TV
Abbott Elementary, Season 1-2
Gilles Mingasson/ABC
From the show’s beginning, each character’s personality has felt clearly defined; yet nearly two full seasons in, they continue to surprise and delight with how they move about and interact with one another. (Principal Ava is still awful at her job, but she can give good advice! Sometimes.) And the show manages to gracefully walk a tight line between cheese and snark – the teaching moments are warm, not overwrought; the rightful critiques of the public school system’s failings are biting, not bitter. — Aisha Harris
TV
Bad Sisters, Season 1
Apple TV+
I’ll follow pretty much anything Sharon Horgan does, but even beyond that, this show hit many of my sweet spots: a playful whodunit; a macabre sensibility (four sisters try – and fail, many, many times – to kill their abhorrent and abusive brother-in-law); and saucy performances from every cast member, small to critical. It’s an easy binge-watch that’s so good it’s unlikely you’ll feel bad about actively rooting for the despicable antagonist’s utter demise. — Aisha Harris
TV
Better Call Saul, Season 6
Greg Lewis/AMC/Sony Pictures Television
Jimmy and Kim’s extremely long, sociopathic con against Howard coming to a bitter, fateful conclusion. Kim’s tearful breakdown on the bus, as years’ worth of guilt finally catch up to her. The ever-sympathetic Nacho staying true to his moral code until the very end. The return of Walter and Jesse. The satisfying reckoning Jimmy faces for all of his many crimes, and those he hurt. We had to wait years to see how it would shake out for McGill and his associates. But it was absolutely worth it. — Aisha Harris
TV
Better Things, Season 5
Suzanne Tenner/FX
What Pamela Adlon and her eclectic, lovable, angsty, neurotic, witty, vulnerable, sassy, hormonal and brilliant cohort managed to bring to these characters over five seasons was special. Few shows have made me feel emotions so deeply with every episode. Even fewer have felt truly aspirational, inviting me to dream of having a community as warm and welcoming as the one Sam has created and nurtured alongside her three children, her mother and the many friends who are basically family. They are missed. — Aisha Harris
Movie
Decision to Leave
MUBI
Sure, the cop-falls-in-love-with-a-suspect trope has been done before, but have you seen Park Chan-wook’s interpretation? This mystery is anchored by the romantic and melancholic dynamic between Park Hae-il’s death-obsessed detective and Tang Wei’s enigmatic widow, who may have killed her husband. Scenes invoke memory and desire in immersive editing choices. And the final moments knocked me out, in the best way possible. — Aisha Harris
Movie
Nanny
Prime Video
In the past few years, quite a few filmmakers have tried to tell Black horror stories, and quite a few have missed the mark. Nikyatu Jusu’s feature debut is a master class in how to execute a vision around mystical spirits and existential anxieties without merely layering on trauma for trauma’s sake. As Aisha, a Senegalese immigrant working for a wealthy white family, Anna Diop is stellar, and Jusu’s vivid imagery lingers long after a viewing. — Aisha Harris
Movie
Nope
Universal Studios
Others may disagree, but in my book, Jordan Peele is now three-for-three as a feature director. Admittedly, my immediate reaction to Nope was that it felt a little bit like a letdown, and there are definitely some details I wish had been more fleshed out – the biggest one being Steven Yeun’s character! – but I love how singular it feels alongside Get Out and Us. We all thought Peele was going to swerve one way, but in every thoughtfully crafted, thrilling frame, he subverted those expectations handily. — Aisha Harris
Movie
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Netflix
I was not expecting to be undone by the last several minutes of this movie, but there I was, crying over a very familiar story that suddenly felt new all over again. The animation is lively and beautifully detailed; the cast is impeccable, especially Ewan McGregor as the endearingly pompous iteration of the cricket conscience; and the overt political tones (this version takes place in 20th century Italy during the rise of fascism) add heft to the film’s themes of family and grief. — Aisha Harris
TV
Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel
HBO
In the crudest of terms, Jerrod Carmichael aired his family’s dirty laundry in front of mixed company, an oft unspoken no-no. But he took a very personal risk – coming out publicly as gay, and then unpacking his mother’s cold reaction to the reveal – and what transpired on that stage is transcendent. Rothaniel lives and breathes in that simultaneously freeing and discomforting imbalance, that tension between relief and despondency, fear and catharsis. — Aisha Harris
Movie
All That Breathes
Sideshow / Submarine Deluxe / HBO
