Apple TV+'s Severance tops top ten TV shows of 2022 - with House Of The Dragon and The White Lotus

In a year when our work-life balance is still the focus of much debate, it may come as a surprise that the most famous television show is about… an office.

Severance, a dystopian series in which workers have their minds and memories ‘separated’ between the office and their personal lives, was crowned the best TV show of 2022 by RadioTimes.com.

The Apple TV+ program led a top ten dominated by streaming services, which won seven spots.

Game of Thrones prequel House Of The Dragon and The White Lotus, both on Sky, took second and third place respectively.

BBC shows The Responder, starring Martin Freeman, Adam Kay’s medical drama This is Going to Hurt and The Tourist, starring Jamie Dornan, were the only terrestrial programs in the top ten – at fourth, fifth and seventh, respectively.

Bad Sisters on Apple TV+ ranked sixth, Netflix crime drama Ozark eighth, Now TV’s The Lazarus Project ninth, and Disney+ Star Wars series Andor 10th.

Only 20 of the 50 programmes, including the latest episodes of the Australian soap opera Neighbors, were from traditional broadcasters.

The BBC dominated terrestrial TV thanks to Chloe, Industry and the final series of Peaky Blinders.

ITV had just two – female-led crime drama Karen Pirie, as well as The Thief, His Wife and the Canoe, based on the story of John Darwin, who faked his own death.

Netflix dominated streaming platforms with ten series in the Top 50, followed by Disney+ with five and Apple TV+ with four.

Severance stars Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Patricia Arquette and John Turturro.

The series has already been renewed by the streaming giant for a second season, but there is still no release date.

The first season of HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon, came to an end in October, breaking a new ratings record.

The first-season finale — dubbed The Black Queen — was watched by 9.3 million viewers Sunday night across all platforms, according to an HBO press release.

Viewership was the highest for an HBO season finale since the Game of Thrones series finale in May 2019.

The numbers — compiled from Nielsen and third-party data — are all the more impressive given the stiff competition from NBC’s Sunday Night Football and Fox’s ALCS game between the Houston Astros and New York Yankees.

House of the Dragon premiered on August 21, drawing 9.986 million viewers, the most of any premiere in HBO history.

House of the Dragon season 1 episodes each average 29 million viewers in the U.S.

Each episode more than triples its average opening night audience with a strong recovery viewing.

House of the Dragon season 1 is also closing in on Game of Thrones season 7, which averaged 32.8 million viewers across all platforms in the US.

House of the Dragon – set 172 years before the events of Game of Thrones – has also become a social media juggernaut.

The show ranked No. 1 as the ‘Most Social Series Across TV and Streaming’ according to Talkwater’s Total Interactions rankings.

The series was the #1 trending topic on Twitter for 10 straight hours in the US on Sunday night, while the global metric is up more than 30% since its debut.

The show also led to ‘elevated viewing’ for the main series Game of Thrones, which saw ‘month-on-month gains’ this summer ahead of House of the Dragon’s debut.

The rise culminated in its “highest-ever weekly audience on HBO Max following the premiere of House of the Dragon”.

House of the Dragon also surpassed Game of Thrones season 8 as the most watched title of all time in Latin America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan on an HBO streaming service.

The series is broadcast on HBO Max in 39 countries in Latin America, 21 countries in Europe and on HBO GO on SEA, HK and TW.

HBO has already renewed House of the Dragon for a second season, which is expected to begin filming in January 2023.