The 22 most anticipated TV series of 2022
From Ms. Marvel to Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet Of Curiosities, here are the 22 shows we can’t wait to watch in 2022
TV News Naveen Andrews
Even as we’re subjected to another season of the pandemic (and yet, On Becoming A God In Central Florida gets un-renewed??), we have to acknowledge the ways in which the start of 2022 differs from the beginning of 2021. Where we had to hedge our bets in 2021 for everything from TV premieres to going outdoors, 2022 has multiple vaccines and firm premiere dates for exciting series (debuting and returning). Programmers are giving us plenty of reason to hope, too—2022’s premieres include epic fantasy series, a few ripped-from-the-headlines stories, intriguing new anthologies, a long-gestating adaptation, and the return of two great FX shows.
Still, The A.V. Club had to narrow down the list to our 22 most anticipated shows of 2022. Even if some of these dates should change, or shows are bumped, we remain confident that the wait, however long it should be, will be worth it.
133 Comments
As sad as I am that season 5 will be the last for Better Things, I’m glad Pamela made the decision to end it on her term instead of going 10 seasons and it becoming a shadow of itself.
I love this show so much and I am sad it is ending.
it’s a beautiful, funny show.the BEST moment from it, IMO
I would also accept the no no no no scene.
Thank you for this. Making my snowed in day a good one.
I just watched the episode last night! I’m going through the first 4 seasons to get ready for the (sadly) last season
That piece on Better Things was fabulous.
i absolutely hate these types of comments. “i’m glad the show ends before it gets bad.”
better things is great and i wish she just kept it going for longer
Im sure her daughter going crazy and murdering all those people in Woodsboro had some influence on her decision.
Quick correction: The Acolyte from Lucasfilm is not coming out in 2022, it’s still in pre-production. Andor, Obi-wan Kenobi and S3 of the Mandalorian will be coming out in 2022.
Wow this really was the absolute laziest TV update they could have done. Obi-Wan is infinitely more exciting than Acolyte. Better Call Saul’s final season is out this year and half these shows don’t have release dates. Get your shit together, AV Club.
I’m more excited for Obi-Wan, but if Acolyte is a bit like the Secret Order missions in the ol’ Tie Fighter video game, that’d be pretty cool.
No mention of The Legend of Vox Machina?
1899 – the next series from the creators of Dark, the best show on Netflix.
Eh maybe the first two seasons. The creators took themselves too seriously for the last season
Glad to see that Britt Lower is getting some prestige TV work. I thought she was great in Man Seeking Woman and hadn’t seen much from her since that show went off the air.
The Gilded Age will probably go the way of most “let’s adapt this British show for American audiences”. And, let’s be honest: do we really want to be reminded of the lives of the rich right now?Also, I hope The Dropout doesn’t pull its punches and settle for the usual clichés.
How is the upcoming ‘Last of Us’ adaptation not on here? It’s set to be the most expensive HBO show ever.
Wild to see that Lord of the Rings thing actually happening after hearing about it for years and years. Maybe it’ll be a Prime show I actually watch.
As long as it’s not like Prime’s Wheel of Time.
The Expanse is fantastic.
I’m loving that Seyfried is finally getting to show her acting chops the past year after what I’m sure has been a tough battle to be taken seriously in Hollywood, but man do I loathe Holmes.
I wonder if Kate McKinnon had to choose between this and the Carole Baskin thing; if so, she chose… poorly.
I will totally watch The Dropout just to see Seyfried do the Holmes voice.
The Elizabeth Holmes case is something I swear the media thinks we’re all much more interested in than we actually are. Also I’m not one to say an actress has to look the part but if anyone’s making yet another Elizabeth Holmes project, which I hope they’re not, they really ought to at least audition Melissa Benoist.
