Our exhaustive rankings of every TV show of 2022 continue. If you missed prior entries, you can find them at the following links:
60. Tokyo Vice (HBO, Season 1). In the #PeakTV era, one of the most irritating things you can say to someone about a show is, “Make sure you give it a few episodes.” People’s time is limited; they can’t just aimlessly fritter away random hours on series that don’t grab them immediately. And with that in mind: Make sure you give Tokyo Vice a few episodes. It gets off to a bumpy start, delving into obscure yakuza minutiae as Ansel Elgort attempts to keep his head above water as the only white dude at Japan’s biggest newspaper. But over time, the picture sharpens and the characters gain dimension. As an outsider trying to assimilate, Elgort’s natural awkwardness suits him well, but the real stars are the natives: Ken Watanabe as a patient detective, Shô Kasamatsu as an ambitious gangster, and the invaluable Rinko Kikuchi as a weary editor. (Poor Rachel Keller is forced to carry a dreary subplot involving a nightclub.) The plot can still be overwhelming, but Tokyo Vice slowly steeps itself in immersive detail, and its sense of exoticism gradually gives way to real intrigue and suspense.
59. Minx (HBO, Season 1). Is pornography rooted in liberation or exploitation? Minx comes (sorry) at that question from a peculiar vantage: It’s about an avowed feminist (Ophelia Lovibond) who partners with a confessed sleaze merchant (Jake Johnson, in his element) to create a magazine where pictures of naked men share space with scholarly articles about women’s lib—an issue with issues. It’s an inherently comic premise, and the show mines it for solid laughs and curious chemistry; simple scenes of the staff (which also includes a very fine Jessica Lowe) debating various articles hum with energy and enthusiasm. (Several episodes were directed by Rachel Lee Goldenberg, who helmed the excellent Unpregnant and knows her way around playful banter.) It’s also a somewhat ungainly character study, perhaps tackling more material—gender politics, racism, class struggle, even the mob—than it can comfortably handle in 10 half-hour episodes. But even if it stumbles at times, Minx’s messiness is part of its fun. You don’t always know what you’re going to see, but you’re always eager to turn to the next page.
58. Ms. Marvel (Disney, Season 1). The lodestar of every Disney production is safety; the surest way to ensure four-quadrant appeal is to minimize the risk of ruffling feathers. Such caution may be commercially savvy, but it rarely lends itself to great art. Ms. Marvel doesn’t entirely evade this corporate imperative—its finale is tedious, as are all attempts to link it with the broader Marvel Cinematic Universe—but it at least carries its own recognizable personality. It’s hard to imagine, thinking back to 2008 when Robert Downey Jr. first donned Iron Man’s metal suit, that the MCU would eventually make room for a TV series about a Pakistani-American teenager (Iman Vellani, flashing star potential) who travels back in time and learns about her ancestors’ travails during the Indian partition. Ms. Marvel is far from perfect—some of its writing is too glib, and its action scenes are unpersuasive—but it at least feels like its own thing. Amid the increasing sameness of our hegemonic superhero marketplace, that’s worth celebrating.
57. Servant (Apple, Season 3; last year: 48 of 108). I have given up on it making sense. Frankly, I’m not sure it ever made sense; the original premise of this series involved a mystically gifted au pair who somehow transformed a “reborn doll” into a flesh-and-blood baby. Now, as Servant digs deeper into its own convoluted mythology, it becomes less narratively intelligible. Who cares. This show has always been about vibes, and those remain out in force. The single-house setting—which has expanded, ever so gently, to include the adjacent street and park—continues to ooze with inexplicable menace (as does Nell Tiger Free’s creepy performance in the titular role), while the impenetrable nature of the mystery only makes it more unsettling. Beyond that, Servant has developed into a bona fide comedy, leveraging the deceptive skill of Lauren Ambrose, Toby Kebbell, and the indispensable Rupert Grint. I’m not convinced that the show’s horror elements mesh all that gracefully with its playful ones, but even that dissonance produces a pleasing tension. One of the characters suffers from agoraphobia, but I can’t blame her; with a house as atmospheric and alluring as this, who’d want to leave?
56. Atlanta (FX, Seasons 3 and 4; 2018 rank: 63 of 93). In its own weird way—and if nothing else, this show has always been weird—the final two seasons of Atlanta feel like an anthology, not all that different from Cabinet of Curiosities. Some episodes center on the main cast, while others depart from the primary narrative entirely. What’s even stranger is that I’m not sure which type I prefer. Some of the standalone installments, like the one about a white family attending a Black funeral, are simply bizarre; others, like the one in which a biracial student code-switches in the hope of benefitting from affirmative action, speak brilliantly to Donald Glover’s preoccupation with contemporary race relations. (Bonus points for the immortal line, “You didn’t have to call the boy Clarence Thomas, shit he ain’t that white!”) But that same inconsistency applies to the putatively normal episodes, which vacillate from exhilarating (the therapist! the farm!) to obnoxious (the baguette, the sleeping tank). Yet even if Atlanta is too capricious to be great, it’s also too striking to be ignored. It doesn’t always make sense; it does always make an impression.
