1923
The Duttons of the 1920s face drought, predatory land developers, and a generation broken by the first war. Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren anchor it as the patriarch and matriarch, and the combination of star power and frontier hardship gives…
Tag best Drama shows
1883
The best thing Taylor Sheridan has made. This prequel follows the original Duttons on a wagon train heading west, and it plays the frontier as the death march it actually was: river crossings, bandits, and grief at every mile. Sam…
Yellowstone
Kevin Costner’s John Dutton runs the largest ranch in Montana and defends it like a feudal lord: politicians, land developers, and his own children all get the treatment. Taylor Sheridan’s flagship is a soap opera in a cowboy hat, and…
True Detective
The first season is a legend: Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson as Louisiana detectives hunting a killer across seventeen years, with a mood so thick you can taste it. Rust Cohle’s philosophy made half the internet quote it for a…
Chernobyl
Five episodes about the 1986 nuclear disaster, and not one wasted minute. Jared Harris’s scientist, Stellan Skarsgard’s bureaucrat, and Emily Watson’s physicist work to contain a reactor that cannot be contained while the Soviet system lies about everything. The radiation…
Succession
A media dynasty’s awful adult children claw for their father’s approval while he tortures them for sport. Succession is the funniest tragedy on television: every episode is a corporate crisis staged like a war room, and every insult is a…
The Sopranos
The show that built the golden age of television. Tony Soprano, a New Jersey mob boss, starts seeing a therapist after panic attacks, and the series becomes the deepest character study the medium has ever attempted. James Gandolfini does more…
The Wire
The best show ever made, and the least sentimental about it. Each season takes one institution in Baltimore, the police, the docks, city hall, the schools, the press, and shows how it fails the people inside it. David Simon was…
Westworld
A futuristic theme park where guests pay to live out their darkest fantasies among lifelike robots, until the robots start remembering. Season one is one of the best seasons of television HBO ever aired: a puzzle box about consciousness, free…
The Witcher
Geralt of Rivia, a mutated monster hunter for hire, roams a grimy medieval world where the real monsters are usually the people. Based on Andrzej Sapkowski’s books (not the games, though the games made it famous), the series follows three…