The Elizabeth Holmes story is interesting, but not for the reason the media thinks it is. Really, it’s just another woman doing a thing men do all the time, but because it’s a woman, it’s supposedly shocking. It’s Martha Stewart all over again. The real meat of the story IMO is that she used toxic masculinity against men. I could see this working very well as a sort of “The Assistant” show, where we never see Holmes, we just see the douchebros who are so broadly stupidly sexist and douchey that anything with alow voice in a turtleneck gets the prize. Where the real villain is not Holmes, but the men she robbed. That take could be sort of fun.
That would be way more fun than focusing yet again on Holmes, who is interesting enough, but whose life story has been pretty thoroughly mined by now. I’d love to see more criticism of the craven men around her who bought into the scam – so many of them were scientists and academics, or otherwise prominent people who should have known better, but were easily won over with the promise of striking it rich.
If internal emails are any indication, there were plenty of scientists and academics raising concerns. It’s just that nobody paid attention to them while everyone was busy praising the new face in tech. Curiously, the hammers of justice only fell on her when the same old investors (who I might add invest in dozens of startups the scale of Theranos every year and are probably the ones who should be looked at critically the most) thought they couldn’t strike it rich with her.
I’d love to see more criticism of the craven men around her who bought into the scam – so many of them were scientists and academics, or otherwise prominent people who should have known better, but were easily won over with the promise of striking it rich.Her board was almost totally devoid of any scientists or academics on her board (or at least not academics in science). She brought on very old, very prominent men who didn’t know a thing about the subject matter. https://techcrunch.com/2021/10/10/the-theranos-fiasco-shows-how-much-startup-advisory-boards-matter/It’s really hard to avoid the conclusion that they were were horny old men who didn’t know anything about medicine and didn’t particularly care about it, so long as they could be charmed by the attention of a pretty young woman
I have listened to the podcasts and followed the story.I could care less that she’s a woman. And I don’t particularly care that she bilked a bunch of dumbass old men or Betsy DeVos out of millions.I care that she was risking people’s health with her bullshit. And then she uses “my boyfriend abused me” defense, when there was never any mention of it until the trial.
And internal emails show she had no problem bossing around the boyfriend when it came to work stuff. I very much doubt him being an asshole had anything to do with her being an asshole.
The real meat of the story IMO is that she used toxic masculinity
against men. I could see this working very well as a sort of “The
Assistant” show, where we never see Holmes, we just see the douchebros
who are so broadly stupidly sexist and douchey that anything with alow
voice in a turtleneck gets the prize. Where the real villain is not
Holmes, but the men she robbed. That take could be sort of fun.
So, even in a story when the woman is the criminal, you want to reframe it so the men are at fault for being stupid?
I posit that the perfection granted to women in American media is as dehumanising as anything else that prevents them from being actual HUMAN characters.
I didn’t say she was awesome. I said she was the boring part of the story. Every day, somebody sells a chimera to the investor class; perhaps somewhat less frequently (every other day?) somebody overtly lies about their product or process, often enough about medical stuff. It happens all the time.My SO is a scientist and watches people he knows bamboozle journals, investors, granting agencies, etc with regularity. When he was starting out, he’d try to do something about it, only the people being conned didn’t seem to want to hear it. Same happened in my tech days. So why is this story so interesting? Why does the media care so much about it? Perhaps you have an answer that isn’t “because she was a woman while doing it,” plus the Jobs cosplay. Having seen this story play out so many times before (but the villains were male con artists rather than female ones), I don’t really see it. When I referrred to “the Assistant,” the movie about Harvey Weinstein that never actually had the Harvey Weinstein character in the movie, I wasn’t implying that Harvey was a great guy. I was saying that the interesting story is showing the world that allowed Weinstein to do that stuff for so long. Similarly, I’m not suggesting Holmes is a great lady. I’m saying, what’s more interesting is the world that made her story possible.
gotcha, sorry i misunderstood. I thought you meant you wanted a story that made the men to be the real villains, because you said “[…w]here the real villain is not Holmes, but the men she robbed. That take could be sort of fun.”