55. Harley Quinn (HBO, Season 3; 2020 rank: 42 of 124). There are moments in Harley Quinn, the hyper-violent animated comedy that takes place in a perverse corner of the DC Comics universe, where the series feels a little too proud of itself, as though its quirky existence is its own reward. But then there are other moments—such as the episode where the Joker stars in his own ’60s-style sitcom, or the one where the characters are forced to witness the death of Batman’s parents over and over, or whenever James Adomian’s Bane says absolutely anything—where you realize what a bizarre little gift this show is. Beyond its impish humor and restless imagination, Season 3 does something unusual: It chronicles a healthy romantic relationship between two main characters. It isn’t as though the union of Kaley Cuoco’s titular villainess and Lake Bell’s Poison Ivy is one of perpetual bliss, but Harley Quinn is serious in demonstrating how they love and support one another. Get past the whole “wanton death and destruction” thing, and they’re basically role models.
54. The Tourist (HBO, Season 1). Wait, is Jamie Dornan a good actor? In recent years, the Fifty Shades heartthrob has given solid performances both comic (Barb and Star Go to Vista del Mar) and dramatic (Belfast). Now he anchors this spiky Australian thriller, one that takes the amnesia gimmick and runs with it for six hectic, entertaining episodes. The Tourist isn’t all that substantial; it plays the usual tricks with memory, and its ultimate destination is fairly routine. But the journey is awfully fun and enjoyably offbeat, incorporating the misadventures of an overwhelmed, doggedly persistent traffic cop (Danielle Macdonald), along with an old-timer (Damon Herriman) who puts a unique spin on the “wily vet” trope. There are twists, betrayals, and blasts of exciting violence, and it strikes just the right balance of not taking itself too seriously and not condescending to its characters. G’day, mate.
53. Evil (Paramount, Season 3; last year: 37). Yikes. This show isn’t exactly scary, because it’s too playful to give you nightmares. But it’s definitely unsettling, in part because it moves according to its own peculiar rhythms. Is it serialized or episodic? Is it a supernatural thriller or a family comedy? Are demons real, or are they really gross? The notion that “anything can happen” is often fatal to art, because it supplants coherence in favor of randomness. But the unpredictability of Evil is less arbitrary than absorbing, in keeping with the series’ off-kilter universe where things are always just off. There is some truly disturbing stuff on this show, but the strangeness never feels punishing. Instead, it’s of a piece in a world where grandmas kidnap son-in-laws, where demanding bosses are literal monsters, and where the kids are decidedly not all right.
52. Reservation Dogs (FX on Hulu, Season 2; last year: 67). I don’t fully connect with this show. Of course, when I write that, it sounds like I’m complaining that it centers Native American characters, so to be clear, that’s not the case; I’m always happy to watch art that features non-white people, especially when it highlights a marginalized or underrepresented segment of society. My issue with Reservation Dogs isn’t about its demographics but its pacing; it’s so relaxed and confident in its storytelling, it’s prone to spells of aimlessness. But this is still a beautifully observed show, and while its episodic structure means that it tends to bounce between its numerous characters, it nonetheless honors all of them. I may not entirely vibe with it, but I still appreciate it.
51. She-Hulk (Disney, Season 1). If you reach back far enough into the archives of this website, you will find my hyperbolic claim in which I declared Tatiana Maslany’s performance in Orphan Black to be “the greatest television performance I’ve ever seen.” It’s been eight years since I made that statement, in which time the volume of high-quality TV has increased exponentially. But what hasn’t changed is Maslany’s talent. She-Hulk is a very silly series, one that putatively places a reluctant superhero at the center of a self-professed “lawyer show”; in fact, it’s so proudly meta (just wait until the finale) that it often disregards the sitcom imperative of telling actual jokes. But in our existing superhero pipeline, which is clogged with drudgery and solemnity, I welcome a bit of lighthearted silliness, even if it’s performative. Besides, Maslany is just so good; rather than succumbing to the material’s laziness, she lifts it up to her level, making goofy storylines and awkward situations sing with vitality and wit. Hulk, smash, indeed.
