The 100 Greatest TV Performances of the 21st Century

Variety breaks down the best TV performances of the 21st century, from Jeremy Allen White to Emma Stone and Sydney Sweeney.

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When one thinks of the defining TV performances of the past 25 or so years, what comes to mind? For Variety staffers, some of the answers included a teacher-turned-drug kingpin, spies working both for and against the U.S. government — and perhaps the defining comedy character of this long political moment, in part for how dark her will to power becomes.

Quantifying greatness is a tricky thing. Any ranking like this one — which sets out to list the 100 greatest performances of the century so far — is going to make some fans feel slighted. How, for instance, can we compare the work an actor does on a drama to that of the work on a comedy? Is it unfair to place shows long off the air, and thus either burnished or faded by memory, to shows that are still dropping new episodes? And who, in the end, should rank No. 1?

Suffice it to say that this list is meant in the spirit of fun, but it was undertaken with seriousness; Variety staffers debated first the performances we might want on the list and then their placement over the course of many months. We started with certain parameters. In order to define the pool of shows we were working with, we limited ourselves to scripted series that began on or after January 1, 2000. (The years we list on each entry are the years the performance were given, not the years the show ran.) Simon Cowell, for instance, may have given the performance of a lifetime over his seasons of “American Idol,” but scripted TV, it seemed apparent to us, is just a different beast. And Sarah Jessica Parker, James Gandolfini and Sarah Michelle Gellar may have delivered era-defining work well into the 2000s on “Sex and the City,” “The Sopranos” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” but — unfortunately! — there had to be a cut-off somewhere. Starting the clock in the year 2000 focused our attention on work that happened in the wake of the prestige-TV boom that those three shows helped to kick off.

Beyond that, we forced ourselves to include only one performance per show in order to boost the visibility of more series. We all know that the ensemble cast of “Succession” could bulk out most of the Top 10 on this list (at least!); what readers will simply have to imagine is how the argument over which aspirant to the Roy fortune played out over many, many emails and Zooms.

Part of the delight of a project like this is the opportunity to think expansively about what an actor’s greatness can look like. It’s by now, years after their respective hit shows left the air, hardly a surprise that Bryan Cranston and Regina King and Peter Dinklage are gifted actors (and this list wouldn’t be complete without them!). But what about Sydney Sweeney’s prestige-TV-redefining emotional explosions, Niecy Nash’s quietly serene ultracompetence, or Emma Stone’s inside-out depiction of influencer-era vanity? Is it too soon to enter Anna Sawai’s 2024 “Shōgun” performance into the pantheon? And isn’t Michael Emerson’s crucial supporting work on “Lost” as or more utterly integral to that show’s success as any of the leads?

The answer to all of these questions, happily, was “Why not?” Think of this, perhaps, as less of a ranking than a celebration of the great TV we’ve enjoyed from the Golden Age through Peak TV onward into whatever it is that’s going on now — and a declaration of hope that there’ll be more good stuff ahead.

Jeremy Allen White as Carmen Berzatto, “The Bear”  

Image Credit: Courtesy of FX

FX, 2022-present

There’s no one as tightly wound as Carmy. And the second and third seasons of “The Bear” have leaned into exploring what made White’s character the particular way he is — the abuse he suffered both in a dysfunctional family home and in the high-stakes culinary world, the loss of his brother and the gradual decision to close himself off. It’s been an amplification and exploration of one of the defining characters of the past few years, a man who seems to pulsate with coiled rage even when things at the restaurant he runs are going well. White delivers a carefully calibrated and precisely measured performance; when Carmy explodes, it’s been building for a while. And when he allows those around him, the audience and — we can only hope — himself a moment of grace, it feels like an exhalation of relief, however short-lived.  

Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton, “Yellowstone”

Image Credit: Cam McLeod / Paramount Network / Courtesy Everett Collection

Paramount Network, 2018-2024

Even in a world filled with grizzled cowboys, Beth Dutton was always the alpha, unafraid to get in the face of CEOs or cops or scofflaws. After all, anyone who tested her ranch magnate family was asking for a good old-fashioned ass-whuppin’. In the soapy Western “Yellowstone,” Reilly didn’t shy away from playing the glam yet debauched businesswoman as larger than life: In grief, her wails were primal; in a fight, she was an unleashed dog; in a disagreement, barbs rolled poisonously off her tongue. But Reilly maintained an undercurrent of sadness beyond caricature — a woman fighting for her kin because she couldn’t have kids of her own, scrambling for the affection of a father who kept her at arm’s length, chasing a man whose emotions remained buried deep. Sure, her best zingers may have been plastered on sweatshirts for wine-addled fans to wear, but Reilly’s pathos made Beth three-dimensional and unforgettable. 

Brett Goldstein as Roy Kent, “Ted Lasso”

Image Credit: Apple TV+

Apple TV+, 2020–2023

Roy Kent would hate being a part of this list. The foul-mouthed soccer superstar turned foul-mouthed AFC Richmond team captain turned foul-mouthed TV pundit turned foul-mouthed assistant coach was never one for doling out praise. But — as Roy himself might say — too fucking bad, because Goldstein was a fucking genius in this fucking part. He matched Roy’s practiced prickliness with an interior life of quiet compassion and fierce devotion to his family and friends and teammates. On a show with a deep bench of extraordinarily lovable characters, Goldstein was the MVP.

Justin Kirk as Andy Botwin, “Weeds”

Image Credit: Michael Desmond / Showtime / Courtesy Everett Collection

Showtime, 2005-2012

Andy came to “Weeds” a mischievous manchild, a jobless stoner who moved in with his dead brother’s widow Nancy (Mary-Louise Parker) under the guise of being a help around the house. Eventually, though, Andy became a sitcom father figure of sorts, teaching his nephews self-defense and the merits of masturbating into a microwaved banana peel. But after several seasons of following her every whim and bad idea, Andy revealed a new vulnerability, professing his unrequited love for Nancy, a heartbreaking revelation that brought his character far beyond the acerbic slacker we’d first met. Kirk gave both charm and sorrow to the character, aspects that made Andy’s journey of self-actualization a more compelling narrative in “Weeds” than the cartel wars Nancy engaged in.

