Matt Roush's Top 10

by Matt Roush, TV Guide, December 19, 2011

1: Homeland

The year's best new series is Showtime's twisty nail-biter of a psychological thriller, an emotionally intense cat-and-mouse game between two damaged souls: Damian Lewis as Nicholas Brody, a Marine POW who may have been turned by terrorists during eight years in Iraqi captivity, and Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, the unstable CIA analyst who breaks all the rules to get under his skin -- and at times under the sheets. (Bringing new meaning to undercover agent.) The actors are as electrifying as the storytelling in this taut tale of homeland insecurity, which also features a marvelously restrained Mandy Patinkin as Carrie's melancholy mentor and a revelatory Morena Baccarin as Brody's understandably conflicted wife. Homeland comes from the veteran producers of 24, who have lost none of their knack for sustained suspense, but within this more realistic framework have been able to concoct a thoughtful and gripping meditation on the human toll of the war on terror.

2: Downton Abbey

A complete delight. PBS's sprawling, Emmy-winning Masterpiece miniseries, with echoes of Jane Austen and Upstairs Downstairs in its wittily sudsy panache, is set on an embattled English estate in the years before WWI, with romantic and financial intrigues distracting both the well-born and servant class.

3: Breaking Bad

Not missing a beat in its excruciatingly suspenseful fourth season, AMC's dark fable of violent corruption pits the desperate Walt White (Bryan Cranston) against the icy kingpin Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito) in a season-long battle of wills. "I won," Walt tells his compromised wife in the literally explosive finale. But at what cost?

4: Community vs. The Big Bang Theory

Airing opposite each other all year on Thursdays were two fabulous extremes on the spectrum of comedy magic. NBC's low-rated cult gem, the experimental and existential -- and hugely entertaining -- Community defies genre categorization (a Glee holiday parody is also a takeoff on "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers") while bringing to life a giddy ensemble of indelible misfits. And dominating the time period, The Big Bang Theory, CBS' gut buster of a monster sitcom hit, has only intensified its geeky genius since beefing up the roles of the ladies in these dysfunctional brainiacs' lives, with Mayim Bialik's dour Amy and Melissa Rauch's perky Bernadette keeping Kaley Cuoco's Penny from being the oddest girl out.

5: Game Of Thrones

HBO successfully brings the epic fantasy to TV with dynamic impact in this adult, red-blooded and relentlessly brutal saga derived from George R.R. Martin's page-turners. Grim tidings befall good people (including Sean Bean's noble Ned Stark) in a medieval mash-up of dynastic mayhem with just the right amount of supernatural menace.

6: Justified

In the sensational second season of FX's tangy, twangy crime drama, the lethally charming U.S. marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) meets his match -- in Emmy winner Margo Martindale's monstrously ruthless Kentucky mountain matriarch Mags Bennett. With her deadly Apple Pie moonshine always at arm's reach, she presides over a tangled multifamily feud for control of Harlan County. If only her bumbling offspring had inherited her steel. Justified goes down with the kick of blended whiskey.

7: The Middle and Modern Family

The have-not Hecks of Indiana and the well-off West Coast Pritchett / Dunphy clan have little in common, except being uncommonly funny. ABC's underappreciated The Middle nails the raucous comic anxiety of overwhelmed parents (the award-worthy Patricia Heaton and Neil Flynn) and their underachieving square-peg kids -- lazy Axl, poor Sue and oddball Brick -- while the acclaimed Modern Family continues to spearhead TV's comedy renaissance with sophisticated farce that anyone with relatives can relate to.

8: Fringe

Living on the fringe of the TV schedule and ratings, Fox's sci-fi / fantasy mind-blower just keeps expanding in its mystical complexity. As Peter Bishop plays peekaboo between warring universes, we're treated to cautionary Frankenstein parables of the dangers of playing God. A more than worthy successor to The X-Files.

9: The Good Wife

Once Alicia (Emmy winner Julianna Margulies) embraced her bad side, in a tumultuous liaison with her boss Will (Josh Charles), network TV's most compelling drama also became its steamiest, cunningly blending the personal with a sharply written legal procedural that is never less than stimulating.

10: New Girl

Four's company, and great company at that In Fox's enderaingly zany new comedy, a free-spirited pixie (Zooey Deschanel in a career-defining test of the how-much-is-too-cute threshold) moves into a man cave with three guys, including Max Greenfield as the hilariously smarmy Schmidt. Their brocode of conduct will never be the same with this sweet, silly and needy interloper in their midst. She's a hoot.