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The 15 Best TV Shows of 2022, So Far - Vanity Fair

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From Abbott Elementary to WeCrashed, a list of Vanity Fair’s favorites from the first half of the year.
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Illustration by Quinton McMillan. Images Courtesy of Hulu, Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television, ABC.

We all agree that it’s nigh on impossible to keep up with every TV show we’re told we simply must watch. But there are some that are just too good to miss—15 in total, according to V.F.’s staffers, who joined forces to select the best TV shows of 2022 so far. These are our favorite TV and streaming comedies, dramas, and specials from the first half of the year, listed in alphabetical order—with links to where to watch them.

Abbott Elementary

By Ser Baffo/ABC.

Where to begin with Abbott Elementary? There’s all the usual stuff: great writing, phenomenal acting, relatable story lines. Created by Quinta Brunson (who also writes, produces, and stars on the show), Abbott is the kind of sitcom you can’t help but root for, a mockumentary-style series about a scrappy elementary school in Philadelphia. Just one season in, the show has become an instant hit, credited with reinvigorating the sitcom as a form, breaking ratings records, and introducing viewers to a wide array of genius comedic voices. (Janelle James and Zack Fox in the same cast? Perfection.) Aside from the cozy chemistry that flows from cast member to cast member, it’s the show’s tender core that makes it resonate, highlighting the very real struggles teachers actually experience—from spending their own money on classroom necessities to caring for students with tough home lives. All of it is handled with a light touch, side-stepping the sad-com trend for something so much brighter. —Yohana Desta

Atlanta

Courtesy of FX Networks. 

The FX series from the mind of Donald Glover, returning after four years away, continues in its third season to break rules with grace and confidence, taking bold swings and challenging viewers to embrace its storytelling even as it strays further and further from its central narrative of Earn, Van, Paper Boi, and Darius. As self-aware as ever (the description of this season’s ninth episode even reads, “Black and White episode? Yawn. Emmy bait.”) this season is packed with standout moments, from the group’s adventures in Amsterdam and disturbing run-ins with a Dutch blackface tradition to the stand-alone episodes that use stories, both surreal and real, to explore race and whiteness. Maybe it’s because we get to spend less time with the main cast, but when we do—as with Zazie Beetz’s incredibly intense work in the final episode—it’s very much worth the wait. —Rebecca Ford

Barry

Photograph by Merrick Morton/HBO

From its very first scene, the comedy of Barry has largely rested on the incongruous shock of brutal murders being committed by its titular character (cocreator, writer, and frequent director Bill Hader)—a hit man whose life is otherwise extremely banal. The show’s third season has taken a deep dive into what the viewer may have tried not to think about: the wreckage Barry’s murders have left in their wake. Now Barry’s efforts to find meaning as an actor have been suspended as he, and his sometime girlfriend Sally (Sarah Goldberg), confront a bigger question: Does everybody deserve a second chance? —Tara Ariano

Better Call Saul

By Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television.

The prequel is a funny format. How do you tell a compelling story when the audience already knows how things turn out? It’s especially fraught when the source material you’re working toward is one of peak TV’s defining dramas. So no wonder audiences and critics alike second-guessed Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s decision to revisit the Breaking Bad cinematic universe and painstakingly unpack the origin story of everyone’s favorite cartel-defending shyster, Saul Goodman. Their instinct that we all needed much, much more Bob Odenkirk in our lives proved correct, however, and it’s now clear, as the series finale rapidly approaches, that the gambit played out as perfectly as a classic Slippin’ Jimmy hustle. If anything, knowing what the future holds has cranked up the tension, as we anxiously wait to learn why Rhea Seehorn’s Kim Wexler—Saul’s wife, best friend, and literal partner in crime—doesn’t make it to the other side. —Michael Hogan

The Dropout 

Naveen Andrews as Sunny Balwani and Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in Hulu’s ‘The Dropout.’Beth Dubber

Not all scammer streaming series are made alike. The Dropout is a tour de force of delusional drama: Amanda Seyfried’s portrait of Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes vibrates with ambition and eccentricity. Liz Meriwether, who created the limited series, knows from her New Girl days how awkward comedy—those excruciating dance sequences!—adds to our understanding of character. We watch as Holmes doggedly transforms herself from a geeky teenage girl into a Silicon Valley power player, donning a Steve Jobs black turtleneck and obsessively practicing deep-voiced inspirational speeches in the mirror. “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” is her power-of-positive-thinking mantra, and she repeats it so often that she (and others around her) believe it. Anything but a cartoon, The Dropout seeks to understand Holmes without ever absolving her guilt. —Joy Press

Girls5Eva

Courtesy of Peacock.

