It’s weird, time. Maybe it’s a flat circle after, who knows?
In any event, more than half of this decade has blown by already, which means we’ve already got a large body of work to consider from a television point of view.
Here are five TV shows of astoundingly high quality that have somewhat been lost in the pop cultural mix.
Get Shorty (the TV show)
They made a TV show based on the 1995 movie starring John Travolta, based on the 1990 Elmore Leonard novel?
Yes, they did, and it’s one of my favorite television shows in recent years (as its placement in the best 100 TV shows ever will attest).
Get Shorty the show puts Chris O’Dowd into the Travolta role – a mobster of sorts who finds his way into the world of Hollywood – and his charisma and likability power a series that nails the show’s darkly satirical tone to a tee. And I simply can’t say enough about how good the rest of the cast is, including Ray Romano (arguably the best he’s ever been) and the astonishing performance by Lidia Porto, as Nevada-based mob boss Amara De Escalones.
Sexy Beast (the TV show)
They made another… based on the… yes, yes, and yes.
And I’ll argue as with Get Shorty, Sexy Beast the show far surpasses its filmic original. I get that I’m treading into controversial territory in this case, but I’m here to report that the TV version, which sadly only has one season on Paramount+ to date, is a 1990s-set prequel that is far more immersive, stylish, and devilishly fun than the movie that earned Ben Kingsley a Best Supporting Oscar nomination.
The Offer
I’m obsessed with the creative process, and The Offer provides us with mesmerizing front-row seats into the making of The Godfather. As told from the perspective of producer Al Ruddy (a charismatic as hell turn from Miles Teller), we see how hard it is to make something truly good, let alone great, in Hollywood. Again, we get a jam-packed cast with stellar talent here, though none surpass Matthew Goode’s all-timer performance as legendary studio head Robert “The Kid Stays in the Picture” Evans.
Tokyo Vice
Based on the book detailing the life and career of Jake Adelstein (played impressively by Ansel Elgort), the first American to work the crime beat for Tokyo’s largest newspaper, that’s the entry point to a fascinating world of journalism, cops (Ken Watanabe is a standout as Det. Katagiri), yakuza (Sho Kasamatsu as Sato may have put on the most impressive performance of all), and Japanese culture circa the turn of the millennium. What’s criminal is that this immersive and mesmerizing show only ran for two mostly unheralded seasons on Max.
Fleishman is in Trouble
Jesse Eisenberg stars in the dramedy Adventureland, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. I also love New York-based stories, so I was super primed to dig this limited series about a recently divorced NYC doctor navigating being newly single in his 40s while juggling the rest of his life. It’s an intelligent show for adults that has a delightfully quirky energy all its own. And then the likes of Lizzy Caplan, Claire Danes, Josh Radnor, and Adam Brody also help bring this dynamite gem to life.