Katja Herbers as Dr. Kristen Bouchard, “Evil”

Image Credit: Elizabeth Fisher / Paramount+

CBS, 2019-2020; Paramount+, 2021-2024

In the gone-too-soon “Evil,”  created by Robert and Michelle King, Herbers’ Kristen started as a disbelieving, Dana Scully-like character. A forensic psychologist and mother of four daughters, she was the voice of reason in a trio of the Catholic Church assessors who investigated possible supernatural occurrences: possessions, potential demonic activity — you know the kind. But in the finale of the show’s first season, Kristen murdered a killer who had escaped justice —— like, 100% on purpose went to his house to kill him with an ice ax! — and that shocking twist set the character on a new path: Viewers just never knew what Kristen might do. Herbers’ Kristen forged a unique chemistry with all of the other characters, whether she was evincing maternal love for her children, desire (for Mike Colter’s David, the priest in love with her) or loathing (Michael Emerson’s Leland, an aspiring — or maybe actual? — demon). Fun and smart, selfish and sometimes cruel, Kristen as the show’s central character elevated “Evil,” and we are shaking our collective fist that this clever, topical horror drama ran for only four seasons.     

Kelly Bishop as Emily Gilmore, “Gilmore Girls”

Image Credit: The WB

The WB/The CW, 2000-2007; Netflix, 2016

While the mother-daughter bond between Lorelai and Rory Gilmore at the show’s center was roughly a pairing of equals, Bishop’s Emily Gilmore reigned supreme. A woman of a particular class and generation, Emily had a composed viciousness that was often barely contained, primarily when directed toward the perceived flaws of her daughter, Lorelai (Lauren Graham). Still, Emily was not always cold and uncompromising. Glimmers of her inner softness emerged in her burgeoning relationship with her granddaughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel). Their bond allowed Emily to relax, showcasing quirks and even elements of humor that she had long buried under the guise of respectability and self-control.  

Matt Berry as Laszlo Cravensworth, “What We Do in the Shadows”

Image Credit: Russ Martin / FX / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2019-2024

If you’ve watched even a single episode of “What We Do in the Shadows,” you experienced Berry’s otherworldly gift for taking a simple word or phrase — like “Manhattan” or “human orgasm” — and, with a twist of emphasis or sudden vocal trill, turn it into an aria of comic eccentricity. As the baroquely louche vampire Laszlo, Berry was a one-of-a-kind hoot, whether he was playing oblivious nursemaid to a rapidly aging energy vampire (Mark Proksch) or masquerading as worldly-wise bartender Jackie Daytona — from “Tucson, Ari-zon-ia.” 

John Early as Elliott Goss, “Search Party”

Image Credit: Jessica Miglio / TBS / Courtesy Everett Collection

TBS, 2016-2017; Max, 2020-2022

As the hideously dressed and attention-starved Elliott, Early nailed a specific type of urban-dwelling millennial: One who is always thinking about himself but has zero self-awareness, who views even something as dramatic as the search for a missing peer and a subsequent murder trial as an opportunity for self-promotion, who has the misguided impulse toward seeming charitable and the lack of follow-through that results in a nonprofit donating water bottles to Africans — sans water. Five escalatingly absurd seasons of “Search Party” gave Early a lot to play with, like a secret Southern upbringing and a “Crossfire”-like talk show in which Elliott painlessly abandoned his moral core for a pay raise. But what made Elliott the most engrossing character on “Search Party” was Early’s distinctive comedic voice, a knowingly performative timbre that legions of short-form internet comics are indebted to, yet none have quite matched.

Cate Blanchett as Phyllis Schlafly, “Mrs. America”

Image Credit: Sabrina Lantos / FX / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2020

This underrated series was a cross-section of the feminist movement in its second wave, as its leaders tried and failed to pass a constitutional amendment barring sex-based discrimination in the early 1970s. But the show’s center of gravity, and insurmountable obstacle, was Phyllis Schlafly, a fire-breathing crusader and walking contradiction who empowered herself by opposing women’s empowerment. Just five years prior, in the film “Carol,” Blanchett’s Carol Aird showed a softer, subversive side to mid-century suburban womanhood. In “Mrs. America,” Schlafly pitted herself against Rose Byrne’s Gloria Steinem, Margo Martindale’s Bella Abzug and Uzo Aduba’s Shirley Chisholm, among others. Thanks to her ferocity and charisma, we believe Blanchett’s Schlafly not just as their cumulative equal, but their tactical superior.

Himesh Patel as Jeevan Chaudhary, “Station Eleven”

Image Credit: HBO

Max, 2021-2022

The characters on “Station Eleven,” the moving limited series based on Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, have lived through the end of the world. And perhaps no other actor on the show’s deep bench made you feel that more sharply than Patel. Thrown by chance into guarding an abandoned child (Matilda Lawler) as a deadly pandemic closes in, Patel’s Jeevan opened the series in a state of sheer survival mode, stockpiling food and keeping a watchful eye on his charge. The exhaustion and frustration of living through the end times wore on Jeevan, and Patel showed us the reluctance within this hero. Landing as it did in late 2021, with COVID lockdowns fresh in memory, the series was both jarring and humane, and Patel’s work lent it real charge and emotion. 

Cristin Milioti as Tracy McConnell, “How I Met Your Mother”

Image Credit: CBS

CBS, 2013–2014

The main cast of “How I Met Your Mother” is up there with “Cheers,” “Friends” and “Living Single” as a perfect network sitcom ensemble, an alchemy of smart casting and unexpected chemistry that shined brightest when all of the actors shared the same scene. Which made Milioti’s impact as the long, long, loooooong-awaited Mother in the final season that much more of a miracle. She took a character who’d existed as an abstracted plot device for eight seasons and transformed her into a vibrant, funny, heartfelt person with such disarming charm that she somehow exceeded fans’ impossibly high expectations. Milioti was so captivating as the Mother, in fact, that the decision to kill her off in the series finale — so that Ted (Josh Radnor) could end up with Robin (Cobie Smulders), which had always been the producers’ plan — still lives in infamy as one of the most ill-conceived endings ever for a beloved show. Instead, let’s say this finale’s legacy was launching Milioti into a career of superlative, scene-stealing work, from the “USS Callister” episode of “Black Mirror” to her ferocious performance on “The Penguin.”

