Top TV Seasons of 2022

The post-lockdown explosion in streamed entertainment has left all fans of TV drama struggling to keep up, as one 'must-see' show overtakes another. I haven't seen enough this year to give a definitive guide, so the following Top Twelve (one for each Day of Christmas) is basically Shows I Saw And Liked. If you notice any glaring omissions, there's a good chance I haven't seen them yet. (I haven't even got around to The Rings of Power or House of Dragons, so that shuts me out of lots of conversations.) Take my choices on that basis and let me know what you think I should have been watching.

All of the following TV was first broadcast or streamed in 2022. I'm judging based on the individual season, not necessarily on the show as a whole. I've included some limited series (what we used to call 'mini-series'), because... my list, my rules. Also I'm using the US 'season' for all the shows rather than the UK 'series', because it makes more sense to me. 

12. Ms Marvel

There's been much debate over the wisdom of creating so many interlinked Marvel shows for Disney+, and this isn't a year where I've out and out loved the MCU's overall content. (Moon Knight had great performances, most notably from Oscar Isaac, but it all got a bit too mythos-heavy by the end.) For me the freshest of the bunch - both visually and in terms of story - was Ms Marvel. This vibrant coming of age story saw a superhero-fangirl stumbling into her own powers amid the conflicted responses of her baffled but endearing Muslim-American family. Iman Vellani was delightful in the lead role of Kamala Khan, an awkward and well-meaning girl with a familial history rooted in the 1947 Partition of India. While there was a sprinkling of the usual slam-bang CGI-enhanced theatrics, this was a super-tale that truly departed from genre norms and told a story with interest and heart. It got a bit teen-mumbly at times, to the extent I had to add subtitles, but I'll let that slide.

11. The Crown - Season 5

It's true this season didn't attain the dramatic heights of 4, the one with the Windsor/Thatcher face-off as portrayed by Olivia Coleman and Gillian Anderson. What it did achieve was more of the most handsomely mounted television drama ever produced in the UK, a sometimes provocative reassessment of recent royal history, and the best of British acting talent easing into the roles vacated by Liv, Tobias Menzies, et al. While Imelda Staunton morphed convincingly into the more matronly Queen Elizabeth with whom many of us grew up, and Jonathan Pryce added notes of warmth and humanity to Philip, it was Dominic West and Elizabeth Debicki who stole the limelight as a crisis-point Charles and Diana. Aided by the nuance of Peter Morgan's writing, they achieved a greater balance of sympathy between these two struggling, fallible humans than viewers might have expected. Props too to Lesley Manville, my favourite out of the show's impressive trio of Princess Margarets, whose episode with Timothy Dalton's ageing Peter Townsend was arguably the season's most heartbreaking.

10. The Walking Dead - Season 11

I stuck with this show through every one of its 177 grisly episodes, and the final handful made me glad of it. While a number of limited series offshoots are firmly in the works, pursuing some of The Walking Dead's most beloved survivors beyond the finale, the mother-series itself ended in largely satisfying style. Having moved on from asking whether anything beyond survival was possible in the zombie apocalypse, this final season dealt with post-apocalyptic government and the daunting prospect that even after humanity's near destruction, greed and entitlement would threaten to poison any newly formed society all over again. For all the heartbreak and despair this show has visited on its fans over the past twelve years, TWD ended on a hopeful note, with some of its longterm characters not being chewed by the dead or bludgeoned by the living, but rather making the most of their shot at creating something better in walker-ravaged America. A few redemption arcs even made it to completion along the way. I loved this beleaguered crew and I'll miss them (except those who show up again in the side-shows).

9. Ozark - Season 4

The Byrde family, Ozark's morally compromised cartel money launderers, waved bye-bye to the possibility of redemption some time ago. All that remained to be seen, in this taut and sometimes darkly amusing final season, was whether or not Marty and Wendy (Jason Bateman and Laura Linney) could escape prison, destitution, or death, protecting their frequently annoying kids along the way. The show's creators made the excellent choice of wrapping the story before it outstayed its welcome, in fourteen tightly plotted episodes, during which our tightly would antiheroes never seemed more than a pace ahead of all-consuming disaster. Bateman was an understated delight once more as the grimly stoic Marty, and Julia Garner slam-dunked her bid for another Emmy as the lovably homicidal Ruth Langmore. For me, though, it was Linney who blazed most brightly this time around. Her final outing as Lady Wendy Macbyrde attained Shakespearian heights of tragedy. As for the ending, the show that owed a debt of gratitude to Breaking Bad for its existence found its own ending to accompany its own look and style - and it was a dark-hearted doozy.

