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).

20 of 23 photo by Courtesy of HBO

91 The Last Movie Stars (HBO Max)

Metacritic's Best New TV Show of 2022.

(#1) Actor Ethan Hawke moved behind the camera (as he has done occasionally in the past) to direct July's six-part HBO miniseries focusing on Hollywood legends Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Produced by Martin Scorsese, The Last Movie Stars traces the celebrity couple's lives both professionally and personally using archival interviews of the two stars as well as drawing upon a wealth of interviews conducted for an abandoned memoir commissioned by Newman from writer Stewart Stern. Those interviews—with the likes of friends and colleagues including Elia Kazan, Gore Vidal, Karl Malden, Sidney Pollack, and Sidney Lumet—are voiced in Hawke's miniseries by present-day stars including Oscar Isaac, George Clooney, and Laura Linney.

“A new benchmark for in-depth looks at films and those who make them. For film lovers, 'The Last Movie Stars' is unapologetically essential viewing, a gold standard fitting that rare on-screen power couple whose image together transcended even the often-spectacular work they did, with or without each other, on the big screen.” —Roger Moore, Movie Nation

Watch it on HBO Max (6 episodes)

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