The best way to watch: Stream it on Netflix.
Picture: Getty Photographs
Six Ft Beneath (2001-2005)
A regular-bearer for high-concept status tv—and a chronicle of the Fishers, a Los Angeles household working a well-trafficked funeral dwelling after the demise of their paterfamilias—Six Ft Beneath was full of lights-out performances. (I’d single out Peter Krause because the looking out, tragic Nate; Michael C. Corridor as his brother, David; Lauren Ambrose as their sister, Claire; Frances Conroy as their neurotic mom, Ruth; and Rachel Griffiths as Nate’s depressive, shiatsu-practitioner girlfriend, Brenda, on the expense of so many others.) However so, too, did it steadiness sufficient gentle gore, darkish humor, sexual drama, and existential inquiry to make each type of viewer pleased. Whereas I can’t say that I rank its sequence finale, prominently that includes the track “Breathe Me“ by Sia, as extremely as most, I did discover all 5 sprawling, bold seasons to be complete killers. —Marley Marius
The best way to watch: Stream it on Netflix.
Picture: Courtesy Everett Assortment
Friday Night time Lights (2006-2011)
To at the present time, Friday Night time Lights, primarily based on the famend Buzz Bissinger e-book a couple of real-life highschool soccer workforce in West Texas, stays the only multi-season sequence that my spouse and I’ve watched along with equal enthusiasm. This even though my spouse has zero curiosity in soccer and I’ve little endurance for teenage soap-style dramas. I submit that it’s the ur-example of the latter, with its attendant cliques, heroes, and antiheroes. It is usually a Regulation & Order-style procedural with every episode providing some type of intrigue between Coach Taylor, spouse Tami, everyman Landry, bad-boy Riggins, do-gooder Saracen, Kardashian-in-the-making Lyla, temptress Tyra, and the remainder of the forged of vivid American archetypes—together with, crucially, the Massive Recreation on the finish of all of it. The qualities that made the characters such nice (if cliched) archetypes additionally made them plausible, even true, and what started as a lowbrow method of passing the time shortly grew to become, in our family, heart-rending must-watch TV. Texas without end.—Corey Seymour