Indian cinema had a breakthrough in 2022 with RRR – but new cinema from and about the country is as diverse as the society it reflects. The exquisite documentary All That Breathes is set against the climate catastrophe of the failing river and crowded neighborhoods of New Delhi. It follows two brothers who run a hospital for injured birds of prey. The winged stars stumble and soar across the screen as their caretakers ruminate on healing, both for the birds and their broken city. Poetic, urgent, unforgettable. — Bilal Qureshi
Movie
Bros
Universal Pictures
The discourse was messy and the marketing terrible, but somewhere beyond the noise, Bros was a truly sweet, sleek and smart New York rom-com. Alongside the equally brilliant and lovable Fire Island, it was such a win to have two queer comedies beyond the tragic and traumatic in the Hollywood mainstream. The plotlines were as ridiculous and saccharine as the Hollywood classics that inspired them, but the brilliant ensembles and found families they centered were a welcome remix – and yes, romantic. — Bilal Qureshi
TV
Irma Vep
Carole Bethuel/HBO
“Meta” doesn’t even begin to summarize what filmmaker Olivier Assayas achieved with this TV expansion of his original 1996 movie. Oscar winner Alicia Vikander stars as a Hollywood actress in Paris to shoot an indie passion project for an unhinged director. In a year filled with earnest love letters to cinema, this was perhaps the funniest and most cynical about the mess of moviemaking. When so much plotting feels derivative, Assayas’ storytelling has a purpose, intelligence and style all its own. — Bilal Qureshi
Movie
Retrograde
Matthew Heineman/OTP
Filmmaker Matthew Heinemen was embedded with American and Afghan forces as the U.S. announced its withdrawal in 2021. He stayed in Afghanistan as American forces left and the result is a spellbinding portrait of a tragedy in real time – the abandoned bases and villages, the fall of Kabul back into Taliban hands as refugees fled to an airport in chaos. Retrograde is war cinema stitched from reality, composed with searing images and interviews, powered by the responsibility to bear witness. — Bilal Qureshi
Movie
Tár
Focus Features
In an already monumental career, the towering central performance by Cate Blanchett is reason enough to see this fictionalized biography of a renowned conductor’s fall from grace. But this isn’t just a splashy performance surrounded by a mediocre drama – it is as much the writing, the moods and the mysteries of Tár that made Todd Field’s return to directing such a masterpiece. This is a story bathed in the grayscale of its Berlin settings, haunted by Mahler’s music and the violence of ambition. — Bilal Qureshi
TV
The White Lotus, Season 2
HBO
Whatever the watercooler is in this atomized age of WFH, the return of The White Lotus provided a unifying, electrifying and unmissable Sunday episodic experience. Feasting on its many Sicilian corkscrew turns week after week proved that creator, director and writer Mike White is a singular force of nature in TV. (Don’t miss his Fresh Air interview!) Here was a sequel that seemed dubious at first – but quickly became its own luxury hotel of horrors, betrayals and sex, made and acted impeccably. — Bilal Qureshi
Movie
Moonage Daydream
BMG, Neon, Live Nation Productions, Universal Entertainment International, HBO
As a committed music documentary watcher, I was completely unprepared for the dizzying, kaleidoscopic IMAX world building that director Brett Morgen brought to his authorized biography of David Bowie. All the archival footage, the music (!) and interviews would be sufficient. But Morgen made a film designed for maximal visual and aural disorientation, a collage film that both celebrates Bowie’s music and conveys the intellectual, philosophical and spiritual currents of a truly epic life. — Bilal Qureshi
Movie
A Hero
Amazon Studios
In filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s hands, what seems a black-and-white morality tale about a man who becomes a celebrity after doing a good deed turns ever more ethically gray. The writer-director encourages you to choose sides so he can make you doubt your decision and then doubt the doubting, as a tiny omission in the man’s original story leads to supporting fibs that require supporting evasions, and the stakes keep rising until pretty much everyone’s compromised. — Bob Mondello
Movie
All the Beauty and the Bloodshed
Nan Goldin
A portrait of the artist that doubles as a call to action, Laura Poitras’ documentary interweaves the origin story of photographer Nan Goldin with her mission to hold the Sackler family accountable for the opioid addiction crisis precipitated by its company, Purdue Pharma. Revelatory and infuriating in equal measure, the film puts you in the room as Goldin mounts guerrilla raids on major museums, forces the Sacklers to listen to the stories of their victims and removes the Sackler name from museum walls. — Bob Mondello
Movie
The Banshees of Inisherin
Jonathan Hession/Searchlight Pictures