??? honestly a lot of this was because men were being stupid and listening to some of them speak in the HBO doc it honestly sounds like they just wanted to fuck her. so yah, she’s the criminal but there are reasons she was able to fraud so many.
That just seems like your imagination to me. It sounds like they wanna capitalize the new female face in tech and while that might be sexually appetizing to a lot of the investor class, I hardly got the impression that they were trying to fuck her
??? honestly a lot of this was because men were being stupid and listening to some of them speak in the HBO doc it honestly sounds like they just wanted to fuck her. so yah, she’s the criminal but there are reasons she was able to fraud so many.She brought in all these horny, geriatric, over-the-hill power brokers who were willing to be flattered by a pretty young woman.There are few heroes in this story, save the rare whistleblowers. One of whom was the grandson of a horny, geriatric, over-the-hill power broker who didn’t believe him.
Holy shit my condolences to Melissa Benoist because she looks like the spitting image of that woman.
Almost, except her eyes don’t stare into the abyss like Holmes.
Then again, neither do Seyfried’s.
Weeeeeell…
I always thought Briga Heelan could pull off the Holmesian crazy eyes.
They are making a movie about Holmes with Jennifer Lawrence starring for Apple TV, so that’s a thing I suppose.I’m genuinely hoping that Melissa Benoist gets to lead a show again soon, because despite Supergirl’s overall quality and various large ups and downs, Benoist never faltered. She was unequivocally the best part of she show and acted her ass off. She was also wonderful in Waco, despite having little to really do there.
Idk I think it’s p interesting
I guess it’s good for her that McKinnon chose to, wait for it … not go ahead with this series.
With her last 6 projects she dies in half of them.
Had a bit of a start when I saw the Star Wars thing, because Headland looks so much like G-n- C-r-n-. Also amused that Sebastian Stan is playing Tommy Lee in that thing; I loved I, Tonya, and him in it, but it looks like Stan is Craig Gillespie’s go-to guy for skeevy dudes. But what a cast–can’t miss it.
G-n C-r-n? Man these droid names are gettin’ weirder!
I have to keep reminding myself that I’m going to be disappointed by Panos Cosmatos’ installment of Cabinet of Curiosities, because there’s no way it can be as bizarrely wonderful as Mandy or Beyond the Black Rainbow. But I’m still pretty excited.
Welp looks like I’m going to have to sign up for some AMC streaming.
I don’t know if it’s still on, but they were running a deal for 12 months of AMC+ for $2/month for Christmas/New Years.
Better Call Saul is on AMC, not AMC+.
I’ve been waiting for Atlanta forever so I’m thrilled that’s almost here. The other likely to be big hitters for me: LOTR, House of the Dragon, and Star Wars are too far away for me to think about. I had always wondered why Interview with a Vampire was never adapted for serialized television so I will check that out. I’m inevitably going to watch Sunday HBO anything but I’m skeptical of The Guilded Age—I’m really into this idea but while Downton Abbey was impressive in many ways, I found it utterly boring and clearly more Masterpiece than HBO. I haven’t seen anything from Fellows that would lead me to believe this will be much more than a very pretty, well-costumed and set-designed afterthought (the casting in the trailer seems way off—especially Cynthia Nixon who might be enough to deter me altogether). I’d rather have more The Knick than The Age of Innocence from HBO since we basically still get Downton Abbey in various forms already from Masterpiece et al.
I don’t think I will enjoy the rich porn aspect of Gilded Age. It was somewhat insufferable on Downton Abbey in later seasons but everything I’ve seen for the show screams I think the Rockefellers were awesome.
The Gilded Age seems an utter waste. It will probably have writing that is reflective of a contemporary political mindset that will have zilch to do with the actual era that is being depicted. This is common of HBO series when they do a period piece, things fall apart in a big way in the writing department. They get everything else right, the costumes, set design, music…but the writing tends to be disingenuous rubbish.
What other HBO period drams are there? I haven’t been keeping up I guess
Fraggle Rock springs to mind.
