The 21 best TV shows of 2022

From Better Call Saul and Abbott Elementary to Andor and Top Boy, Hugh Montgomery and Amy Charles pick the year's greatest programmes to binge right now.

1. The Bear

Given the literal and metaphorical heat inside a restaurant kitchen, it would seem to be a perfect crucible for drama. So it's surprising that there hasn't been a top-flight restaurant-centred show – ok, Bob's Burgers aside – until this June, when Hulu production The Bear premiered in the US and quickly became the breakout hit of the summer. In a star-making performance, Jeremy Allen White plays the fine-dining chef returning from New York to his native Chicago to take over his family's sandwich shop following the suicide of his brother. But as he tries to revive its fortunes, he comes into conflict with the t's long-standing staff, as does his new hire, keen young sous chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri). Altogether, it makes for the very opposite of comfort TV, both tightly wound and exhilaratingly kinetic – as well as mouthwatering, for carnivores at least, with its depiction of Chicago's famous beef sandwich, among other things. (HM)

Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

2. Better Call Saul

This year saw us bid farewell to a few all-time-great series (including Atlanta, below), but perhaps no finale was a bigger deal than that of this Breaking Bad spin-off exploring how the once flawed but well-intentioned Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) became Saul Goodman, aka Walter White's deeply crooked lawyer. What started out as a spin-off project that even creator Vince Gilligan wasn't totally sure about ended up arguably outshining its acclaimed predecessor with its more nuanced depiction of a man succumbing to moral compromise. And perhaps most impressive of all was the way it managed to stick the landing in its final season: without giving anything away, it confirmed the show, in the words of the New Statesman, as a "a high point in television drama: never has a series better conveyed the complexities of human lives". (HM)

Available on AMC+ in the US and Netflix in the UK

3. Abbott Elementary

It's been a while since a mainstream network sitcom felt as alive and accomplished as this ABC mockumentary from creator and star Quinta Brunson. Focused on the trials and tribulations of a group of overworked educators at an underfunded Philadelphia school, the show impressed right out of the blocks when it first premiered last December – and with this autumn's second season, it has continued to keep sweetness and sharpness, sitcom hijinks and social commentary, in perfect balance. At September's Emmys, it picked up three wins from seven nominations, including for Brunson and Sheryl Lee Ralph as the fabulously battle-hardened kindergarten teacher Barbara Howard, but I'd expect a veritable sweep of awards coming its way soon enough. (HM)

Available on ABC and Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK 

4. The Rehearsal

How to explain this mind-boggling show, really? Well, maybe the best way is through a film reference: Charlie Kaufman's equally discombobulating 2008 movie Synecdoche New York. In that, a theatre director tried to create a bonkers, ever-expanding facsimile of his real-life existence using actors, actors playing the actors themselves and yet more layers still. Here, comedian Nathan Fielder ends up on a similarly Sisyphean path: setting out to help people "rehearse" potential future life situations using actors, he then becomes part of the performance himself, playing a fake father in a simulation of a family – and that's just the tip of the iceberg. The result is the most bizarre kind of reality TV imaginable, in which the question of what is real and what is not becomes increasingly muddied, as do the ethical implications. But by the end of the six-episode series, there is something curiously very moving about the instinctively ironic Fielder's seeming discovery of genuine emotional connection within his grand charade. Or maybe, of course, that's all a con too. (HM)

Available on HBO Max in the US and NOW in the UK

5. Industry

Few milieus are more mystifying to outsiders than the world of high finance, but while this BBC/HBO series about London graduate bankers has its fair share of incomprehensible jargon, it is never less than entirely gripping. In fact, this year's second series was even better than the first, as its young protagonists turned into ever more complex, morally compromised characters – from inscrutable American Harper, forging a connection with an eccentric tech billionaire, to privileged West Londoner Yasmin, out to really assert herself but dragged down by her noxious father, and Robert, now sober but still battling with serious demons. With its high quotient of sex, drugs and excellent dance tunes, it also manages to be racy without feeling gratuitously so, convincingly capturing a state of being where constant hangovers are set off by the desperate need to succeed. Bring on series three. (HM)

