Top five TV dramas this year capture American life

I was never one of those critics who measured television against literature, theater, film or any of the other forms of entertainment and art that have traditionally been considered more serious or elevated.

In fact, for decades, I have been arguing about the importance of television in its own right as an enormous cultural force: the principal storyteller of American life, even in its silliest and most debased genres (like reality shows).

But as I joyously wallowed in the wealth of great TV drama this year, one thought kept flashing across the scoreboard of my brain: This is absolutely the stuff of the the Great American Novel that all those English department professors were talking about back in the late 1960s and early '70s when I was studying literature.

The idea of the novel migrating to TV is not a new one. "The Wire," to name one series, has been there and gone.

But I have never seen such complicated and profound aspects of American life so consistently, wisely and engagingly explored, week after week in the best dramas, as I have this year.

When I picked my five best dramas independent of this notion of the novel-on-television, I was struck by how firmly each movie, miniseries or series was rooted in an American sense of place and how much that geography shaped the imaginations of the characters in these stories — much like great American novels were supposed to do.

I also couldn't help but notice the prevalence of women as lead characters and writers of the shows at the top of my list. I didn't go looking for that. It just happened as the list came together in my mind. Women writers and protagonists were not something those predominantly male English professors talked about back in the '60s as they knelt to worship Ernest Hemingway.

There's more to be said about the fact that all these series are on cable or Netflix — not the networks or PBS, which spends its biggest drama dollars on stories about British life. But I leave that for another column.

Here are my best TV productions of 2014:

1. "The Affair," which ends its fabulous first season on Showtime at 10 p.m. Dec. 21, is set in Brooklyn, N.Y., and the summer resort community of Montauk on Long Island. I was already gung ho on this 10-part series after seeing Dominic West, of "The Wire," in Episode 1 as Noah Solloway, a deeply conflicted Brooklyn high school teacher and married father of four headed for a very sexual summertime relationship with a married woman in Montauk.

But last week, as I watched the season's next-to-last episode dazzled by the performance of Ruth Wilson as Alison Lockhart, the Long Island waitress with whom Solloway becomes involved, I realized that as terrific as West has been, this is really Alison's story — and Wilson is the one to watch.

There's a sequence in a doctor's office after Alison is treated for self-inflicted cuts that left me emotionally and spiritually spent. I can only imagine what it took for Wilson to play the scene. In it, she articulates the guilt, remorse, anguish and suicidal self-loathing she feels as she tries to survive in the bottomless pit of pain she has inhabited since her young son died by secondary drowning while under her care.

The moment when the sympathetic physician tells her she will never be able to know if her son might have lived had she made other choices as a caregiver is almost too painful to bear. "Existential" hardly starts to describe the depth and darkness of the pain she will carry the rest of her life.

Showtime has promoted the series as an exploration of the psychological aftermath of an affair on the people involved and their family members. And it is all that, and more.

Showtime being premium cable, there is no shortage of sex. The physical aspects of the affair are given full rein. And Noah's feelings as he revels in sex with Alison and lies to his wife are skillfully explicated

But his guilt is skin-deep compared to the place where Alison lives.

Sarah Treem and Hagai Levi are the creators of the series. I loved their work in HBO's "In Treatment," with Gabriel Byrne. But they have outdone themselves here — particularly in the writing by Treem.

Melanie Marnich and Kate Robin wrote the teleplay for last week's episode. They created the words that Wilson brought to life in that doctor's office. Bravo to all the writers of this series.

2. HBO's "Olive Kitteridge" is set in New England, and the title character played by Frances McDormand embodies the grit, tenacity and no-nonsense rectitude of those who settled on those rocky shores. Only she's living in a small town in Maine in 20th-century America, and she's out of step with much of modern life.

The four-part miniseries is based on a collection of short stories by Elizabeth Strout that won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2009, so the talk of TV as the new home of the Great American Novel might not be that far-fetched.

All praise to HBO for investing in a production that features people who don't care about fashion or cosmetics — in other words, the kinds of people you rarely see on TV, except when they are ridiculed in reality series. And more praise yet to McDormand and the other producers for dealing so honestly and sensitively with themes not often explored on TV, like suicide and clinical depression that runs in the genes.

In the end, the great reason to celebrate this production is the performance by McDormand as Olive. She's transcendent.

3. "House of Cards" makes the list, and not because it's made in Maryland. The Netflix political thriller has often been described as Shakespearean in its narrative and arc. And it's all there, from "Macbeth" to "Richard III."

But the over-reaching of this self-made South Carolina politician played so compellingly by Kevin Spacey is also quintessentially American. Think Richard Nixon and his dark, soulless climb from California obscurity to the White House.

"House of Cards" has suffered its moments of narrative excess, like Spacey's Frank Underwood pushing reporter Zoe Barnes (Kate Mara) off a subway platform to her death. But while such moments strain the sense of verisimilitude, Beau Willimon's writing nails far deeper truths about Washington and the deeply troubled state of American political life.

4. Because it debuted way back in January, it might be hard for some to remember what it first felt like to first see Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as a couple of Louisiana detectives in HBO's "True Detective."

It was mesmerizing to see and hear them driving down a back road talking about life, death and infinity — especially McConaughey's character, Rust Cohle, who seemed to be from another planet with his zonked-out take on existence.

By the time Cohle starts describing Earth as a "giant gutter in space" and man as a "tragic misstep in evolution," Harrelson, as his agitated partner, Martin Hart, has had enough.

"I wouldn't go around spoutin' that stuff if I were you," he says. "People around here don't think that way. I don't think that way. … I got an idea: Let's make the car a place of silent reflection from now on, OK?"

"I got a bad taste in my mouth out here," Cohle says as the two cops continue down that rural road. "Aluminum, ash, it's like you can smell the psychosphere."

Im not sure I know yet what the psychosphere is, but I felt like I could smell it, too, riding the wave of Cohle's mad rap.

5. You want a sense of American place? How about Minnesota in the FX drama "Fargo?"

I wasn't optimistic about the chances of FX successfully adapting the 1996 Coen brothers film about crime and a small-town Minnesota police chief just trying to do her job. McDormand won an Oscar for her portrayal of the chief.

But the adaptation is a winner, thanks largely to Martin Freeman's fine performance as Lester Nygaard, a timid but resentful insurance agent in way over his head, and Billy Bob Thornton as a great American archetype, the dangerous, rootless drifter who arrives from nowhere one night.

Forget Minnesota nice. With Thornton oozing danger as Lorne Malvo, it's Minnesota menace that drives this series.

All five picks are a little dark, granted. But if you want sunshine-and-lollipops TV, I'm not your guy.

david.zurawik@baltsun.com

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