Released in the US mid-summer, FX’s majestic restaurant dramedy The Bear subjected its UK audience to an agonising wait that proved more than worth it when it finally dropped in October. The Star Wars universe swelled still further with three new spinoff series, the best of which, Andor, was up there with anything on the small screen in 2022.īut you didn’t need orcs and dragons to deliver the goods. Then HBO’s disappointing Game of Thrones prequel, House of the Dragon, came along and asked it to hold its poisoned barley beer, marrying big-scale intrigue with alarming amounts of Targaryen incest. The mûmakil in the room was Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings, which raised the bar for enormo-budgeted home viewing that no one else could possibly compete with. Ties between seasons with the same score and the same number of reviews are broken by the audience score and then number of audience reviews.It was the year that streaming and TV supersized itself. To break any ties, seasons that have the same score are then ranked by the overall number of reviews (season only or season and episodic scores together where episodic reviews can be counted).

Shows retain their Certified Fresh status even if they fall below 75%, as long as the scores stay at 70% or above. To be Certified Fresh, seasons must score at least 75% on the Tomatometer, with at least 20 critic reviews (five of those from Top Critics). So congrats to The Bear star Jeremy Allen White and his compatriots in fine restaurant-service comedy.

The next closest title is season 1 of Netflix romance Heartstopper, which is Certified Fresh at 100% on 55 reviews. With a 100% Certified Fresh score on 72 reviews, season 1 of the series takes the top spot. The FX comedy series on Hulu portrays the fish-out-of-water drama that results when a world-class chef returns home to Chicago to take over the family sandwich shop. The fifth season of Yellowstone, the first season of its prequel 1923, new fantasy series Willow, and the final season of The Walking Dead are among the latest TV and streaming seasons to be Certified Fresh and join our list of the best shows of the year.īut as 2022 comes to a close, The Bear emerges victorious on our list of TV and streaming series that released a season that was Certified Fresh in the year. Updated (to reflect the latest scores): December 30, 2022 (Photo by Matt Dinerstein/FX) The 145 Best TV and Streaming Series of 2022

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