.”

One of the best shows of 2021, it only got better in 2022, with a confident, soulful second season that made the most of its time and talent. As Native teens Bear (D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai), Elora (Devery Jacobs), Cheese (Lane Factor) and Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) continued to nurse their grief over their friend Daniel (Dalton Cramer) dying by suicide, the once inseparable group splintered and scattered in Season 2, leaving the series to pick up the pieces in spotlight episodes that deepened every single character and relationship to gorgeous effect. We follow Cheese in a foster home the day after his guardian is suddenly arrested, and Willie Jack visiting Daniel’s mother (Lily Gladstone) in prison. We join Bear’s mother Rita (Sarah Podemski) at a corporate retreat with her best friends, all in desperate need of letting loose. We watch Bear attempt to be useful throughout his first day of work as a roofer and tribal cop Big (Zahn McClarnon) trip absolute balls in the woods. We see Elora making a break for California before the death of her grandmother guides her back home, however reluctantly, to the community she’s relied on all her life. We meet more of the spirits who faithfully watch over them all, even as they sometimes get bored and create mischief for the hilarious hell of it.

At once surreal, warm, and wise, “Reservation Dogs” is so comfortable in its own shoes that walking with it from one destination to the next always feels like embarking on the best kind of adventure. If that’s not what television is for, what is?

Honorable mentions: “Severance” (Apple TV+), “Russian Doll” (Netflix), “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” (Amazon Prime Video), “High School” (Amazon Freevee), “The Gilded Age” (HBO)

As I write this, the press has not been able to see all the episodes of Season 2 of “The White Lotus,” HBO’s drama/comedy hybrid about the vexations of lust on an island paradise. So I’ll make room for a series about love set on a similarly alluring isle: Manhattan. The first season of this “Sex and the City” reboot, the second half of which aired in early 2022, was maddening, frustrating, deeply flawed, often operatically wrongheaded. It operated, in other words, according to the logic of romance. After a very rocky start, the series found its way towards depicting its three core characters as genuine, rounded, and complete; it sketched out a social milieu for 50something women that felt sharp, smart, and inclusive; it treated the ending of a friendship with gravity and care; it gave us Che Diaz, an instantly iconic TV character. I had many, many complaints about this series. And I would watch a million more seasons.

The return of the seven castmates of “The Real World’s” 2000 season made for jarring, painful, ultimately redemptive documentary about the passage of time — what changes and what doesn’t. It’s heady stuff, but that’s what “The Real World,” once upon a time, did well, depicting frank conversations and the collisions of youthful egos. Here, the personalities have largely been softened by time and experience, and the participants are able to speak with a sweet melancholy about what becoming global celebrities for a year did to their minds and relationships; the one cast member who seems frozen in her moment of fame makes for a chilling portrait of what the camera can do. It’s, as a subplot within a conditionally upbeat series, a whole different kind of documentary, and just as riveting.

The smart decision at the root of this show’s creative success is to treat the story of WeWork — the co-working office space company with its famously failed initial public offering in 2019 — as a character drama. And it’s centered on a figure whose tangential nature is the point. CEO Adam Neumann is played by Jared Leto, but it’s the character’s wife, Rebekah, played by Anne Hathaway, who emerges as the driver of story: Her vision that a real-estate holding company could meaningfully shift global culture drove the company’s hubris, and her anger at being marginalized from the operations of WeWork prompted some of the company’s more mercurial decisions. In Hathaway’s hands, Rebekah Neumann is a remarkable character, quick to anger between silky moments of self-assurance. A failed actress, Rebekah is, more even than most people, constantly performing, and WeWork becomes a company built in her image: Like an overzealous theater student, it “yes-and”s its way into a situation that’s ultimately unsustainable.

The question of whether or not “Barry” is a comedy is not, to my eye, an interesting one, not least because it seems by now a settled matter: Like “The Sopranos,” it’s a drama with some jokes. And both of those elements, the drama and the jokes, were operating at their highest level yet in this year’s third season. Barry’s journey into unrepentant inner darkness was played beautifully by Bill Hader, but the season belonged to Sarah Goldberg, whose Sally simultaneously got everything she thought she wanted in her career and lost the ability to credibly pretend that her relationship with Barry was sane or safe. All of this coexists alongside what’s likely the strongest direction on TV, with a bravura motorcycle chase scene demonstrating just how much Hader can do behind the camera.