Writer-director Martin McDonagh’s dark Irish comedy concerns longtime pals Padraic (Colin Farrell) and Colm (Brendan Gleeson) who could have just stepped out of a Samuel Beckett play, friendship unraveling as they’re waiting for something even more elusive than Godot. Gleeson’s a hard-headed giant; Farrell, eyes brimming, at once hopeful and anguished at being abandoned. You’ll empathize with both in a tale of buddies that plays like a blood feud. — Bob Mondello
Movie
Everything Everywhere All at Once
A24
A swirling, wildly inventive two-hour multiverse fable that plays like a music video with dialogue in multiple languages, rapid-motion effects and shifting aspect ratios. There’s a universe where humans have hot dog fingers, one with raccoon chefs (directing duo Daniels have a thing about Pixar’s Ratatouille), and one where someone says “the bagel will show you the true nature of things” and you think, yup, the everything bagel. Thrilling even when it’s less chaos theory than chaos practical. — Bob Mondello
Movie
Living
Ross Ferguson / Number 9 films / Sony Pictures Classics
Ramrod straight, tailored in bowler and pinstripe suit, Bill Nighy plays a buttoned-up widower toiling in a public works office in post-World War II London. His days shuffling papers as head of a staff of six are unvarying and pointless. He embodies bureaucratic inertia – desk piled with papers, tasked with shuttling them (and the people who bring them) from department to department. An elegant, exquisitely sad retelling of Kurosawa’s 1952 drama Ikiru, brimming with period detail and lovely performances. — Bob Mondello
Movie
The Fabelmans
Universal Pictures
Having wowed us with giant sharks, adorable aliens, velociraptors, an intrepid archaeologist and even Abe Lincoln, Steven Spielberg tells his own story this time – a tale of growing up movie-besotted. As his adolescent stand-in takes up his dad’s Super 8 camera and discovers that the lens sometimes sees what the eye cannot (especially about his fracturing family), we see it dawn on him, as it must have on Spielberg, that this medium is capable not just of revealing truths, but of shaping them. — Bob Mondello
Movie
Three Minutes: A Lengthening
Family Affair Films, US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Bianca Stigter’s striking documentary exercise in cinematic forensics reinvents form, turning three minutes of pre-World War II vacation footage into a 69-minute detective story. It’s a fascinating and exhaustive – but never exhausting – look at how much can be learned from images: Time of day? Yes. Location? Sure. Social class? Absolutely. But state of mind? The film becomes a narrative of discovery, an exploration of memory and a meditation on loss and cinema. — Bob Mondello
Movie
Vesper
IFC Films
An upper-class elite has taken refuge in cities that look like huge metal mushrooms in this European eco-disaster fable. While they consume all the planet’s available resources, the rest of humankind lives in sackcloth and squalor. Dickensian much? Practical and computer effects give the film the look of Children of Men and the bleak atmospherics of The Road, to go with a heroine who seems like she would be entirely capable of holding her own in The Hunger Games. — Bob Mondello
Movie
Women Talking
Michael Gibson/Orion Pictures
Sunlight streaming through slats in a barn offers beauty but no warmth in Sarah Polley’s fierce adaptation of Miriam Toews’ 2018 novel about women in an isolated religious colony who break their silence about abuse at the hands of the colony’s men. Based on incidents in a real Mennonite community in Bolivia, the film is harrowing and fascinating. Anyone clear-eyed about the world today will recognize the truths that these women are talking. — Bob Mondello
TV
A League of Their Own
Anne Marie Fox/Anne Marie Fox/Prime Video
Reinventing Penny Marshall’s beloved 1992 movie about an all-female, World War II-era baseball league was challenge enough. But series co-creator and star Abbi Jacobson upped the ante, centering storylines on gay, transgender and Black characters the film could only hint at, while keeping it all just as heartwarming and funny as the original. That bold vision minted a new TV classic perfectly suited for today’s times. — Eric Deggans
TV
Atlanta, Season 4
Guy D'Alema/FX
Delayed by COVID and creator/star Donald Glover’s myriad ventures, the final two seasons of this trippy, creatively ambitious series on the misadventures of a group of Black millennials had less impact than earlier episodes, despite dropping in the same year. But seeing Glover’s Earn Marks finally realize his potential, in stories that offered telling observations while remaining defiantly unpredictable, left an indelible reminder why the show was so groundbreaking in the first place. — Eric Deggans
TV
Only Murders in the Building, Season 2
Craig Blankenhorn/ Hulu
