In all honesty, this article was meant to run as part of our best of the decade package at the end of 2019, but one thing led to another, it was bumped from the calendar, life carried on, things went to hell, and suddenly it was the end of 2020, arguably just as much the close the decade as December 2019, plus I’ve been watching a lot of television during the quarantine and saw that after a years-long drought Terriers was back on streaming (Hulu). I thought, people need to be reminded of this show. The fact that I’ve already taken the occasion of editing this website to remind you of Terriers on several, questionably relevant occasions wasn’t going to stop me. So I concocted this whole thing, agonized a little over the ranking, and settled on putting Terriers at fourth. Maybe not quite the chest-thumping case I was originally planning to make, but it lands above Twin Peaks, True Detective, The Americans, and a few other respectable also-rans.
It was a strange era for crime television, the 2010s. We’re mostly past the so-called Golden Age, but antiheroes were still a major part of the vernacular. Episodic, case-of-the-week TV went out-of-fashion, replaced by star-studded miniseries. Twin Peaks happened again, mystifyingly beautiful and compelling, like Colin Farrell’s moustaches in the ill-fated season two of Nic Pizzolatto’s meditation on the universe.
Just to get this out of the way up-front, here are some more or less excellent shows that I’m not including in the top 10: Fargo, Sharp Objects, Boardwalk Empire, Big Little Lies, Mindhunter, and The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story all come to mind The reasons why they’re not here are mostly subjective bordering on the whimsical. I’d watch them all again and probably have. But for my money these ten are the very best crime shows the decade produced. Any objections, contact my lawyer. You can reach him at Saul Goodman Productions, 505-842-5662.
10. The Night Of
(HBO / 2016)
This miniseries ran only the one season over the summer of 2016, but its indictment of the criminal justice system is as searing as ever and it boasts some of the finest performances in a long run of great HBO work, including John Turturro as jailhouse lawyer, John Stone, Michael K. Williams as a Rikers strongman, Bill Camp as the “subtle beast” detective, and most remarkably, Riz Ahmed with a breakout role in the lead, Naz Khan. With Richard Price and Steve Zallian at the helm, The Night Of had plenty of literary firepower, and it remains a quintessentially and unforgettably New York show: a city where world’s intersect every night, and where a chance tryst can lead to the unbearable sequence of events resulting in a young man’s incarceration and ruin. Systemic, deeply-ingrained injustice and corruption is a difficult thing to portray in a TV show; it’s not what you would expect to call entertainment, but The Night Of grips us so thoroughly with its human drama there’s no denying the compulsiveness of the watch. It stands among the highest achievements in tragedy we’ve seen on the medium.
9. You
(Netflix, Lifetime / 2018 – )
You is only two seasons in but has already established itself as one of the sharpest, most unsettling thrillers to come around in a long while. Following the various stalkings, fixations, and crimes of Joe Goldberg, You also doubles as a biting satire of contemporary culture. In season one, we’re moving through literary adjacent circles in New York City; season 2 proved an inspired choice, following Joe to the west coast and offering up a whole new social scene at once alluring and quietly rotting. Based on the Caroline Kepnes books (and with Kepnes one of the series writers), You is the perfect Highsmith-style thriller for a new generation of crime fans, capturing all the alluring, implicating lunacy of the Ripley books along with a dash of its glamorous settings.
8. True Detective
(HBO / 2014 – 2019)
True Detective: forever destined to divide crime fans sharply in two, those who celebrate its brooding brilliance and those who find the moody existentialism preposterous, indulgent, or worse. There may be no bridging the camps, but for my money the aching, searching intensity of the first and third seasons overcomes the incredible mess of a rushed second season, which, if you go back and watch it as a semi-serious nod to the works of David Lynch, is actually somewhat enjoyable, at least in moments. That’s a bit of a half-hearted defense of a show I’m calling one of the decade’s best, but True Detective lives in those interstitial gray zones, right, so maybe that’s okay. Meantime, let’s all remember those Harrelson / McConaughey exchanges in the car from the first season and rejoice: “Cohle: Look, I’d consider myself a realist, all right? But in philosophical terms I’m what’s called a pessimist. / Hart: Uh, okay, what’s ‘at mean? / Cohle: Means I’m bad at parties. / Hart : Heh. Lemme tell ya, you ain’t great outside-a parties, either.”
7. Bosch
(Amazon Prime / 2014 – )
Police procedurals are a fraught (if enduringly popular) form of TV, but Bosch aspires to more than heroism and fan service. Based on the Michael Connelly books, and with Connelly and Wire alum Eric Overmyer at the helm, Bosch aims toward a greater societal reckoning for the city of Los Angeles, guided by Harry Bosch’s ever-present motto: “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” On a pure procedural basis, there’s simply no beating the meticulousness of an investigation by Bosch (played with a dark intensity by Titus Welliver) and his partner and counterpoint J. Edgar (the always locked-in Jamie Hector). But over the course of its six seasons, Bosch has widened its lens again and again to take on new issues, new corruption, and new communities in the City of Angels. Yes, the world does get saved now and again, the action can be a bit macho, and you just maybe don’t feel like watching police right now, but if and when you’re ready again, Bosch is as fine a detective show as there is on TV these days.
