The Shadies: The 5 best TV shows of 2022

Still, nobody asked for it, but the awards keep coming

We’ve covered off the 10 best video games of the year. Done and dusted. No complaints. Now for TV.

As someone who started a short-lived blog about TV, and took a few uni courses, even one in television scriptwriting, you could say I’m a little invested in the medium, even if I’m more watching than writing these days.

Though in the latter half of 2022, I struggled to keep up with even just the week-to-week shows. Not that it’s feasibly possible to keep up with everything, what with the ever-expanding number of streaming services and shows greenlit, mining every possible IP under the sun, with streamers now turning to videogames. Much as Wongers said, reciting FX CEO John Grandraf, we’re really in an era of peak TV.

After seeing some discourse on top 10 lists at the start of 2023, I get it, it’s cowardly to come up with a list and not assign numbers to it. I know for myself, my brain needs to know the numerical worth of your pick and where it sits on your own personal scale even if it’s pointless and none of it matters.

At Shades, we’re all about personal growth. So we’re bringing numbers back, baby. Top 5’s are also becoming the trendy thing, so we’re knocking five off the list*. You don’t have time for that. There are also those lists that pick an arbitrary number for some kind of brain-tickling psychological trick but I won’t do that to you here.

Sure, writing about five shows is half the work of writing ten, but really, I do this all for you, dear reader.

5: Better Things - Season 5

Pamela Adlon’s Better Things. Pay no attention to the disgraced comedian previously attached, this is now Pamela’s baby through and through. Better Things follows Sam Fox, loosely based on Adlon’s own life as a single Mum, raising three daughters in LA, all while maintaining an acting career and with her nosy British mother living across the street.

I’m afraid to say I only caught up with the show in 2022. I fell off in Season One and now that I’ve seen the series to its conclusion I can recommend a daily dose of Better Things in your life. A comforting binge. It’s not a nail-biting dramatic series, though it certainly has the feels. It’s down-to-earth, like a warm blanket, an antidote to all the heightened binge-model shows demanding our eyeballs.

4: The Rehearsal - Season 1

Nathan Fielder is scary. You wouldn’t know it from his low-key, introverted demeanor, but inside is a demon, hellbent on putting ordinary humans through the wringer of awkward social interaction. And I just can’t stop watching his shows. This is his follow-up project to Nathan for You, a show where Fielder would convince local business owners he would improve their business by concocting various schemes, only to end up selling an ice cream flavor that tastes like poop.

The premise of The Rehearsal, which is quickly thrown out the window, has Fielder create a scenario for the victim, err… participant, where they can rehearse a scenario in their personal life by hiring actors, rehearsing different script paths, even recreating a bar in an empty warehouse, down to the wear-and-tear of an old bar stool.

The show delves into a rehearsal that ends up much larger and takes place across multiple episodes, it becomes the beating heart of the show, where a participant wants to rehearse being a parent, as the child “ages” in a condensed lifespan, they are swapped out for another actor, ending on a commentary of the ethics of using child actors. This is the most ridiculous and terrifying thing I saw last year.

3: Station Eleven - Season 1

Based on the book by Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven is a post-apocalyptic tale about a world-devastating pandemic and the human population coming out on the other side. With the show airing after the outbreak of Covid, it was a tough watch at times, and while there are harrowing events, ultimately the series is a hopeful one.

We follow Kirsten who is an actress in an acting troupe known as the Traveling Symphony, roaming from town to town, delivering Shakespeare to the people who are left. What starts as a seemingly disparate series of connections ends up meaning so much more, as the characters’ backstories are slowly revealed over the course of the season, from the initial outbreak to 20 years later.

2: Better Call Saul - Season 6

Another show with Better in the title wrapping up this year. It’s the year for better best things. Better Call Saul, the Breaking Bad prequel, follows the origin story of Saul Goodman, Walter White’s lawyer. Before Saul, he was Jimmy McGill, a scrappy and ambitious lawyer, straining relationships with his friends and family because of his dogged passion for representing his clients, even if it meant getting his hands dirty.

We were teased throughout the series of an after-Breaking Bad timeline in black and white, with Saul in hiding as Gene, the manager of a Cinnabon and we finally got to see it pay off. And of course, revealing what happened to his associate, Kim Wexler. We also get the obligatory Breaking Bad cameos of new scenes set during the Breaking Bad timeline, which feel a little forced, but do focus on important moments for Jimmy.

It’s a fitting finale for this technically brilliant and compulsive watch. While I could pick which show is better, Breaking Bad or Better Call Saul (I’d really need to give Breaking Bad a re-watch) but they’re different animals. Breaking Bad is more pulpy and propulsive with plans going wrong, while Better Call Saul is more deliberate in its approach, more about the setup and payoff of a perfect heist. They’re companion pieces, and I can’t wait to see what the Gilligan team cooks up next.

1: Atlanta - Season 3 & Season 4

Since 2018 we had been waiting for the continuation of Atlanta. With a cast that includes Zazie Beetz, Brian Tyree Henry, and LaKeith Stanfield, they’ve all been very busy lately. Almost as an apology to fans, in 2022 Donald Glover put out not just one, but two seasons of Atlanta to wrap up the series.

I love this show. While coming at it as a white guy, watching a show by a Black creator on the subject of Blackness, I may not be seeing everything that is being told episode to episode. But in my bones, I appreciate the offbeat, twisted humour with moments of surreality.

Season 3 has the cast on their trip to Amsterdam, while also featuring self-contained episodes, telling Twilight Zone-style stories with new actors (obviously in part due to the aforementioned busy regulars). Some fans were frustrated by these episodes, taking away from the cast they were here to see. It was almost like a second show being snuck inside Atlanta, but I admired the audacity of it and the stranger stories they could tell.

Season 4 has more episodes with our familiar cast but still manages to squeeze in an episode about a fake documentary on a fictional Black creator of The Goofy Movie. The finale is an amazing wrap-up, reckoning with the show’s surreal nature while still staying true to itself without going overly meta.

Atlanta is the best TV show of 2022.

* If you’re still curious, the bottom half of my list has Severance, The Bear, Heartstopper, Players, and For All Mankind.