Also, a major disclaimer - there are several dramas I haven't watched yet but want to. Shows like Boardwalk Empire, The Man in the High Castle, Justified and especially Breaking Bad are still on my "to watch" list so this is a list of the dramas I have watched all or some of.
Close Calls
9-1-1 (FOX) - It's a Ryan Murphy show so I'm waiting for the shoe to drop and it turns into a hot mess, but it's been pretty thrilling through its first couple seasons.
Timeless (NBC) - I know this was a pretty silly show, but I'm a sucker for time travel premises and the journeys to so many times in history was just plain fun.
Chicago Med (NBC) - My second favorite Chicago show (see below). I've stayed with this medical drama longer than any others so that says something.
A truly creepy experience, this show is on the list because of its first, fourth and fifth seasons. The second and third seasons meandered around and went down weird side stories to the point that I was almost ready to give up. But it completely refocused and rewarded my patience. The prequel to Psycho was bolstered by very strong performances by Freddie Highmore and Vera Famiga. Think it's impossible to feel sorry for notorious Psycho killer Norman Bates? Think again. This show made me think about mental health an awful lot and how so many factors are at play when there's a serial killer or a mass murder. It was at times completely heartbreaking and at other times horrifyingly disturbing. The way the show crept closer to Marion Crane's arrival at Bates Motel and then turned the story completely on its head as it catapulted towards the end of the series was smart and fascinating. And let's not forget the rainy and gloomy Northwest setting only added to the eeriness and mood.
What an interesting ride Scandal had. If this was based just on the first couple seasons, it easily would have cracked my Top 5. Like Modern Family, its later seasons sent it tumbling down the list. But since this is focusing on the best of a series, I will talk about what it was like early on when I could hardly wait to see what happened next. In retrospect, it should have been obvious that the breathless pace of storytelling wouldn't be sustainable in the long run but boy was a thrill when it was happening. Led by the brilliant Kerry Washington, Scandal was everything The West Wing wasn't. It scared us (or perhaps confirmed beliefs) that Washington DC could be terribly corrupt and self-serving. During Scandal's run, the real DC started looked more and more that way and maybe that made Scandal less of a thrilling fiction and more of a scary real possibility. Even as it wilted towards the end, it still had some fleeting moments. I look forward to watching the first half of the series again sometime.
The Americans is one of two shows on this list where I haven't finished watching it yet. I am at the end of season three and it's possible that it would move higher on this list when I am done watching. But I have been fascinated by the first several seasons. The stakes seem extraordinarily high all the time and yet it's so often played like an intimate family drama. That's the beauty of how The Americans is constructed. There have been spy dramas before, even ones with husband and wife teams, but this one had a different feel to it. I am most interested whenever stars Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell are on the screen and especially when they're on screen together. I do think the show sometimes has a few too many side characters but I understand the world building. With their meticulous attention to detail and unique storytelling, I trust that everything is heading in a smart direction. No spoilers!
I know, I know. If by some chance some TV critic is reading this blog, their eyes are going to bug out of their head that Chicago Fire is in my Top 10. It's a show that, despite its popularity and success in launching spinoffs, is dismissed as a generic procedural with an equal balance of fighting fires and hooking up. But that is selling a show short that has had a great cast of characters and compelling stories for eight seasons now. Not every show needs to be ambitious and different to be good. Sometimes a show can simply be a really strong version of what it's trying to be and that's Chicago Fire. The show has also done a great job, in true Dick Wolf crime drama fashion, at adding and removing characters. Every time a major character has left the show, I've thought it maybe can't quite soldier on without them and yet they've been very successful at repopulating the firehouse. I know this will never be an Emmy winner, and it probably doesn't deserve that, but it deserves more respect than it gets.
I know American Crime Story is an anthology but I did not care for the second installment so I am specifically giving my #6 slot to first season. However, it is ranked where it is partly because the second installment was lackluster. But the first, focused on the "Trial of the Century" was one of the best made TV shows of the decade. With an all-star cast and an incredible attention to detail recreating 1990s Los Angeles, it took a story that everyone knew and gave it entirely different lenses to look through 20+ years after the fact. It was surprisingly restrained for a Ryan Murphy show and featured standout performances all over the place: Sarah Paulson, Courtney B. Vance, Cuba Gooding Jr., David Schwimmer, Sterling K. Brown, etc. The show did a masterful job at providing context to help us understand why this trial spun out of control and how a seemingly easy case got so convoluted. It gave lessons in race, sexism, media, fame and so much more. It was brilliant.