Tichina Arnold as Rochelle Rock, “Everybody Hates Chris”

Image Credit: Richard Cartwright / 3 Arts Entertainment / Courtesy Everett Collection

UPN, 2005-2006; The CW, 2006-2009 

In truth, everybody loved Chris (Tyler James Williams). But when there’s always another bill to pay, dysfunction makes love look different, and no one on Chris Rock’s semi-autobiographical sitcom embodied the strains of domestic life more than Arnold’s Rochelle. As the Rock family matriarch, Rochelle had it the hardest; she was expected to cook, clean and keep everyone’s shoes on their feet on top of having a job of her own. Rochelle delivered on those responsibilities without fail and without thanks, so her constant threats and orders felt justified. Still, Arnold found ways to strip back the performance — not only in quiet moments sitting at the edge of Chris’ bed or at the kitchen table with Julius (Terry Crews) after the kids were asleep, but with a surprising core of tenderness buried within her admonishments. She may have had a harder edge than other TV parents, but Rochelle’s this-hurts-me-more-than-it-hurts-you sentiments always felt true, and shot through with love.

Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore, “Ozark”

Image Credit: Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Netflix, 2017-2022

To be clear, Ruth Langmore — the brilliant, dirt-poor teenager whose talents Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) discovered as he began his criminal career in a resort town in Missouri — was a pretty absurd, thoroughly unrealistic creation. But boy, did she liven up “Ozark.” Marty and Wendy Byrde (Laura Linney) were grim and humorless, and Ruth, with her foul mouth (“I don’t know shit about fuck”) and pithy insults (“I wouldn’t fuck you if your dick were made out of gold”) was both the Netflix crime drama’s comic relief and its heart. Marty and Wendy were cold people, but Ruth ran hot all the time — and once she finally figured out that they’d never be loyal to her, her days were numbered. Garner deservedly won three drama supporting actress Emmys for “Ozark,” and she created a truly unforgettable character that lifted the show up from miserabilism. 

Kyle MacLachlan as Special Agent Dale Cooper, Dougie Jones and others, “Twin Peaks: The Return”

Image Credit: Courtesy of Showtime

Showtime, 2017

MacLachlan served as a muse for the late, great American director David Lynch, whose 17-part opus “Twin Peaks: The Return” marked the culmination, and eerily apt conclusion, of a decades-long creative partnership. On the original run of “Twin Peaks,” MacLachlan played Special Agent Dale Cooper, a Boy Scout of a G-man confronting the forces of darkness in rural Washington State; more than a quarter-century later, he played a Cooper reduced to babbling incoherence by interdimensional travel, but with his fundamental decency still intact. Cooper’s doppelgänger, Dougie Jones, in his signature lime-green suit, was a slapstick turn for the ages, while Cooper, who returns to himself in a scene of shattering emotion, packed pathos into a precious few episodes of agonizingly delayed screen time. MacLachlan’s haunting delivery of the series’ final line — “What year is it?” — still echoes in one’s subconscious.

Renée Elise Goldsberry as Wickie Roy, “Girls5eva”

Image Credit: Emily V. Aragones / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Peacock, 2021-2022; Netflix, 2024

A pop group isn’t a pop group without a diva. And Wickie Roy was that diva. Goldsberry, a Tony winner for the utterly earnest “Hamilton,” proved she could handle arch and often surrealist humor, as Wickie endured all manner of petty slights as she and her bandmates attempted to reclaim their 1990s glory. The years out of the spotlight had done little to dim Wickie’s self-belief: Like a Norma Desmond whose glory days were on MTV’s “TRL,” she knew she was still big. The subtle balancing act of Goldsberry’s work here, though, was that Wickie’s enduring sense of her own stardom, while hilarious, was never mocked. Indeed, listening to her crisp diction and watching the steel in her spine as she prepared to conquer another stage, one almost believes that she’ll make it.

Stellan Skarsgård as Luthen Rael, “Andor”

Image Credit: Lucasfilm Ltd.

Disney+, 2022–present

On this exhilaratingly intelligent — and eerily well-timed — “Star Wars” series about building a revolution against fascism, Skarsgård plays a man fueled by his rage against the Galactic Empire who cannot ever let himself fully express it. Instead, Skarsgård betrays Luthen’s feelings in finely calibrated micro-expressions, as he manages the fragile factions of the nascent rebellion and recruits disillusioned thief Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) to join it. It’s only when one of Luthen’s moles in the Empire demands to know what he has possibly sacrificed that Skarsgård finally takes the lid off. “I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them,” he says, his eyes burning with pain and regret and anger. “I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see!” It’s a monologue for the ages, proving that the Force is clearly with Skarsgård. 

Ilana Glazer as Ilana Wexler, “Broad City”

Image Credit: Comedy Central / Courtesy Everett Collection

Comedy Central, 2014-2019

Sexually aggressive, perpetually stoned and irrationally confident, no one personified the id of Obama-era millennial women like the co-protagonist of webseries-turned-basic cable hit “Broad City.” Broke New Yorkers Abbi and Ilana, named for Glazer and their creative partner Abbi Jacobson, were a Laverne and Shirley for the post-recession age. But within this partnership of comedic equals, it was Glazer’s Ilana who helped “Broad City” break into the zeitgeist. Her arrested development (“I’m 27, Lincoln — what am I, a child bride?”), perpetual quotability (“In da clerb, we all fam!”) and occasional offensiveness (“Sometimes you’re so anti-racist that you’re like, really racist”) made Ilana an accessible kind of aspirational being. Maybe that’s why “Broad City” has had such an extended afterlife of its social media, despite being so clearly of its time and place: We can’t all live as loud and proud as Ilana, but we can carry her with us as a patron saint of libidinous enthusiasm.

