The Best of 2022 Peak TV – Part 1

September 9, 2022

If there is one thing we know about the state of television now, it’s the phrase “I can’t find anything to watch” should never be uttered again.  From broadcast networks to cable channels to an increasing number of streaming services, there is an endless choice of content to watch.  In fact, there aren’t enough hours in the day/week/month/year to consume even a fraction of what is out there, let alone trying to catch up on shows that you might have missed.  Ever hear a recommendation from someone and they say “Well, it’s seven seasons, the first one is a little slow, but it starts to really pick up at the end of season two, so hang in there.  It gets great!”  When I start doing the math of number of episodes times episode length, I’m usually tapping out.  There are just too many choices to waste time on things that don’t grab me in the first few episodes. 

This weekend will see the television / streaming industry heap accolades on themselves at the Emmy awards.  As I’ve written before in my Oscar posts, I do find the awarding of trophies to celebrities to be a little silly, but I do like the idea of honoring the best of the best in the performing arts, especially the talented writers and directors who help create the magic we see on the screen.  That being said, this is not going to be an Emmy preview.  While I do my best to watch as many of the Oscar nominated films as possible, it would be a Herculean task to do the same with the Emmys.  With hundreds of new shows available every year, it’s just too much content.  And yes, there is such a thing. 

So, while I will be covering some shows that you’ve heard about, there are some that just haven’t been in my wheelhouse, so you won’t read about them here.  If you’re looking for insights into Stranger Things, or the new Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings series, you’ll have to go elsewhere – they just haven’t been of interest to me.  I also won’t be covering shows that I’ve written about before or ones that aired a while ago, except to say that if you haven’t seen Squid Game, Mare of Eastown, or Station Eleven, add those to your list.  And if you aren’t watching Succession, start doing so immediately.  You have plenty of time to catch up on the best show on television before the fourth season begins next year. 

With all of that in mind, I thought I would share some recommendations of shows that I have enjoyed this year, as well as some that I felt could have been a little better, in case they are on your watchlist and you want an opinion on whether you should dive in.  A final piece of advice – everyone’s taste is different.  There have been plenty of movies I’ve recommended that people I know have hated, and vice versa.  That’s what makes movies and television so interesting – different genres and programs can appeal to people in a different way.  So, enjoy this two part series, watch the Emmys and see if you find a few shows that might be of interest based on your personal taste.  Before we dive in, let’s do a quick pulse check on the industry.

The State of Television

Well, I guess it turns out that there actually is a limit to how much corporations can spend on content.  After watching the locomotive steaming forward the last few years as we saw new streamers (HBO Max, Apple TV+, Disney+, Paramount+, Peacock) rush to buy / make content for their services, and legacy streamers (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu) keeping up with the new kids in town, it seems like the train might be losing some momentum.  In an announcement that sent shockwaves through the industry, Netflix actually lost subscribers earlier this year.  Now, Wall Street really cares about revenue and earnings, but subscribers means revenue and you can only grow revenue through two means when you are only a streaming service – more customers or higher prices.  Well, actually, you can do both, but that’s neither here nor there. 

Why did the growth slow at Netflix?  Are customers finally fed up with the lower quality programming churned out through their “quantity over quality” strategy?  Do they no longer see the value of the “binge model” that is now only employed by Netflix?  Or were rising prices everywhere in the economy the straw that broke the camel’s back for customers to trim back their entertainment spending?  If you want to subscribe to all of the major streaming services, it will cost you over $100 per month.  It’s beginning to look a lot like cable.  Regardless of the answers, that announcement showed that there actually might be a crack in the foundation that there would be an endless growth in streaming subscribers as customers continue to cut the cord with their cable companies.

Hot on the heels of Netflix the last two years has been Disney, which has seen very strong growth in its service, with a strong complement of classic Disney movies, plus the Marvel and Star Wars juggernauts which have both legacy franchise movies and new television shows that have been hit and (mostly) miss (in one person’s opinion, although I thought WandaVision was genius.)  Despite the strong growth in subscribers (including barely passing Netflix this last quarter), Disney is facing its own day of reckoning next year.  Would you believe that over one third of Disney+ subscribers are in India who pay a low subscription fee to watch cricket?  That’s right – India’s most popular sport is streamed on Disney+ and The House of Mouse is about to lose the streaming rights to the cricket league next year (and likely millions of subscribers with it). 

