Happy Sunday, Streamers.
Let’s reflect as another year comes to an end. It was the first that felt like a new one after spending (what felt like) two years in 2020, and likely the one we’ll look back on as the year the streaming bubble burst. The future of TV is unclear. Daddy Z is slashing budgets over at Warner Bros/Discovery (RIP Minx!!!), and Bobby I is out of retirement over at the House of Mouse for the same reason: the economics of the streaming model Netflix created, and then all of the media adopted, is untenable.
The pandemic was the final nail in the coffin for cable TV. That, coupled with a decade of essentially free money, set up a scenario in which billions of dollars were pumped into content production as media pivoted to streaming, unleashing a plethora of premium entertainment onto the masses under the guise of growth (but not profit). But honestly, thank god. Because looking back on 2022, man, oh man, did we get some primo content.
Sitting down to write this list, we confidently could have made a top 25 (thank god for honorable mentions!). Instead, we rolled up our sleeves, killed our darlings, and put together (in our humble opinion) the ten best shows streaming services had to offer this year. We hope this will arm you with enough content to sail through the impending end of the year no man’s land. You know, the one where you shower intermittently, wear the same sweatpants for 72 hours straight and only have a vague idea what day of the week it is.
On that note, this will be the final dispatch of 2022 (we all need a break, right?). We sincerely thank you for all the love this year and humbly ask for a small holiday wish: please share the gift of The Sunday Stream with a friend.
That concludes our spiel (Happy Hannukah!) until our return on Sunday, January 8th. Now let’s get to it.
Top Ten Shows of 2022
#10 - The English
Recency bias? Perhaps. But The English is precisely the kind of a show we may not get again in the direction TV is moving. This high-budget revisionist Western honors the best of the genre (Dances With Wolves, the films of Sergio Leone and John Ford, etc.) while pushing the format into a new direction, centering the story around a Native American man and a woman (two groups Westerns traditionally do not give much airtime). It also doesn’t hurt that The English is beautiful to look at, with all the glory of the American frontier on full display in 4K. It’s violent, melodramatic, and unafraid to examine the harsh realities and ambiguous morality upon which these here United States were formed. Giddy up.
#9 - Hacks
Hacks was a breakout comedy of 2021 and one of the first crown jewels in HBO Max’s original programming hat. It was unclear if Season Two would be able to keep the party going (the Season One finale easily could have been the series finale, and we would have been satisfied). Still, it managed to tread new ground thanks to the whipsmart decision to take the show on the road (literally). Jean Smart and Hannah Einbender continued to embody two incompatible halves of a hilarious whole, and Hacks ensured that we always had some counter-programming to all the prestige (read: dark) streaming fare shoved down our throats. Here’s hoping they can carry the torch into Season Three.
#8 - We Own This City
Speaking of heavy, fans of The Wire rejoiced this year when David Simon came out of the woodwork to deliver its spiritual successor, We Own This City. Another look at the corrosion of law enforcement in America, this show was not for the faint of heart (nor if you were one of the people complaining about the time jumps in House of the Dragon). If cultural commentary on policing and race relations isn’t your thing, trust us when we say Jon Bernthal alone is worth the watch. He gave possibly the most electric performance of the year as Sgt. Wayne Jenkins, hamming it up with an unrelenting barrage of menace and cocky working-class swagger interspersed with Baltimore “owwws.”
#7 - The White Lotus
We never covered this one, only because suggesting you all watch it would be the same as recommending air to breathe. Who remembers the last time it felt like the whole country was watching a show at once? The White Lotus Season Two was appointment viewing, and not just because the internet spiraled out over which body ended up washing up on the beach. The characters were loathsome but likable (aka human), the performances were pitch-perfect (who didn’t feel like they had known these people for years after just 40 minutes?), and the setting itself was impossibly cinematic (the Four Seasons San Domenico Palace will be booked for years to come). Mike White found a way to improve upon his winning (if admittedly accidental) formula from the first season, this time using the traveling wealthy and elite to dive into an enthralling exploration of the transactional nature of sex. Oh, and the theme song was a total banger (have we ever collectively held off on that “skip intro” button with such glee?).
