Toodle-oo, 2022!
Another year is almost behind us, and so it’s time to share my top 5 TV shows of 2022. I have to admit, I didn’t watch as many shows as last year, since this year has proven a bit better for going out and getting active as opposed to staying isolated and binging every program in existence. But still, I made time to watch a few shows and found some that I really enjoyed. This year had a few really solid shows, and some fantastic ones didn’t even make the cut. I want to give a shoutout to Derry Girls and Reservation Dogs, two shows that I really love overall yet just missed the top five. With those honorable mentions out of the way, let’s dive into my top five shows of 2022. Hopefully you find some previous favorites and some new ones you’d like to check out.
The Midnight Club
Mike Flanagan excels at creating horror shows with a lot of heart. And The Midnight Club, adapted from the Christopher Pike novel, is no exception. Iman Benson stars as Ilonka, a teenager with terminal cancer who elects to stay at a renowned hospice for young people where she hopes to find a cure. She finds refuge in the Midnight Club, a group that meets nightly to share scary stories and locate proof of an afterlife. The record-breaking show uses the nightly tales as opportunities to adapt Pike’s other works. These stories allow The Midnight Club to break from its already intriguing core mystery to tell sci-fi, horror, noir, and other popular genre stories that prove engaging in their own right. These also feature the core cast, allowing the ensemble to play against type. Sadly, the show ends on a cliffhanger, and Netflix opted not to renew it for another season.
All of Us Are Dead
You’d think that in the year 2022 we would all be sick of zombie shows. And on the surface, the South Korean Netflix drama All of Us Are Dead doesn’t sound inventive. While a zombie apocalypse begins, a group of high school students has to make it from school… to the outskirts of town. And yet, the strength of All of Us Are Dead lies in the emotional and surprisingly grounded storytelling. Unlike other shows that lean into the absurdity of it all, this one feels highly realistic in portraying a rapidly collapsing society (zombies themselves notwithstanding). The effects and filming also impress, with several scenes in which choreographed carnage unfolds over a single long take. Yoon Chan-young leads the capable cast, who often have to act as both sympathetic students and the ravenous undead. The show gets a bit long in the (flesh-eating) tooth, but it ends with an emotional payoff that satisfies and invites another season.
Our Flag Means Death
While Our Flag Means Death primarily takes place on a pirate ship, the HBO Max show itself feels like a Trojan horse. On the outside, viewers may see an absurd pirate comedy, but inside lies a surprisingly sweet story about loving without boundaries. Longtime collaborators Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi slip into their roles effortlessly as the out-of-his-depth Stede Bonnet and the barbarous yet bored Blackbeard. The two characters have a complex dynamic, but the two actors clearly have a blast playing off each other. Supporting the two are a cavalcade of comically-attuned character actors, including Leslie Jones as a pirate queen who steals peoples’ noses and Kristian Nairn (Hodor himself) as a hilariously raucous crew member. The various supporting actors and game-for-it-all guest stars prove too numerous to mention. Though the show starts a little slow and isn’t consistently humorous, when it gets going, it really sails strong.
Station Eleven
In 2020, I made the arguably unintuitive choice to read Station Eleven, a book about a devastating pandemic. The riveting novel by Emily St. John Mandel focuses on seemingly disparate characters, their lives before and after the plague, and how they intersect in surprising ways. When I heard HBO Max had an adaptation in the works, I worried about how it would utilize the material, with its time jumps and deep interiority. But Patrick Somerville pulled it off, aided by a believable and pathos-providing cast featuring Mackenzie Davis, Himesh Patel, and Daniel Zovatto.
The TV adaptation makes some changes. It’s not better or worse than the novel, but different. That said, the changes fit the medium. The book is more cynical, while the show is more hopeful. The book trusts readers with an open-ended finale, while the show rewards patient viewers by tying up loose ends. Since the show can’t let us into the thoughts of its characters, it has them take more actions that reveal their values and beliefs. The adaptation carefully builds to a cathartic conclusion, something we all could benefit from after the last few years.
Around the World in 80 Days
I do love an impressive literary adaptation, and Station Eleven almost made it as my top one for the year, as well as my favorite show of 2022. But a surprise adaptation of one of my favorite novels just barely managed to beat it to the finish line. The latest Around the World in 80 Days may not be the first adaptation of the Jules Verne classic. However, the eight-part miniseries gives the story room to breathe, focusing each episode on a different fully-realized locale, conveying the feeling of a worldwide adventure.
In this adaptation, the superb David Tennant fills the globe-trotting shoes of Phileas Fogg, supported by the talented and likable duo of Ibrahim Koma as Passepartout and Leonie Benesch as new addition Abigail Fix Fortescue. While the limited series deviates from the source material in terms of precisely what happens, it fully commits to the book’s spirit.
It’s a true testament to the greatness of a show where individual episodes feel like their own movies, and Around the World in 80 Days offers them freely, from a rip-roaring railroad endeavor that builds off the book to an added chapter with an Old Western standoff. Almost every episode proves heavily thematic and exciting, building around an overarching theme about learning it’s never too late in life to reinvent oneself. If the previous entry looked back at the introspection of the pandemic, this one brings our gaze outward, reminding us of the grand world we live in and the adventures it holds.