6. Twin Peaks: The Return
(Showtime / 2017)
I couldn’t possibly begin to describe this eighteen episode continuation of the classic ABC series except to say that it is wonderfully, transcendently weird, and that was exactly what the unsettling universe created by David Lynch and Mark Frost deserved. Twenty-five years after the original investigation, Agent Dale Cooper’s various leads, theories, and conspiracies extend the story to reaches across the world, as the story threatens to, and basically does, spiral out of control, in mesmerizing fashion. Twin Peaks will forever remain one of the most uncanny experiences TV viewers have ever endured, and the return was especially of another world, yet always tethered to a rigorous, ambitious artistic vision.
5. The Americans
(FX / 2013 – 2018)
Yes we’ve long been promised a new era of post-Cold War spy fiction, but it turns out the gold standard for espionage this decade was a show set firmly within the latter years of that very epoch, a show that reveled in the strange little details of analog spycraft. (The wigs, oh the wigs, and the dead drops, those lovely dead drops.) Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys depicted as tense and nuanced a marriage as we’ll ever see on crime TV, a marriage arranged by the “Center” no less, a divisive union that bled into the nervy family life around them and eventually consumed their children. A high-concept show like this had no right to be a nuanced, poignant family drama, but that’s what it turned out to be, a slow-burning meditation on the clash of dual identities in the tight confines of a family unit. The run is over now, but you can bet viewers will go on discovering and marveling at this one for a long while.
4. Terriers
(FX / 2010)
Ah Terriers, you were too beautiful to live. FX’s one-season-and-canceled masterpiece about a pair of down at the heels private eyes in Southern California was the modern private eye show we were promised, and in the years since its abrupt end, it has gained a small but devoted following bordering on cult favorite status. (A status that may be cemented now that Terriers has returned to streaming as a part of the FX channel on Hulu.) The setting is certainly a co-star here, as it is with all great crime fictions. Hank and Brit work in the Ocean Beach section of San Diego, and an episode wouldn’t be complete without a quick jaunt to or under a pier, not to mention all the seaside mansions, salt-strewn pawn shops, and pool-centered bungalows. This is slightly seedy, laced with nefarious riches Southern California we were promised by Raymond Chandler. And beneath it all was a beating heart. Terriers wasn’t afraid of a little sentiment, but it always had the sharp, witty writing to fall back on, the pitch-perfect writing that allowed it to play with and expand beloved noir tropes. Right from the opening credits, Terriers always strikes the right note, the note private eye aficionados crave, and maybe, just maybe one day we’ll even get a glorious return to the seedy Ocean Beach beat for Hank and Brit.
3. Better Call Saul
(AMC / 2015 – 2020)
Given the troubled history of spinoffs, it’s kind of astonishing just how good Better Call Saul really is. There may even be a flourishing—and reasonable—debate as to whether it surpasses the original work. Saul Goodman, aka Jimmy McGill, is even something of an antidote to the era of TV Antiheroes exemplified by none other than Walter White. Saul isn’t really in the realm of heroes, though he may be the series lead. He’s a survivor, a pragmatist with a secret romantic streak, a con artist turned lawyer, a surprisingly loyal friend, but he falls much more firmly into the Peter Lorre camp crime archetypes. He’s the side character who steals the show, and then eventually gets his own, the charismatic man on the margins just trying to forge an identity. It also doesn’t hurt that Kim Wexler turns out to be a series co-lead, or that Mike Ehrmentraut is involved. Let’s check back in another few years once the dust has settled and we’ll see whether this one hasn’t risen another notch on the list, or maybe even reached the top.
2. Justified
(FX / 2010 – 2015)
When Justified started in 2010, it was one of the most sharply written shows on TV, but it also had a few vestigial pieces from the era of serialized, crime-of-the-week TV. Then somewhere in season 2 when the Bennetts showed up and Boyd Crowder gained steam, the show became something greater. It was the spirit of Elmore Leonard brought to the hills of Harlan County—the petty hustlers, the warring clans, the trigger-happy lawman with a quip to match the sometimes lunatic wit of the many, many criminals around him. With each new season, Graham Yost and the Justified writing staff created a richer and richer world full of wild characters and relationships that felt damn near Shakespearean. Bridging the two eras of TV, Justified was the perfectly entertaining mixture of episode payoffs and season-long arcs. We may never see its equal again.
1. Breaking Bad
(AMC / 2008 – 2013)
What’s there left to say about Breaking Bad? It was the most finely constructed, wickedly entertaining, emotionally transformative, deeply human show of the decade, and its creator, Vince Gilligan, forged himself a spot on the Mount Rushmore of pop culture and gave us some of the most enduring characters in modern fiction. Walter White, Jesse Pinkman, Gus Fring, Mike Ehrmentraut, Saul Goodman, Sklyer White, Hank Schrader, Marie Schrader, Junior—the list of memorable characters goes on, and each one had a lived-in authenticity rare to find in any form encompassing such a broad cast, and yet still their stories and arcs dovetailed in utterly satisfying fashion. The conclusion of the series is unparalleled on TV, and maybe that’s what gives it the edge over so many other great series, including some from the preceding Golden Era (looking at you, Sopranos). Gilligan and his team knew just where they wanted to take these characters, what story they wanted to tell, and they did it in a way that was shocking and moving and yet felt completely right. Hard to beat that.