Nixon won a Tony for the recent revival of The Little Foxes where she and Laura Linney played the dual leads of wealthy women around 1900 (they were both transfixing). I don’t know much about her Gilded Age character, but she absolutely has the chops to pull off this type of period piece and is one of the reasons I’m excited to check this one out.
I am not worried about the acting. Its more the writing. Fellows is impossible to mix up with other TV writers due to his style but I’d argue that’s not a good thing.
I never got round to Downton Abbey, but I’ll be giving The Guilded Age a try purely for Carrie Coon.
I mean to be fair the movie of Age of Innocence is kinda amazing, and utterly ruthless in a way Fellowes’ writing never is (I enjoy his stuff in a very superficial way–I even watched Belgravia and his historical soccer series–albeit mainly as something I could watch with my grandma). Not for nothing has Scorsese said it’s his most emotionally violent film.
If your British you get the last seasons of Peaky Blinders and Derry Girls. I’m envious.
There is nothing enviable about being British right now. Except Peaky Bliners and Derry Girls obviously.
… and Toast of Tinseltown.
Being British I have to point out it’s “you’re” ;)Derry Girls is clearly my most anticipated show on 2022, but another one nearly passed me by. Toast of Tinseltown started on the BBC last night – with Matt Berry. Loads of cameos (plus Clem Fandango) and even Kayvan Novak as Des Wigwam, doing a surprisingly convincing Scouse accent.
I’m half Irish, correcting my grammar is the nicest thing you could have done. Heard good things about Toast of Tinseltown, will definitely watch soon as I can.
Man, I saw “ROAR” and I had the hope it was a series going over the making of the FILM and showing the fucking madness of filming and living with live lions.
Also during this period and filming (I think) a underage Melanie Griffith is being hit on by Don Johnson, who will leave his groupie girlfriend Pamela Des Barre for her.
Roar is one of those trainwreck films that is both A fascinating and B shocking nobody died. I think?
You are correct Sir! (that was in my best Ed McMahon voice)It’s crazy no one died on that set.
Melanie Griffith got her face ripped up in that movie.
“Everybody in the family had been injured by the cats, and that included
Melanie, who was clawed across the face by a young lion and needed
plastic surgery,” John Marshall says in the documentary.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/entertainthis/2017/06/21/young-melanie-griffiths-bloody-face-animal-planet-documentary/103067734/
I’d like to thank the people in the comments for talking about shows they like. Because I got to the second “slide”, saw that some sort of rehashing of Pamela and Tommy Lee is considered to be most anticipated, and despaired that 2022 got cancelled.
How is the final season of Better Call Saul not on this list?
If that’s this year then it’s my number 0 on the list, as in I don’t need to anticipate it because I’m sooooo already there!
I follow a lot of the cast/writers, etc on Twitter, as far as I know it’s this Spring. They asked Rhea to describe the season in one word: Devastating.
I remember reading that too. The beauty of this show is that, while we know where it’s going, it’s so compelling I have to see how it gets there.
That is always what I’m interested in. I want to see the journey. In the first season, as they brought in characters from Breaking Bad, ie Tuco, the Cousins, etc. Just loved it.
I never could get into the first season. Every episode, it seemed like this sad miserable man was gonna be sadder and even more miserable at the end of the episode. I couldn’t bear to keep watching.
Not to defend the slideshow format, but for the millionth time, you can get a simple list with a single click in the upper right once you start the show.
Why are there 0 articles published today beyond this one that auto-dropped at midnight?
Nothing on Twitter indicates something happened, and the other sections are posting normally. It is curious.
With the bosses telling avclub staffers they must move to LA or lose their jobs, I’m wondering if any of the staff are actually left to post anything.
Weird, why would they need to move to LA to write a blog? Does the internet not exist outside of California and New York.
It’s totally absurd.
The justification is that because Hollywood is in LA, AV Club should be in LA.
Man, we as a society need to start developing some mass communication networks, to allow news from one part of the country to reach other parts of the country in a short amount of time. (Maybe even one day all over the world, but lets not run before we can walk.)