8. The Handmaid's Tale - Season 5

As of writing, I have yet to watch the finale of The Handmaid's Tale season 5 (it lands on UK television Christmas Day - how festive!), so its place on this list may either fall or - hopefully - rise. As of now, this show remains one of the most engrossing and thought-provoking dramas around. Even if it's lost the early seasons' compelling claustrophobia and given way to dramatic convenience in the writing, there's still much that marks it out as top quality. The production values remain among the most remarkable on TV, so that she show's look is as gorgeous as Gilead's patriarchal dystopia is ugly. There are moments of heart-pumping power and wicked twists that subvert all expectations, while the complexity of the story's politics develops in fascinating ways. As for the performances, they're still next level; all screen time shared by Elizabeth Moss and Yvonne Strahovski as June and Serena is off the charts, and I always crave more of Ann Dowd's Aunt Lydia. With one season (and that one forthcoming episode) to go, I can't wait to see how the show dovetails into the forthcoming adaptation of Margaret Atwood's sequel novel The Testaments. 

7. Derry Girls - Season 3

The greatest thing about Derry Girls is that the humour is unashamedly Northern Ireland and yet totally universal. This final season has lost none of what makes this flawed and irreverent bunch a joy, while intensifying the emotional connection felt by viewers. My love for the characters extends beyond the 'girls'. So beautifully drawn are the grown-ups that creator Lisa McGee wrote a whole extra backstory episode to explore their 1970s-set schooldays. The backdrop of the 1990s later-era Troubles is deftly woven into the episodes, never overshadowing the comedy, but adding touches of pathos that culminate in a moving final episode. (It's that kind of show; even the moment when Sister Michael shared a whiskey and a moment of unexpected companionship with Father Peter brought a lump to my throat.) The celebrity cameos are nicely judged too; a conversation between Kevin McAleer's delightfully boring Uncle Colm and a certain gruff RUC Chief Constable achieves a joyous series high point. Another high - and a truly poignant moment for those of my generation in NI - was the visit to Barry's amusement park in Portrush. Oh our vanished childhoods... captured, one way or another, in nineteen all too short episodes of comedy gold. 

6. Under the Banner of Heaven

This one is intense. Based on a true crime book of the same name, Under the Banner of Heaven is a disturbing reflection on what happens with religious faith becomes infected by human frailty and hubris. It chronicles the investigation into the horrific 1984 murders of Mormon wife Brenda Lafferty and her infant child by extremist members of her own faith community. Andrew Garfield takes on the fictional role of Jeb Pyre, a Mormon detective, family man, and church elder, whose own beliefs threaten to buckle under the weight of the crime he is investigating. A complex triple timeline follows his pursuit of the truth in parallel with the twisted family saga that led to the killings, and the founding events of Mormonism itself. It's a darkly absorbing story, anchored by Garfield's terrific performance, and leavened (a bit) by the comradeship that develops between him and his Native American police partner (played with a wise gravitas by Gil Birmingham). Daisy Edgar-Jones stands out from the fine supporting cast, her performance serving as tribute to the bright and spirited, if ill-fated, Brenda. Not a popcorn watch, but a very rewarding one.

5. Only Murders in the Building - Season 2

For those who like their crime fictional and lite, the return of Only Murders was a treat. Season one established the central trio of showbiz veterans Charles and Oliver (Steve Martin and Martin Short) and their deadpan Millennial associate Mabel (Selena Gomez) as true-crime podcast fans turned sleuths. Now in this even funnier, even sharper second season, these characters feel like old dysfunctional friends, and the Arconia Hotel where they all live, detect, and broadcast, has become an increasingly mysterious and labyrinthine home-from-home. Each episode of this comedy drama is a lovingly honed gem, changing character viewpoint and narrative style as required for some new angle on the unfolding investigation. There are welcome returns by S1 supporting players (like Nathan Lane), intriguing newcomers (like Cara Delevigne), and splashy star cameos (like Shirley flipping MacLaine!). It's cunning, heart-warming, a little bit macabre, and - above all - laugh-till-the-tears-roll hilarious. When the final episode tagged on a set-up for season three, I cheered. This is a truly happiness-inducing murder drama, and I can't get enough.