Available on HBO Max in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK

6. Big Boys

No series has been sweeter this year than this semi-autobiographical sitcom from British comedian Jack Rooke about the blossoming friendship between two first-year university roommates Jack and Danny, one gay and one straight, played by Derry Girls' Dylan Llewellyn and Jon Pointing. What could have made for a hoary odd-couple style sitcom instead turned out to be brilliantly nuanced and tender, with Pointing in particular impressing as the jack-the-laddish Danny whose initially confident exterior belied a deeply affecting struggle with mental health. For anyone needing a pick-me-up, it's the kind of show to restore your faith in humanity; let's just hope it gets an airing beyond the UK soon. (HM)

Available on All4 in the UK

7. Andor

Even devoted Star Wars fans would have to it that the extension of the franchise into a full film and TV "shared universe" has not thus far produced the most inspired results, such is the over-adherence to a tried-and-tested formula on both big and small screen. So the latest Star War Disney+ show, released this autumn, shocked everyone with its ability to defy the corporate rules. On paper, a prequel series to a spin-off prequel film, Rogue One, centred on rebel fighter Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), didn't sound promising. Yet in the hands of showrunner Tony Gilroy (the Oscar-nominated director of Michael Clayton), it became a compelling and chillingly real study of authoritarianism that was all the better for dispensing with the usual Star Wars paraphernalia of lightsabers and cute sidekicks. As The Guardian said, "Gilroy… seems to care little about what came before him. Instead, he has focused on human drama, visually stunning set pieces and watertight writing" – and, fans will be glad to know, a second series is already in the works. (HM)

Available on Disney+ internationally

8. Atlanta

After a four-year hiatus, Donald Glover's semi-autobiographical comedy-drama returned with not one, but two series this year – and that was that, as it has now said goodbye for good. But what a show it was, a formally daring piece of work with a gobsmackingly self-assured ability to slip between genres and tones that really pushed the boundaries of what can be achieved on the small screen, while offering pithy wry commentary on the state of contemporary America and more besides. In fact, the first of its two new runs saw rapper Paper Boi, manager Earn et al on tour in Europe, allowing for some equally astute satire on social mores – and attitudes to race – on the other side of the Atlantic; then, finally, it returned to Georgia to give a brilliant hometown send-off to the gang. The show will be much missed, but its place in TV history is assured. (HM)

Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

9. Bad Sisters

With the likes of Severance, Pachinko (see below) and Slow Horses, Apple TV+ has had a particularly strong year out of the streamers – and this Irish comedy-drama was possibly its very best offering of all. An adaptation of a Belgian series written by and starring Sharon Horgan, the Irish comic actor and writer best known for Catastrophe, it revolved around a group of female siblings living in Dublin conspiring to murder one of their other sisters' abusive husbands. Well, that was in the past timeline – in the present timeline, he was indeed dead but who killed him, and how, was a mystery that ran through the 10 episodes. The performances all round were stellar, and like Catastrophe, it was a comedy-drama that truly lived up to that description, masterfully blending gallows humour with real pathos. Meanwhile Claes Bang as the rotten spouse gave simply one of the most skin-crawling performances ever committed to screen (and we mean that only as a compliment). (HM)

Available on Apple TV+ internationally

10. Sherwood

The crime drama has had as many iterations as ever this year, but they didn't come more intelligent or searching than this BBC series from the prolific playwright/screenwriter James Graham, which explored the troubled legacy of the 1980s miners' strikes through the case of a crossbow-wielding killer in a Nottinghamshire village, who hides out in the famous Sherwood Forest. Inspired by a real-life case, it wove a complex portrait of a place still riven by old political divisions, with the help of an astonishing ensemble cast, including Lesley Manville, David Morrissey and Joanne Froggatt among others. In fact, the whodunnit was far less important than the question of "how did a community end up like this">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });