Recommendation: The TV Show Damages
It holds up great; I liked it even more on the re-watch
Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, tight plots, good writing, and the main characters deepen and change over its five seasons.
Glenn Close plays Patty Hewes, a brilliant lawyer going after bad guys like a CEO (Ted Danson) who ripped off all his shareholders in a multi-billion dollar scandal. But Patty is a deeply damaged person, on the border of being a sociopath and always cutting ethical corners.
Rose Byrne plays Patty’s protege Ellen who Patti tries to corrupt. Ellen has a love/hate relationship with Patty.
Damages ran from 2007 to 2012. If you saw it then and liked it, enough time has passed that you may be in that perfect zone of being familiar enough with the plots to focus on the characters, but not too familiar that the plot twists won’t entertain.
And if you haven’t seen it, I think it’s better than most anything currently on.
Which shows or movies do you think hold up well for a re-watch or first watch? Put your recommendations in the comments.
One of my inspirations for my Substack was watching the entire Fugitive TV series from the 1960s. It's an incredible program at the intriguing intersection of late noir, spy tropes, and the emerging counterculture and David Janssen is perhaps my favorite TV star of all time!
Mad Men holds up well. And I’ve been thinking of re-watchin “Bad Sisters.” It didn’t get the attention it deserved.