Blue Bloods premiered at the beginning of the decade. It was one of the very first shows I reviewed for this blog and I actually didn't stick with it at first before coming back to it. It gets made fun of for only having fans over 65. And while it is the oldest skewing drama on TV, I am here to tell you that this 33 year old really enjoys it. Similar to Chicago Fire, this is never going to win any major awards but a well done procedural has a place in the TV landscape and they don't come better than this one. There is a such a classy feel to this show. Yes, it dabbles in murder and crime and all sorts of things you see on an NYC-set police drama. But the family element and the veteran stage and screen stars that populate the cast and guest stars, led by Tom Selleck, give the show a regal feel. Blue Bloods hasn't been afraid to occasionally wade into hot button issues or have some surprising twists, but it mostly is the healthiest kind of TV comfort food. It has good acting, compelling cases (that still get wrapped up by the end of the episode usually) and unabashedly chooses to see the good in the police force while not dismissing other views. It's deserved its very long run.
The Good Wife is the other show on this list that I haven't finished. I am currently in the middle of season four. I always knew this would be a show I would enjoy but it started a year before I started this blog and I just never got around to it. It should say something that this non-binger has made his way through four seasons of a show in just a couple months. A legal drama by definition, this show really is so much more than that and is one of the only network dramas to get any sort of awards attention this decade. If Blue Bloods feels regal, this show feels downright prestigious but in many ways, it's more impressive than a prestige streaming show because it did for 22 episodes a year within the network confines of running time and content. The show is a parade of big names playing lawyers, clients and others and served as commentary on so many issues of the 2010s. Legal dramas can be so repetitive, this never was (or at least not through four seasons). I look forward to finishing the series and then moving on to The Good Fight.
This is Us put itself on the map with a gimmick. It became known as the family show with plot twists and misdirects that were closer to a show like 24 or Lost than a standard family drama. But the best thing about This is Us is it never actually has had to be about the gimmick and never let that reign over the rest of the show. It has been able to back up its hook with really strong acting and heart-tugging stories. The jumping around from decade to decade and trying to find actors to play the different characters at different eras (like the kids) or one actor playing a character at all different ages (like Mandy Moore) is no easy task. But it's succeeded admirably and I don't think it gets enough credit for how different it has been because it feels so effortless. It seems to get lumped in with other great emotional dramas when in fact it is far more ambitious. They also managed to deal with an extremely hyped episode we knew was coming since nearly the beginning - the death of Milo Ventimiglia's character - in a post-Super Bowl slot no less, and nailed it from a creative standpoint. Nothing about what This is Us does is easy but they do it all so well.
If I had done a Best Dramas of the 2000s list, Jason Katims' Friday Night Lights would have been #1. In the 2010s, it is Katims' Parenthood landing at #2. The saga of the Braverman family never got the respect it deserved. It didn't get the ratings or the critical acclaim of a family drama that followed on the same network just a little bit later (see above). What it did do was give us was give us six seasons of heart-tugging beauty with genuine family stories. I've been critical of shows like A Million Little Things that try to hit every major life issue: death, pregnancy, cancer, drugs/alcoholism, marital troubles, etc. When I think back, Parenthood tackled pretty much everything but it never felt forced. It always felt organic. I think part of that was due to the very large ensemble where it never felt like piling on any one character or family. But it was also due to really stellar writing and acting. A terrific ensemble and Katims' trademark mix of realism with heartfelt drama was the perfect combination to make this show tear-inducing but never sappy. It also had a healthy dose of humor involved with a lot of actors having been in comedies at one point too. And unlike many dramas, I think it still had stories to tell when it ended. It left me wanting more.
My favorite drama of the decade, and all time is the most meticulously detailed and fascinating show I have ever watched. A lot of my list has shows with big hearts that aren't afraid at times to play on emotions. I can be a sucker for shows like that. But Mad Men is different. Mad Men is often cold and almost always cynical. It was not a love letter to the 1960s by any means. The nods to 1960s culture were fun and even nostalgic at times. But it also had something to say about the culture then and its parallels to now. It is clear every decision from major character arcs to the types of pens on the desks were done with the utmost care. Simply put, this is a master class in the art form of television. Even though I didn't watch it when it first aired, I went back to read articles about every episode after I was finished watching it. I couldn't wait to see what symbolism or narratives they were presenting that I picked up on and which ones I missed. The show fired on all cylinders from start to finish (I'm one of those people who did not mind the ending or final season). The cast was absolutely brilliant and the journey of one of TV's first great antiheroes, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) was fascinating to watch. It seems like most people agree this is one of TV's top dramas of all time but most put it just a hair behind Breaking Bad. I am excited to watch Breaking Bad soon (just one that slipped through the cracks) but I have a hard time anything will top my beloved Mad Men.
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