Anyone worried that Girls5Eva would somehow fall into a sophomore slump in its second outing clearly underestimated the show’s BPE (if you know, you know). Creator Meredith Scardino and stars Sara Bareilles, Busy Philipps, Paula Pell, and an Emmy-worthy Renée Elise Goldsberry hit another high note in season two, providing more legitimately catchy tunes and laughs per minute than any other series on television. Girls5Eva is the rare comedy these days that’s actually funny, and season two allows the four extremely talented women at its center to fully chew the scenery—whether that means dating a lunch lord (the male equivalent to a lunch lady) starring in an early-aughts-era prank show (PBAG, or Pranked by a Girl), or beating up a Property Brother. It’s time for Peacock to drop the album and greenlight a third season so we can all go #TourMode. —Chris Murphy

Hacks

Courtesy of HBO Max. 

Season one of Hacks frothed its heroines’ many prickly clashes—age, comedic sensibility, identity politics, class stratum, digital fluency, even taste in shoes—into a scalding foam topped with withering betrayal. In season two, the tenderhearted comedy with a mean streak about Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), an old-guard boomer comic, and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), the reluctant Zoomer joke writer sent to polish her act, still picks at those multifaceted clashes, but notably softens the arc of its leads toward greater, if begrudging, mutual respect. As the duo road trip to rehab Vance’s dated routine into something more emotionally authentic, we see how women riding vastly different feminist waves can still lap at the same shore. Such big themes—misogyny in comedy, thorny female alliances, the vanity of fame, the wounds we mine for our art—could easily veer into a simplistic feel good of the sisterhood. Yet the jokes still kill, without Hacks sacrificing the humanity or complexity of its leads—even the ones without punch lines. —Tracy Moore

Our Flag Means Death

Rhys Darby and Taika Waititi in Our Flag Means Death.By Aaron Epstein/HBO Max

Thousands of fans making amazingly detailed fan art can’t be wrong, right? Yes, fan campaigns have gotten some well-earned eye rolls in recent years, but the enthusiastic energy behind HBO Max’s cheerful pirate comedy is testament to the power of this proudly queer bit of revisionist history. Essentially a workplace comedy on the high seas, the ensemble includes standout supporting performances from newcomers like Vico Ortiz and Nathan Foad. But it was the slow-burn romance between Rhys Darby’s fussy gentleman pirate, Stede Bonnet, and Taika Waititi’s leather-clad Blackbeard that launched a thousand ships and recently earned the series a season two renewal. In a spring TV season full of murder and mayhem, Our Flag Means Death included a fair bit of both—just shot through with silliness and a sense of chaotic possibility that makes piracy look a lot more fun than it must have been in real life. —Katey Rich

Pachinko

Minha Kim in Pachinko.By Juhan Noh/Apple TV +

Adapting Min Jin Lee’s beloved 2017 novel for television seemed like an impossible task—it follows four generations of a family, is set in three different countries, and features at least three different languages. But Apple TV+’s sweeping epic about Sunja, a woman living in Korea under Japanese rule, and the ripple effect her decisions will make on future generations of her family is an astounding feat of beautiful visuals, powerful storytelling, and memorable performances from its ensemble cast. Newcomer Minha Kim and Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung are standouts as the young and older versions of Sunja, delivering vulnerable performances that often make the biggest statements with the simplest of looks. —Rebecca Ford

The Righteous Gemstones

Courtesy of HBO Max. 

