There was too much TV in 2022. Now’s your chance to catch up.

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Andor (Disney+)

How do you sum up a show as perfectly realised as Andor in just a few sentences? It’s tempting to use them for a highlight reel of all the iconic speeches: Luthen’s “I made my mind a sunless place”, Maarva’s “That’s just love, nothing you can do about that”, Nemik’s “Remember this: try”. And it’s true – Tony Gilroy’s virtuoso writing was the Force propelling this miracle of a TV show. But there’s so much more that made Andor special, from the killer soundtrack (think of the funeral march in the season finale, or the absolute banger that was ‘Niamos’) to the disdainful curl of Denise Gough’s lip as the terrifying Dedra Meero. Shorn of Star Wars’ usual space wizardry and fairy tale trappings, Andor is about the real human cost of rebellion but also, more hopefully, how tiny sparks of resistance can eventually become a raging fire. / Catherine McGregor

Better Call Saul (Neon)

Better Call Saul managed the impossible. It somehow outshone the extraordinary shadow cast by its predecessor, Breaking Bad. And it managed to produce a perfect final season that deftly tied up the vast number of intertwined loose ends that had been created since the show started in 2015. I already miss Saul, Kim, Mike, Gus and everyone else that we grew to love, hate or downright despise across all six seasons. / Stewart Sowman-Lund

Hacks (TVNZ+)

I recently congratulated Slow Horses on boasting the best insults since Veep. A worthy runner-up in that category is Hacks, the wonderful Emmy-winning comedy that returned for season two this year. Of the many delights in this series about a veteran Las Vegas stand-up and the Gen Z comedy writer trying to reinvigorate her show, the stream of mockery between Deborah (Jean Smart) and Ava (Hannah Einbinder) is a constant highlight. Still, among all the terrifically funny acidity, the sweetness of Hacks sneaked up on me, until I found myself sobbing during the funeral scene that closed season one. In season two the show went on the road, and Deborah and Ava’s relationship was pushed to breaking point… and then the finale left me in bits, again. In a sea of TV comedy-dramas, Hacks is undoubtedly the funniest of them all. It’s also often the most moving. / CM

The Bear (Disney+)

After six of its eight excellent episodes, The Bear was already destined to become one of the best shows of the year. Everyone who watched it became obsessed with the Chicago-based chef show – the memes, the hot-but-troubled head chef, played by new heart throb Jeremy Allen White, and the constant knife’s-edge drama that threatened to boil over at any moment. For the full 20 minutes of episode seven, that’s exactly what happened. Filmed in one glorious take, it captured the chaos, the madness, the who-would-do-this? WTF-ness of kitchen life in all its debauched, life-threatening glory. A masterpiece of writing, storytelling and clever filmic deception, that episode turned an already great show into an unmissable one. Already seen it? It’s well worth watching again these holidays. Then get in the kitchen and try and perfect your donuts. / Chris Schulz

Reservation Dogs (Disney+)

Reservation Dogs closed out its excellent first season with a question: where do these kids, and where does this series, go from here? The second season more than delivered. The show set Bear, Elora, Cheese, and Willie Jack on journeys beyond their own insular friendship, and explored the darker, funnier, and sadder sides of each of their characters. Quiet episodes about subjects as diverse as working a part-time job, grief and decolonisation resonated deeply, because they came from such an authentic place. Not just a beautifully observed series about small town life, Reservation Dogs is a precious window into Native American culture, disrupting tired narratives and replacing them with stories that come from, and are rooted in, truth. / Sam Brooks

Industry (Neon)

Set among a group of highly sexed (and very often plain high) young traders in the City of London, Industry ranks as one of the most intense TV shows of the year. Think Succession meets Euphoria, or The Bear with Bloomberg terminals instead of kitchen knives. I found season one impressive but hard to love. Season two, though, was a revelation. The showrunners have spoken about realising they’d failed to inject the series with enough plot when it launched in 2020; that’s definitely not an issue this year. While I watched season one mostly for the vibes of the thing, season two was as gripping as anything I’ve seen on TV this year. If you’re coming to it fresh, watch Industry from the start – and expect it to get better and better. / CM

Severance (Apple TV+)

What are the goats up to? Why is Mark working alongside his supposedly dead ex-wife? And what the blinking hell are they even doing in that blindingly white office? Landing at a time when most of us hadn’t spent much time in the office, Severance gave us the darkest nightmare vision of work-life balance, one where you can have your memories “severed” to keep plenty of distance between those two places. It raised questions – because of course it did – which morphed over the course of this twisted, deceitful season of television from ‘why would anyone do this?’ to, ‘would you do this if you could?’ Intense, minimalist and posing plenty of questions ahead of its highly anticipated second season, Severance will make you feel differently about your least-liked desk mates, and have you dancing to defiant jazz, in no time. / CS

Abbott Elementary (Disney+)

Do you miss having a great half hour comedy in your life? A properly funny network sitcom, like The Office or Parks and Rec? I have good news: Abbott Elementary is the show you’ve been looking for. This workplace mockumentary set in a Philadelphia public school isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. You’ll recognise Lesley Knope’s DNA in Janine, the sunny young teacher played by show creator Quinta Brunson; as her colleague Gregory, Tyler James Williams does the best camera side-eye since Adam Scott. But wearing its influences on its sleeve doesn’t make Abbott Elementary any less satisfying. Every member of the small cast is fantastic, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as old-school teacher Barbara certainly deserved her Emmy. But on a pure laughs-per-minute basis, Janelle James’ inept principal Ava and Chris Perfetti as corny but lovable Jacob are my MVPs. Season two is streaming on Disney+ now. Do yourself a favour and watch it. / CM

The Staircase (Neon)

First released in 2004, the docuseries The Staircase stretched across 13 episodes, three seasons and 11 years in the life of Michael Peterson, the prime suspect in the killing of his wife Kathleen. If you’d stuck with The Staircase through all that time, you probably thought you’d gleaned all you could ever need to know about this confounding story. But The Staircase – here I’m talking about HBO Max dramatisation released this year – would prove you wrong. As Michael Peterson, Colin Firth captures the pathos and often extreme prickishness of his real life counterpart, while Kathleen, little more than a face smiling from snapshots in the original documentary, has life breathed back into her by actor Toni Colette, and by showrunner Antonio Campos’ decision to time-jump back and forth between the lead-up to her death and its aftermath. It didn’t get the same attention in a year of ripped-from-the-headlines series like The Dropout and Dahmer, but The Staircase is well worth catching up with this summer. / CM

The White Lotus (Neon)

As I write, we’re awaiting the final episode of a season of TV that has effortlessly taken social media by storm over the past six weeks. But there’s nothing effortless about The White Lotus, whose creator Mike White has again crafted a perfectly realised story about the social collision between the overprivileged and somewhat less than privileged. It would’ve been enough if he’d just put Jennifer Coolidge on screen, slurring memes, but instead, White dug even deeper and threw even wider this year. The second season, transplanted to Sicily, played with sexuality, infidelity, and ultimately showed us how dirty the have-nots have to play to get even a sliver of what the rich have by birthright or luck. Maybe most crucially, for me, it showed how awful the kinds of people who stay at a hotel and only eat there truly are. / SB