At the very least, lockdowns and the lack of new content provide a good opportunity to finally catch up on the classics. Maybe now is the time to finally sit down and binge some of those great TV shows instead of re-watching Smallville for the 12th time. Although what happens after those have been seen? With ‘Prestige TV’ recommendations, the same handful of shows get thrown around. Not everyone has seen The Wire, but at least they have heard of it. It, The Sopranos, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, maybe even Fargo, are the regular ports-of-call in the Prestige TV landscape.
But there are other outstanding shows that hang just on the edge of these recommendations. Despite receiving plenty of accolades, they seem to have been forgotten. Yet these TV shows still live up to that same critical quality, and are definitely worth seeking out for their high-quality and complex meaning, if not for their legacy.
Alongside The Sopranos and The Wire, Deadwood was the other acclaimed HBO series of the mid-2000s, which never quite gained the cultural legacy of the other two. But its followers will still contend Deadwood’s place as one of the greatest TV show of all time. Based upon the real-life settlement of Deadwood during the Gold Rush of the Wild West, Deadwood is a show about a community slowly forming around the American frontier. It combined period-accurate clothing and vernacular with a wonderfully theatrical Shakespearean and vulgar speaking style.
Deadwood nominally revolved around the conflict between honorable ex-Sherriff Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and nefarious Saloon-owner Al Swearengin (Ian McShane), but really Deadwood is about the two men and the community coming together to make their camp function. Deadwood also features legendary gunslingers like Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) and Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) coming to settle down, as modernity reaches across the horizon. Deadwood was infamously cancelled early after 3 seasons, but its devoted following culminated in Deadwood: The Movie in 2019 (13 years later), proving the show’s enduring appeal.
The Americans being an overlooked show is appropriate for a series about two KGB Agents hiding in plain sight as suburban American couple Elizabeth (Keri Russel) and Philip Jenkins (Matthew Rhys). Set during the ’80s Cold War, The Americans is about professionalism versus personal choices, and how far people will go to serve their ideologies. Moreover, it questions the notion of nationality itself, and whether the Jenkins’ pretending to be the ideal all-American family actually turns them into one (and if this ideal was ever ‘real’ in the first place).
The Americans is also a spy show, dealing with espionage and high-adrenaline situations and numerous wigs. Yet beneath the grander political implications, The Americans is about the work that goes into marriage, with Elizabeth and Philip’s relationship complex and shifting throughout the seasons. The Americans was never highly-popular of award-winning but kept on for 6 seasons, as everyone who did see it proclaimed its greatness, mirroring the dedication and loyalty shown within the show itself.
Set at the fictionalized Knickerbocker Hospital in 1900 New York, The Knick outlines the innovations and limitations of medicine and surgery during the turn-of-the-century. The show brings fascination and high tension from hand-cranked blood suction and imperfect surgical tools, alongside the introduction of the X-Ray and even electricity into hospitals. The Knick even features a sub-plot about Typhoid Mary, and how class tensions exacerbate an infectious outbreak. Other societal context shows the hospital’s high-society sponsor Cornelia Robertson (Juliet Rylance) struggle against the expectations of her gender and class, and newcomer Dr Algernon Edwards (Andre Holland) facing intense racial discrimination. This was also the age of eugenics, after all.
Lead surgeon Dr John Thackery (Clive Owen) himself struggles with addiction, with cocaine and heroin widely proscribed as medicine in 1900. The Knick makes such history feel visceral, with the surgery scenes particularly gruesome and intense, the life-and-death stakes being literally out in the open. All episodes of The Knick were directed by Steven Soderberg, who brings experimental hand-held digital camerawork and a thumping EDM-inspired soundtrack to increase the immediacy. Soderberg recently stated a new season of The Knick, now helmed by Moonlight director Barry Jenkins, is in the works, so seek out this unsung masterpiece before it arrives.
Much like how Mad Men followed the shift in society and advertising through the 1960s, Halt and Catch Fire does so with the late ‘80s computer-tech industry. Although its characters never become hugely successful, they all contribute towards an increasingly computer-dominant society, assisting in personal computers, video games, online browsers and e-commerce sites. Halt and Catch Fire showed the innovations in this nascent field, but always tied it back towards the designers and creatives who helped craft it.
These people include the Steve Jobs-esque entrepreneur Joe Macmillan (Lee Pace), and coders Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis) and Gordon Clark (Scott McNairy), whose wife Donna (Kerry Bishé) comes into the show with surprising contributions. These relationships are central to what makes Halt and Catch Fire work so well, as although they sometimes clash, the show is really about how they all grow and learn from each other. Such maturity always feels earned and realistic, creating a fantastic portrait of the motivating power of friendship. Topped with phenomenal set-design and cinematography, much like the entrepreneurs within it, Halt and Catch Fire never quite broke out but contributed a lot.
After co-creating Lost and before the award-winning Watchmen TV show, Damon Lindelof made critically-acclaimed The Leftovers, a series about when 2% of the world’s population suddenly vanished. This is not a show about solving how or why this ‘Departure’ happened. Rather, it’s about how people cope with grief and unknowable events, with The Leftovers dropping in several more strange occurrences and dream-sequences. It’s not about if these events themselves are ‘real’, but rather how people construct conspiracy theories and grander meaning on what they cannot understand in order to make sense of the world.
The Leftovers might appear unrelentingly grim, and admittedly its first season is particularly bleak. But during its second season, The Leftovers finds unexpected story-turns, fantastic direction, and surprising humor. The characters become particularly endearing, like disgruntled half-crazed cop Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux), and Nora Durst (Carrie Coon), whose husband and both children all vanished during the ‘Sudden Departure’. Often The Leftovers takes an semi-anthology approach where each episode follows a different character, like Nora’s put-upon reverend brother Matt (Christopher Eccleston), or Meg (Liv Tyler), a recent member of the white-clothes-wearing, chain-smoking, mute, nihilistic cult ‘The Guilty Remnant’. The Leftovers was a powerful memorial of those trying to reclaim people they’ve already lost, and a touching love-story between those left behind.
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