Favorite TV of 2022 and all-time

Again jumping off from a Metacritic compilation of top ten lists, I review my own choices for the best TV of 2022, but not before commenting on welcome encores for two of my favorite series, which had me back onto AcornTV for a month.
 
Doc Martin (Wiki) gets an honorable mention on my list of all-time favorites, plus this year’s, as my particular exemplar of comfort viewing, having found a durable formula sustained through ten seasons over eighteen years.  The final season ended a great series on a high note, having shown remarkable continuity in its depiction of a seaside community in Cornwall.  Virtually all the village characters remain, ringing changes on well-known personalities, from Dr. Ellingham’s autistic lack of bedside manner through a dozen more.  Intelligent and funny, lovely to look at, with many medical mysteries unpacked, this entire series has my highest recommendation, for a broad audience.
 
Nearly matched by The Detectorists (Wiki), a fantastic half-hour comedy about the members of a metal detecting club in the east of Britain, featuring Toby Jones and Mackenzie Crook, who also writes and directs.  After completing three seasons back in 2017, it returned with a movie-length Christmas special, about another uncovering of unsuspected treasure, under the verdant soil of the English countryside, and in the verdant soil of English comic acting.  Another of my picks to click with many sorts of viewers.
 
If you’re on Acorn, be sure to sample their Short Film Showcase, a series of ten short films, highlighted by performances from the likes of Sally Hawkins or John Hurt.  Each has its own merits, and they share the merit of being brief and distinctive.
 
Long cited as my favorite television show ever (and recently sampled yet again), David Simon’s The Wire has finally been outdistanced, in a photo finish, by the Vince Gilligan/Peter Gould tandem of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, which last year concluded its combined eleven-season run in perfectly dovetailed fashion, fitting together as neatly as the first two parts of The Godfather.  A new series of Borgen also solidified its place in my all-time list. 
 
[Click on “Read more” to see my brief round-up of the year’s best tv (with Metacritic rating for reference), and also my up-to-date all-time Top Ten list.]

 
The top tv of 2022 was simply too diverse and distinguished to reduce to a top ten, so I sort the highlights into various categories:
 
Among “American Auteurs,” Better Call Saul (95) is clearly the pinnacle, but David Simon returns to Baltimore with We Own this City (83) and Mike White takes The White Lotus (81) to Sicily.
 
For “Murder-less International Series,” I recommend the literate and lucid pleasures of Pachinko (87), My Brilliant Friend (96), and Borgen: Power & Glory (86).
 
In the always-popular category of “Angling for Anglophilia,” first off I stand by two old favorites, Gentleman Jack (81) and The Crown (65).  Can’t easily avoid murder (or comedy) with British hour-long dramas, but here are some standout variants:  the caper mystery Bad Sisters (79), hospital-based This is Going to Hurt (91), spy thriller Slow Horses (78), and police investigation that probes the heart of a community in Sherwood (90).
 
I could have put Doc Martin in the previous group, but instead use it to head “Unexpected Category-Jumpers.”  Other standouts of this sort are the for-real “reality-based” series Couples Therapy (90), and the 3/4 hour-per-episode comedy biopic Julia (76).
 
Turning to half-hour comedy series, the best of them fall under the category of “Heartland Heartbreaks,” rueful yet hilarious looks at Oklahoma teens in Reservation Dogs (93), Kansas oddballs in Somebody Somewhere (86), and high-pressure Chicago restaurant staff in The Bear (88).
 
Under “Fraught Romance Among Youngsters,” each has a twist:  Never Have I Ever (86) about South Asian teens in SoCal, Heartstopper (85) about gay teens in England, and As We See It (82) about autistic twentysomethings.
 
“Still Going Strong” describes the final season of Better Things (93) and the second of Hacks (88) and Abbott Elementary (88).
 
And finally the revised list of my top ten tv shows all-time, specifically hour-long dramatic (and/or comic) series.
 
1)     Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul
2)     The Wire
3)     Rectify
4)     Buffy the Vampire Slayer
5)     Justified
6)     Deadwood
7)     Friday Night Lights
8)     Borgen
9)     Mad Men
10)   The Sopranos
 
Current show most likely to crash the list:  Succession
Honorable Mention:  Doc Martin, The Crown, Halt & Catch Fire
Special mention for one-season wonder:  Freaks & Geeks