TV is better than it's ever been, and with that explosion in choice and quality comes
a quantity of incredible performances. Here are the actors whose performances go beyond
great and are perfectly flawless.
The three short years from 2013 and 2015 were a magical era in entertainment. Rising from
the ashes of crappy romantic comedies and punchlines about how often he could be spotted
shirtless, Matthew McConaughey ushered in The McConaissance. It was a career reinvention
in which he proved himself a compelling leading man who could disappear into any role without
even ditching his thick Texas accent. While the film Dallas Buyers Club may have been
the one that scored him an Oscar, and Interstellar marked the most high-profile film of that
era, there's no role he took during that era that has the cultural impact of Rust Cohle
from the HBO series True Detective.
Cohle is a bleak, nihilistic detective worn down from years of undercover work, loss,
and substance abuse. He never gives a straight answer to any question, managing to turn something
as simple as "How'd you sleep?" into a riddle. He's simultaneously obnoxious and endearing
despite sounding like a 15-year-old who's just seen Fight Club for the first time.
"Your mom still alive?"
"Maybe."
McConaughey excels in the role, playing off Woody Harrelson, who co-stars as Cole's partner
Marty, with odd-couple chemistry. Cohle could read as parody if not for the nuance McConaughey
brings to the role. Any future True Detective actors have big shoes to fill.
Anyone who has a complicated relationship with a family member is going to find Netflix's
Bloodline way too real to get through it in a single sitting. The show analyzes the complex
family dynamics between parents, siblings, and extended family in an extraordinarily
raw fashion. There's no poor acting in the series, and Kyle Chandler is truly exceptional
as John, the patriarch of the Rayburn family. That said, nobody knocks it out of the park
quite like Ben Mendehlson as Danny, the black sheep of the family.
Danny's arrival in the show's pilot signals a proverbial storm on the horizon. He's effectively
been excommunicated from the Rayburn clan, and it quickly becomes clear why. He's wild,
and not in the sense of a constantly-partying frat boy. He's more like a live wire near
dangling over running water. It doesn't take much to set him off, and when that happens,
something's going to be burned to the ground. Mendehlson's portrayal is darkly charismatic
and very careful in its steps, a necessity considering Danny's tendency to pivot sharply
from friendly to terrifying in a matter of seconds. Those turns never seem unbelievable
thanks to the care Mendehlson puts into the role. His avatar of chaos is a true standout,
not just for this show, but for the entirety of Netflix's original content. Bloodlines
is very good overall, but Mendelsohn's performance is what makes it can't-miss binge television.
Showtime's Penny Dreadful probably could have had a decade-long run if it merely stuck to
its roots in gothic horror and fantasy, playing up the pulpier elements of its source material.
The show revolved around a fictional universe in which Victorian horror icons such as Dorian
Grey and Victor Frankenstein exist in the same world, a winning formula for a 19th century
version of Supernatural. Instead, the show chose to become something more. It cast a
crew of exceptional British actors and played up the Shakespearean overtones of its story,
elevating the artistic integrity of its genre roots to the forefront. While the whole cast
is exceptional, former James Bond actor Timothy Dalton is especially good as an ex-adventurer
Malcolm Murray, the standout is easily Eva Green as Vanessa.
Vanessa is a woman whose entire life has been surrounded by darkness, by otherworldly forces
seeking to use her to their whims, but her strength lies in her constant refusal to be
anything but a bright light in her dark world. You could argue for Green's excellence in
the role based solely on the extent to which she seems to disregard her own physical well-being
for the sake of performance. Vanessa goes through several drastic physical transformations,
and a scene involving a seance sees her contorting her body gruesomely. However, to focus on
her physical commitment would be to sell short the empathy and tenderness Green instills
into Vanessa. Very few characters in this mold have felt so undeniably human. Penny
Dreadful is all the better for it.
There aren't a lot of comedies that have balanced a gradual transition from conventional to
bizarre quite like New Girl. Over the course of its run, it transformed from a quirky Zooey
Deschanel vehicle to a truly out-there comedy about some of the strangest characters on
TV. Few characters embody that evolution quite like Nick Miller, played to perfection by
Jake Johnson.
"You want to be a long-haul trucker with a family?"
"No, the family would be in Montana, or, or Mars landing, if the government finally steps up."
Nick enters the series as a comedic straight man, pretty conventional and clearly set up
to be the Ross to Deschanel's Rachel. His neuroses and quirks are dealt out slowly over
the first two seasons, and by the time season four begins he's a full on nutcase, and a
pretty endearing one at that. He's an emotionally stunted conspiracy theorist whose best friend
is a silent man he talks to on a park bench. Johnson embodies Nick perfectly, especially
shining when doing or saying something ridiculous that Nick clearly believes is entirely normal.
He brings a great deal of heart to the role that keeps Nick grounded even when he's going
off about his distrust of banks and cell phones. Taking a character from a normal place to
such a weird one is tricky to pull off for a writer's room. Luckily, they had Johnson
to anchor the character and make it all work.
In the wake of Get Out and Black Panther, it's easy to forget where now-superstar actor
Daniel Kaluuya got one of his first major exposures to American audiences: an early
episode of the pessimistic sci-fi anthology Black Mirror. Kaluuya appears in the series'
second-ever episode, titled "Fifteen Million Merits," and it's a performance that shows
exactly why he rocketed to worldwide fame shortly after.
