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Best Drama Series of the Decade
THE AMERICANS
FX’s magnificently wrenching ’80s spy drama played out (appropriately) like a Russian novel: a densely plotted, deeply humane slow burn that we savored all the way through to the final page. Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys were both terrific as married Soviet spies Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, working undercover to dismantle Reagan’s America while being eternally yanked back and forth between their love for the family they’d built and their loyalty to the homeland they left behind. Showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields expertly ratcheted up the tension each season, gradually tightening the noose around Philip and Elizabeth’s necks until even we couldn’t breathe, and capped it off with an incredibly satisfying series finale that delivered quietly devastating character moments rather than big shocking deaths. The Americans somehow never won an Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series — and looking back now, that seems downright unpatriotic.
BETTER CALL SAUL
It’s not supposed to work like this. Spinoffs aren’t supposed to even approach the quality of the original show, especially when the original show is a stone-cold classic like Breaking Bad. But Saul shattered the TV mold by taking a character best known for comic relief — Bob Odenkirk’s sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman — and crafting a moody, melancholy backstory for him. Here, he’s Jimmy McGill, a lighthearted schemer who hasn’t fully broken bad yet, and as we saw with Walter White, Saul patiently takes us through every agonizing step of his heartbreakingly inevitable downfall. There are plenty of fun Easter eggs for Breaking Bad devotees to geek out over: Mike Ehrmantraut! Gus Fring! But Saul really soars when it breaks new ground, especially in Jimmy’s complicated bonds with brother Chuck and fellow attorney/girlfriend Kim Wexler. It’s not Breaking Bad, it’s true… it might be even better.
BREAKING BAD
We’d known TV anti-heroes long before Walter White stripped down to his skivvies in the desert. But rarely had we gotten to witness a villain’s complete descent from mild-mannered regular citizen to drug-pushing criminal mastermind… until Walt and Jesse’s meth-lab RV careened onto our screens. Bryan Cranston’s riveting portrayal of the chemistry teacher-turned-drug kingpin and Aaron Paul’s take on aimless stoner Jesse allowed Vince Gilligan’s AMC series to mine serious drama from the lengths a “good” man would go to take care of his family. And the writing! The final season’s “Ozymandias” remains one of the finest-ever hours of television, from Walt’s reaction to his brother-in-law’s execution to that searing voicemail he leaves his wife at the end of the episode. All hail Heisenberg!
FARGO
Was Noah Hawley ambitious (if not a bit crazy) to draw inspiration from the Coen Brothers’ acclaimed 1996 black comedy/thriller and bring a version of it to the small screen? You betcha. But by choosing an anthology approach in which each cycle follows the often ill-advised antics of small-town crooks and the smarter-ish cops who chase them, Hawley has kept things varied and interesting, all whilst rotating through a top-notch slate of actors. Whether embroiled in stories of poorly covered-up murder, (slightly) organized crime or a tale of two Ewan McGregors — and with the occasional UFO thrown in for good measure — TV’s Fargo has spun rollicking yarns while letting the likes of Allison Tolman, Martin Freeman, Jean Smart and Carrie Coon create indelible additions to the Coen-verse. We can’t wait (and continue to wait) to see what Season 4 has in store for us in 2020.
FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS
Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose. All you have to read are those six words, and bam! You’re transported back to Dillon, the podunk Texas town that for five glorious seasons served as the backdrop for Peter Berg’s adaptation of his 2004 film. And the trip isn’t automatic just because the line — taken from a pep talk delivered by Kyle Chandler’s Coach Taylor to the Panthers high-school football team — scored itself a place in the pop-culture lexicon. No, the journey is reflexive because the series from which the catchphrase is taken was so sublime, NBC made an unprecedented deal with DirecTV to save it when its ratings didn’t reflect its quality. So, though any FNL fan will tell you that it was about much more than football, it’s still altogether apropos to say that showrunner Jason Katims and his team, including the estimable Connie Britton as “Mrs. Coach,” really… scored.