Disney also has a complicated business arrangement with Hulu, which is jointly owned by Disney (two-thirds) and Comcast (one-third) thanks to the arrangement set up when Hulu launched in 2007.  In two years, Comcast will sell its share to Disney for a decent chunk of change (probably over $10 billion).  So, it’s not surprising that Disney also announced it would be increasing its monthly subscription fee, as well as adding cheaper “ad-based subscriber options”, a strategy that Netflix has also announced they will undertake after years of proclaiming to be forever commercial free.  So, television with commercials – where have I seen this before?

You know who is not worried about cash?  The two silent giants who don’t have 100% reliance on the entertainment industry.  You may have heard of them – Apple and Amazon.  Their streaming services are mere hobbies, funded by the sales of iPhones and millions of products in an online marketplace.  They can afford to be patient, not panic and take the course of building a strong brand of quality content.  Amazon has been less than impressive (in my eyes) with their original programming, but just purchased MGM studios, so they now have a strong movie and television library.  Apple has taken a different approach – build entirely in-house, financing a small number of projects (including some very expensive movies) or purchase completed films, like they did with their Best Picture winner CODA.  Apple has not spent hundreds of millions of dollars on old television shows like Netflix did at the beginning to get subscribers.  Apple is taking more of the boutique approach – creating shows that have high quality and strong fan loyalty, demonstrating that they are in it for the long haul.  An example of one of their top shows is where we’re going to start this look at my favorite shows from this past year.

Umm, What’s That Premise Again? – Severance

OK, hear me out for a second, because you might need to read the description of this series twice.  Severance, co-created by Ben Stiller, who also directed most of the episodes, takes place in the near future where a technology company has created a procedure that some people have decided is too enticing to pass up.  Lumon Industries will perform a “severance” procedure on your brain that will allow you to have complete separation of your work self (called “innies”) and your home self (called “outies”).  When you enter the building at the start of the work day, your work brain turns on and your home brain turns off.  And vice versa when you leave work at the end of the day.  So, while you are at work, you have no knowledge of your homelife – you don’t know if you’re married, have kids, etc.  And while you are at home, you only know where you work – not what you do, who you work with or anything else except the company’s name.  On the one hand, wouldn’t we like to forget about our jobs when we leave work every day?  On the other hand, brain surgery?  Hmmm, that might be a hard pass.

The main protagonist of our Severance universe is Mark, played by Adam Scott (Parks and Recreation), who elected to have the procedure to help forget the death of his beloved wife in a car accident, at least for part of his day.  He works with a collection of characters, including some acting legends (John Turturro and Christopher Walken), as well as his boss, played by Patricia Arquette.  Oh yeah, she’s also his next door neighbor, but he has no idea because, you see – different worlds, different sides of the brain.

As the nine episode season unfolds, we learn more and more about the characters, and the mysteries of Lumon Industries, as well as what the workers are actually doing at their computers each day.  In some respects, this has elements of Lost in that it feels like a “puzzle box mystery show” at times.  But, I’m not worried about some grand reveal of all of the answers in a future episode.  I just enjoy watching the stories unfold each week with many questions, a few answers, and just enough WTF moments as we watch everything emerge, like layers of the onion being peeled back.  The series features some strong performances, particularly by Scott and Britt Lower as Heley, the new employee who is not happy about her outie’s decision to have the severance procedure, and some creative production design of the Lumon offices.  Oh, and the last episode of the season was a nailbiter, right up until the final moments, and will make you eager to see what Stiller and his crew have dialed up for season two.  Severance is available to stream on Apple TV+

Lost Meets Lord of the Flies – Yellowjackets

With the advent of streaming madness the last few years, Showtime has been relegated to the back of the line in terms of programming viability.  While it has had some quality series over the years (Billions, Homeland, Weeds, and Dexter come to mind), it’s always been behind cable leader HBO in terms of a subscription you needed to have in the rotation.  Now that may change since its parent company is now offering Showtime as part of its streaming service, Paramount+, an example of bundling that we will likely continue to see (more on that next week).  So, while Showtime isn’t always top of mind for cable companies, every once in a while they produce a real gem, and that was the case with Yellowjackets, a gripping drama thriller that premiered in late 2021. 