Steven Yeun as Danny Cho, “Beef”

Image Credit: Andrew Cooper / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Netflix, 2023

“Beef,” about a feud that destroys two lives, required two great performances. And together, Yeun and Ali Wong delivered an acting duet par excellence, but it was Yeun’s Danny who undertook the greater journey. His subterfuges, as he tried to destroy his archenemy (Wong, whose character had the audacity to flip him off in a road-rage incident early in the premiere), were more extreme, and his engagement with the Korean evangelical church provided the show its meatiest thematic elements. In all, the most intriguing aspect of the series was something that Yeun in particular illuminated: The idea that deep enmity is not about hatred but about one’s own pain. Danny, dealing with money troubles and a fundamental aimlessness, found in Amy a place to project all his self-loathing. 

Lamorne Morris as Winston Bishop, “New Girl”

Image Credit: Ray Mickshaw / Fox / Courtesy Everett Collection

Fox, 2011-2018

The ensemble of “New Girl” was greater than the sum of its parts — the chemistry the characters shared enabled abject absurdity, even if each individual character felt like someone you could meet in real life. All except one. As the only resident of apartment 4D who wasn’t present in the pilot, Morris’ Winston flew slightly under the radar in the earlier seasons, which allowed him to wear certain quirks — still believing in Santa as an adult, for example — with ease. But by Season 3, he had become a vehicle for the writers’ wildest whims, constantly expanding the jokes the show could pull off. A man who doesn’t discover his colorblindness until his 30s and may or may not perceive his own skin as green? Sure. Morris played Winston, believably, as always a beat behind, meaning that anything was possible.

Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon, “Fosse/Verdon”

Image Credit: ©FX Networks/Courtesy:Everett Collection / Everett Collection

FX, 2019

Over the course of its run, “Fosse/Verdon” bloomed into an examination of what it means to live a theatrical life, and Williams brought such an existence into vibrant, colorful reality. Her Gwen Verdon — the real-life stage performer in a lifelong personal and creative entanglement with the director Bob Fosse (Sam Rockwell) — felt so deeply that she could not help expressing herself through movement. It was as though she was bursting: with heartbreak, with thwarted love, with art that she was desperate to make. 

Al Pacino as Roy Cohn, “Angels in America”

Image Credit: HBO

HBO, 2003 

The HBO adaptation of Tony Kushner’s epic two-part play was a capital-E Event of the sort that TV too rarely makes anymore. The series’ stellar cast, tasked with bringing to life a phantasmagorical exploration of the AIDS crisis in this country, included heavy hitters like Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson and emerging stars like Patrick Wilson, a pre-“Weeds” Mary-Louise Parker and Jeffrey Wright. Calling any one performer best in show here feels ludicrous, but it’s Pacino’s rageful, embittered power attorney who sticks, spikily, in memory, both as an elegant way to harness Pacino’s particular bigness as an actor and for the journey Cohn takes from resentment to a kind of far-too-late remorse. 

Allison Williams as Marnie Michaels, “Girls”

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2012-2017

In the years since “Girls” left the air, its stature has only grown. Removed from the heat of media glare that accompanied its first run, many viewers seem to be discovering that it’s not just a meme — it’s an excellent show. And perhaps no actor gleams more brightly upon a rewatch than Williams. Taken in full, her work as alpha gallerina Marnie reveals itself as a shrewdly calibrated and wickedly funny dissection of what, back in the 2010s, we called the “girlboss.” Keenly attuned to the failings of others and yet utterly blind to her own vanities and delusions, Marnie was buoyed through life by heedless self-confidence. And when — as happens throughout one’s 20s — she was confronted with reality, as when her attempt to restage an old relationship for one magical night fell apart, we saw a big performance shrink into quiet sorrow. 

Naya Rivera as Santana Lopez, “Glee”

Image Credit: Fox

Fox, 2009-2015

The William McKinley High School Glee Club’s members tended to go either full camp (Lea Michele) or utterly, sympathetically earnest (the late Cory Monteith). But Rivera’s Santana could do it all. She relished the art of a bitchy bon mot inserted to add chaos every time the show’s conflicts wrapped up in too neat a bow, but she also made sure the character never appeared unfeeling. Case in point: In the show’s tribute episode to Monteith, who died in 2013, Santana landed a cruel dig at his character’s weight before launching into a note-perfect rendition of “If I Die Young” that ended in hysterical tears. It was a harrowing and moving scene, even before Rivera’s own untimely passing in 2020 lent new resonance.

Penn Badgley as Joe Goldberg, “You”

Image Credit: Beth Dubber / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Lifetime, 2018; Netflix, 2019-present

The secret of Badgley’s performance at the center of the stalker thriller “You” is that Joe Goldberg barely speaks with anyone, but his interior monologue — delivered in Badgley’s baritone voice-over — lets the viewer in on his demented thoughts. Badgley’s Joe is the constant in “You,” which became a phenomenon on Netflix after Lifetime canceled it after its first season. The show works only because Badgley’s layered charms and likeable nature play against Joe’s madness; with just one season left, Joe’s sick mind is further deteriorating, not healing. Which is saying something, because he’s been a stalker and murderer since Season 1! 

Michaela Jaé Rodriguez as Blanca Evangelista, “Pose”

Image Credit: JoJo Whilden / FX / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2018-2021

Rodriguez was the first transgender woman to receive a major acting nomination at the Emmys and even won a Golden Globe; the honors came as a result of one of this era’s most soulful and sweet performances. As Blanca, the mother of the House of Evangelista in the New York ballroom scene of the 1980s and 1990s, Rodriguez took a tough-love approach with her charges, pushing them to be their best and to stay safe. Rodriguez is a Berklee-trained musician, and showed her chops in one indelible early scene in which she and Pray Tell (Billy Porter) serenaded the residents of an AIDS hospital floor with Diana Ross’ “Home,” a song about seeking and finally finding a sense of belonging. Rodriguez’s vocals soared, and conveyed the message with a simple, easy clarity: Blanca worked, each day, to create a home in a hostile world.

