Ranking Every TV Show of 2022: #s 40-31

We’re ranking every TV show of 2022. For prior installments, check out the following links:

#s 110-96
#s 95-81
#s 80-61
#s 60-41

40. The Gilded Age (HBO, Season 1). As befits the work of Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey, Belgravia), this is a ridiculous show, featuring two-dimensional characters, predictable writing, and painful contrivances. It is also delightful. Part of this lies in its sumptuous trappings; there are opulent mansions, magnificent dresses, splendid hats. But there’s also a sincerity to the storytelling that feels heartwarming rather than cloying. Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector shine as the Big Apple’s ultimate power couple, while Christine Baranski lobs casual insults like she’s tossing grenades. Everything about The Gilded Age is clankingly obvious and shamelessly engineered. But railroads run on power, not subtlety, and this series is a locomotive, steamrolling over all criticism with unstoppable, beautiful force.

39. Westworld (HBO, Season 4; 2020 rank: 38 of 124). Look, I get why HBO cancelled this show. It was too expensive, too complicated, too obscure. It doesn’t fit David Zaslav’s new corporate strategy, which I believe is called, “You can’t lose money if you never spend it.” Yet I still lament Westworld’s demise, because when it was cooking, it supplied images and set pieces like nothing else on television. Its final season is as incomprehensible as ever, with multiple timelines, duplicated characters, and nonsensical fake-outs. But I don’t watch this show for its story; I watch for its style, its bravura, its visual grace. It may be meaningless on a macro level, but on a scene-to-scene basis, it still delivers: thrilling action scenes, haunting images, killer needle drops. Perhaps there’s a parallel timeline where Evan Rachel Wood and Thandiwe Newton are still effortlessly dispatching hapless foes as they contemplate their identity while decked out in stunning outfits. If so, I’m buying a first-class ticket.

38. Winning Time (HBO, Season 1). The subject matter of Winning Time is so inherently interesting, even Adam McKay couldn’t fuck it up. The Don’t Look Up filmmaker isn’t technically the showrunner here, but he directed the first episode (he’s also an executive producer), and his grimy, sloppy fingerprints are everywhere; the series’ aesthetic is aggressively, obnoxiously ugly, with grainy images and messy editing. Doesn’t matter. Once Winning Time delves into the heart of things—not just the allure and the challenges of being a celebrity athlete in the City of Angels, but also the complex mechanics of fast-break basketball itself—it gathers irresistible momentum. The whole cast is terrific—in particular, Jason Clarke is hilarious as the perpetually grouchy Jerry West, while newcomer Quincy Isaiah is stupendously charismatic as Magic Johnson—while the writing deftly blends the season’s broader storyline with smartly focused episodes. There are plenty of imperfections in Winning Time (including the spectacularly dumb title; the ’80s Los Angeles Lakers were dubbed “Showtime,” yet HBO couldn’t name a series after one of its premium-cable competitors), but with its clashing personalities and its sports-drama hooks, it’s still a title contender.

37. Undone (Amazon, Season 2; 2019 rank: 35 of 101). If the first season of Undone seriously explored the metaphysical complications of various science-fiction tropes (time travel, parallel universes, resurrecting deceased family members), its follow-up carries a troubling “be careful what you wish for” vibe. Rosa Salazar’s brilliant researcher has successfully crossed into an alternate world, reuniting with her once-dead father (Bob Odenkirk). Yay, she made it! So why do things feel off? Undone probes its philosophical questions with startling earnestness—not in the sense that it’s openly emotional, but in that it treats its characters seriously, charting their chaotic barrage of feelings and desires. Like Russian Doll, Undone’s second season dives headlong into the familial past, but here the shrouded mystery is of a piece with the series’ agitated restlessness and persistent evolution. The richness of the storytelling is amplified by the animation’s fluid rotoscoping, which adds a layer of surreality to an already-otherworldly melodrama. I don’t pretend to understand this show, but that fuzziness is appropriate for a series whose characters are perpetually lost—whether in time, or in the clouded fog of their own minds.

36. The Staircase (HBO, Season 1). Did Michael Peterson kill his wife? This intensely detailed, rigorously intelligent true-crime series is too smart to definitively answer that question. It’s more interested in exposing the seedy underbelly of American wealth, and in contemplating how truth can change when it’s filtered through different perspectives. As a raw procedural, The Staircase is nothing special; we’re already familiar with its courtroom proceedings, its penal codes of justice. But the show is still gripping, partly thanks to the cast (Colin Firth, Juliette Binoche, Michael Stuhlbarg exclaiming “You found another woman at the bottom of the stairs!?”), but also because of how it patiently depicts the fraying bonds of a blended family. The Staircase presents an ever-shifting blur of allegiances and bloodlines—every one of Peterson’s relatives seems to have a different last name—then examines how each new piece of evidence can loosen the ties that bind.