Jettisoning the painfully slow pacing of the first installment, this continuation of the documentary series about the NXIVM cult, one that branded and starved women, is a potent and elegantly constructed investigation of culpability, harm, and what it means to atone. Cult co-founder Nancy Salzman opens up to director Jehane Noujaim’s camera about the mistakes she made in her attempt to help heal the world and to enrich herself; just how tactical her confessions are is among the chewy complications of the series. Noujaim is careful to present all sides: Loyalists to founder Keith Raniere, now incarcerated for charges including human trafficking, have their say. And this is more than a question of fairness: Presenting these stories, too, leaves the door open to the hardest story of NXIVM, not about the sympathetic victims for whom we weep but those women who don’t feel they were victims at all.

The first episode of this superlative crime drama is directed by Michael Mann, and the entire piece borrows his mood. As journalist Jake Adelstein (Ansel Elgort) plumbs the underworld of Japan’s crime world, the lights are low and the motives are hazy. The series does an excellent job of constructing hierarchies with clean lines that are easy for an outsider to understand. This is true in Jake’s career at a Tokyo newspaper, where he’s an outsider both as an American and someone unwilling to just take the cops’ side of the story, as well as within the universes of the police and of the mob. “Tokyo Vice” introduces a crusading character and then places him in intriguing opposition to a precisely drawn world. It’s pure narrative pleasure.

Elizabeth Holmes’ story is one of the defining ones of whatever we’re calling the current, still-unfolding iteration of capitalism. But as conceived of by Elizabeth Meriwether and as played by Amanda Seyfried, “The Dropout’s” rendition of Holmes will remain the definitive version. (That’s so much the case that Jennifer Lawrence recently said that she has dropped her planned turn on the Holmes story in an Adam McKay feature film. What more is there to be said?) The trick of “The Dropout” is its ability to conjure a deep and textured sense of who Holmes was without ever begging for sympathy. Formed by her prodigious intellect, her abandoned-alien sense of herself as never quite fitting in, and a racing mind seeking to evade trauma, Holmes is a creature whose oddities read, within the cosseted world of Silicon Valley, as signs of generational genius. She’s a vampire — quite literally, in fact — but she’s the monster our economy made.

Ryan Murphy’s Netflix deal finally came to make a sort of business sense near the end of the year, with “Dahmer” becoming a zeitgeist hit. But his impulse, as a producer, toward excavating half-told histories falling from popular memory found far more creatively rewarding expression in this docuseries. Directed by Andrew Rossi, the six-episode “Andy Warhol Diaries” uses the late pop artist’s journals as a starting point to explore his fundamental remove from his peers and his own work. Recreated in a tastefully done AI voiceover, Warhol’s voice guides us through his work, his loves, and his rivalries, all bolstered by contemporaries of the man speaking to the camera today. It’s a thoughtful, incisive look at a brilliant auteur of the lowbrow, one who seemed at times uncertain why he was drawn to the lurid. Perhaps it should be no surprise that it’s Murphy, as producer, who brought it to us.

This is the best of several ripped-from-the-news series on this list, and the one with the most crystalline sense of what it wanted to say both about its characters and the world they, and we, inhabit. Liz Hannah and Patrick Macmanus’ series follows Michelle Carter (Elle Fanning) as she tunnels through layers of delusion in her brief, vexed acquaintanceship with Conrad Roy (Colton Ryan), a fellow high-schooler. Living life in her mind and through text messages, Michelle doesn’t have events happen to her — she experiences storylines. And this ultra-narrativized life, a consequence of nascent social media, but also of Michelle’s particular character, comes to have tragic consequences, explored sensitively and well. Fanning’s work here deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Sydney Sweeney’s on “Euphoria,” as both actors push themselves into frightening emotional terrain in search of a rigorous honesty amidst chaos; Chloë Sevigny, too, playing Conrad’s bereaved mother, has rarely been sharper.

The signature show of the say-everything social media era — big, loud, brash, unafraid to be obnoxious, and undergirded with notes of shocking and askew sensitivity that will leave a viewer breathless. The second season of Sam Levinson’s high-school freakout belonged, jointly, to Zendaya and to Sydney Sweeney — arcing in different directions as Zendaya’s Rue fought her way to a moment of peace and Sweeney’s Cassie spiraled into mania, consumed by insecurity and the need to be seen for who she was, whoever that is today. This culminated in an astounding autofictional “school play” in which characters were confronted with their fears and the things they hate about themselves — the sort of device a writer must fear will seem tinny and fake if it falls short. It didn’t. “Euphoria” would be television’s most overconfidently made series, if it didn’t somehow, every time, find its way to sublimity.

Honorable mentions (in alphabetical order): “Atlanta” (FX), “Better Call Saul” (AMC), “Irma Vep” (HBO), “Pam & Tommy” (Hulu), “Somebody Somewhere” (HBO), “The Staircase” (HBO Max), “We Need to Talk About Cosby” (Showtime)