50. As We See It (Amazon, Season 1). Woof. The beacon that accompanies any show by Jason Katims (Friday Night Lights) surely warns viewers to keep tissues close at hand. But As We See It, the story of three autistic adults (played by actors who are all on the spectrum) fighting for a semblance of social normalcy, isn’t a traditional tearjerker. It’s too empathetic to manipulate its characters into artificially sad situations. Instead, it regards their predicaments with honesty, sincerity, and (where appropriate) cringe comedy. The series is far from flawless; there are a few contrivances, in particular involving the heroes’ aide (Smile’s Sosie Bacon), and the behavior of the secondary characters is sometimes unrealistic. But that’s the rarity for a series where realism is both an artistic goal and a source of discomfort. It doesn’t take long before you cling to these people, whom you desperately hope can blot out the noise and find a small measure of peace.
49. Mythic Quest (Apple, Season 3; last year: 30). The curse of repetition threatens to envelop Mythic Quest in its third season, which sometimes feels like it’s running in place. The jokes are a little less zippy, the references a little more strained. Even the requisite format-breaking episode doesn’t meet the (very high) standards of prior seasons. (Also, the stuff with the HR manager is kind of a disaster.) Nevertheless, this is still a warm and funny show, full of sharply drawn characters and smart dialogue. Charlotte Nicdao remains MVP, but she makes room for other, equally talented members of the spry cast, in particular Jessie Ennis’ overeager, manipulative assistant. And if Mythic Quest doesn’t seem to be making much narrative headway, that’s in keeping with the spirit of its characters, who constantly attempt to revitalize themselves only to fall back into the same suffocating patterns. The sequel to this game may not reinvent the wheel, but it still has plenty of replay value.
48. The Afterparty (Apple, Season 1). Hey, a whodunit! Alternatively: guh, a whodunit. I enjoy murder mysteries, but I’m also wary of them; they can focus so narrowly on building suspense and implicating various suspects that they neglect the more fundamental values of writing and pacing. For the most part, The Afterparty avoids this trap thanks to its faintly marvelous gimmick: Every episode unfolds from the perspective of a different guest, and in doing so each adopts its own singular tone and genre. Naturally, some of these are more successful than others—the obvious highlight is Ben Schwartz’s demented musical—but the variation is the point; it keeps you engaged, providing you with substantive entertainment beyond just randomly guessing who’s guilty. It turns a standard-issue procedural into an ensemble comedy, one where every player is a charming coconspirator.
47. The Sandman (Netflix, Season 1). Netflix’s brand is all about the binge. It always releases all of its episodes at once, so that ravenous consumers can devour as many hours of their favorite show as fast as they can. The result is that, for most series, different episodes tend to blur together—the dreaded “10-hour movie” approach. The Sandman isn’t a great show, but it nonetheless strikes the perfect balance between serialized storytelling and episodic excitement. No single installment is entirely self-contained, but most of them focus on specific adventures or disturbances that are flavorful and unique; the two best—one that’s set at a small-town diner whose guests fall victim to their own rapacious desires, the other which contemplates whether immortality is a curse or a blessing—are delightful in their ingenuity and economy. Conversely, it’s frustrating when The Sandman tries to cobble together a multi-episode arc, in part because its titular lord of dreams (Tom Sturridge) is so bland. But even here, the show’s world-building is impressive, with gleaming production design and a strong sense of style and color. It’s good enough to make you dream of a second season.
46. Under the Banner of Heaven (FX on Hulu, Season 1). There’s something especially dangerous about applying the stock true-crime storytelling approach to the sordid deeds at the center of Under the Banner of Heaven; it risks tarring an entire community, inviting the nonbelievers among us to stop and sneer, “Look at those foolish zealots!” Sensibly, the series attempts to correct for this, casting Andrew Garfield as a faithful LDS practitioner who also happens to be a stubbornly good detective. In addition, it takes pains to illustrate the many gradations of faith, and how disturbingly easy it is for well-intentioned worship to slip into fanatically violent dogma. In this regard, no cast member is more nauseously memorable than Wyatt Russell, who plays a church leader who seems like a decent guy, at least until he’s saying things like, “God never ratified the 13th Amendment.” Under the Banner of Heaven is queasier than most series of its ilk—not because its violence is especially ghastly (though it’s pretty rough), but because it delivers such a persuasive depiction of moral rot. In the end, it’s almost too convincing; after watching this show, good luck reading your scriptures the same way again.
