The 20 Best New TV Shows of 2022

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – December 27, 2022

In the gallery on this page are the highest-scoring first-year TV series (including limited series) debuting in the United States between January 1, 2022 and December 31, 2022. Shows are ranked by Metascore (an average of grades from top professional critics on a 0-100 scale) prior to rounding based on scores as of December 23, 2022, and any programs with fewer than 7 reviews are excluded. One-off TV specials and made-for TV movies are also excluded (though the best of these is revealed at the end of the gallery, along with a list of the year's highest-scoring returning shows).

16 of 23 photo by FX

88 The Bear (FX on Hulu)

(#5) Yet another critically acclaimed FX series—though like many recent FX titles, it doesn't actually air on FX but instead is exclusive to Hulu—The Bear is also the reason that Chicago-style beef sandwiches have started popping up on menus across the country. The dark comedy finds Jeremy Allen White (Shameless) playing a fine dining chef who returns home to Chicago to run his family's sandwich shop ("The Original Beef of Chicagoland") following the sudden death of his brother. Frenetic, intense, and realistic, The Bear comes from writer-director-producer Christopher Storer (Ramy, Dickinson) and also counts Atlanta's Hiro Murai and BoJack Horseman's Joanna Calo among its producers.

One of the most talked-about shows of 2022, The Bear was almost instantly renewed for a second season. Have critics changed their mind about the series since it debuted in June? Hardly: The Bear is landing on tons of year-end top 10 lists.

“An extraordinary show, not so much for the story it tells as how it tells it; you will have to go far to find another show so invested in and adept at portraying ordinary human speech and behavior, and even then you might not find one.” —Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times

Watch it on Hulu (8 episodes)

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