“The Handmaid’s Tale”
Season one of Hulu drama “The Handmaid’s Tale” took television viewers by storm with it’s methodical pacing, true to life potential horrors and a enriching and commanding performance by “Mad Men” veteran Elizabeth Moss. It won a bunch of Emmy’s and solidified itself as a part of the modern, pop culture lexicon. It remains, in season two, a formidable presence for television, brutally continuing to lay the foundation for the hellscape that these women live in. Moss is on another playing field in terms of her performance against many of her peers but season two has offered Ann Dowd, Yvonne Strahovski, Samira Wiley and Alexis Bledel plenty of moments to shine too. While the world continues to grow and the horrors hit a fever pitch, the continued lack of hope to be found, even in moments of resistance can seem unfathomably punishing, yet it remains a powerful and thoughtful series with plenty more to continue to say. Our critic gave it a glowing review, saying “It is just as upsetting, even more pessimistic and it has no interest in being subtle or decorous about its real-world parallels, often punching right on the nose. But that’s also what makes it such a thrilling feat of storytelling acumen and imagination: a ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ that has thrown back its hood and lifted its downcast eyes from the page, is one that can see for miles.” – AJ
“The Americans”
In an age of television that is increasingly cinematic, the strongest moments of this FX series – and its sixth and final season in particular – weren’t the ones that would’ve felt more at home on the big screen. Instead, it was the scenes that could have come out of a stage play that resonate most. “The Americans” might be a series about married Russian agents in 1980s’ Washington, D.C., but it’s really about interactions between people instead of high-tech gadgets, MacGuffins and dangerous missions. Season six was full of these scenes, particularly between Elizabeth (Keri Russell) and husband Philip (Matthew Rhys), but the series finale “START” tops them all with the heartbreaking, inevitable confrontation the show was building toward since episode one. It was just four people in a parking garage talking, but it was so much more, encapsulating the series’ themes and its characters struggles in a single conversation. Based on just the first three episodes, we called season six “a worthy ending to one of the decade’s best series,” but the last episode improves even on its predecessors, providing one of TV’s best, most emotionally satisfying (and wrecking) finales. – Kimber Myers
“Billions”
The question for Brian Koppelman and David Levien’s financial drama was always whether a show that initially seemed so singularly focused on the rival between two men — Damian Lewis’ hedge fund master-of-the-universe Bobby Axelrod and Paul Giamatti’s crusading, compromised U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhodes — would be able to sustain over the umpteen seasons that Showtime tend to milk out of their successes. Fortunately, three seasons in, there’s no sign of “Billions” doing a “Dexter,” with another run of episodes that cemented the show’s position as one of the most consistently entertaining and well-plotted shows on TV. Yes, no human being talks like the way people talk on “Billions,” and yes, John Malkovich was a little underwhelming as a Russian oligarch. But Koppelman, Levien and their team burn through twists and turns at the rate of three-seasons-of-“Bloodline” per episode, and have assembled such a deep bench of a cast that David Costabile’s Wags, one of the best characters on TV, got almost nothing to do this year and you still didn’t mind. We’ll see whether they can keep it up, but this weekend’s finale ended up in such a tantalizing place that the wait for season four will be a long one. – Oliver Lyttelton
“Counterpart”
We’re a little baffled that “Counterpart” hasn’t made more of a noise — not since “The Americans” first appeared have we seen an espionage drama that came out of the gates so fully-formed, so confident, and so compelling. The Starz drama, created by “The Jungle Book” screenwriter Justin Marks and produced by Jordan ‘Moonlight, you guys won’ Horowitz, is a clever sci-fi twist on the Cold War, with Berlin-based bureaucrat J.K. Simmons discovering that the facility that he works in actually guards the entrance to a parallel world that suddenly appeared thirty years earlier, and that his counterpart (hey! that’s the name of the show) from the other side is a badass secret agent. The show obviously serves as a great showcase for the Oscar-winning “Whiplash” star, who gets to play two very distinct sides of his persona, but the show’s pleasures reach far beyond that: a terrific supporting cast including Olivia Williams, Stephen Rea, Harry Lloyd and Nazanin Boniadi, a truly striking brutalist aesthetic and atmosphere, and smart, characterful writing. Despite the relative lack of buzz, the show was commissioned for a second season before the first even began, so you have the rest of the year to catch up on what we’re sure will be your next obsession. – OL