Top Fives of 2022: TV

This week I’m counting down my favorite works of arts and entertainment in 2022. Yesterday I started with my favorite movies, plus a great stage show. Today I’m covering TV. As a family we watched a ton of British and American detective shows and the occasional HGTV demo-and-reno. I watched sports—not quite as much as I used to, but still plenty. Plus I’m sure there were a few episodes of the Great British Baking Show in there somewhere.

As with my movie picks, I tried to stick with shows released this year. Here’s what our family enjoyed the most:

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SHORESY made me laugh more than any show in a looooooong time. Jared Keeso, the creator and star, created a perfect character: Shoresy is a hockey lifer, rutting around on the worst team in a low-level Canadian league, getting by on a foul mouth and a strange charm and the little bit of skill he has left. After another blowout loss, the owner threatens to fold the team, and Shoresy responds by announcing they will never lose again—and he sets out trying to keep his promise. More than anything else, SHORESY feels like one of those screwball comedies from the black-and-white era—the rat-a-tat dialog sounds like Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, if they had said fuck a lot. It’s a sports show, a romance and an epic adventure all in one. And even though the show is named for a guy, note that women play all the authority figures—and they’ve all got Shoresy’s number.

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Those of you who read Lee Child’s Jack Reacher books know about the outrage from fans when Tom Cruise was cast as the lead in the Reacher movies. In the books, Reacher is 6-5, 250. Tom Cruise is … not. It didn’t wreck the movies for me (the first one was very good, the second one very dumb). But some fans just couldn’t get past it. The REACHER series on Amazon Prime corrects the Cruise Effect: Alan Ritchson, who plays the lead, is built like an All-Pro defensive end. He can play the part between the ears, too—Reacher is a walking bar fight but also smart and funny and perceptive, and Ritchson makes you believe. In this eight-episode season he winds up in a corrupt small town in Georgia, with not a whole lot of help except for a local policewoman named Roscoe (Willa Fitzgerald, who is excellent). A warning: There are a couple of extra-gory scenes. But if you know the Reacher books, you know violence is coming. And over about six hours of run time, he kicks so much ass.

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ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING came back for a second season that equaled the first. There’s a murder to solve, sure, but the mystery is just a vehicle to give Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez a chance to play off one another, usually for comedy, sometimes for real drama. The new murder is fodder for their characters’ true-crime podcast, but there’s also a competing podcast, secret rooms, weird art projects and a foul-mouthed parrot. Plus Tina Fey. And a special shout-out to whoever is picking the music over the end credits—I’ve Shazamed more than once to find out the closing song for an episode.

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I hadn’t read any of Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer books, but the LINCOLN LAWYER series made me start reading. Mickey Haller, a hotshot L.A. defense lawyer, is trying to resurrect his career after an accident. He lands a high-profile murder case that (surprise!) has many, many twists and turns. Meanwhile his ex, a prosecutor, runs into her own problems—most of which involve Mickey in one way or another. I didn’t know most of the cast (except for Neve Campbell, who plays Mickey’s ex), but they’re good enough to make you care about them and want to know what happens next. There are 10 episodes and I think we binged them in three nights.

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Now we’re in our family sweet spot: British murder mysteries. MAGPIE MURDERS has a juicy plot: A famous mystery novelist is killed, and the last chapter of his final novel is missing—a chapter that might reveal not only the killer in the novel, but his own killer as well. What makes the show stand out is how it moves on twin tracks. Some scenes are set in the present, where Lesley Manville (as the novelist’s editor) searches for the lost chapter and ends up trying to solve the case. Other scenes are set inside the novel itself, as famed detective Atticus Pund tries to solve the mystery in the book. It’s a nifty trick—two murder mysteries in one!—and several of the actors play characters in both timelines. But the way it’s laid out makes it easy to follow. I’m not sure I’d ever seen Manville in anything before this year, but she also starred in MRS. HARRIS GOES TO PARIS (one of my movie picks). She’s great in both, but I like her a little better in this. Maybe it’s the convertible.

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OLDER SHOWS WE ENJOYED THIS YEAR: I can’t let this category go without mentioning three shows we got deeply absorbed in: GRANTCHESTER (handsome, hard-drinking, womanizing British vicar* helps detective solve murders); FOYLE’S WAR (taciturn British detective solves murders in the shadow of WWII); and our current obsession, LONGMIRE (taciturn Wyoming sheriff and his small department battle everyone from local crooks to the Irish mob).

*There are actually TWO handsome, hard-drinking, womanizing British vicars in GRANTCHESTER—the second one took over from the first. It made me wonder exactly what Anglican seminaries in 1950s Britain were teaching.

EXTRA DOUBLE BONUS, PERSONAL EDITION: I love all the shows above, but my favorite moment of TV this year was the college football national championship, where my beloved Georgia Bulldogs beat Alabama and won the title for the first time in 41 years. One episode, perfect, no notes.

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Now it’s your turn: What TV shows did you enjoy the most this year? Drop your picks in the comments.

Tomorrow: Books!