4. Stranger Things - Season 4

I really liked season 3 of the science-fiction nostalgia-fest phenomenon, but the show unarguably needed a creativity injection to offset the possibility of staleness. Well, following the long lockdown break, season 4 of Stranger Things arrived pumped full of the new and the entertaining. It's geographically bigger, for starters, breaking free of its small town so that while half the characters are solving the traditional Scooby-Doo mystery back in Hawkins, Indiana, others are on the run from sinister government operatives, or fighting for their lives in Russian gulags, or plunged into traumatising psychodrama in some desert-based research facility. It ups the scale in every other sense too, drawing from a wider range of retro pop-culture, so that Carrie, Cheech and Chong stoner movies, and Dungeons and Dragons all get referenced in the same episode. But more than all, it leans into '80s horror, ultimate villain Vecna leeching parasitically from Freddy Kruger, Pennywise the Clown and Hellraiser's Pinhead, to come out his own (make that the Duffer Brothers') special creation. It's rip-roaring, gleefully scary, and the purest shot of televisual fun I've had all year.

3. Sherwood

Move away from genre entertainment to Sherwood, a limited BBC drama that begins under the guise of a based-on-fact police procedural, before turning into something much more profound. David Morissey heads up Brit-cast of the year as DCS Ian St Clair, digging into the murder of a trade unionist in a Nottinghamshire mining town circa 2004. The real drama stems from the wounds reopened in a town riven two decades earlier by the nationwide miners' strike. Lines are redrawn between committed strikers and those who continued to work, the situation exacerbated by suspicions that a police spy stuck around in the locality, having infiltrated the militant union members back in the day. Several episodes in and the killer's identity matters less than that of the covert operative, and both are thrown into shadow by the turmoil of a community that has never managed to heal from political traumas of the past. It's a terrifically woven tapestry of interlinked human stories, with that jostling crowd of UK acting talent - Robert Glenister and Lesley Manville among them - proving why they're in such demand. Catch up on this one. It'll be six hours of your life well spent.

2. Severance - Season 1

This dystopian satire's delights are too many to list. The premise of Severance is fabulous in itself - a company that can separate the workplace and non-work memories of its employees through a surgical procedure, effectively dividing them into two identities, neither one with any recollection of the other. Take Mark (Parks and Recreations' Adam Scott), who knows that his 'innie' self is employed by the mysterious Lumon Industries but nothing beyond that. That's until a deranged man purporting to be his one-time work friend shows up to tell him that Lumon is insidiously evil and that Mark needs to act on the knowledge. Cue a science-fiction drama that combines pulse-racing paranoia with a weirdly hilarious parody of corporate culture, where each episode has you spinning increasingly complex theories about what in suffering hell is going on. Meanwhile, the writers feeds out just enough clues to keep you thoroughly intrigued. Severance is an exquisite slow-burn of a drama that gets right under your skin, unsettling you even as it makes you laugh. It's a masterpiece of design too, with a soundtrack as stealthy as the painstaking (if often surreal) plot developments. As for the season finale, call it forty minutes of sustained, jaw-dropping payoff that makes you doubly glad you began watching, and just as infuriated that season 2 hasn't yet been completed. Marvellous from start to finish, Severance's inaugural run would top this list most years.

Just not in a 'Saul' year.

1. Better Call Saul - Season 6

So - is Better Call Saul better than Breaking Bad, the drama that spawned it? It's the clever-clever thing to say, but I wouldn't be so bold, not without watching all of both shows over again (and that so wouldn't be a chore). What I will say is this... However good a show Breaking Bad was, and it was a 'contender for best TV drama series of all time' kind of good, it's been made better by Better Call Saul. BCS's final season confirmed that notion, concluding the prequel element of the show with four episodes left over to dig into sequel territory (a noteworthy creative choice in itself). This Bad-straddling structure enabled viewers to compare the tragic story arcs of aspiring drug lord Walter White and his moral shell of a lawyer Saul Goodman, aka Jimmy McGill, in a unique way. Was 'Saul' doomed to double/triple/quadruple down on his mistakes like Walter did, till there was none of Jimmy's decency left at all? And would he take everyone he'd ever loved down with him? This keenly observed, superlatively executed character drama kept us guessing till the last, ending in a manner we'd not predicted, even if on some level we maybe should have done. Along the way it delivered weekly masterclasses in how to craft high calibre TV. It also made us care about a clutch of deeply flawed human beings, understanding why they persisted along some excruciatingly bad choice roads. And we remained ready to forgive them all their manifold sins, if they'd just throw us a bone. Don't get me wrong - Brian Cranston as Walter is still probably the greatest sustained TV acting performance of all damn time. But after six seasons of BCS brilliance it's Bob Odenkirk's Jimmy McGill (and this show) that has my heart.

That's your lot. Now please torpedo all my hyperbolic enthusiasm with other contenders. I'll have time between Christmas and New Year to check out at least some of your suggestions.

Merry Christmas, everyone.