45. The Patient (FX on Hulu, Season 1). The Americans is on the very short list for my favorite TV show of all time, so the encore from Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg was always going to face an impossibly high bar. Give them credit: They tried something different. There are no disguised spies in The Patient, though its hooky premise—Domhnall Gleeson plays a serial killer who kidnaps his therapist (Steve Carell) and locks him in his basement, demanding regular sessions until he can quench his compulsion—provides ample opportunity for suspense and deception. Whether it provides 10 episodes’ worth of such material is another question; this is one of the rare TV shows where it’s fair to wonder whether it would have worked better as a movie. Still, there’s plenty of tension here, maximized by the cast and crew; certain scenes of Carell and Gleeson talking somehow pulse with agonizing uncertainty. It also delivers a killer finale that puts the kibosh on any potential mercenary renewals. The Patient arguably could have been even more minimalist—a few flashbacks feel like cheats—but it wrings real drama from its simple setup. There’s nowhere else to go; let the healing begin.
44. P-Valley (Starz, Season 2; 2020 rank: 27). Whether the COVID-19 pandemic is truly over depends on whom you ask, but most of television seems to have eagerly pushed it to its rearview. Not so for P-Valley, which grapples directly with the disease’s spread in direct and sometimes startling ways; the season’s opening sequence, in which a customer attends a drive-through strip show, is astonishing in its design and color. That combination of stylistic verve and topical bluntness is what animates the series, which is unapologetic in its graphic frankness. The character work in Season 2 isn’t uniformly perfect, as certain plot points get drowned in esoteric detail. But this remains a fiercely emotional show, swaddling its characters in its very particular brand of tough love. At the center of everything remains Nicco Annan, whose Uncle Clifford is one of the most vibrantly original characters to grace modern TV screens. And while it’s tempting for some liberals to dismiss entire chunks of the American South as a lost cause, P-Valley reveals the glorious Black heart that beats within Mississippi. With great insight and electric dance scenes, it turns the pole into a pulpit.
43. For All Mankind (Apple, Season 3; last year: 28). In terms of hit-to-miss ratio, this show grades out relatively poorly; certain subplots in Season 3 are so mind-bogglingly bad, it’s fair to wonder if the writers were acting out of protest. But good science-fiction is all about innovation and experimentation, and even if For All Mankind runs into patches of turbulence, it also remains capable of delivering truly epic sequences that are rare for modern television. There’s a time jump in an early episode that had me hooting with glee, and some of the later dilemmas are staged with exquisite precision and patience. It’s fair to wish that the series were more judicious with its plotting and its characters, but imposing that kind of restraint might risk flattening its grandeur. Remember, this is a show about the space race. It needs to reach for the stars.
42. Kindred (FX on Hulu, Season 1). The racial and sociological implications of Kindred—a series in which a Black woman (Mallori Johnson) living in present-day Los Angeles gets inexplicably yanked back to the antebellum South—are thorny and provocative. Yet in this telling, they take a backseat to more pressing logistical questions. Namely: What would you do? How would you act? Could you use your knowledge of history to outwit your national forebears, or would you be overwhelmed by being transplanted to a country you’ve never known? Kindred grapples with these queries sincerely, lending real-world heft to its sci-fi premise. Whether it satisfactorily twins its elaborate plot with its theme of racial injustice is yet another open question. Regardless, there’s plenty to chew on here, and Johnson and Micah Stock (who plays her sorta boyfriend, sorta savior, and sorta victim) imbue their characters’ linked predicament with febrile intensity. (For his part, True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten is delightfully repugnant as a plantation owner.) Will they forever be trapped between two timelines, or will they outfox the mysterious forces that are tormenting them? Either way, there’s no question that you’ll keep watching.
41. Inventing Anna (Netflix, Season 1). Some great performances disappear into their role, invisibly melding the actor with the character. That, to put it mildly, is not what Julia Garner does in Inventing Anna. To the contrary, she plays the titular scammer with such zealous fanfare, such operatic visibility, that you always remember she’s an actor doing her job. But that flamboyant approach makes perfect sense for this part, because Anna Delvey is a born huckster, so the act of portraying her is just another con. And the Delvey scenes in Inventing Anna are exhilarating in their sheer disbelief, their “How on earth did she pull this off?” preposterousness. They’re so good, in fact, that it’s maddening the series frames itself as the subject of an investigative report pursued by a hopeless journalist (Anna Chlumsky). The split is roughly 50-50 in terms of screen time and a billion to zero in terms of entertainment value. But a billion is a big number (it’s probably how much Delvey convinced some poor sap to invest in one of her schemes), and the thrill of Garner’s performance does an awful lot to compensate for the series’ more sluggish material. That, after all, was Delvey’s magic trick: Even when there’s nothing there, she’ll convince you that you’re looking at a masterpiece.
Coming tomorrow: athletes, robots, prisoners, and podcasters.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.