"I just want something real to happen. Just once."
Each episode of the show explores the disquieting implications of an aspect of technology or
media. In this case, the story revolves around a sort of twisted reality show in a dystopian
and close-quarters world in which the only way one can rise from their societal rank
as a grunt working an exercise bike all day is to win an American Idol-esque game show.
We explore this world through a character named Bing and follow his romance with a fellow
biker, only to see her sucked into the world of this reality show. It's an almost Shakespearean
tragedy and Bing, played by Kaluuya, is among Black Mirror's most memorable characters.
We follow him from frustration to elation, elation to love, love to heartbreak, and heartbreak
to an unending, seething rage. It's a difficult character arc to tackle, especially in a single
episode of high concept television, but Kaluuya's chops are clearly up to the task.
When it comes to the all-time greats of superhero casting, sure, Chris Evans and Robert Downey
Jr. are great, but they've got small-screen competition. Krysten Ritter as Jessica Jones,
in the Netflix show of the same name, definitely belongs on the list of all-time great superhero
casting. It's all the more impressive when you realize that Jones is unlike any other
protagonist viewers have seen in the genre, and Ritter delivers an incredible TV performance
to do it proper justice.
Jessica Jones has super powers, but she's no Avenger.
"I gave it a shot once."
"Tell me there was a costume and you still got it."
"It didn't work out."
Instead, she's a private investigator, a combination of every detective novel stereotype with the
addition of superhuman strength and a few other cool powers. When we meet her, we see
a different kind of Marvel hero, a victim of abuse at the hands of a sadistic villain
who used mind control to bend her to his whims. Ritter is dealing with emotions and traumas
that are incredibly real, ones that viewers of the show are far more likely to have experienced
themselves than those of Thor or Captain America. As such, Ritter bears a great deal of responsibility
in performing this role, and she handles it with poise and grace, masterfully navigating
Jessica through a multitude of complex emotional highs and lows. It also definitely doesn't
hurt that she's great at sardonically quipping her way through every confrontation with a
bad guy that comes her way.
If True Detective is HBO's effort to showcase the skill of two massively talented male actors,
Big Little Lies is their effort to do the same for a group of some of the most talented
female actors on the planet. Every woman on the show is tremendous, from Laura Dern to
Nicole Kidman, but Reese Witherspoon's performance is perhaps the most memorable.
As Madeline, Witherspoon is a seemingly simple character with a wealth of complications beneath
her surface. She's a woman with an all-too-real desire to convince her neighbors and family
that everything is fine. Madeline is on her second marriage and struggling with raising
an older daughter who's in the dregs of her teenage years and a younger daughter who's
already too perceptive for her own good. She constantly runs into her ex, who parades around
town with his new younger wife clearly looking to rub it in Madeline's face.
"Oh I love this."
"Oh, thank you, I made it in Peru."
"Of course you did."
Witherspoon channels a defensive, combative bluster into Madeline, an abrasiveness that
keeps people at too great a distance to see how close she is to crumbling. It's a remarkable
performance in a show already chock full of them.
When Hollywood came calling with roles in blockbusters like Pacific Rim and Marvel's
Thor films, Idris Elba easily could have stepped away from his role as police detective John
Luther in the BBC series Luther. He hasn't. The show has, amidst Elba's ascent as a movie
draw, continued on, a clear testament to how much he enjoys playing the character. It makes
perfect sense, as Luther is by far the most compelling role he's ever taken on, and a
forum for some of the most consistently great work of his career.
John Luther is a bull in a china shop. He's a ruthless, violent detective with intense
anger issues and a disregard for any authority that isn't his. He'd probably be a villain
if he weren't so dang cool. That might be what's so impressive about Elba's performance
as Luther. In addition to tackling such a wide array of dark emotions, he never forgets
to make Luther the coolest cop on TV. From his icy demeanor to his trademark tweed jacket,
you can't help but wanna be him, save for the anger management issues and constant barrage
of tragedy, that is.
It's been a long time since the era of Bonanza and Gunsmoke had westerns ruling the TV airwaves,
but make no mistake: American audiences still love a good cowboy. They're fewer and further
between these days, but there's nothing like a TV show about a straight up, old-school
gunslinger. No show has updated that classic archetype to the modern era quite as well
as Justified, which features Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens, a U.S. Marshal whose cowboy
ways don't stop at his hat and southern drawl.
"I want you to understand: I don't pull my sidearm unless I'm gon' shoot to kill."
"That's it's purpose, huh? To kill? So, that's how I use it."
The show follows Raylan, originally created by legendary crime novelist Elmore Leonard,
as he's forced to relocate to his hometown of Harlan, Kentucky after a shootout gone
wrong in Miami. Aside from taking on criminals of all sorts, Raylan is confronted with old
friends, enemies, and family ties he's made every effort to escape since leaving. Underneath
the cowboy cool demeanor and quick draw, Olyphant instills a simmering anger in Raylan, one
that's amplified by how well Olyphant performs the character's quieter moments. We love a
classic western shootout, but Raylan is never more engaging than he is when talking to his
ex-wife, his antagonist Boyd, played immaculately by Walton Goggins, or confronting his father.
Olyphant brings equal charisma and empathy to a character that could be a one-note gunslinger.
Instead he delivers one of the most memorable TV performances, and easily the greatest cowboy
character, of television's modern era.
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