Besides the final season of my favourite show of all time, our picks for the Best Drama Series in 2022 are all brand-new shows. All three out of four are genre-hard shows, with fantasy creatures and sci-fi stuff. I’m so used to HBO clearing up in this category, but it’s only got in once and in third place!

Each of these series engrossed us week-to-week (aside from the fifth pick, which was released all at once) and had us talking about each twist in the narrative.

Here are our picks for the Top 5 Best Drama TV Series in 2022.

– Dylan Blight

5.) The Sandman: Season One

After decades in development hell, Netflix finally found a way to bring Neil Gaiman’s beloved comic series The Sandman to live action. Managing to perfectly toe the line between being true to the source material and updating itself for a 2022 audience, the show was good for both fans of the comics and newcomers alike.

Centred around Tom Sturridge’s performance as Morpheus, the personification of dreams and nightmares, the show boasts a sensational supporting cast with Kirby Howell-Baptiste as Death, Gwendoline Christie as Lucifer Morningstar, David Thewlis as the creepy John Dee, Boyd Holbrook as nightmare murderer the Corinthian and, in a perfect piece of casting, Jenna Coleman as Johanna Constantine. If for some odd reason, you didn’t enjoy an episode, you only needed to try the next one to find something entirely new to enjoy. Tackling some of the comics’ most iconic moments beautifully, this show proved to be worth the wait.

– Ashley Hobley

4.) Better Call Saul: Season Six

As the final season of Better Call Saul headed towards its dramatic finish, things were firing on all cylinders. Every piece of the story, character beat and little tease throughout the series’ history was wrapped-up perfectly. Where the characters were left was perfection, and the final arc is beautiful in its retrospective simplicity.

– Dylan Blight

3.) House of the Dragon: Season One

Drama is the forte of Game of Thrones, where many different families and clans fought for the Iron Thron. Well, it’s not so different when a show in the same universe focuses on just one family. The in-fighting and slow build to the war that will be in the coming seasons between House Targaryen were built wonderfully in the first season. Seeing the main characters grow from kids to adults was an excellent choice to build the audience’s relationship with them. 

– Dylan Blight

2.) Severance: Season One

The big word-of-mouth show of the year. Every week, I saw more and more people talking about Severance, theorising about Severance, sharing their impatience to find out what happens next on Severance. I finally bit the bullet and dived right in and it turns out this show lived up to the hype.

Centered around a company that uses a mindwipe medical procedure called “severance” to separate the consciousness of their employees between their lives at work and outside of it, the show became a fascinating mystery box. With so many interesting leads and tangents for the characters to deal with, you never knew where the show was going next and you were always delightfully surprised.

– Ashley Hobley

1.) Andor: Season One

Andor has restored my faith in Star Wars. It has restored my faith in the potential for these massive franchises to be able to tell different kinds of stories in different genres. More a political spy thriller than a sci-fi story, Andor was a beautiful breath of fresh air into a franchise that did not delight us as much as we had hoped with their other offerings this year.

With the starting point of following Cassian Andor five years before the events of Rogue One, we soon go into various new directions rarely seen in Star Wars. In the characters of Deedra Mero and Syril Karn, we see things from the perspective of those in support of the empire. We follow Mon Mothma as she struggles with her double life, trying to secretly fund the rebellion while keeping up appearances as a senator. We see new worlds filled with culture and history and are treated to some of the best monologues of any show this year. Andor proves to be a new hope for those who have started to feel jaded by Star Wars.

– Ashley Hobley

Dylan Blight and Ashley Hobley compiled this Top 5 list. The TV shows nominated must release between November 15th 2021 – November 15th 2022 and have been released in Australia via network TV, VOD or a streaming platform.