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its-only-v · 1 year

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Best Shows of 2022

Yes, I'm putting this on Tumblr after 2022 has ended. Yes, it's also entirely too long with 30+ shows and all categories that I made myself.

The Best Show That Feels Like an Extended Award-Winning Cut of a Movie

And yes, I mean it in a good way, and not in the way that it should’ve been a movie and not a tv show. Slow Horses made the time fly by and it was so excellent that its second season is already airing right now and the show just came out in March. A big reason to watch it is also Gary Oldman, who plays one of the leads in the show. He’s also announced that he’ll be retiring after it ends - but don’t worry, it won’t be anytime soon because Apple has already renewed it for third and fourth seasons. How is that for a stamp of approval?

The Show with the Superhero in Most Desperate Need of a Therapist

On one hand, we have Peacemaker who has daddy issues (understandably so) and survivor’s guilt. On the other hand, there’s everyone in The Boys. We have definite psychopath Homelander and possible psychopath Soldier Boy and what’s Butcher doing this season with superpowers? But I doubt a therapist would be safe from the maniacs in The Boys so I’ll give this one to Peacemaker who would make better use of the help and not kill the therapist (this guarantee doesn’t extend to Vigilante).

The Show with the Highest Tension

This one’s a tie between The Bear and Severance. And what a surprise, both of them have the workplace as the central setting. Besides what I’ve already said about them in separate editions dedicated just to them, do I need to say more? Fine, here’s one line - it’s best to go in blind for Severance because you want to be surprised and I’ve watched The Bear all the way through three times.

The Best Show About Worst Career Changes That Sort of Work Out

A tie and both of these are comedy shows. Killing It follows Craig (Craig Robinson) an entrepreneur-turned-python hunter in Florida and Our Flag Means Death follows Steve Bonnet (Rhys Darby), a gentleman-turned-pirate. Both of them should not be doing what they’re doing but they do it anyway and it manages to sort of kind of work out along with hilarious situations along the way.

The Show with the Weirdest Relationship

Nobody can explain the plot of The Time Traveler’s Wife in a way that doesn’t make you narrow your eyes. Clare (Rose Leslie) first meets her husband Henry (Theo James) as a little girl when he travels back in time to a clearing near her house as an adult. She grows up falling in love with him because who wouldn’t (and she finds out that he’s already married her in the future so it’s destiny)? But it’s technically okay because he keeps his distance (and it’s not like he time/space travels on purpose) and he’s actually first met her as an adult when she’s an adult too (who has been in love with him since her childhood so is it acceptable?). It was cancelled after the first season because of the entire HBO/Warner Bros/Discovery disaster of a merger so we won’t be exploring more complexities of this relationship but it was interesting to watch while it lasted.

The Show with the Best Fictional Criminals

Sprung makes having a crew seem fun. You’d love to hang out with them and commit crimes (for legal purposes, this is a joke and I’m not condoning crime). We also had some white-collar crime in the new season of Industry but I’ll give them the leeway that crime isn’t their full-time job.

The Show with the Best Real-Life Criminals

This category was previously going to be called best shows based on real life, but then all the characters were fans of shady business practices. The contenders include WeCrashed (about WeWork), Super Pumped (about Uber), The Dropout (about Theranos) and Black Bird (about getting a criminal to get a serial killer to confess) (let’s pretend Inventing Anna didn’t happen for the sake of my sanity). Black Bird is the clear winner here. It has Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser giving their career-best performances and the show feels like a spiritual successor to True Detective and Mindhunter, which elevates it even more.

The Best Show About Teenagers Falling in Love with Teens Who Act Their Age

This was a difficult one to pick with very strong top three contenders - the new season of Young Royals, the last season of Love Victor, and Heartstopper. But, at the end, how could this not go to Heartstopper that’s romantic, wholesome, cute, and does not fail to put a big smile on your face? (The characters of The Sex Lives of College Girls are also teenagers but the second season is still airing so jury’s still out on that and if they all look & act like teenagers or rather young adults is up for debate)

The Show with the Best Power Couple

George (Morgan Spector) and Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) from The Gilded Age, overcome the absolute drabness of their names to be the best power couple in television this year, not just in a period drama. Doing a bad relationship is easy. A great relationship? Tricky. Especially when it happens to be set in the past, with all its problematic period-accurate outlook. But Julian Fellowes has aced it (Bridgerton, please take note so you can have Season 2’s promising couple back for the third season, which didn’t happen this year).