35. My Brilliant Friend (HBO, Season 3; 2020 rank: 46). The pacing on this show is strange. It’s not slow, exactly, because monumental events can cascade in instants. It’s more arrhythmic, with leisurely patches alternating haphazardly with blitzes of incident. That sounds like a complaint, but My Brilliant Friend’s novelistic approach is oddly gripping in how it captures the unpredictable, syncopated tempos of everyday life. Season 3 has its lulls, but they flow naturally alongside its rushes of feeling. Besides, despite proceeding alongside the ugly encroachment of Italian fascism, the plotting here is less important than the depth of the characters, who acquire new shades and dimension with each episode. I might have wanted to spend more time with Gaia Girace’s Lila, but it’s the coldness of her absence that crucially impacts Elena (Margherita Mazzucco), who is now a wife, a mother, and an author, yet who still wanders on the verges of unhappiness. Even the love affairs in My Brilliant Friend are flecked with sorrow, and the series’ refusal to pin its characters down is a testament to its persistent sense of invention. It can feel larger than life and also achingly life-sized.

34. Stranger Things (Netflix, Season 4; 2019 rank: 16). It may have technically only featured nine episodes, but given that several of them blow past the length of many movies (seriously, the finale alone runs two-and-a-half hours), the latest season of Stranger Things certainly wins 2022’s award for the most TV. The muchness was inevitable, given that maximalism has always been in the show’s DNA. But if Season 4 doesn’t exactly suffer from bloat, it certainly feels scattered, splintering its many characters off into their own mini adventures—except they aren’t really “mini,” because they all take enormous amounts of time. I’d even argue that roughly 80% of the material feels relatively inessential, and in raw mathematical terms, that would seem to be quite the indictment. But when this show hits, it fucking explodes. There are moments in Stranger Things—typically any scene involving the enchanting pairing of Maya Hawke and Natalia Dyer, with Joe Keery’s Steve wonderfully mixed in—that are positively euphoric in their anticipation and execution. (The much-memed moment of a headphone-strapped Sadie Sink ascending toward the heavens while listening to Kate Bush is so transcendently staged, even the internet couldn’t ruin it.) You can’t criticize the show for trying to do too much—not when “too much” is precisely what the show does.

33. Gentleman Jack (HBO, Season 2; 2019 rank: 15). Is it weird that I shouted at the screen as often during this series’ finale as I did during Stranger Things? Or that it’s equally cluttered? With its fine costumes and precise dialogue, Gentleman Jack hardly suggests the capacity for messiness. Yet its second season is a little overextended, with too many subplots and random secondary characters. But it hardly matters, because when the show homes in on its central romance between a stereotype-shucking landowner (Suranne Jones) and a fretful aristocrat (Sophie Rundle), it absolutely sizzles. The first season concluded with a blissful piece of fan service, but the follow-up complicates their clandestine love affair, introducing new obstacles and thorny shivers of doubt. Yet at the same time, it confirms the abiding truth of their mutual affection. The result is one of the most complex and rewarding on-screen relationships in some time, one that I as a viewer became bizarrely protective of. So when a greedy and manipulative interloper attempted to thwart their connection in the finale, he should have known better. Forget Rundle’s brittle resolve or Jones’ coiled fury; he had to go through me first.

32. Only Murders in the Building (Hulu, Season 2; last year: 26 of 108). Of course this show didn’t need a second season, and not just because no show needs a second season; final scene aside, the first installment of Only Murders in the Building wrapped things up so perfectly, there was nothing left to resolve. But frivolity is one of the series’ key themes; its characters elect to start a true-crime podcast in part because they have nothing better to do. So if Season 2 of Only Murders feels somewhat inessential, that’s just part of its low-key charm. Besides, the show remains very warm and funny, replete with sharp one-liners, inspired gags, and fabulous Selena Gomez coats. (Also: yay, Cara Delevingne!) That its long-form mystery is less than thrilling is similarly beside the point, because the series thrives not as a whodunit but as a hangout comedy. With luck, these goofballs will keep stumbling onto ludicrously convenient crime scenes for years to come.

31. The Old Man (FX, Season 1). The recent Spider-Man movies starring Tom Holland may have been wildly successful, but I’m skeptical that many fans know the name of their director. It’s Jon Watts, and in light of those films’ perfunctory action sequences, he wouldn’t have been my first choice to helm the opening episodes of a spy thriller. So imagine my surprise that the beginning of The Old Man, which stars Jeff Bridges as one of those retired spooks with a very special set of skills who’s forced out of hiding, pummels you with the elegance of its craftsmanship. In fact, those first two hours are so terrific, the remainder of the season’s mere goodness feels like a letdown, especially in light of an irritating non-ending. Still, Bridges is fully engaged here, and the rest of the cast—John Lithgow as his former partner and wily pursuer, Amy Brenneman as his smitten lover who finds herself over her head, Alia Shawkat as his [redacted]—help imbue the pulpy material with humanity and complexity. Just because you’ve seen this stuff before doesn’t mean you won’t be itching to see more.

 
Coming later today: bad boys, college girls, old comediennes, and older vampires.