Ha!Of course not!
Idk if American news is comparable to Canadian news right now but today’s Ontario lockdown announcement smells suspicious.
How do you list all those actors in Severance and not mention Christopher Walken?
The Dropout amuses me solely because there’s a hentai anime/manga called “Dropout” that’s extremely popular among women.
So in rereading the synopsis for She-Hulk, it says that Jennifer
Walters specializes in cases involving superhumans. So I’m asking, whom
do you think that she’ll be defending? There’s only one person I can
think of in the MCU (adjacent) that is in this wheelhouse: Trish Walker.
Perhaps ‘She-Hulk’ can serve to finally introduce the Marvel villain we’ve all been waiting to see: Paste-Pot Pete!
I’d be all for a Trish Walker trial and that would also mean Jessica isn’t far behind. I’ve read conflicting rumors that Krysten Ritter is in this and that they tried to get her, but couldn’t because of scheduling conflicts. I’m mostly really hoping that they get at least some oddball Marvel characters, whether they’ve been used before or not, to debut here. She-Hulk is the perfect vehicle for this, considering how it’s being presented as more of a legal comedy.
Depends on how deep they want to dig into the comics lore. We know that Abomination will be in the series; he certainly has potential for needing legal help, as might Titania, who had a personal beef with Shulkie in the comics. Starfox/Eros, who appeared in the Eternals movie in a mid-credits scene, has also been a client of Walters’ in the comics, although Marvel may have other plans for him. I would love to see Trish return, but my theory is still that she’s going to end up in some version of the Thunderbolts, or whatever Allegra de la Fontaine is whipping up, if they’re not the same thing.
We saw Abomination in [redacted]. He didn’t look like he was on the run or in need of legal help.
When he left via portal, he was returning to a prison with a high tech cell visible. And given that he seemed to be doing some sort of anger-control fight therapy with Wong, he could be arguing for release or parole.
Not at that precise point in time, maybe (although see ryanjcam’s comment, he could actually be in prison). If they’re going to go by the spirit of the comics runs of Dan Slott (at least the first series–I wasn’t too crazy about the second) and/or Charles Soule (who is an actual lawyer), they may be dealing with some interesting questions about how the law applies to superpowered people; it would be cool if it were something like Blonsky/Abommo suing to get his military pension, and the government denying it on the basis that he’s not really the same person, or something.
Well, he was pretty deep underground. You could make the case he was on the run.
The list, BTW:
– Peacemaker
– The Gilded Age
– Pam & Tommy
– Inventing Anna
– Severance
– Better Things (Season 5)
– The Dropout
– Atlanta (Season 3)
– Lord of the Rings
– Dark Winds
– House of the Dragon
– Ms. Marvel
– Star Wars: Acolyte
– The First Lady
– Bel-Air
– Pachinko
– Marvel’s She-Hulk
– Interview with the Vampire
– The Sandman
– Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities
– Pieces of Her
– Roar
“No, thank you. I much prefer the slideshow format,” said no one ever.
There is a “List Slides” button that not only produces a list, but links each slide individually. I use that when it’s a topic not worth stepping through as a slideshow or shrinking the browser to partial screen, allowing me to scroll through.
Love your work!
Zahn McClarnon nearly stole the show on Reservation Dogs as tribal officer Big, but now the Westworld alum has been cast as the co-lead of AMC’s Dark Winds adaptation.He also killed it in Season 2 of Fargo.
No love for Mrs. Maisel? Or is that not out till 2023?
Is there anyone that seems to be getting anywhere near as much work in the last few years than Nicole Kidman? The woman is seemingly everywhere. When does she NOT work? Perhaps the sleepless Greg Berlanti could let me know Kidman’s secret?
Olivia Colman.
Yeah, great call lately. Olivia is deservedly in demand. Kidman less so, though she is a great actress.
