Television in 2022: All the best shows coming to Netflix, Binge, Foxtel and Amazon Prime

With new series of Bridgerton, The Crown and Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, the small screen has never been more exciting.

Olivia Cooke as Lady Alicent Hightower and Rhys Ifans as Ser Otto Hightower in House of the Dragon, the Game of Thrones prequel. Picture: HBO

Foxtel

It will come as little surprise to learn there’s more extraordinarily promising television coming along in 2022 – although the sheer scale of some of these offerings is probably unprecedented even in the Golden Age of the Small Screen.

We don’t have a crystal ball, but can confidently predict that Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon (coming to Foxtel) will be the television event of the year. The world of Westeros captured audiences on a mammoth scale – more than 44 million average viewers a season – and this prequel, starring The Crown’s Matt Smith alongside Aussies Ryan Corr and Millie Alcock, and set during the reign of Daenerys’s Targaryen ancestors, will be hard to miss.

Also on Foxtel in March is the sixth season of Outlander, with soon-to-be Oscar nominee Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan still navigating love and time travel, and then later in 2022 will be The Twelve, an Australian original crime series starring Sam Neill and Marta Dusseldorp, about the jurors deciding an unsettling murder trial.

Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan in Outlander. Picture: Jason Bell

Binge

Zendaya’s beloved, if controversial, teen series Euphoria is back for a second season on January 10. The whole gang is returning, including Australian actor Jacob Elordi, Hunter Schafer and Sydney Sweeney, the breakout star of White Lotus.

In March, Binge will screen Winning Time, a sports drama set in the fast-living 1980s that charts the rise – and rise, and rise – of the Los Angeles Lakers, starring Adrien Brody, Jason Segel and John C. Reilly. This series is on our must-watch list purely for the behind-the-scenes drama: Winning Time is the reason producer Adam McKay split ties with his longtime partner Will Ferrell – the pair made the Anchorman films together, among many others – because McKay cast Reilly in the role originally pegged for Ferrell, as revealed in a recent profile of McKay in Vanity Fair. Juicy!

Netflix

The king of streaming continues its dominance next year, with the return of Stranger Things and Bridgerton – though sadly without Rege-Jean Page’s Duke of Hastings. The focus in season two of Bridgerton will be on Viscount Anthony (Jonathan Bailey) and Kate Sharma (Simone Ashley), the closest thing Bridgerton gets to a Lizzie Bennet.

On February 11, Netflix will release Shonda Rhimes’ Inventing Anna, a deep dive into the twisted true story of grifter heiress Anna Sorokin, played by Ozark’s Julia Garner.

Also in 2022 is a reboot of Heartbreak High, the outrage-inducing Byron Baes and, coming in November, with a brand new cast – including Imelda Staunton as the Queen, Dominic West as Prince Charles and our very own Elizabeth Debicki as Princess Diana – is the fifth season of The Crown, recently, ahem, crowned the best drama series at the Emmys.

Amazon Prime Video

It’s said to be the biggest show in the history of television, with a budget rumoured to be in the astonishing vicinity of $US465m. And by September, we’ll know if the price tag for Amazon Prime Video’s lavish Lord of the Rings series will have been worth it. We know very little about it, other than casting – including Australians Markella Kavanagh and Charlie Vickers – and that it is a prequel, set long before the story we know.

Next year will also see the return of the AACTA-nominated real estate melodrama Luxe Listings Sydney, a bona fide local hit for the streamer, as well as overseas pickups including the binge-worthy miniseries A Very British Scandal, led by a post-The Crown Claire Foy and Paul Bettany, and Conversations With Friends, the latest in the Sally Rooney cinematic universe, with a cast that includes Jemima Kirke and Joe Alwyn, Mr Taylor Swift himself.

Stan

The Tourist, a Bourne Identity-style thriller set in the South Australian outback starring Jamie Dornan, has started on Stan. Also coming this month is Wolf Like Me, filmed in Sydney and led by Isla Fisher and Josh Gad. Later in the year will be the third season of Bump, hot on the heels of season two, which dropped on Boxing Day. Stan is also the home of comedy masterpiece Hacks, one of last year’s most beloved shows and featuring a bravura performance from Jean Smart. You can expect the second season to eventually land next year.

Jamie Dornan in The Tourist. Picture: Ian Routledge

Paramount +

Thanks to a deal with Showtime, Paramount+ is coming into the new year with a brace of must-watch shows. The starriest is First Lady, the streamer’s attempt at a Crown-esque anthology, focusing on the lives of famous First Ladies from Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson) to Michelle Obama (the great Viola Davis). Australian Eliza Scanlen co-stars as a young Eleanor.

Coming later in 2022 will be Three Women, the highly anticipated adaptation of the best-selling Lisa Taddeo book, starring Shailene Woodley, as well as a new version of The Talented Mr Ripley, featuring Dakota Fanning and Johnny Flynn and – in casting news that broke the internet when it was announced – Fleabag’s hot priest Andrew Scott as the peeper Tom Ripley.

Disney+

Since wrapping most of the Hulu shows into its offering, Disney+ has upped its television game. The platform will start the year with Pam & Tommy, the incredibly buzzy Pamela Anderson miniseries with a transformed Lily James in the title role. Australian Craig Gillespie, of I, Tonya fame, is directing. Disney+ has another ripped-from-real-life series launching later in the year: The Dropout, starring Amanda Seyfried, following the true story of disgraced Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

On the Marvel side of things, there’ll be Ms Marvel and Agatha: House of Harkness, a WandaVision spin-off giving more airtime to the always wonderful Kathryn Hahn.