Nicole Kidman as Celeste Wright, “Big Little Lies”

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2017-2019

The Nicole Kidman pulp-prestige series is by now a subgenre unto itself. And the template was set with the very best example of her small-screen work. In this adaptation of Liane Moriarty’s novel, Kidman — bolstered by a fantastic ensemble that included Reese Witherspoon and Laura Dern, among others — pushed herself to astonishing extremes. This was true both in scenes where Celeste is experiencing domestic violence and in moments where, as a therapy patient, she is justifying to herself why she is to blame for the ongoing assault. While the show’s second season represented a significant step down in quality, Kidman’s work remained precise, as her Celeste began to find her footing in the wake of her late husband’s death. Celeste, as written, was a fundamentally intelligent person in an impossible situation; Kidman’s great achievement was showing us the way she tries to think herself out of her marriage and her grief. Gifted though she is, Kidman can’t always elevate the TV material she chooses to the status of great art — but she did so here.  

Kaitlyn Dever as Marie Adler, “Unbelievable”

Image Credit: Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Netflix, 2019

Dever would go on to deliver a masterful, painfully wrought performance as an opioid addict in 2021’s “Dopesick” and will, later this year, appear on “The Last of Us.” But the first of her major TV turns was on this Netflix limited series, where she played a displaced young woman whose allegation of sexual assault ends up wildly backfiring, as she becomes a social-media pariah and is criminally charged with making a false report. Toni Collette and Merritt Wever are also excellent as the police detectives seeking to aid Marie, but this series — based on real-world reporting — is Dever’s tour de force. She beautifully conveys just how destabilizing it is to tell the truth, and then to have no one believe you.

Rami Malek as Elliot Alderson, “Mr. Robot”

Image Credit: Michael Parmalee / USA Network / Courtesy Everett Collection

USA, 2015-2019

Malek played a paranoid vigilante who delivers justice only to those he deems deserving: In an era of superhero narratives, this warps and refracts our understanding of the genre. Perhaps his superpower was a sort of hyper-vigilance: Behind his stoic, unimpressed appearance, Elliot, a hacker who undertook no less than a complete restructuring of society, was constantly assessing what was in front of him, analyzing others for lies and inconsistencies as a way to slither into the cracks in their facades. The canny trick of “Mr. Robot” was how it contrasted Elliot’s inner monologue, which revealed his surprisingly vulnerable self, with his flat and bland exterior. The performance had a quiet but building intensity, one that compelled us to root Elliot on even as he crossed into what, when we’re not under his spell, we can concede looked a lot like madness.

Patricia Clarkson as Adora Crellin, “Sharp Objects”

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2018

Amy Adams’ journalist character Camille Preaker — alternately playing clear-minded horror at the story she’s investigating and a sort of mad delirium — is this show’s agent of chaos. But Clarkson’s Adora provides its backbone. A rigid-minded socialite who’s perpetually scandalized by her daughter Camille’s addiction, her self-destructiveness and most of all her reportorial nosiness, Clarkson plays Adora as if in possession of iron fists within lace gloves. Camille broke free of her small town but finds herself drawn back to it to investigate a crime; Adora, by contrast, sits at the town’s very center, in utter control of all that surrounds her. The second of two collaborations between the late director Jean-Marc Vallée and HBO, after “Big Little Lies,” “Sharp Objects” has a shrewd, nasty understanding of what makes us tick, and Clarkson’s depiction of Adora’s cunning and her cruelty is among the show’s great achievements.

Antony Starr as Homelander, “The Boys” 

Image Credit: Jan Thijs / Amazon / Courtesy Everett Collection

Amazon Prime Video, 2019-present

On “The Boys,” Starr plays Homelander as Superman with a psychotic, sadistic streak; he’s Captain America, if Cap had been bred in a lab to be a serial killer. He’s also a stand-in for Donald Trump, as demonstrated by his desire for absolute power and fealty, and the deep well of insecurity that fuels his violent temper and nihilism. In another actor’s hands, Homelander — who likes nursing from the women in his life, as if he’s their baby — would be a joke, a caricature. He’d be ridiculous. But Starr projects Homelander’s brilliance more than anything else. He’s cunning, and he can see through people: right before he incinerates them with his laser eyes, that is. 

Ty Burrell as Phil Dunphy, “Modern Family”

Image Credit: Colleen Hayes / ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

ABC, 2009-2020

The clueless sitcom dad has existed as long as there have been TV comedies, but Burrell brought the form to new heights. His Phil was painfully desperate for approval — from his children (Sarah Hyland, Ariel Winter and Nolan Gould), whom he tried to approach as equals; from his father-in-law (Ed O’Neill), who disdained him; and from his wife (Julie Bowen), with whom he had a tense relationship. The cleverness of Phil as a character, and the aspect that seemed near impossible to sustain for 11 seasons, was the degree to which he was oblivious to it all. Each new episode represented another opportunity to win over his family, to prove that he really was a cool dad. Phil helped justify the show’s title: Parenting as an attempt to impress one’s kids was a 21st-century invention, and Burrell portrayed Phil’s insecurity with tactical, sharp wit.

Issa Rae as Issa Dee, “Insecure”

Image Credit: HBO

HBO, 2016-2021

Unsurprisingly, given the series’ title, Rae’s character on “Insecure” spent a lot of time psyching herself up. Work, relationships and — crucially — friendships were a struggle for Issa Dee, and, looking in the mirror and rapping at herself to find some semblance of confidence, Rae provided a master class in contrast. Suddenly, the meek and soft-spoken Issa was gone — only to return a scene later. Rae, who co-created the show (and based it, in part, on her web series “The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl”), turned Issa Dee into an avatar for the entire micro-generation who graduated college into late-aughts precarity. But the character is a woman all her own, too. Special mention, when considering the show and its legacy, should go to Rae’s frequent scene partner Yvonne Orji; the season in which the best friends experience a profound estrangement makes painfully clear just how natural their friendship had been to that point. 

