The 12 best TV shows of 2022 From The Sandman To Wednesday

From Tim Burton’s reimagining of gothic icon Wednesday Addams to Stranger Things bringing metalheads and Metallica back into popular culture in a big way, it’s been a massive year for alternative culture on the small screen, and another brilliant year for television as a whole.

MARKMEETS’s editors decided to team up for yet another year in making our picks for the best TV shows of 2022.

Whether you were craving some thought-provoking comedy or the most chilling of horrors, there’s been something for you. So, to commemorate the gems that have made recent TV sparkle, we’ve compiled the 10 most unmissable TV shows from 2022. Beware, some mild spoilers below…

Andor

Better Call Saul

There’s no TV drama as precisely made and carefully plotted as Better Call Saul–which is a little sad given that this beloved series ended its run this summer. In the sixth and final season Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn as the titular Saul Goodman and Kim Wexler continued to have astonishing chemistry, and the ratcheting tension behind the rise of Gus Fring’s Albequerque drug empire was a thing to behold. The final episodes were straight-up masterpieces—nerve-rattlingly tense, moving and then in the series’s last moments, quietly profound. A total delight

House Of The Dragon

Anyone would be forgiven for entering House Of The Dragon pessimistically, what with Game Of Thrones’ final season remaining the biggest letdown in television history. However, this prequel, which depicted the early years of the ruling Targaryen dynasty, returned to its parent programme’s roots of political machinations and backstabbing. It became the fantasy show of the year as a result. Lord Of The Rings eat your heart out.

Abbott Elementary

The sitcom mockumentary format has been done to death at this point, but against all odds, Abbott Elementary manages to refresh that formula and breathe new life into it. It just makes sense that a school would be the subject of a documentary.

The best part of Abbott Elementary is that each of the teachers just feels real, like a teacher you probably had at one point or another in your life. Sheryl Lee Ralph and Janelle James command the cast as wise kindergarten teacher Barbara and work-allergic, self-absorbed principal Ava, but from eager and sometimes naïve Janine (Quinta Brunson, also series creator) to street smart Philadelphia native Melissa (Lisa Ann Walter), all the characters are vivid, messy, and relatable in their own ways. And they all learn from each other, so no one person is the butt of all the jokes and instead they have their own separate strengths and weaknesses — and separate quirks about them that make them hilarious. Also, the added bonus of the kids being absolutely adorable makes Abbot Elementary particularly special

The Midnight Club

Mike Flanagan, the showrunner behind The Haunting Of Hill House and Midnight Mass, continued his Netflix residency with The Midnight Club. The first episode of this horror series about eight terminally ill teens who share scary stories set a world record with its number of jump scares (21), before its characters endeavoured to unravel the mysteries of their hospital. It was so compelling, its cancellation should be criminal.

Russian Doll

A second Russian Doll season seemed needless. The first could have been a perfect one-and- done, chronicling protagonist Nadia’s attempts to escape a time loop wherein she kept dying at her own party. However, this successor was a wild yet tender dramedy that quantum leapt off the rails. Season three best be coming soon – unlike Nadia, we can only loop back to binge-watch this again so many times.

The Sandman

After Good Omens struck gold for Amazon, Netflix decided to make their own series out of a Neil Gaiman comic. The result was The Sandman: a dark fantasy melodrama about the god of dreams, who’s kidnapped by Charles Dance in 1916 and, once freed, returns to find his kingdom in ruins.Dance, David Thewlis and lead actor Tom Sturridge all gave unsurprisingly powerhouse performances, while the time-jumping plotline never let the ten episodes (and one bonus) grow stale in replicating Gaiman’s beloved comic series.

Severance

Ben Stiller stepped behind the camera to direct this comedy-thriller about colleagues who’ve had the work and home life halves of their brains literally, surgically separated. Despite (and because of) this duality, there’s fathoms of character depth. Protagonist Mark bisected his existence to help compartmentalise the grief he felt after his wife’s death, for example. Quirky and beautiful, Severance was some of 2022’s best entertainment full stop.

Stranger Things

Netflix’s sci-fi/horror juggernaut doubled down on the darkness in 2022. After all, the long-awaited fourth instalment introduced new baddie Vecna: a grotesque, fleshy psychic demon with a penchant for mutilating and murdering children. However, that didn’t stop the season from becoming a pop culture powerhouse. Its soundtrack gave Kate Bush and Metallica newfound relevance, while Eddie Munson became the coolest (and sexiest) metalhead in TV history.

Vikings: Valhalla

When it was announced in 2019 that The History Channel’s Vikings would end with its sixth season, showrunner Michael Hirst also confirmed he’d jump ship to Netflix for a spinoff. Vikings: Valhalla picked up a century after the original series, this time in Anglo-Saxon England. It also continued everything that made what came before so bloody fun, with violence and sex for all. Happy raiding!

Wednesday

Tim Burton has wanted to work within the realm of The Addams Family for decades, and Netflix’s Wednesday finally gave him that chance. The mastermind behind Batman and Edward Scissorhands directed half of this new show, but it was actually held together by Jenna Ortega’s perfect turn as the title character.It was Ortega’s charisma and an overall macabre tone that stopped this from plummeting into archetypal teen romcom fare, maintaining a twisted sense of black humour throughout that made it a captivating and entertaining watch.

The Crown, Season 5

The latest chapter of The Crown continues the brilliantly brutal dissection of Charles and Diana’s collapsing marriage, with Dominic West playing the Prince of Wales and Australian actor Elizabeth Debicki, her downcast-chin-upward-eye head position honed to uncanny resemblance, playing Princess Diana. The season covers—with widely varying degrees of fidelity to actual events—Charles and Diana’s “second honeymoon,” the intimate phone call between Charles and Camilla that leaked to the tabloids and has lived in dubious infamy ever since, Diana’s explosive interview with Martin Bashir. For such sexy source material, *The Crown—*this season especially—can sometimes feel quite staid. But for sheer production value, and if you’re committed to this many-season masterful depiction of royal life, it is required viewing.

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The 12 best TV shows of 2022 From The Sandman To Wednesday

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