#6 - Severance
Severance was prestige high-concept sci-fi from the unlikeliest of places: Ben Stiller and Apple. As the year closes out, it remains one of the most unique shows to date, perhaps runner-up only to another show on our list (more on that later). Its success will hopefully signal to creative execs that audiences are interested in more than just IP franchises and/or ripped from the headlines stories about famous people where said famous people are played by other famous people. It’s possible the show’s timing was simply perfect for the specific moment in culture in March 2022 (deconstructing the concept of work/life balance rang true in the wake of the pandemic). Even so, that wouldn’t change the fact that Severance’s finale was probably the best season finale of any show of 2022. Even if many questions were left unanswered (WTF were those goats?!).
#5 - Barry
There’s the TV that is entertaining because it manages to riff on a working formula, and then there are shows like Barry. Three seasons in, Barry has evolved from what was originally a simple premise (a comedy where a hitman wants to become an actor) into a limitless series that manages to be a show-biz comedy, a crime drama, a horror show, and an exploration of themes like rage, PTSD, and the empty pursuit of vengeance all at once. Oh, and this season may have had the best action set-piece on TV all year. All of this from Bill Hader, the same guy who brought us Stefan on SNL and whatever the fuck this was. Barry may walk the strangest tonal line of any TV show in recent memory, but it works, making it one of the best shows of this decade.
#4 - Andor
We can feel your eyes rolling. A Star Wars show? On Disney+? In the top five? Really? We don’t care. We will die on this hill. Not just because Andor is great but because it’s an argument for what can be done with franchise storytelling in the right hands (as I wrote about for Collider). We’re okay with a future in which we only get blockbuster IP TV shows if it means creative execs take more shots like Kathleen Kennedy and the folks at Lucasfilm clearly did with Tony Gilroy on Andor (and we get more monologues like Stellan Skarsgard’s in Episode 10). You don’t need to be a Star Wars fan to enjoy this show - Tony Gilroy created an adult drama that transcends the franchise and effectively plays as Michael Clayton in space. Is it possible that we’re having such a reaction to this show because it’s the first time in years we’ve felt an adult connection to something that was a huge part of our childhood? Maybe. Or it could be that it’s just a great fucking show. You decide.
#3 - The Rehearsal
Yes, this is the show that wins for the most wildly unique show of the year (sorry, Severance). Nathan Fielder’s insightful (or cruel, depending on how you look at it) performance-art schtick went to an entirely new level in The Rehearsal. What started as an elaborate gimmick turned in on itself when Fielder decided to insert himself into the experiment, testing his own hypothesis. Can life be controlled? Should it be? What if, in doing so, you hurt the people around you in the process? The Rehearsal can be read as a metaphor for anxiety, a commentary on parenting, or even a strange argument for empathy. Repeatedly Fielder goes out of his way to literally shape reality to accommodate the views of his subjects, even when they’re objectively insane (and/or problematic). It was an insightful spectacle that made you laugh out loud at the sheer audacity of its absurdity (do we think that Brooklyn bar is still on a soundstage somewhere?).
#2 - The Bear
Yes, Chef! Was the internet’s obsession with this show partially due to Jeremy Allen’s sex appeal? Sure. But that doesn’t change the fact that The Bear was one of the most surprising and satisfying runaway hits this year. Gorgeous, raw, abrasive, and addictively stressful, The Bear would have been a 90-minute indie film in another era. But the 2022 TV environment allowed it to be a tight episodic series, during which all that extra time allowed the space for breakout performances from Ayo Edibiri, Matty Matheson (!!!), and of course, Ebon Moss-Bachrach (who is also in Andor, believe it or not). Moss-Bachrach’s Richie is the winner, though: a funny, awful, and heartfelt character you would simultaneously be thrilled and a little scared to knock a couple back with at the bar. We can’t wait for our second helping in Season 2 (sorry).
#1 - Better Call Saul
It’s hard to make a good TV show, it’s harder to make a good TV show that runs for six seasons, and it’s nearly impossible to make one that carries on the legacy of one of the best TV shows of this century. Better Call Saul did all of those things and stuck the landing in its sixth and final season in a way that not only served as an appropriate epitaph for Jimmy “Saul Goodman” McGill but also the Breaking Bad verse in its entirety. With BCS, Vince Gilligan cemented the fact that he has no equal regarding tightly structured plots and slow-burn suspense when he crafted a series that wasn’t just picking up where Breaking Bad left off but rather actively conversing with it. With the conclusion of Better Call Saul, Gilligan capped off a storytelling achievement that’s never been seen on television (as I wrote about in Collider here), unquestionably taking home the top spot for best show of 2022.