TV Review of the Year: From Freddie Flintoff's young cricketers to blood, gore and Ben Whishaw, here's the first five in our top 10 telly of 2022

10 Somewhere Boy (Channel 4): A strange, eerie tale of a boy kept away from society by his controlling father, this was warm and tender.

9 Stranger Things (Netflix): The Duffer Brothers really upped the ante – and the gore – with the fourth season of the supernatural thriller, opening up the action. This may have lessened the pace, but it provided a richer story.

8 Freddie’s Field of Dreams (BBC1): A reality show which proved more than the sum of its parts, as Lancashire’s own Andrew Flintoff came home to give some kids a chance to prove something – to themselves and to a society that had written them off. By the end, you found yourself rooting for them, while Adnan’s story in particular has left an impression.

7 Taskmaster (Channel 4): Regular readers will now how much Taskmaster is loved in these quarters, and is shows no sign of losing its sense of inventive silliness. And you’re still guaranteed to find yourself laughing like a drain – Fern Brady trying to whistle or John Kearns trying to do anything being highlights.

6 This is Going to Hurt (BBC1): A brutal, blackly comic adaptation of Adam Kay’s acclaimed memoir of life as a junior doctor, this was set in the mid-2000s, but was just as relevant to today’s NHS, which is still in a ruinous state. And it was this that really hit home – that the NHS was dying then, and in almost 20 years, nothing has changed.