The premise of the series (which just began filming its second season) is a two timeline story that takes place in present day and the late 1990s, when a girls high-school soccer team’s plane crashes in a forest on their way to a tournament.  They are forced to learn how to live on their own with only their teammates and their injured coach to figure things out.  We also see what the survivors of the ordeal are going through in the present day as adults.  Throughout the ten episode season, we learn more and more about what really transpired before the girls were rescued, what they resorted to in order to survive (hint: ever hear of the Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the Andes mountain that was depicted in the film Alive?), and how the trauma is affecting them today, especially as their secrets begin to emerge. 

There was a lot to like about the storyline, the writing, the soundtrack (killer 1990s songs – and not just the obvious ones), and how the plot keeps you guessing about what really happened.  But the genius of the showrunners was in the casting.  The adults are led by Melanie Lynskey, Christina Ricci and Juliette Lewis, and the actresses selected to play their teenage counterparts are perfect matches.  There are a number of unknown actresses that you probably haven’t seen before, but that doesn’t detract from the high-quality of this show.  I can’t wait to see what they have in store for season two.  Yellowjackets is available to watch on Showtime or Paramount+.

The Tech Business Stories – Super Pumped, WeCrashed, The Dropout

Another quality program that Showtime delivered this past year was Super Pumped, a new series focused on the stories behind the scenes at technology companies.  The first season was based on the rise and fall of Uber’s “morally challenged” founder Travis Kalanick, portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt.  If you are not familiar with the Uber story (I was not), this is a very good story of how Kalanick came up with the idea to innovate a stale industry run by taxi cab drivers and municipal transportation departments to create a new marketplace of the “sharing” service industry. 

The tone of the series is a little over the top, including Gordon-Levitt’s performance, which reflects Kalanick’s personality and behavior, which led to his downfall following complaints of how employees (in particular, women) were treated in the fraternity-type environment.  Series creators Brian Koppelman and David Levein (also responsible for Billions) employed tactics that got a little annoying, including characters breaking the fourth wall and talking to the audience, and a narration device (by Quentin Tarantino) that I found more distracting than enhancing, but overall the series was a success.  Bonus points from Koppelman and Levein for their casting choices of Kyle Chandler as the venture capital investor in Uber who keeps Kalanick in check, and Uma Thurman as Uber board member (and Kalanick defender) Ariana Huffington.  Season two will reportedly focus on Facebook, and will have a high bar to achieve anything close to David Fincher’s masterpiece The Social Network.  Super Pumped is available to watch on Showtime or Paramount+. 

The business tech theme was popular this past year, including WeCrashed, the absolutely bonkers story of WeWork, the real estate company that wanted to be a tech company, led by ummmm…..charismatic(?) CEO Adam Neumann and his wife Rebekah.  If you don’t know this tale, it’s quite the wild story of how investors and employees can be lulled into believing a vision of a company’s strategy, even if it is just a house of cards.  WeWork started out as an office space rental company, but the Neumanns had a much bigger vision of creating a utopian society.  They had interesting ideas, but kind of forgot about important business fundamentals, like, you know, cash flow. 

The best part of the limited series is Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway (Oscar-winning movie stars in their own right) going for broke displaying the wild eccentricities of this power couple.  The rise and fall of the Neumanns and WeWork was swift and this series does a good job depicting the full story behind the scenes.  Bonus points for casting Anthony Edwards as the venture capital investor who kept plowing money into WeWork, never knowing when to stop digging the hole he was in, and O.T. Fagbenle (who you may have seen in The Handmaid’s Tale) who is phenomenal as the skeptic brought in to review WeWork’s operations before their planned IPO and sees right through their bullshit.  The scene where Adam thinks of “Community-Adjusted EBITDA” is one of my all-time favorite business moments in television history.  Admittedly, that might be funny only to an accounting nerd like me.  WeCrashed is available to stream on Apple TV+.  If you are interested in another take on this disaster, check out the documentary WeWork: or The Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, released last year on Hulu.