David Harbour as Jim Hopper, “Stranger Things”

Image Credit: Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Netflix, 2016-present

“Stranger Things” has made stars out of many members of its junior ensemble, but the grown-ups deliver the performances most worth sticking around for. Harbour gives Jim, a police chief seemingly outmatched by the supernatural forces tormenting Hawkins, Ind., a lived-in intensity and grit that adds dimension without feeling out of place on a show that centers precocious kids. (His backstory, as a grieving father who, for a time, medicated his pain with alcohol, is felt throughout the show. But, through Harbour’s refusal to go too big in the performance, this sorrow is treated with a delicacy and even grace.) And as “Stranger Things” continues, the depth of Jim’s bonds with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Joyce (Winona Ryder) keep the series grounded, even as surreality reigns. 

Kaitlin Olson as Deandra Reynolds, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”

Image Credit: Prashant Gupta / FXX / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2005-present

Everyone who watches “It’s Always Sunny” will have their favorite performer, and there are arguments for each — the riotous mania of Charlie Day, the sociopathic sangfroid of Glenn Howerton, the acerbic ringleader energy of Rob McElhenney. Yet it’s Olson whose go-anywhere-for-the-joke instincts have lent the venerable sitcom some of its finest moments. Her Dee is that perfect comic combination of egotistical and deeply ignorant — all carried across by a star who, without ever winking at the audience, makes clear that she is in on the joke.

Angela Bassett as Marie Laveau, “American Horror Story: Coven”

Image Credit: FX

FX, 2013-2014

“You dealing with the HBIC now.” Though Bassett has portrayed different characters over several seasons of “American Horror Story,” her Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, remains the most enduring. Bassett brought her own commanding tone to the Senegalese twist-wearing character, based on a real-life 19th-century voodoo practitioner and always more than willing to spill blood, torture or enact revenge when it suited her goal of climbing to the top of the supernatural heap. Bassett toggled between anguish and self-assurance; the audience sided with Marie even when she was dead wrong. The immortal, vengeful Marie was timeless, and she was vicious. 

Marcia Cross as Bree Van de Kamp, “Desperate Housewives” 

Image Credit: Ron Tom / ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

ABC, 2004-2012

“Desperate Housewives” was an instant breakout, and much of its early success was owed to perhaps the most desperate of its cast — and certainly the one who felt the most like a prototypical Stepford housewife. Cross played Bree as an unhinged perfectionist, aiming for demure Martha Stewart elegance but often landing in gun-toting mania. Though Bree presented herself as perfect, Cross offered glimmers of cracks in her pristine image; Bree’s obsession with appearances devolved, often and revealingly, into mania. Bree could have been depicted as a one-dimensional creature of suburbia, but she slowly freed herself of the expectations that had left her caged for so long. With her red hair always elegantly styled, she eventually lightened up, letting us see glimpses of the heart, humor and self-awareness beneath the facade. 

Elizabeth Olsen as Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, “WandaVision” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of Marvel Studios

Disney+, 2021

In her initial film appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff struck a memorable but tertiary presence — powerful and distinct, but little seen. She finally took center stage in “WandaVision,” in which Wanda processed the death of her beloved Vision (Paul Bettany) by transforming a small New Jersey town and its residents into a television fantasyland steeped in the tropes of family sitcoms from the past 70 years. Olsen nimbly embodies a catalog of heightened comedic acting styles stretching from “The Dick Van Dyke Show” to “Modern Family” while also channeling Wanda’s profound sorrow — while also playing the most powerful witch in the world. As if by magic, she conjures a singular portrait of how grief can overwhelm our sense of ourselves.

Janelle James as Ava Coleman, “Abbott Elementary”

Image Credit: Gilles Mingasson / ABC / Disney

ABC, 2021–present

For some, it’s when Ava — the clout-chasing, fashion-forward principal of the titular Philadelphia primary school — is laughing so hard at second grade teacher Janine Teagues (Quinta Brunson) that she tumbles out of her chair. For others, it’s when Ava expresses her disbelief that sixth-grade teacher Jacob Hill (Chris Perfetti) has a boyfriend by saying, “So he knew you and then was like, ‘More.’” But no matter when it happens, James wins you over utterly. The actress takes a character who is, on paper, one of the worst principals ever on TV and remolds her into an irresistibly vivacious comic presence. That has come with some real growth. Over the seasons, Ava has flourished into being a dedicated educator without losing an ounce of her iconoclastic charisma — thanks to the fusion of the show’s A-plus writing and James’ extra-credit performance. 

Frances Conroy as Ruth Fisher, “Six Feet Under” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2001-2005

Later one of the most reliable players in the “American Horror Story” franchise, Conroy emerged as a TV star on “Six Feet Under,” bringing a tremulous, haunted energy to the show’s dysfunctional funeral home-owning family. As they recovered from their father’s death, Ruth Fisher’s three children barreled forward, pursuing distraction at all costs; Conroy showed us, in Ruth, what it looks like to be truly lost. Dowdy and downbeat, Ruth felt out of place and out of time; having built her life around her identity as a mother and wife, she had to find a way to reinvent herself with her husband gone and her children grown. Her coming into her own happened gradually, in fits and starts; a scene in which, somehow invited to an upscale Hollywood party, she made the faux pas of bringing homemade potato salad lives on in lurid memory as much as any of the show’s episode-opening death scenes. “Six Feet Under” was about mortality, and the passage of time; in Ruth, the show depicted a character beginning to realize that it was not too late for her to experience life. 

Michael Emerson as Ben Linus, “Lost”

Image Credit: ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

ABC, 2006-2010

It’s hard to believe, in retrospect, that Emerson didn’t appear on “Lost” until the 14th episode of Season 2, given how instrumental he and his character ultimately were to the show’s mythology. Emerson was originally slated only to appear in a handful of “Lost” episodes — but once he hit the screen, the producers embraced his presence and changed the show’s destiny. As Ben Linus, the leader of the “Others,” Emerson portrayed a villain whose actions were often diabolical even when his motives were ambiguous. He could be cold and calculated — then switch on a dime to be irrational, petty and jealous. No “Lost” character goes through more of a transformation than Ben, whose childhood trauma turned him into a mass murderer (he helped kill the entire Dharma Initiative population, after all) and then a cult leader before ultimately helping save the island. The fact that Emerson could pull off such a complex, rich contradiction of a character was enough to earn him the Emmy for supporting drama actor in 2009. 

