Anyone have any more obscure-ish TV recommendations? My friends are always pointing us towards the obvious stuff ("Have you seen Game of Thrones?? Breaking Bad FTW!!"), but there have been some really solid recs here lately. I checked out and liked both Severance and Halo, and will be giving The Last Kingdom a go soon.
The shows I've been recommending the last few years are ones I really liked and find that very few people seem to have seen: Justified, Banshee, and Kingdom.
Justified is probably the best known of the bunch, but it was never a ratings darling. It's about a US Marshal in Kentucky, his boyhood pal turned criminal, and is based on some really great Elmore Leonard stories. This is easily one of my favorite shows ever. The characters, dialogue, and performances are stellar Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins leap off the screen.
Banshee was one of the few shows that Cinemax did once upon a time. It's definitely a hard R -- the violence and sex are plentiful, but it's easily one of the best unsung crime dramas of the last couple decades. A thief gets out of prison after 15 years and goes looking for his lost love, winds up in Banshee, PA. In a pretty crazy turn of events, he assumes the identity of the town's new sheriff. Like Justified, the backdrop of the show is the main character vs the main villain, which stretches across all 4 seasons, but each season has its own overarching crime story/villain as well. Very solid cast and storytelling.
Kingdom might be the least known of these 3 shows, but maybe not on a hockey message board. It aired on The Audience Network, whatever the hell that is. So basically no one saw it. The backdrop is the world of up-and-coming MMA. Frank Grillo and his two sons (Jonathan Tucker and Nick Jonas) run an MMA gym, the sons and their friend (Matt Lauria) are fighters, and the show basically follows their lives. The work the actors put in to sell their MMA prowess is stunning. Tucker is the standout, but all three were convincing in the MMA sequences. Very good show.