The last (and best) of the tech business series I’m going to cover this week is a story that has been covered extensively the last several years, but that didn’t diminish the intrigue of The Dropout.  Amanda Seyfried (fast becoming one of the best actors working today, coming off an Oscar nomination for Mank) stars as Elizabeth Holmes, the naïve founder of Theranos, the company that promised a too-good-to-be-true solution to the blood-testing industry.  Holmes demonstrated the “fake it till you make it” behavior that some entrepreneurs have to go through until they can get some traction with their product.  The crime Holmes committed was not owning up to the technical problems that her machine had from the beginning, always making promises that she couldn’t keep, trying to get to the next round of financing for her business to keep it going.  The showrunner (Elizabeth Merriweather, who created New Girl) made this series a nice combination of business scandal, troubled romance (with Holmes and her business partner Sunny Balwani), and investigative journalism, with the Wall Street Journal on the hunt for the truth behind the business.  Seyfried was fantastic in the role, particularly demonstrating the transformation of Holmes from college dropout to a wannabe Steve Jobs (including a creepy voice change), and might pick up an Emmy this weekend for her performance.  I was also impressed with Naveen Andrews (Sayid from Lost) as Balwani, demonstrating a cunning menace to keep Theranos moving forward, regardless of the personal and professional costs with everyone in their way. 

This series was based on a podcast, and the Theranos story was covered extensively during the takedown of Holmes after the Wall Street Journal coverage (led by John Carreyrou, whose book Bad Blood is a great detailed look of everything that unfolded).  There was also an excellent documentary (The Inventor) released in 2019 from director Alex Gibney.  And with The Dropout as the icing on the cake, I’m not sure there is much more to be told of this story.  With that in mind, director Adam McKay (Vice, The Big Short, Don’t Look Up) is planning to adapt Carreyrou’s book into a feature film with Jennifer Lawrence attached to star as Holmes.  I have to wonder if it’s worth it to still pursue that project given how strong The Dropout turned out.  Time will tell.  The Dropout is available to stream on Hulu.

From the Mind of the Crime Story Master – Tokyo Vice

Unlike some of his contemporary directors (like Scorsese and Spielberg) who work nonstop, churning out movies year after year, Michael Mann takes his time between projects.  After forty years in the business, he has only directed eleven movies, but his filmography includes some classics – Heat, Thief, The Last of the Mohicans, and my favorite – The Insider.  Most of his films and television work (especially as executive producer of Miami Vice) have focused on the interaction of cops and criminals.  This past year, Mann took on the role of executive producer of Tokyo Vice, a fish-out-of-water story based on the real-life experience of the lead character, and he set the tone of the series masterfully in directing the pilot.

At the center of Tokyo Vice is Jake Adelstein, an American reporter living in Japan who secures a rare opportunity as a reporter for Japan’s largest newspaper.  Jake’s situation is unique because it was unheard of at the time (late 1990s) for a Japanese publication to hire an American journalist.  But his mastering of the language and determination impress the editors and he is given a chance to succeed.  While investigating what looks like a routine death, he starts to sense that there is something more sinister at play, and before you know it, he is immersed in the underground world of criminals, drug dealers, and the police officers who largely ignore the crimes in their city.  Jake is portrayed by Ansel Elgort (most recently in West Side Story) in a very impressive performance, especially his command of the language and customs of Japan.  He finds a sympathetic cop (played by Ken Watanabe, who you may recognize from Inception) who is tired of the police force looking the other way and steers Jake in the right direction.

