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Top Ten TV Shows from 2022

2022 was an absolutely incredible year for me when it comes to television shows. Within this period I ended up watching so many amazing shows, both old and new. Whether being animated, comedy, drama or genre stuff, these shows all had something special in them, which made their inclusion on this list a foregone conclusion.

10. The Cuphead Show!

Due to the mistreatment of animators, this cartoon show had three whole seasons released within the calendar year of 2022. With that put aside, I loved every second of it. It is a glorious adaptation of a notoriously difficult video game that is not only a lot of fun in its charming, irreverent humor, but it’s also highly artistic and just dazzling in its old-fashioned animation.

9. Blok 27

I just had to include a series from my home country on this list because it is extremely rare that Serbia ever produces high-quality television like this. Blok 27 is, yes, very much influenced by ‘Stranger Things’ and ‘Dark’, but it still becomes its own thing due to its authentic setting, memorable characters and surprisingly strong storytelling. This one really surprised me.

8. The Staircase

The Staircase is one of the best-written shows of the year and one of the most underrated. Yes, it has its scripting issues in the second half of its run, but for the most part it’s an incredible true crime drama that benefits from brilliant Colin Firth, a stupendous flashback structure and a complicated, ambiguous finale that was just glorious to witness.

7. Mythic Quest

From the creators of ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’ we got Mythic Quest, a workplace comedy about the gaming industry. While uneven in its first season, the second one improved things considerably. The characters are already iconic in their own right and the humor is frequently fantastic. It’s a show that is only getting better with each new season.

6. The Sandman

The Sandman is an epic fantasy show on Netflix that is clumsy in certain areas, but what it does right it excels at – the world building is intricate, the characters are richly drawn and the dialogue is stupendous. The one-off installments are particular highlights of sophisticated, experimental storytelling.

5. Hacks Season 2

Deborah and Ava continue to delight us in Hacks, a show that also only gets stronger with time as the second season is somehow even better than the already superb first one. The comedy is hilarious, the commentary about Hollywood is spot-on and the character dynamics are quite complex and fascinating.

4. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia Season 15

This is the first season of this classic comedy show that switched its formula significantly. The change in setting wasn’t just superfluous, but it led to more emotional storytelling that was quite potent at times. Still, this season never forgot to be funny and it never forsake its characters’ personalities, which is a huge accomplishment for a series this late in its run.

3. Odd Taxi

Odd Taxi is an instant anime classic. It tackles so many different themes, characters and amazing arcs that it was a miracle how the vast majority of them were pulled off successfully. The show’s major final twist was absolutely astonishing. Perfectly written, acted, animated and tonally very diverse, this series is unlike any other and an absolute masterpiece of television animation.

2. The White Lotus

I watched the first season of The White Lotus at the beginning of the year and I watched the second one at the very end of it. The first one instantly hooked me in as it was superbly written in dialogue and characters, but it is the second one that brought things up a notch even more. This season is populated with so many striking personalities, fascinating character dynamics and a great exploration of the male-female dichotomy. It’s a highly sophisticated, funny and consistently riveting show that is a small miracle, especially for how grounded in reality it is.

1. Primal

The first place goes to Tartakovsky’s Primal, which also has two seasons by now and both are so amazing that it would be hard for me to choose one over the other. This animated series about the brutal adventures of a prehistoric man and his dinosaur pal is unflinchingly graphic in its violence, but it is also unpredictable and wild throughout with so many crazy plot turns that really worked. The animation is quite artistic, the mood is one that is very much poetic at times and the vast majority of episodes are instant classics of one-off episodic storytelling. It’s one of the best animated shows of all time and a number one on this list.

Honorable Mentions:

Big Mouth Season 6 – Probably the best season of Big Mouth so far, the sixth season saw so many memorable character moments as everybody got to shine here properly. The humor continues to be fantastic.

I Love Lucy – Though it got quite uneven toward its end, I Love Lucy still remains a classic sitcom that hailed from a different, more innocent period, but is still wildly enjoyable to watch to this day.

The X-Files – I really did not care for the last couple of seasons of this series, but The X-Files still clearly remains a benchmark in science fiction/horror television. The exploits of Scully and Mulder are for the most part wonderfully suspenseful and intriguing.

Cabinet of Curiosities Season 1 – As uneven as most anthologies are, but mostly very satisfactory, this Guillermo del Toro show gave us lots of classic spooks and chills.

Russian Doll Season 1 – While the second season of Russian Doll was really disappointing, the first one was obviously great. It featured a stellar concept well executed for some laughs and thrills simultaneously.