The Tourist
Stan
It’s tough to innovate in the well-flogged “bugger me dead, it’s hot!” action-thriller (my genre), but this pulse-pounding BBC co-production starring Jamie Dornan as an amnesiac on-the-run criminal feels fresh. Dornan’s foggy-brained protagonist may not know who or where he is, but he does know that the mystery of his past has something to do with a man who calls him after being buried alive. Naturally. This riveting, moreish series finds great rhythm by constantly addressing the two core writers’ room questions according to Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan: “Where’s the character’s head at?” and “What happens next?” – Luke Buckmaster
Read more: The Tourist review – Jamie Dornan is intense in explosively entertaining outback thriller
The Australia Wars
SBS
In a country so adept at forgetting, this three-part documentary was a hymn to memory – a work of candour, dignity and humane grace. Written and directed by film-maker Rachel Perkins, The Australia Wars asked a simple, potent question: why do we not memorialise this nation’s first – and most important – war, the war for sovereignty? Australia’s history of frontier bloodshed “is still alive in those descendants who carry the stories”, Perkins showed. Lest we forget. – Beejay Silcox
Read more: ‘They are burning with a desire for justice’: Rachel Perkins on Australia’s genocidal past
Mystery Road: Origin
ABC
Origin stories are difficult to execute without them feeling like extraneous spin-offs – particularly when you have characters as recognisable as Aaron Pedersen’s outback detective Jay Swan. But Mark Coles Smith delivers the goods as a younger iteration of the Mystery Road protagonist, as does director Dylan River – crafting a handsomely cinematic and very satisfyingly structured production, more like a long film than a series. Based in the late 90s, the Akubra-wearing sleuth cuts his teeth in a tangled plot involving robberies committed by thieves wearing Ned Kelly-esque masks. – Luke Buckmaster
Read more: Mystery Road: Origin review – Jay Swan is back and as great as ever
Bump season two
Stan
Like the surprise pregnancy that kicked off the series, this Claudia Karvan-led 2020 drama seemed to come out of nowhere. One season in, teen parents Oly (Nathalie Morris) and Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr) and their respective families are still making sense of life with an unexpected infant daughter, which adds plenty of wrinkles to the usual coming-of-age dramas and big questions of young adulthood. But at its heart, Bump is a warm and funny portrait of overlapping families in the process of fraying, breaking and reforming – and all the different kinds of love that exist in between. – Walter Marsh
Read more: Bump season two review – the smart, satisfying show that keeps growing on you
Significant Others
ABC
Flashbacks interrupt a scene’s temporal flow by nature, often in dramatically dislocating ways. Not so in creator Tommy Murphy and director Tony Krawitz’s classy mystery-drama. Here they feel more like coils of memories, evoking images of Jacqueline McKenzie’s Sarah, who is lost at sea and presumed dead. Her disappearance forces the reunion of her estranged siblings, who have a complex and fraught dynamic. The drama is very compellingly staged and the cast uniformly excellent. The colour blue pops up everywhere, symbolising melancholia, introspection and potential rebirth. – Luke Buckmaster
Read more: Significant Others review – ABC drama is a class act from beginning to end
RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under season two
Stan
After the abysmal, scandal-ridden first season (often referred to by fans as the worst of the franchise’s near-50 seasons), there was nowhere to go but up. Learning from its mistakes, the show honed in on the best part of season one: our Kiwi and Australian queens’ focus on personality and humour above aesthetics. Prioritising charisma over polish, even Down Under’s weakness – its microscopic budget compared with the pristine US seasons – became a strength. It wasn’t perfect, but Down Under was filled with the messiness and heart of the early seasons that made Drag Race a mainstream event. – Jared Richards
Lego Masters 2022
Channel Nine
Lego Masters is like the Great British Bake Off: a flawless format that almost never fails to deliver the right mix of politely gentle fun and mild hijinks that won’t get you too riled up before bed. It also has the perfect delivery system for that mix, in the always amusing juxtaposition of its hosts: the Brickman, who regularly cries when booting off contestants and who just loves bricks; and Hamish Blake, the fun uncle of Australian TV. It’s the unabashed love for building Lego that makes this show so joyous, and the latest season’s contestants weren’t only brilliant builders, but were even more nerdily enthusiastic for their hobby. – Patrick Lenton
