Justified

While it lives forever in the shadow of actor Timothy Olyphant's prior series, the brilliant Deadwood, Justified is its own very special show. It's one thing to capture the essence of Elmore Leonard's writing in a great film, as Steven Soderbergh did with Out of Sight. It's a stellar accomplishment to nail Leonard's wry tone and moral ambiguity in a weekly series, episode after episode. It helps to have a superb cast, let by Olyphant and Walton Goggins (The Shield). Olyphant plays U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, who, after his questionable shooting of a drug dealer in Miami, is reassigned to his former stomping grounds, the impoverished mining community of Harlan County, Kentucky. Harlan is a hotbed of corruption, meth dealing, white supremacists, and twisted family rivalries that go back generations, so naturally Givens is not thrilled to return. In the first season, he finds himself pining for his lawyer ex-wife, Winona (Natalie Zea), and butting heads with a former friend--the dangerous, mercurial Boyd Crowder (Goggins), though the two eventually make an uneasy truce. Margo Martindale's Emmy-winning turn as the complex, matronly villain of the second season exemplifies Justified's essential hard-bitten humanity. The show is an endlessly compelling balancing act between Raylan's principles, his loyalties, and the letter of the law.