Season two of Danny McBride’s lusciously bonkers creation is deeper and more resonant than the first, and it’s got cool ninja assassins on motorcycles. There are too few go-for-broke comedies these days—insert 6,000-word think piece on the perils of trying to be funny in the social media age—but even if you come to Gemstones for the broad send-up of televangelism, the Arrested Development–level family dysfunction, or the homoerotic bodybuilding cult, you stay for subtler stuff, like the delicious writing, John Goodman’s empathy-inducing turn as the embattled patriarch Eli, and Edi Patterson’s brilliantly twitchy turn as daughter Judy. —Jeff Giles

Rothaniel

Courtesy of HBO Max. 

From his NBC sitcom The Carmichael Show to his HBO documentary Home Videos, Jerrod Carmichael has long proven a knack for exploring fraught, prescient topics through a comic lens. His latest HBO special, Rothaniel, puts that skill to more intense use in a remarkably vulnerable new piece, a comedy act that doubles—perhaps enhances—a raw, personal confessional. Seated before a live audience in the Blue Note Jazz Club, and captured in beautiful close-ups by director Bo Burnham, Carmichael intricately lines up a series of anecdotes and punch lines to assemble a powerful memoir of family secrecy, and a nuanced context for very publicly coming out as a gay man. The effort alone is worth celebrating; that Rothaniel manages a kind of hilarious poignancy throughout makes it a new stand-up classic. —David Canfield

Severance

By Atsushi Nishijima/Apple TV+

I was initially wary of Severance. The opening scenes of the series, from creator Dan Erickson, are perhaps too reminiscent of Black Mirror and other sci-fi stuff that examines the banal horror of the modern age. But as Apple’s beguiling series goes, it deepens into something rich and sinister. The implications of its premise—a corporation that silos off its employees’ work-life consciousness, essentially creating two people in one body—grow darker and darker as Severance tumbles into a nightmare. This is a series about people living in hell, trapped in the office with no hope of escape. There is a class awareness to the series that is never overstated; for all its big ideas, Severance is disarmingly restrained. It still packs quite a punch, though, ending with a cliff-hanger for the ages. I haven’t been this excited about a mystery-box show since the heyday of Lost—let’s hope this one doesn’t let us down. —Richard Lawson

Slow Horses

By Jack English/Apple TV +

​​If you’re tired of efficient operatives displaying their fitness by running around picturesque locations and deploying cool gadgets, this witty, atmospheric drama was made for you. The disgraced spies of Slough House, first brought to life in novels by Mick Herron, have no resources except their brains and—in some cases—their desperation to escape secret agent purgatory (you get sent to MI-5’s crumbling Slough House if you screwed up). Apple TV+ renewed Slow Horses, which features a fantastic cast anchored by Gary Oldman and Kirstin Scott Thomas, for a total of four seasons, with the second season dropping later this year. I cannot wait for these goofballs to screw up—and to somehow pull off sloppily daring missions—again. —Maureen Ryan

The Staircase

Courtesy of HBO Max.

Inundated as we are by true-crime content, it was only a matter of time until someone made a series that takes a meta look at this troublesome fascination of ours. Antonio Campos has done just that with his scripted adaptation of a watershed documentary series. On the surface, The Staircase is a mystery about a person’s death—appropriately sad and chilling and maddening. That’s just one layer of the series, treated sensitively but also with a reportorial bluntness. The Staircase is also about the making of the documentary, examining how a narrative is shaped by observation. And the family of the deceased is given profound consideration: Campos follows their lives years after the incident, gradually building his series into a rather grand portrait of loss and doubt. If The Staircase was the last of its genre, I’d be just fine with that. —RL

WeCrashed

By Peter Kramer/Apple TV+.

Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway are mesmerizing as WeWork’s delusional founding first couple, Adam and Rebekah Neumann, in this Apple TV+ homage to millennial excess. Based on Wondery’s WeCrashed: The Rise and Fall of WeWork podcast, the slick drama recreates the stunning rise and fall of Adam’s billion-dollar empire in impressive detail. There are snotty comments about Rebekah’s real-life cousin Gwyneth Paltrow, plus a cereal box full of marijuana, and corporate retreats that felt more like Coachella. Even if you can’t stomach the Neumanns’ real-life rock star antics, you’ll still appreciate WeCrashed’s production value and performances. —Julie Miller

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