Heartbreak High
Netflix
Netflix’s reboot of the 1990s mainstay had big Doc Martens to fill, but Hartley High’s class of 2022 quickly earned their place. With one eye to the original and another to contemporary Netflix high school dramedies such as Never Have I Ever and Sex Education, these Zoomers dropped C-bombs and pingers, caught feelings and STIs, and deftly explored themes of consent, sexual and gender identity, neurodivergence and police brutality with wit and heart. It even managed to turn an eshay named Ca$h from a one-note punchline to a tragic, complicated, star-crossed lover – and it’s already been renewed. – Walter Marsh
Read more: Heartbreak High gets a Gen-Z makeover: ‘We’re giving this generation their own show’
Muster Dogs
ABC
It couldn’t get any more wholesome: a show about a litter of kelpie pups learning to herd. But there was something quietly stirring about this tale of working dogs and hardscrabble graziers. The dogs were a sly gateway into a conversation about low-impact farming, land conservation and the lives of regional women. But it was more than that. When taciturn cattle farmer, Frank, stared into Annie’s puppy-dog eyes, the country swooned. What the kelpies craved was connection. And so did we. – Beejay Silcox
Read more: Muster Dogs: the new Australian reality show set to charm the world
Summer Love
ABC
Summer Love is a series of eight funny, tender vignettes, each set in the same beachside holiday house, but featuring completely different characters. Created by husband-wife team Wayne Hope and Robyn Butler, the show adopts a fairly light touch throughout, despite tackling an array of thorny issues, from racism to child-rearing. It recalls SeaChange, another coastal gem from the ABC stable, and actually veers a lot closer to it in tone than the 2019 reboot ever did. At just four hours total, Summer Love is best knocked over in a single Saturday afternoon sitting. – Nathan Jolly
Byron Baes
Netflix
Say what you will about Byron Baes – and a lot of people had a lot to say – but in the reality TV-saturated market of Australian television, I’m just glad we got something interesting. Yes, it was problematic and badly timed, but there was something so strange and overly self-conscious about the show and its subjects; it felt more like a sadistic experiment, a fascinating window into an insane and broken world. It really showed that putting a camera on a bunch of people is like giving them a petard and just waiting for them to hoist themselves. – Patrick Lenton
Read more: Byron Baes review – a compelling, compulsive and kind of terrifying binge
Irreverent
Netflix
American reviewers seem to have given this delightfully witty and idiosyncratic show a lukewarm response. Maybe they don’t get it? I had a ball soaking up the fish-out-of-water exploits of Colin Donnell’s Chicago criminal Paulo, who flees to a beachside Queensland town where he poses as a priest while attempting to track down the (actual) priest who stole his money. It’s complicated. And very funny. The cast (including Donnell, Tegan Stimson, Wayne Blair and PJ Byrne) keep a straight face while giving the audience a cheeky wink-wink. Some plot twists are a little flaky, but it’s fabulously entertaining. – Luke Buckmaster
Read more: Irreverent review – a Chicago criminal goes undercover down under
Fisk season two
ABC
Filmed during the depths of Melbourne’s Covid lockdowns, Kitty Flanagan’s Fisk debuted on the ABC last year and quickly proved to be one of the sharpest Australian comedies in some time. Focused on the dreary frustrations and petty office politics of life in small suburban legal firm Gruber and Associates, Flanagan plays the acerbic, bemused lawyer Helen Fisk, leading a strong ensemble cast featuring Julia Zemiro as overzealous office pest Roz, and Aaron Chen as disinterested “webmaster” George. The perfect argument for working from home. – Nathan Jolly
Bluey season three
ABC
Bluey spent 2022 where all series that last for five years end up: the guest stars got bigger (Lin-Manuel Miranda! Natalie Portman!), side characters became more prominent (bratty cousin Muffin is fast becoming the show’s secret MVP) and things became a little meta (an episode with Bluey contemplating the nature of free will ends with a zoom-out to the animator creating the scene on their computer). What didn’t change, though, is it remained the most consistently creative, joyful, surprising and hilarious show on television, even while becoming Australia’s biggest cultural export since Crocodile Dundee. – Andrew P Street