Tokyo Vice might not be for everyone.  It’s not a violent story, but it’s largely about criminals, so it’s not a very uplifting series.  And some people don’t like watching subtitled programs, and this one is largely in Japanese.  The plot can be a little dense at times (trying to follow all of the different criminals and what their motivations are), but I found it a compelling series and am looking forward to the second season.  Well, maybe.  HBO announced a renewal several months ago, but as I will cover in next week’s post, just because HBO decides something doesn’t mean they will stick with it.  More on that topic soon.

It’s unclear what role Mann will play in the second season.  My guess is it will be an executive producer title with very little day to day involvement.  He’s got his hands full with two projects that I am really excited about.  Filming just got underway on Ferrari with Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz starring in a film about the legendary family behind the famous automobile that bears their name.  After that, Mann is going to tackle the sequel to Heat, his 1995 crime masterpiece with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro.  The film will be based on the novel that Mann wrote (and recently released) and is mostly a prequel story, but also includes events that take place after the film.  The casting decisions for that one will be fascinating to see.  One thing that Mann does have in common with his contemporaries is the continued drive to work, even as he approaches his 80^th birthday.  Tokyo Vice is available to stream on HBO Max.

Speaking of Which… – We Own This City

With Tokyo Vice putting the best of Michael Mann on display, the same can be said about our next series.  If there is anyone who is known for delivering compelling stories of police, criminals, and the innocent people caught up in their conflicts, it’s David Simon, best known for creating The Wire, and writing the book that inspired the television series Homicide: Life on the Streets.  Simon’s well-versed in the inner workings of Baltimore police departments, politics and the criminals working the streets and his talents are on full display in one of the best shows of the year that hardly anyone saw, We Own This City.

There is a reason that this one might have gone overlooked by the casual television viewer.  First it doesn’t feature an A-list household name star at the top of the billing.  It features a brilliant ensemble cast, but there is one standout performance that I’ll get to shortly.  The second and main reason that people probably missed We Own This City is that it was released in late April, among a deluge of television premieres ahead of the Emmy submission deadline in late May.  I’m going to cover another brilliant series next week that I think suffered from the same problem.

We Own This City focuses on the Baltimore police department and their task force to crack down on crime in the city.  The series is based on the nonfiction book of the same name and each episode was directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (who also directed last year’s King Richard, which won Will Smith his Oscar – you might remember that part of the ceremony?).  Throughout the series, we bounce between various groups: members of the task force (both clean and dirty), other members of the police department investigating suspicions of wrongdoing, the police chief and politicians dealing with a community on edge (part of the series takes place during the protests following Freddie Gray’s murder), and the common criminals roaming the streets.  Speaking of bouncing around – a word of warning:  The episodes jump across various timelines, but we are shown where we are through the use of the police department logs of events that happened, with the date depicted on screen.  So two pieces of advice – keep the phone down while watching this one or you might get lost, and try to watch the six episodes over a short period of time or you might forget what happened or who characters were from a previous episode.

Leading the cast is John Bernthal, who should be a bigger star as he jumps off the screen, especially in this role.  Throughout the six episodes, we see his rise and fall from wide-eyed rookie cop to someone who has figured out every angle to cheat the system and become corruption personified.  The bench in this cast is very deep and apparently includes some alumni from The Wire (disclaimer – I have never watched the series, despite its strong reputation.  Just never got around to it), as well as Josh Charles (The Good Wife) in a performance unlike anything he has done before. 

When looking for shows to watch, especially ones that are based on a true story, it’s nice to know that there is closure.  We want to see the mystery solved, the killer go to jail, everything tied up in a neat bow in the closing moments of the final episode.  While I think the showrunners did a great job of bringing this story to closure, this is one of those stories that may leave you frustrated because not all of the problems are solved.  The corruption, crime and desperation of this city are too big for a small group of people trying to do the right thing to solve.  Hell, they might be too big for anyone to solve.  But that doesn’t change the fact that this is brilliant television.  One of my favorite series of the year, We Own This City is available to stream on HBO Max. 

That’s all for this week.  I hope you enjoyed part one of my look at the best of the year in television.  I’ll be back for part two next week.  If you would like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.