This was such an exceptionally good year for TV characters, I had to extend the usual “Top 10” list to 15 mentions. Of course, I did the same thing for the “Worst” list as well, but why focus on the negative? The bottom line is that if you couldn’t find a TV show (and character) to love in 2022, you weren’t trying very hard.
15. Best All-Around Cast of TV Characters: “Better Call Saul”…In most years, Jimmy McGill/Saul Goodman/Gene-the-Cinnabon-manager would’ve easily taken the top spot. However, that might ignore just how well-written and expertly crafted the rest of “Saul”‘s cast actually is. You can see it with characters we’re not supposed to focus on (the heartbreaking fate of Nacho Varga is revealed in the first few episodes of season 6) or ones we’re not even supposed to like (the not-as-shallow-as-you-think Howard Hamlin). On a lesser show, Howard would be a smarmy, one-note antagonist we feel nothing for, and it’s a triumph that “Saul”‘s mid-season climax felt like such a gut punch. This was easily the most layered, multi-dimensional cast of characters in 2022.
14. Candy Montgomery (Jessica Biel) on “Candy”…Biel delivers a career-best performance with this enigmatic character. Play close attention to her body language, as she prowls around the frame with loose, panther-like energy and a hunger that feels almost primal hidden beneath unflattering glasses and deceptive Texan “cheerfulness.”
13. Alan Strauss (Steve Carell) on “The Patient”…Frankly, this miniseries wouldn’t work at all without Carell’s Strauss being such a multi-layered, sympathetic character. He’s the luckless therapist taken hostage by Domnhall’s Gleeson’s shark-like serial killer (who’s deluded himself into thinking he actually wants to change), and you can see the true horror of what Gleeson’s character actually does when his eyes turn black and he furiously murders someone right in front of a horrified Strauss. Carell has to give a performance within a performance as his shrink searches every possible angle for a way to survive, all while going through the motions of giving therapy to a patient who is clearly beyond redeeming. It’s subtle, crafty, intriguing work that is easy to overlook in a sea of flashier performances.
12. Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) on “The Crown”…”The Crown” may have a bit of a Diana problem (not unlike the real-life royal family had) since she’s such an effortlessly appealing character, the show suffers an energy drag whenever we’re forced to spend time with the actual Queen again. Debicki–one of the most attractive women on Earth at this moment–inhabits Diana’s slyness and clever charisma with ease, goosing “The Crown” with much needed voltage in her scenes. [Also, Dominic West is a dramatic upgrade over the actor they had previously portraying Prince Charles as a sullen nerd.]
11. Sergeant Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal) on “We Own This City”…”City” doesn’t work as well as David Simon’s past works (not only “The Wire” but the excellent “Show Me a Hero”) because it’s a little bit drier and succumbs to his wonkier instincts without very many juicy characters to fashion his points around. However, Bernthal’s loose cannon breaks free from Simon’s docudrama style to give us a fully formed, three dimensional dirty cop that is no mere sociopath. In fact, Wayne is adamant that he’s not a dirty cop even as he lies, cheats, and steals his way through the streets of Baltimore, giving us a look at the cluelessness of corruption from those who are so used to practicing it that it looks normal.
10. Joe Leaphorn (Zahn McClarnon) on “Dark Winds”…McClarnon has been so good in so many supporting TV roles (“Fargo,” “Reservation Dogs,” “Westworld” to name only a few) that it’s thrilling to see him finally cast as a lead. Needless to say, he makes the most of the opportunity here as a taciturn, soulful tribal detective in 1970’s New Mexico. Leaphorn isn’t one for huge monologues or modern detective “quirks,” and is an example of just how captivating a slow born character can be when centering a solid, patient series that doesn’t need to overwhelm you to keep your attention.
9. Peggy Scott (Denee Benton) on “The Gilded Age”…I’m not really a fan of Julian Fellowes’s past work that seems nostalgic for an age of inherited wealth and iron-clad snobbery (“Downton Abbey,” “Gosford Park”), and “Age” isn’t really an exception to that. However, Benton’s Peggy is one of the best characters that’s ever entered into his universe, as a black woman in 1880’s New York who finds her fortunes almost completely controlled by others around her (she has to pretend to be white to get her stories published, and her father gives away her baby without Peggy even knowing the child survived). In between “Gilded”‘s petty bickering over who will attend what party and who snubs who at a ball, Peggy Scott learns she could not be successful as her true self, and is forced into a tough question: “What does it mean to ‘make it’ if the person getting that success isn’t really you? Are the sacrifices worth it?” To its credit, “Age” doesn’t attempt to give a concrete answer the way so many 2022-set series would offer a simplistic “hell no, be true to yourself,” and the ambiguity almost elevates the show into something more.
8. Luci Miller/Victoria (Shalom Brune-Franklin) on “The Tourist”…One of the things I love about doing these lists is highlighting performances and characters that would surely be overlooked by anyone else. “Tourist” isn’t a great show, and it’s saddled with a pair of leads that are almost completely uninteresting, but Shalom’s Victoria is a different story. For much of “Tourist,” you can’t figure out her true motivations, allegiances, or even morality, making her a quasi-femme fatale in the vein of Carrie Anne Moss from “Memento.” She’s vulnerable, dangerous, sexy, magnetic, and intriguing, something I wish I could say for the series around her.