Somehow, this cheeky, hit comedy about a trio of crime-solving, podcast-making, cluelessly wisecracking residents of a crumbling apartment building in Manhattan’s Upper West Side upped its game for its second season. We got sharper celebrity cameos, a poignant backstory for Steve Martin’s mediocre-actor character, a bit more self-awareness from Martin Short’s mediocre theater director and a deepened chemistry with younger co-star Selena Gomez. In short, TV perfection. — Eric Deggans
TV
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Marni Grossman/CBS
Finally, Star Trek fans have a rollicking new TV show about the Starship Enterprise that revives the original series’ mojo. Set 10 years before Jim Kirk’s captaincy, this series takes big swings – showing us the origin story of cadet Nyota Uhura, rewriting Mr. Spock’s romantic past and fleshing out the heroic command of Kirk’s predecessor, Christopher Pike. Paired with updated visual effects and storytelling, it’s pure heaven, especially for Trek nerds. — Eric Deggans
TV
The Crown, Season 5
Keith Bernstein
For its fifth season, the series adroitly tackled perhaps the modern British monarchy’s most contentious moment: the public crumbling of Princess Diana and then-Prince Charles’ marriage. The show’s hidden ace was sharp casting, from Elizabeth Debicki’s uncanny embodiment of Diana’s ethereal beauty, to Jonathan Pryce’s aging lion Prince Philip and Dominic West as a jerky, yet occasionally sympathetic Charles. A layered – and disputed – look at a story everyone thinks they know, but likely don’t. — Eric Deggans
TV
The Good Fight, Season 6
Elizabeth Fisher/Paramount+
This legal drama concluded the story of Christine Baranski’s ace lawyer Diane Lockhart by channeling modern tensions over social unrest and public violence. While protests churned outside, Lockhart’s predominantly Black firm struggled with a flashy new partner in Andre Braugher’s Ri’Chard Lane, Lockhart’s growing professional ambivalence, and, finally, an attack on their office by armed white supremacists. The message – urging continued struggle to combat injustice – rang through clearly. — Eric Deggans
TV
The U.S. and the Holocaust
1940/Library of Congress
Ken Burns’ ambitious docuseries features one of America’s most beloved TV historians tackling one of the country’s biggest myths: that the U.S. was always on the right side of history as the Holocaust unfolded in Nazi Germany. Instead, Burns’ searing story reveals how antisemitic State Department employees made Jewish immigration difficult as Adolf Hitler came to power, offering sharp lessons from history just as similar rhetoric has reappeared in contemporary times. — Eric Deggans
TV
We Need to Talk About Cosby
Mario Casilli / mptvimages / Showtime
Director/narrator W. Kamau Bell asks a challenging question: How do we acknowledge the groundbreaking impact of comic Bill Cosby, while fully recognizing the dozens and dozens of women who, for decades, have accused him of sexual misconduct? Bell offers an earnest discussion of Cosby’s influence – the way he opened doors for Black stuntmen, for example – while adding that he absolutely believes the women who say the man once known as “America’s Dad” drugged and raped them. — Eric Deggans
TV
Andor, Season 1
Lucasfilm Ltd.
No lightsabers, no Force lightning and – mercifully – no Tatooine. Andor is a surprisingly humanistic exploration of one corner of the Star Wars universe we’ve only glimpsed before. It shows us how the mythic, oppressive evil of the Empire is powered by petty functionaries jockeying for position. And it shows us that it takes more than a handful of charismatic action heroes to save the galaxy; it takes ordinary citizens brave enough to stand up and resist, no matter the cost. — Glen Weldon
TV
Our Flag Means Death, Season 1
Aaron Epstein/HBO Max
The foppish gentleman pirate Stede Bonnet is a classic Rhys Darby character – high status, low skill set. His bluff enthusiasm masks an unease with the violent nature of life on the high seas. What a happy coincidence that he should meet Taika Waititi’s Blackbeard, whose ruthlessness belies a longing for the social graces Bonnet embodies. On David Jenkins’ deadpan queer comedy, the two men realize that they complete each other – and lustily unbuckle each other’s swashes. — Glen Weldon
TV
Severance, Season 1
Apple TV+
Employees agree to a procedure that causes them to forget their home lives when on the job and forget their work lives when at home. We follow one team as they welcome a new hire; what threatens to descend into broad anti-corporate satire instead maintains a profoundly weird comic edge. Waffle parties! Policy manuals treated as holy texts! Severance knows what it wants to say, and says it in maddeningly compelling fragments, all the way up to a barnburner of a season finale. — Glen Weldon
TV
The Bear, Season 1
FX
The Bear is no casual binge. It’s demanding in the best way, drawing you into the world of high-end chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), who returns to run his family’s Chicago sandwich joint only to face resistance from the lifers on staff and from his own protégé (Ayo Edebiri). The Bear places you on a kitchen line during the lunch rush as panic rises and personalities fray. But it also offers small moments of connection between its complex characters that leave you satisfied – but still hungry. — Glen Weldon
