The Most Wonderful Time of the Year: Sean’s Official TV Show Rankings of 2022
#24 – #11: Awesome shows, just missed the Top 10
24.) Rick and Morty – Season 6
23.) Industry – Season 2
The show no one knows about that everybody should be watching.
22.) Cobra Kai – Season 5
21.) Fleishman is in Trouble
One of the last entries of the year, Jesse Eisenberg and co. crushed this limited series (I think?). Kind of depressing and jarring at times as Claire Danes channeled her inner Carrie Matheson, although it only added to the show.
20.) Peaky Blinders – Season 6
One last ride for the Peaky f**kin Blinders! …or is there a movie to come?
19.) 1899 – Season 1
The creators of Dark came back to Netflix with this wacky sci-fi/fantasy entry that took a few episodes to get going and ultimately became one of the more mysterious and intriguing shows of the year. Of course Netflix cares about numbers, so when it didn’t perform as well against the much broader audience of Wednesday, 1899 is sadly cancelled. Guess we’ll never know about that cliffhanger! Doom.
18.) The Bear – Season 1
Was worried that we would never see Lip again after Shameless ended… safe to say Jeremy Allen White will be around for a while. This was awesome and he absolutely crushed it! (Update: He won a Golden Globe.)
17.) Bad Sisters
16.) Pam and Tommy
Not enough love going around for this! The story for these two is a wild one, and Sebastian Stan and Lily James absolutely rocked their respective roles.
15.) Slow Horses – Season 1
Incredible what happens when you take a disgusting version of Gary Oldman and have him be in charge of a bunch of reject British spies. Great spy show!
14.) The Time Traveler’s Wife – Season 1
When going through this list and thinking, “what should I watch?”, just know that this one also painfully got cancelled by HBO… so you only have to watch six episodes and you’re done! In the rare rom-com TV drama, this show was really well done. I would’ve loved to have seen it finished properly, but what can you do. Well, I guess you can watch the movie with Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams… although I liked these versions better.
13.) Reacher – Season 1
Thad Castle has a hit TV show! I repeat. Thad Castle has a hit TV show! Fun character. Fun story. Fun watch.
12.) Slow Horses – Season 2
Not one, but two seasons of Slow Horses in one year! Liked the story in the second season a little bit more so it gets the nudge.
11.) Andor – Season 1
A lot of people are calling Andor the best Star Wars content ever created. I wouldn’t personally go that far, as there were some pretty slow points and one specific decision I didn’t like (and no lightsabers), but everything else about Andor was incredible. Several acting nominations are deserved, on top of the overall praise the show has earned.
Top 10! Best of the Best
10.) The Sandman – Season 1
The Sandman is such a cool fantasy concept that you would expect to be butchered when made into a television show, but Neil Gaiman and Netflix knocked it out of the park with this one. Fantastic characters across two different story arcs made for a great first season. And it’s renewed!
9.) Severance – Season 1
Easily the most unexpected show of 2022 was Severance. A concept that I couldn’t have ever thought of with some of the best acting and writing of the year. Lots of emotions and a strong finish have everyone dying for season two.
8.) Tokyo Vice – Season 1
The best part about bilingual shows might be that it really forces you to focus, or sometimes you just have no idea what happened in a conversation in Japanese. Regardless of that fact, Tokyo Vice is one of the best of the year. Ansel Elgort and the great Ken Watanabe play off each other very well. Just a cool world to discover.
7.) The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – Season 1
It felt like The Lord of the Rings TV show. at Amazon was in development forever. It was hard to tell what it would be about for a long time and everyone was afraid of the second coming of the pretty awful Hobbit movies. The Rings of Power was worth the wait. There is A LOT of world building that happened here so it took a few episodes to get rolling, but then it took off. Episode 6 was maybe the best TV episode of the year? Felt like the third hour of a LOTR movie. Not to mention, the show looks INCREDIBLE. Hopefully Season 2 doesn’t take too long to make!!
6.) The Boys – Season 3
The Boys is probably the most consistently fun show on TV, and is of the highest quality. The addition of the Captain America knockoff, Soldier Boy, in Season 3 raised the stakes and made this season the best since the first. Homelander is still the MVP though!
5.) Black Bird
I somehow missed out on Black Bird until December. What a mistake. Taron Egerton and Paul Walter Hauser absolutely crushed their roles in this creepy, serial-killer, prison crime series. Only six episodes but every single one of them will have you on the edge of your seat.
4.) Peacemaker – Season 1
James Gunn and John Cena struck gold with this random DC villain that virtually no one has ever heard of before last year. Peacemaker is innovative and one of the funniest shows you’ll ever watch. Could some call it childish? Immature? Outlandish? Repulsive? Maybe! But to all those people, I tell them to get over yourselves and watch this fantastic TV show. Oh yeah, greatest opening sequence of a TV show ever by a billion.
3.) Stranger Things – Season 4
Stranger Things has become such a phenomenon that it sent a 35 year old song to the top of the song charts this year. Introducing the shows best villain to date, Season 4 brought on a whole new level of evil that shook the show to its core. A strong emotional build over seven episodes paved the way to a month long break until the final two epic episodes, which were essentially two blockbuster movies. The cast and production of Stranger Things have elevated the series to one of the best ever and the third best season of the year.
2.) 1883
Now I have a lot of thoughts on Yellowstone. I think it’s fun at times and some of the characters are great, but mostly I think it’s a giant mess. Season 5 straight up stinks. LUCKILY, Taylor Sheridan actually knows what he’s doing with these prequel series. 1883, the story of the Dutton’s voyage to Montana almost 150 years earlier is an epic tale. Tim McGraw leads a great cast onto the Oregon Trail but may have been outshined by breakout Isabel May, who narrates and carries the series. What Yellowstone lacks in writing and direction is the exact opposite of what we get in 1883. Coming out early in the year, it held my number one slot all the way through until August… and then the best show of the year arrived.
1.) House of the Dragon – Season 1
Look, I get it. I’m the guy that has crapping all over Game of Thrones since it ended. The trailer for House of the Dragon came out in October 2021 and while everyone was gushing over the trailer, I imploded. See article here. I think I was valid to be upset. The ending of Thrones is the greatest failure in television history, if you ask me, and I had no interest in watching HBO ruin my favorite show any further. Well, I WAS WRONG! I was so wrong. House of the Dragon is the epic series everyone needed this year. The story, the characters and the setup of the first season were perfect. Matt Smith is going to make Daemon Targaryen one of the greatest characters of all time! What is truly promising is that the story is written. It’s done. There’s no deviation ahead like Game of Thrones. The ending is set. The story is set. The massive Targaryen civil war is coming and it is going to be amazing. Easily the number one show of the year for me. I am going to miss Milly Alcock though. She rocked the role of Rhaenyra in the first five episodes.
Thanks for following along, the list has already begun for 2024!