Chloë Sevigny as Nicolette Grant, “Big Love”  

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2006-2011

An indie-film darling and — lately — a staple of Ryan Murphy’s acting company, Sevigny has lived several lives as a screen performer. But Nicolette Grant may be her most lasting achievement. The second of three wives to polygamist Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton), Nicolette was a power broker in floor-length skirts, making the process of triangulation as painful and challenging as possible for the sister wives she disdained. Jeanne Tripplehorn and Ginnifer Goodwin played the women in the unfortunate position of going through life with Nicky, whose insistence on claiming her fair share of family resources (and then some) was rooted both in a compelling, dramatic narcissism and in her status as polygamist royalty. Nicky’s family ties to fundamentalist compound leader Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), and the trauma she carried, made for one of the show’s most intriguing elements.

Rachel Bloom as Rebecca Bunch, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” 

Image Credit: The CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

The CW, 2015-2019 

As the co-creator, star and co-songwriter of the CW series “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” Bloom delivered on all creative fronts. But her performance as lawyer Rebecca Bunch, who abandoned her high-strung New York life to pursue a childhood crush in the exurbs of L.A., is worth singling out on its own. Bloom’s manic portrait of a woman cloaking her mental health struggles in cultural myths around love and romance was a high-wire act sustained for four seasons. In her pursuit of sweet-natured himbo Josh Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III), Rebecca was clearly troubled, but not a cautionary tale, which  allows the show to comment on various tropes without succumbing to them. Fantastical song sequences helped “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” make its point, highlighting Bloom’s musical and comedy chops in equal measure. One could pick a track at random and stay humming it for the rest of the day. 

Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lecter, “Hannibal” 

Image Credit: NBC / Courtesy Everett Collection

NBC, 2013-2015

What would the Devil actually look like? Surely as elegant, seductive and subtly malevolent as Mikkelsen’s take on fiction’s most notorious serial killer. While watching “Hannibal,” the macabre fairy tale that miraculously aired for three seasons on NBC, Anthony Hopkins’ Oscar-winning performance in “The Silence of the Lambs” faded from memory. Whether conducting therapy, cooking an elaborate meal of long pig or simply vibing out with Hugh Dancy’s super-empath investigator Will Graham, Mikkelsen’s Lecter was sophistication personified, giving us the cannibal as refined apex predator. The Danish star broke out internationally as Bond antagonist Le Chiffre in “Casino Royale,” and while “Hannibal” cemented his reputation as a villain performer for the ages, the show also made him a romantic lead. When Hannibal and Will tumbled into the ocean together in the series finale, their ultimate fates were unknown — but the fall into the sea is a consumption and a consummation. 

Danny Pudi as Abed Nadir, “Community” 

Image Credit: Justin Lubin / NBC / Courtesy Everett Collection

NBC, 2009-2014; Yahoo! Screen, 2015

There’s committing to the bit, and then there’s what Pudi did as he built out the inner world of socially awkward cinephile Abed. Perhaps the weirdest comedy to ever air on a major broadcaster, “Community” had a structure that was constantly in flux, veering from stop-motion Christmas hellscapes to simultaneous explorations of parallel universes years before multiverse movies became Hollywood’s hottest ticket. It couldn’t have pulled that off without Abed. Unlike his fellow students at Greendale Community College, Abed always seemed to know he and his friends were in a TV show. Pudi’s embrace of that conceit was intensely self-aware but never cynical — a balance that kept “Community” miraculously aloft for six seasons.

Pamela Adlon as Sam Fox, “Better Things”  

Image Credit: FX / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2016-2022

“Better Things” began its life as a continuation of sorts of Adlon’s collaboration with Louis C.K. on “Louie.” But after news broke in 2017 of C.K.’s alleged sexual misconduct, for which he admitted blame and apologized, FX cut ties with him, and it became clear: “Better Things” had been Adlon’s show all along. Her Sam Fox — like Adlon, an actress entering middle age and fighting her way through the industry’s biases — was largely seen at home, attempting to decompress while her three daughters pull her close and, heartbreakingly, push her away. (In particular, Adlon’s acting duet with future “Anora” star Mikey Madison, playing eldest Fox daughter Max, was a painful documentation of how parental love evolves as one’s child enters the world.) There seemed not quite to be any place for Sam, and yet the world, and her family, wanted almost more than she can give. The “almost” was crucial: In the end, Sam’s life, like Adlon’s bighearted performance, was a sustained act of generosity. 

Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin, “Battlestar Galactica”

Image Credit: SyFy Channel

Sci-Fi Channel, 2004-2009 

When “Battlestar Galactica” began with the android Cylons annihilating almost all of humanity, McDonnell, in just a few wordless moments, captured the dizzying terror of Secretary of Education Laura Roslin catapulting from 43rd in the line of succession to president of the 50,000 survivors left scattered across a few dozen starships. Over the ensuing four seasons, McDonnell left no corner of Roslin unexplored, from the flinty grit she found within herself to become a true leader to the ache and fury of her yearslong battle with cancer. Roslin faced down horrific choices and punishing defeats with a fortitude that sometimes surprised even herself, but McDonnell never let us forget just how human — how fallible and frail — she also could be.

Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow, “Alias” 

Image Credit: ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

ABC, 2001-2006

In the later seasons of this spy serial, the opening credits featured a dizzying montage of the wigs and costumes Sydney Bristow wore in order to manipulate her way into any situation. It was an achievement of aesthetics, but also of performance: Garner, in her first major role, convinced you that Sydney was such a superspy that she could fool just about anyone. She also never lost sight of the woman underneath it all: Sydney’s quest wasn’t just to figure out what was going on with the Rambaldi device (a supernatural MacGuffin never resolved in a satisfactory way). It was to gain revenge on those in the spy world who’d deceived her, and to then find a way out of the game. The odd character detail that Sydney balanced spying with a graduate-level study of literature came to make sense: For all the spectacle of “Alias,” it featured at its center a performance of exquisite, novelistic shading. 