In the Five(ish) Doctors, she comments to Sean Pertwee that she’s surprised not to be in The Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special because she’s “in everything at the moment”.
“Vellani is set to reprise her role in 2023’s Captain Marvels, so it will be exciting to see how the show not just introduces her masked personality, but also how it fits into Phase Four of the MCU.”I believe the proper plural is “Captains Marvel” (and also that’s not what the movie’s called).
I really want it to be called that. Got a good Warriors Three or Tub of Popcorns Three vibe. Sadly it’s just The Marvels.
It’s actually “The Marvelous Mrs. Marvels.”
Between Ms. Marvel and Hawkeye, (and, sorta, Black Widow) I’m kind of digging that we’re at the point in the MCU where we have emerging heroes who are truly second generation, who’ve idolized the heroes we already know.
Lots of demure White women with blonde updos. Americans should be happy with this selection. LOL!
“Lots of kinky haired black women, so I guess the critics will love these shows.”
HELLS YEAHS ANOTHER SLIDESHOW
Ah fuck, did AV Club get Deadspinned?That would seriously hurt. I’m more of a newcomer than some of the other regulars (I only remember Kinja) but goddamn I’d miss the fuck out of this place. Fuck.
I was just coming here to post about this. Almost everybody else went back to work today. There’s a suspicious lack of content. I haven’t been reminded about Ted Lasso in a week.
Dare I hope ‘The Sandman’ will actually be a worthy adaptation? The trailer looks good for what it shows, and Neil Gaiman has stopped enough bad versions being made to imagine that this will be a good one, but I’m still hesitant to get too excited just yet.
If Good Omens was his overture, then here’s hoping The Sandman is his symphony.
He’s involved but not a show runner here (the show runner hasn’t done anything similar to Sandman before, so is kinda a wild card). But honestly, that may be a good thing. Good Omens (which he was show runner on) was… mostly good. But people seem unaware that as American Gods got worse, he got more involved.
The AV Club hasn’t published anything in two days so I’m just gonna ask my burning question here: Any updates on the release of major films that claimed they’re only coming in theatre? Ontario is going back into full lockdown tomorrow (my money is at least 3 months). All of the cineplexes in Toronto are closing again….. is America gonna adjust themselves because of that or do we collectively just not get to see The Batman?
RE: Severance:Jesus Christ if I have to endure YET ANOTHER DYSTOPIAN CORPORATE SMILEY FACADE DRAMEDY IN 2022 NO LESS OH MY FREAKIN GOOD HEAVENS
This trope was played out IN THE 1960S
The only thing I care about in 2022 is Season 3 of “Barry.”
Not one of these interests me.
Is anyone anywhere actually excited for Peacemaker?
Suicide Squad was fine, and it was nice to see Gunn taking a deep dive into DC’s rolodex and coming up with an under-explored Charlton character. But I don’t know anyone who was like, “need more John Cena meathead super patriot”. Just seems like a case of over-estimation of a supporting character’s popularity.
Then again, we’re getting the 2nd live action Vigilante in 5 years, so maybe every character will get their own show by 2025.
I can’t stop thinking about Pieces of Her and Toni Collette violently kicking ass. Pretty much everything she does is magical and I can’t get enough of it.
You’ve made Moon Knight very angry.
I am hoping Better Things has an open door at FX, where she can return at any time ala Curb at HBO, and like Louie formerly had at FX.
Every time I see Ginger Gonzaga’s name in print, I always read it as Ginger Gazonga and picture an old-fashioned stripper/burlesque performer.
Whoever picked that image of Nicole Kidman for the slideshow clearly hates her. Goddamn.
No mention of The Last of Us?
So, not one single program or series on regular broadcast television?‘Cause I (and many others) don’t do subscription “services.”
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Better Call Saul S6 not being on this list is a travesty. It would be #1 on my list. I hope there isn’t some unfortunate delay to it that I don’t know about.Other shows I didn’t see mentioned that I’m excited for – Marvelous Mrs. Maisel S4, Stranger Things S4.