Best TV Shows 2022: Stranger Things, Love Island and Euphoria revealed as UK’s most popular TV series

Despite being the most searched for show globally, Stranger Things could only scrape second place in the list of the UK’s most popular TV shows of the last year. As expected, the list was dominated by reality shows but there were still a few surprises.

According to research conducted by William Hill Slots - which analysed search volume from October 2021 - October 2022 - reality TV saw a huge surge of clicks with Love Island, GoggleBox and Strictly Come Dancing all cracking the top ten.

Globally, Netlfix’s Stranger Things came out on top with a total of 13.26 million searches for the show over the past year. HBO’s hit teen-drama Euphoria also saw massive search results with the show peaking at 10.6 million.

Despite a challenging first half of the year, research shows that Netflix is the most popular streaming service in the UK with 3.78 million searches. The platform was closely followed by BBC Iplayer in second place with 3.54 million and ITV with 1.16 million searches.

Aside from reality shows, Peaky Blinders appeared high on the list after it aired its sixth and final series on BBC earlier this year. The gangster drama ranked third in the global table with 8.08 million searches.

What else appeared on the list of most popular TV shows in the UK and across the globe?

UK’s most popular TV shows in 2022 according to William Hill

1. Love Island (860,000)
2. Stranger Things (751,000)
3. Strictly Come Dancing (743,000)
4. Peaky Blinders (505,000)
5. Euphoria (500,000)
6. Bridgerton (326,000)
7. The Boys (268,000)
8. Moon Knight (255,000)
9. The Tourist (180,000)
10. Gogglebox (180,000)

Global list of most popular TV shows in 2022 according to William Hill

1. Stranger Things (13,260,000)
2. Euphoria (10,670,000)
3. Peaky Blinders (8,080,000)
4. Moon Knight (4,940,000)
5. Bridgerton (4,010,000)
6. Vikings (2,630,000)
7. Better Call Saul (2,590,000)
8. Resident Evil (2,270,000)
9. Love Island (1,980,000)
10. American Horror Story (1,700,000)