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The 10 Best TV Shows of 2022 (So Far)

Hundreds of shows aired from January to June this year. Here were 10 of the best, as chosen by TV critic Valerie Ettenhofer.
Best Tv Shows Of So Far
By  · Published on July 8th, 2022

Hacks

Hacks

HBO Max’s odd-couple comedy series crafted a near-perfect first season last year with an arc that saw veteran comedian Deborah (Jean Smart) start a fraught partnership with young writer Ava (Hannah Einbinder). In its sophomore season, Hacks didn’t try to one-up its first outing so much as grow from it, letting the complex, dynamic characters speak for themselves. The result is a well-written and emotionally intuitive season of television that’s laugh-out-loud funny to boot.

The season picks up with Deborah and Ava in a precarious position in more ways than one: Ava’s dad just died, Deborah is about to start a cross-country tour, and the former accidentally aired the latter’s dirty laundry out to some cutthroat Hollywood execs while loaded one night. These new episodes deftly tackle each of these plot points but embed them in an overarching story of a friendship that keeps blooming despite the self-sabotaging habits of two “difficult” women. Smart is effortlessly great as Deborah, but the show wouldn’t be nearly as brilliant if she didn’t have Einbinder constantly ricocheting off her in a performance that’s peak twentysomething dysfunction.


Our Flag Means Death

Our Flag Means Death

The Golden Age of Piracy gets a delightful romantic rewrite in one of the year’s most unexpected comfort watches. Our Flag Means Death casts ever-underrated New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby as Stede Bonnet, a dandyish landowner who forgoes his wealth and family to chase his dreams on the seven seas. The Gentleman Pirate isn’t great at his new job, but when he meets the legendary marauder Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), he finds himself learning some lessons in piracy – and maybe love, too.

Our Flag Means Death is a sweet, joyfully queer adventure series that’s as much about unpacking trauma and embracing love as it is about pillaging and plundering. Still, with breezy half-hour episodes and chemistry-building subplots involving fancy parties and treasure hunts, it’s able to remain captivating and goofily funny even as it builds up a surprisingly strong emotional core. Darby puts in a great lead performance as curious but guilt-ridden Stede, while Waititi’s compelling charm and heart make him the perfect other half of an endlessly watchable on-screen partnership.


Search Party

Search Party

Few TV shows in recent memory have reinvented themselves as wholly and frequently as Search Party. The dark sitcom’s first four seasons saw a vapid group of New York Millennials hunt for their lost classmate, kill a man and cover it up, stand trial for murder, and survive a kidnapping plot. In its fifth and final season, the HBO Max series pivots wildly one more time, into a deliciously over-the-top satire about cults, influencers, enlightenment, and zombies.

You read that last part right. The series goes balls-to-the-wall in a last season that defies both expectation and simple description. With plots that include John Early’s Elliott adopting an evil child, Alia Shawkat’s Dory becoming a zen guru, Kathy Griffin playing a conspiracy theorist named Liquorice, and Jeff Goldblum appearing as a tech billionaire who wants to erase all pain with a pill, the final season of Search Party has nothing to lose and a whole lot of batshit comedy to go around. Early continues to be the screamingly funny series standout, but Shawkat, Meredith Hagner, and John Reynolds all get their chance to shine as they each commit to their self-obsessed characters to the bittersweet, bonkers end.


Severance

Severance

At once cerebral and instinctual, slow-building and shocking, Severance is a fantastically crafted, dual-minded sci-fi thriller. Come for the Apple TV+ series’ intriguing premise, which follows a group of employees at a shady company who undergo a procedure to separate their work memories from their home memories. Stay for the utterly mind-boggling layers of in-universe lore, deep rivers of emotion, and eerie atmosphere as the show grows into a trippy, philosophical thriller featuring two sets of the same characters.

Adam Scott initially plays a company straight man in a cast that also includes a teeth-gnashing Patricia Arquette, lovestruck John Turturro, hilarious Zach Cherry, and secret weapon Britt Lower. Ben Stiller directs alienating office interiors with a beautiful, brutalist sensibility. The show sneaks up on you, luxuriating in its own mystery until you’re lulled into its patterns, then dropping huge, satisfying twists. If all of that isn’t enough, Severance has the most nail-bitingly suspenseful season finale I’ve seen in years.


Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Star Trek Strange New Worlds

When I first heard that Paramount+ was attempting a Star Trek: The Original Series prequel show, I was at best skeptical, and at worst fiercely protective of anything that might try to touch the Gene Roddenberry original. So when Star Trek: Strange New Worlds turned out to be a total blast, it was one of the biggest and best TV surprises of the year for me. The series stars an uber-charismatic Anson Mount as Captain Pike, the Enterprise’s canonical first in command in the years before Kirk ever set foot on the ship. A crew of talented newbies, along with young versions of familiar characters like Spock (Ethan Peck) and Uhura (Celia Rose Gooding), accompany Pike on exploratory missions similar to those undergone in the original series.

But Star Trek: Strange New Worlds side-steps the problems other modern Trek shows have faced by taking a largely episodic approach to its story, cultivating great character-driven moments while also delivering entertaining one-offs about music-loving comets and Vulcan body swaps. The super-smart show is always respectful in its approach to its beloved source material. Even more impressively, it updates Roddenberry’s progressive, idealistic philosophies in order to comment thoughtfully on the challenges of today through stories of an imaginatively rendered future.


Find more about the best movies and shows in our Mid-Year Report.

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Valerie Ettenhofer is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer, TV-lover, and mac and cheese enthusiast. As a Senior Contributor at Film School Rejects, she covers television through regular reviews and her recurring column, Episodes. She is also a voting member of the Critics Choice Association's television and documentary branches. Twitter: @aandeandval (She/her)