The Show with the Most Toxic Couple

Yes, I said doing a bad relationship is easy. But - hear me out. Doing a toxic relationship with such compelling characters who happen to have insane chemistry? Louis (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat (Sam Reid) from Interview with the Vampire will make you go from thinking they-should-be-together-forever to please-someone-enforce-a-restraining-order. And as a bonus, there are multiple toxic relationships to go around along with toxic traits that don’t include ripping people’s heads or organs off their bodies (murder can be excused but Lestat, don’t open your relationship if you’re going to throw a fit once your partner takes you up on it and definitely don’t turn a teenager into a vampire to have an adoptive child to save your marriage). Runner-up goes to The Great, which had its second season air this year, with a couple that would also gladly kill each other but at least they’re honest about where they stand.

The Sexiest Show with Queer Vampires

How is this a category? How can this not be a category when you have What We Do in the Shadows’ latest season, and new shows including Interview with the Vampire, Reginald the Vampire, Vampire Academy, and First Kill all airing in the same year? Vampires definitely had a resurgence this year and not just on television (Dracula Daily was also a phenomenon this year and we had the iconic Morbius that needs no introduction and the overlooked Netflix film Day Shift with Jamie Foxx and Dave Franco as vampire hunters). But all of this is just to say that yes, Interview with the Vampire wins again, and Guillermo from WWDITS would agree and we should take his word for it.

The Best Show About Making Money Off the Female Gaze

Minx and Welcome to Chippendales both have businesses trying to capitalize on the female gaze - the first with a magazine and the second with a troupe of male strippers. Since Welcome to Chippendales is still airing and I’m not entirely convinced it’ll stick the landing, Minx wins this one by default but it’s also a very strong show which might have won anyway.

The Best Show To Take You On a Vacation

Or, more specifically, Italy. Yes, the second season of The White Lotus wasn’t the only show with a scenic Italian setting this year. While at the time of writing The White Lotus hasn’t ended yet, I know Mike White isn’t going to lead us astray. The other show that takes you on a vacation in Italy during Mussolini’s era is Hotel Portofino, which weaves in beautiful locales, interesting characters, history, and a mystery to keep you hooked till the end of the season.

The Show with the Best Murder Victim

The Afterparty. RIP Xavier (Dave Franco), you were a superstar blessed with predicting your own death in your music video. (Bonus points for the song being a banger, with the creators filming the full music video even though it wasn’t in the show and releasing a full EP by the character on Spotify).

The Show with the Most Underrated Detective

With a lot of criminals come a lot of criminal catchers. You know the trio of Only Murders in the Building but I bet you’ve not heard of Bell Prescott from Panhandle is a genius crime solver and there couldn’t have been a more fitting name for him for the way he acts. Luke Kirby (who you might know as Lenny Bruce from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel - also the only good part of this year’s new season which I didn’t like much) plays the lead - he manages to solve years of unsolved cases all while not having stepped out of his Florida mansion (that he shares with his mother and pet crocodile) since the death of his wife (whose presence he still hallucinates). Also, like any crime-solving genius, he also gets an assist from a sidekick (rookie cop Tiana Okoye) who makes up for his flaws, making them an epic crime-solving duo.

The Best Supernatural Show NOT About Vampires

Well, not exclusively anyway. Supernatural Academy is my pick for this one, which won't entirely be a surprise. It was such a well-made show and had so much mature storytelling than I was expecting from it. I was also considering The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself because that was such a good show but it only picked up about halfway through and now it's been cancelled with just the first season on Netflix. While there hasn't been any news of Supernatural Academy's second season, I'm more hopeful of Peacock keeping shows going than Netflix at this point so I hope we'll see more of it.

The Best Show About Shows

Please take a moment to acknowledge the meta commentary by the placement of this category at the end. Thank you.

There are multiple shows in this category and all are winners. The Rehearsal is technically a reality show that also shows you what goes into the making of a reality show. We also have Reboot for scripted fiction, which you’ve probably guessed from the title is a show about the making of a reboot that also happens to have an all-star comedy cast. If we extend the definition of a show to all types of shows because why not, we also have Hacks, whose new season was about the making of a new stand-up show on the road. Also an excellent watch.

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