TV
The Sandman, Season 1
Netflix
It shouldn’t have worked. You don’t get more high-concept than a comic about the personifications of concepts like Dream, Desire and Death. Neil Gaiman’s densely mythic series should have been unadaptable – and for decades, it was. But the Netflix show leans into the world building of the comic while conferring new roundedness to its characters. Add to that a haunting central performance by Tom Sturridge? That sound you heard when it premiered was millions of Sandman fans breathing sighs of relief. — Glen Weldon
Movie
Triangle of Sadness
Platform
Nothing about Swedish director Ruben Ostlund’s first English-language film is subtle. Not the premise – a yacht catering to the ultra-rich runs into trouble. Not the plot, which sees the yacht’s long-suffering crew assuming control of a worsening situation. And not the characterizations, painted as they are in broad, agitprop strokes. But subtlety isn’t the goal here – funny is. And the way Ostlund visits various manifestations of existential comeuppance on his characters makes for a richly satisfying ride. — Glen Weldon
Movie
Glass Onion
John Wilson/Netflix
Rian Johnson’s follow-up to Knives Out brings a new cast, including standout Janelle Monáe, to a new murder mystery featuring Daniel Craig’s detective Benoit Blanc. Cleverly structured and beautifully designed, the film is a pure pleasure as well as an impressive continuation of Johnson’s fresh take on the long tradition of the whodunit. And not for nothing, its skewering of the tech “genius” played by Edward Norton couldn’t feel more timely. — Linda Holmes
TV
Mo, Season 1
Netflix
Mo Amer’s semi-autobiographical half-hour comedy-drama is a heartfelt family story that also has a taste for the absurd. The fictional Mo’s endless slog through the asylum process leaves him in limbo, and that limbo makes him vulnerable to all manner of economic peril and the risky decisions it can bring. At the center of the show is Amer’s sharp, sympathetic performance, which fits both the crime-caper elements and the delicacy of a kid’s love of his mother’s homemade olive oil. — Linda Holmes
TV
The Dropout, Season 1
Beth Dubber/Hulu
Of all the limited series in 2022 ripped from stories of controversial startup founders – and there were several – The Dropout is the one that rose to the top. Amanda Seyfried’s performance as Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes focused less on Holmes’ distinctive voice and more on her manner, on her idiosyncratic way of being both confident and dorky. Now that Holmes has been sentenced to prison, this unsparing look at her story is an even more effective cautionary tale. — Linda Holmes
TV
The Last Movie Stars
HBO Max
Directed by Ethan Hawke, this thorough and thoughtful look at the lives of Joanne Woodward and Paul Newman is not just biography; it’s a consideration of what art is, what it is to have heroes and how these ideas operate in the lives of real people. Hawke’s assembly of contemporary actors to read from old interviews with Hollywood legends works brilliantly, and the result is provocative as well as deeply touching. — Linda Holmes
Movie
The Lost City
Kimberley French/Paramount Pictures
Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum are both perfectly cast in this very funny caper/rom-com about a romance novelist who winds up on a quest, accompanied by her hunky cover model. Throw in Daniel Radcliffe’s beautifully weird turn as a villain and Bullock’s purple-sequined jumpsuit, and you have a throwback to the days when movie stars lent their considerable charms to romantic comedy much more than they tend to now. — Linda Holmes
TV
The Patient, Season 1
Suzanne Tenner/FX
Steve Carell’s most successful dramatic turn so far casts him as a therapist held hostage by a serial killer played by Domhnall Gleeson who wants to stop killing and needs therapy to do it. An irresistible setup in the hands of The Americans creators Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg, the series goes from absurd to terrifying to moving, anchored by its central performances. The 10 half-hour-ish episodes maintain an almost unbearable tension as the possible outcomes narrow. — Linda Holmes
TV
This Is Going to Hurt, Season 1
AMC Networks
Ben Whishaw stars as an OB-GYN in the U.K.’s National Health Service in this adaptation of Adam Kay’s memoir of his time in a similar setting. The series can be very funny and very sad in nearly the same moment, and it captures the complexities of being deeply committed to work in a field that can be miserable and demoralizing, even dangerous. Whishaw’s performance, and that of Ambika Mod as his young colleague, sharply convey the anguish in Kay’s book about the toll that inadequate support takes on doctors and others. — Linda Holmes