7. Prince Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith) on “House of the Dragon”…Daemon is one of the few characters to not only survive the first season, but be played by the same actor for its entirety (good call as nobody could top the effortless charisma of Matt Smith, who can do a lot with a wry expression or raised eyebrow). Along the way, he manages to be a war hero badass, a scheming murderer, a wildly different husband to three women, and one of the few characters in “Dragon” we can reliably count on not to do something stupid and/or irritate us. That “Dragon”‘s creators were surprised that Daemon became such a fan favorite (one of them publicly said so) is very revealing about how little Hollywood executives even know about what an audience might actually want. For those starving for a complex, mesmerizing anti-hero that isn’t immediately punished for their crimes, Prince Daemon might’ve been your best bet in 2022.
6. Angela Adams/Emily Chase (Alia Shawcat) on “The Old Man”…Just like Luci Miller/Victoria from “The Tourist,” this is a character-within-a-character. [And another great TV showcase for what “Search Party”‘s Shawcat can really do.] One of the many reasons it was such a drag watching Amy Brenneman’s Zoe scenes is because it takes us away from Angela/Emily, an infinitely more compelling heroine who’s much more central to the plot–far more than we even realize at first. Shawcat is playing a razor-sharp FBI agent (complete with cutting one liners) and a woman inexplicably drawn to a larger identity that feels like a phantom limb. Playing the smartest, most controlled character in the room and the most existentially searching is a contradictory task that Shawcat (and “Man”‘s writers) make look easy.
5. Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman) on “Slow Horses”…Oldman’s Lamb is a completely different spy character than Shawcat’s Emily. He’s as direct as a slap to the face, over-the-hill, and probably even depressed. [One of the first season’s best putdowns is when Lamb chooses to “motivate” his team of lovable losers by telling them “working with you lot has been the low point of a disappointing career.”] And yet he’s just as intelligent and deceptively loyal. Lamb is what might happen if one of John Le Carre’s aging back-benchers was actually funny. Knowing that he’s honestly the UK’s best hope of avoiding an espionage disaster is not only fascinating but realistic, as most of the best real-life spies are less James Bond/Gal Gadot and much closer to Oldman’s bitter, disheveled boozer.
4. Sam (Bridget Everett) on “Somebody Somewhere”…Sam is an unlikely character to center one of the year’s best TV shows around. Most shows not only wouldn’t feature an overweight, depressed middle-aged woman living in Kansas at all, but especially not one who isn’t caught up in some “save the world” action caper or trying to catch a serial killer or even living a romantic fantasy of stumbling into sudden wealth. Sam’s real “plot” is in trying to find a purpose or direction or happiness or even just figuring out what went “wrong” in the first place and why she’s so unfulfilled. It’s infinitely relatable–far more than most of the year’s “best” shows–and Everett manages to make Sam not only searching, but hilarious, introspective, surprisingly warm when you least expect it, and compulsively watchable. Throughout the first season, she doesn’t “do” a lot besides hang out with her new best friend and (more unwittingly) her family, and you might find yourself shocked at how much you want to keep hanging out with her.
3. Elizabeth Holmes (Amanda Seyfried) on “The Dropout”…You know Holmes is a real person, because if this show had been fictional she almost certainly would’ve been a male character. Seyfried creates a complex antihero (or is it villain?) for the ages by making Holmes a seething, frighteningly ambitious jerk and a total fake terrified of their own inadequacy. You can’t take your eyes off her, whether she’s cultivating an image as “the next Steve Jobs” (built on a reality of medical fraud and malignant negligence) or acting like a little kid in her bizarre relationship with Sunny Balwani (who she refuses to admit she’s dating). I honestly can’t remember ever seeing a “character” like this before.
2. Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby) and Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) on “Our Flag Means Death”…Stede Bonnet was apparently a real person who quit a life of dull nobility to become a pirate, but I doubt he had much in common with the Stede of “Flag.” “Our” Bonnet is one of the year’s most unlikely adventure heroes, a likable joke who reveals new layers with every episode. Almost as good is Blackbeard, a vicious real pirate who finds the incompetent Stede still has things to teach him about the finer things and maybe even romance. Their relationship is hard to explain without over-simplying it, and it would probably undercut the delightfully low-key surprises of “Death” to even try. Just watch it, and enjoy being along for the adventure that feels more like a group hang.
Best of the Year: Ptolemy Grey (Samuel L. Jackson) on “The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey”…It’s a shame that more people haven’t actually watched this criminally underrated miniseries. If they had, I doubt I would even need to explain why Ptolemy is the year’s best character. Over the years, my “top pick” usually makes me forget I’m watching a TV show, and is whoever feels the most like a breathing, flesh-and-blood person (like Walter White, Elliott Anderson, or Deborah Vance). Ptolemy definitely qualifies–I’m not at all surprised this miniseries is based on a literary novel as the best of those can excel at creating lifelike characters–as we see his youth, tragedies, successes, romances, and really the inner workings of his mind. “Grey” is really showing us a full, vibrant life in only a half-dozen episodes–something most shows don’t accomplish with 7 seasons. It also helps that the always-terrific Jackson is unforgettable with a performance that is devastatingly dramatic and laugh-out-loud funny, while always being vibrant.