GAME OF THRONES
Yes, Game of Thrones was that show about the dragons. But to dismiss HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s novels as geeky frippery is to swoop past the point: The show was a study of power — who had it, who wanted it, who was willing to conjure a shadow assassin to seize it. (C’mon, it was a fantasy drama.) The intriguing battle to rule Westeros unfolded via large-scale storytelling and feature film-level cinematography, which combined to stunning effect in episodes like “The Rains of Castamere,” “Battle of the Bastards” and “The Long Night.” But the show’s greatest strength was its characters, brought to life by the likes of Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who transformed the quest for the Iron Throne into appointment television. “What is dead may never die” goes one of the show’s mottos; similarly, a fantasy series done as well as Thrones was — even with that somewhat off-track final season — will leave its imprint on genre TV from here on out.
THE GOOD WIFE
Robert and Michelle King didn’t just end their CBS hit with a slap, they also started it with one, albeit of the metaphorical variety; a smack that seemed to say, “C’mon, people, TV’s legal dramas can be smarter, funnier, darker, better.” And for seven seasons, the series creators proved how right they were as they didn’t merely put out a show that was in a league of its own, but in a category of its own. What’s more, as they reinvented what had become a formulaic genre, sharpening its teeth while raising its IQ, they delivered to stars Julianna Margulies and Christine Baranski what may turn out to be the roles of their careers. So it’s no wonder The Good Wife has continued, in a fashion, with CBS All Access’ The Good Fight. The case for the original series was just too good to close.
JUSTIFIED
“We dug coal together.” From start to finish, this FX crime drama — based on Elmore Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole” — was often about two Kentucky boys on different paths, each fighting to avoid the destiny they were born into, in rural Harlan County. As brought to life by Timothy Olyphant, Raylan Givens was a U.S. Marshal not to be trifled with, and certainly not to be challenged in a duel. Walton Goggins’ Boyd Crowder was a similarly formidable native son, as a wielder of ill-gotten gains and power. And while the confrontations between Raylan and Boyd crackled with animus-infused electricity, Justified also made room for a veritable rogues’ gallery of colorful, smaller-time criminals and cretins, from Margo Martindale’s crafty Mags Bennett (and her ragtag litter of sons) to Neal McDonough’s Robert Quarles and Jere Burns’ Wynn Duffy. We would never want to live there, but Harlan County was always a fun (if deadly) place to visit.
MAD MEN
At Mad Men‘s start, Don Draper was a slick, Madison Avenue advertising executive living the American dream. By its end, he was a broken, doubly divorced dad doing yoga on a California hillside. He had, to paraphrase a popular commercial slogan, come a long way, baby — thanks to the stellar AMC drama, which used Don and his co-workers to illustrate the sweeping social changes buffeting America in the 1960s. Viewers didn’t root for Don, who often did terrible things (and made even worse choices) in the pursuit of success and happiness. But they also couldn’t tear themselves away from his exploits, a testament to both Matthew Weiner’s storytelling and Jon Hamm’s acting ability. Meanwhile, the series’ female characters — most notably Elisabeth Moss, in her breakout role of Peggy Olson — navigated women’s liberation in the toughest of old-boy networks… and sometimes even came out on top.
RECTIFY
It could be argued that the word “rumination” was invented to one day describe this four-season SundanceTV drama about Daniel Holden, a Georgia man who is released from prison after spending nearly 20 years on death row due to a wrongful conviction. The subject matter was innately hefty, and the assorted interpersonal dynamics (between kinfolk, friends, lovers, would-be lovers) were often prickly. But it was the performances — starting with leads Aden Young, Abigail Spencer and Clayne Crawford, and across the board — that made every development, both great and quaintly small, land in such a way that you felt a part of this fractured family. What we may seldom see again on the small screen is Rectify‘s lusciously languorous feel, where characters could spend small eternities in deserved thought, saying more with sparse words than talkier dramas say with many.
Image: Courtesy of FX
Image: Courtesy of AMC
Image: Courtesy of AMC
Image: Courtesy of FX
Image: Courtesy of NBC
Image: Courtesy of HBO
Image: Courtesy of CBS
Image: Courtesy of FX
Image: Courtesy of AMC
Image: Courtesy of SundanceTV
