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It has been a confusing but pivotal year in the history of television. The streaming wars are heating up, “prestige TV” is cooling down.

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A number of shows that were practically institutions will also have wrapped by the end of the year, such as “Ted Lasso,” “The Crown,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Barry,” “Reservation Dogs” and “Succession.” Others, including “Party Down” and “Frasier,” were resurrected, with mixed results. Experiments abounded: There were genre remixes like “Daisy Jones and the Six” and “The Curse” and ethically dicey meta-documentaries including “Paul T. Goldman,” “Telemarketers” and “Jury Duty.” We got “Bridgerton,” but sad. “The Bachelor,” but old. Hearty conventional fare included murder mysteries aplenty, such as “Poker Face,” “A Murder at the End of the World” and “Only Murders in the Building.” Thrillers fared well, too, with “The Night Agent,” “The Diplomat,” “Hijacked” and a third season of the excellent “Slow Horses.”

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In a year of television structured by crisis (with two strikes!), a best-of list will be more than usually subjective. Nevertheless, here are the 10 shows I most enjoyed this year.

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10. ‘Party Down’

The cult series about downtrodden caterers in Los Angeles, which premiered in 2009, a year after the crash, and featured comedy powerhouses such as Adam Scott, Ken Marino and Jane Lynch, was so sharp about its particular moment that a revival seemed unwise. But the third season managed to achieve the impossible with impressive economy: In only six episodes, it semiplausibly reunited most of the regulars, updated the catering crew to include the TikTok generation, and even incorporated the pandemic. All without losing the sardonic tone and stochastic sentimentality of the original.

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9. ‘I’m a Virgo’

Boots Riley’s show about a sweet, 13-foot-tall Black teenager named Cootie (Jharrel Jerome) is exactly what it looks like: an unsubtle parable about the vilification of Black youths. But its playfulness spares it from being merely censorious. Or predictable. Cootie’s entry into the world is hilarious, weird, self-referential counterpropaganda: entertainment aimed squarely at the dangers of entertainment, set in a magical realist version of Oakland presided over by an evil “superhero” (Walton Goggins) whose comic books Cootie grew up worshiping, and where a particular episode of a “South Park”-like cartoon renders people catatonic.

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8. ‘Fellow Travelers’

The Showtime limited series based on the 2007 novel by Thomas Mallon follows two flawed but interesting men over four decades as they fall in lust and then (on tragically different timelines) in love. Hawkins Fuller (Matt Bomer) and Tim Laughlin (Jonathan Bailey) meet during the height of the Red Scare. “Hawk” is a cynic, while Tim is a true believer. At its weakest, the romance is draped a little too didactically over predictable flash points in American history. At its best, this wildly erotic series is a kind of gay “Outlander,” using sexual choreography to map the ways the dynamics between the principals are shifting. Bomer and Laughlin are exceptional, so stubborn and specific and just plain good that they rescue Hawk and Tim from the pitfalls of melodrama (or martyrdom).

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7. ‘Jury Duty’

Sometimes described as a modern-day “Truman Show,” “Jury Duty” was an amazingly delicate, labor-intensive production, using dozens of actors and hidden cameras to dupe an unsuspecting man into believing that he was a juror in a real trial. He was not. But his every reaction to bizarre circumstances (some scripted and some improvised by an extremely talented cast) was caught on camera. The footage resulting from this human experiment was weirdly uplifting. Against all odds, “Jury Duty” made viewers feel better about humanity.

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6. ‘Somebody, Somewhere’

A quiet gem starring the exceptional Bridget Everett, this unassuming comedy about unassuming people refuses to condescend to small-town life. Set in Manhattan, Kan., which is Everett’s actual hometown, the series follows Sam on her return home after her sister’s death and tracks the evolution of her friendship with a high school acquaintance named Joel (Jeff Hiller) as well as her changing relationship to her family, particularly her sister, but also her aging parents. A warm show about small goals and moderate ambitions, “Somebody, Somewhere” builds something lovely on a scaffolding of grief and loss.

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5. ‘The Bear’

The FX dramedy about the heart-clogging anxiety of food service was a breakout hit in 2022 for good reason. The series follows Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White), a high-end chef who takes over the Beef, his deceased brother’s Chicago sandwich joint. He is resented by the staff, helped by Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), a trained chef like himself, and tormented by guilt and shame. The second season risks a great deal by demolishing the cramped kitchen of the Beef, where much of the series was set. It also spends episodes entirely focused on storylines and restaurants other than Carmy’s. Both choices were major gambles. Both paid off.

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4. ‘Reservation Dogs’

This goofy, profound, irreverent jewel of a show ended with three almost perfect seasons. “Reservation Dogs” followed a group of Indigenous teens while they tried to figure life out on a reservation in Okern, Okla., in the wake of their friend Daniel’s suicide. Their muddled quest for closure structured the first two seasons while they searched for some ceremony or elder or peer who could help them through. But the show gently grew to explore the ways everyone, including parents, grandparents, uncles, spirits and even the mythical Deer Lady, dealt with loss and disillusionment, and also with life after it.

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3. ‘Succession’

The stylish, absorbing drama from Jesse Armstrong about the dynastic ambitions of the traumatized super-rich stuck its landing. After four seasons cycling through alliances and betrayals, the contest over which of Logan Roy’s four children would be sociopathic enough to inherit his empire concluded with a fittingly Pyrrhic victory that left them all stone-faced and bereft. As a longtime fan of “Peep Show,” which Armstrong created with Sam Bain, I will always regard “Succession” as his lesser achievement. But it was rightly praised for its marvelously inventive insults and top-notch performances.

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2. ‘Beef’

Any discussion of “Beef” must acknowledge that David Choe, who plays a relatively minor character in the series, described sexually assaulting someone on a podcast in 2014 and later claimed he had been lying for “shock value.” (The podcast, he said, was “a complete extension of my art.”) The response from “Beef” creator Lee Sung Jin and stars Ali Wong and Steven Yeun was disappointing. This is still one of the best shows of the year: a thoroughly surprising, original, believable and extremely funny drama about the bond that gradually develops between two people whose propensity toward spiraling rage pits them against each other and ends up binding them. Impeccably plotted, gorgeously acted, every single detail in this show pays off.

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1. ‘Mrs. Davis’

Plenty of shows this year deal with religion. There is horror mystery series “Thirty Coins,” the supernatural comedy “Good Omens,” even “The Righteous Gemstones.” “Mrs. Davis” blows them all out of the water. This glorious series from Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez is a romp, an epic, a masterpiece. It’s a sendup of AI. A love poem to the power of archetypes while subverting them. It’s also about faith, a riff on mother and daughterhood that had me sobbing. Betty Gilpin plays a modern-day nun married to Jesus (literally) whose distaste for illusionists (growing up as the daughter of one) drives her to fight an apparently benevolent AI overlord named Mrs. Davis and to destroy the Holy Grail. I know that makes no sense. Watch it anyway. It will.

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