Tituss Burgess as Titus Andromedon, “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” 

Image Credit: Eric Liebowitz / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Netflix, 2015-2020

Titus Andromedon is a classic Tina Fey creation: An actor seeking fame in Fey and co-creator Robert Carlock’s surrealist New York, he’s a diva in perpetual pursuit of a stage. The show’s protagonist, Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) was attempting to rebuild her life after emerging from a cult; Titus represented the delights and delusions of the wider world, and his disdain for Kimmy’s naive approach to life was a clever comic idea. But as the show went on, Titus stepped into his own as a one-man delivery system for the series’ loopiest jokes. Few actors have been quite as skilled as Burgess at delivering Fey and Carlock’s dense, rhythmically complex lines, and Burgess also nailed the wistful, optimistic tone that sets “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” apart from its creators’ other work. Titus knew he was destined for success. He just had to keep performing, even if his audience was only one odd former cult member. 

Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, “Downton Abbey” 

Image Credit: PBS / Courtesy Everett Collection

PBS (first aired in the U.K. on ITV), 2011-2016

“What is a weekend?” It’s the line that cemented “Downton Abbey” as a quick-burning cultural obsession, in large part due to the topspin of disdain lent to it by Smith, the legendary British thespian who died in 2024. The dowager countess, a woman whose entire life has been structured around her taste for leisure, doesn’t know what sort of person has a week segmented into workdays and off days — and, frankly, she wouldn’t care to. Reuniting with screenwriter Julian Fellowes, whose “Gosford Park” also saw Smith play a snobbish member of the early-20th-century British upper crust, the actress managed to make this role feel entirely new, in part because it’s not entirely poisonous. The dowager countess has, behind her contempt, a deep reserve of sympathy and love for her family — one that requires them often to wade through pretension and fend off sarcastic remarks, but one that is real.

Ken Leung as Eric Tao, “Industry”  

Image Credit: Simon Ridgway / HBO

HBO, 2020-present

With its cast of young Brits dabbling in sex and drugs, HBO’s “Industry” earned early comparisons to “Skins.” But its central relationship, between Leung’s senior banker Eric Tao and new associate Harper Stern (Myha’la), is straight out of “Mad Men.” Like Don and Peggy, Eric and Harper recognize one another as upstart outsiders within a hidebound institution. While Harper aggressively scrambles for a foothold on the corporate ladder, Leung’s Eric is an embattled middle manager, stalking the trading floor with a baseball bat in hand to assert dominance over his underlings while scrambling to manage up to his superiors. The live-wire energy of “Industry” is enhanced by its electronic score and the characters’ free-flowing substance use, but the tone originates with Leung’s jittery take on a midlife crisis. The actor is a veteran setting the standard for his junior colleagues, just like Eric.

Susie Essman as Susie Greene, “Curb Your Enthusiasm” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2000-2024

No one screams “motherfucker” like Essman. Larry David may have been the ringmaster of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but over nearly a quarter-century, it was Essman who most memorably seized the opportunity afforded by its loose, improv-heavy structure. As the wife of Larry’s manager, Essman was an eternal voice of reason — if that voice were more of a howling screech dressing down her husband and her unwelcome houseguest for their latest act of dipshittery. Somehow, Susie’s increasingly clownish outfits never detracted from her ability to put the fear of God in those on the wrong end of her ire. To watch her break down exactly why Larry’s admittedly antisocial behavior offends her is to watch an artist in her element. 

Anna Sawai as Toda Mariko, “Shōgun”

Image Credit: Katie Yu / FX

FX, 2024

If the conflicts throughout “Shōgun” — between Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Hiroyuki Sanada) and the rest of Japan’s leadership, between Japan and the encroaching West, between honor and duty — were a massive, swirling storm, then Sawai’s exquisite performance as Lady Mariko sat at that tempest’s center. So often, Mariko’s position as a highborn, Catholic convert tasked with translating for English sailor John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) meant she understood more about what was really happening than anyone around her. But the strict emotional austerity of her political role meant Sawai could register Mariko’s feelings — including her thwarted desire to join her disgraced family through ritual suicide — only with the slightest of gestures. There were scenes in which Sawai communicated a chasm of yearning, rancor and guilt through a flicker in her eyes. So when her facade finally did crack wide open, we felt every bit of the emotion that was unleashed.

Sarah Goldberg as Sally Reed, “Barry” 

Image Credit: Merrick Morton / HBO

HBO, 2018-2023

Throughout its run, “Barry” charted its titular hit man’s desperation to redeem himself, but it was clear by the final season that his attempts at change were futile. It was Sally, Barry’s acting classmate (and later wife) who really transformed. In the early seasons, Goldberg conveyed Sally’s Hollywood ambitions as an endearing, sympathetic delusion. Watching her fall for Barry, knowing that she’d eventually have to learn who he really was, was one of the show’s most dread-inducing storylines early on. But it was a further gut punch to see her morals unravel well before Barry’s own reckoning; some small measure of career success drove her to monstrous outbursts against the people who had supported her. The two leads’ paths intersected at a place of inhumanity: By the time Barry revealed himself as a murderer, Goldberg’s Sally was almost as hollow as he was.

William Jackson Harper as Chidi Anagonye, “The Good Place” 

Image Credit: Justin Lubin / NBC / Courtesy Everett Collection

NBC, 2016-2020

In “The Good Place,” four recently deceased people contended with how their actions on Earth affected their experiences in the afterlife, a conceit that served as a hilariously inventive engine to explore the ethics of human behavior. It certainly helped that one of those people, Harper’s Chidi, was a professor of moral philosophy fluent in the varied precepts of Kant, Aristotle and Kierkegaard. But Jackson also turned Chidi into a comic dervish of paralyzed indecision: What good is it to know all the possible right answers if you can’t commit to one? As he and Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) grew from assigned soulmates into real ones, Harper dug deep within Chidi to reveal a man of deep feeling tucked within a brittle shell of nerves.

Christina Applegate as Jen Harding, “Dead to Me” 

Image Credit: Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Netflix, 2019-2022

In creator Liz Feldman’s “Dead to Me,” Applegate played an Orange County Realtor and widow who was wounded and full of rage, both of which manifested in her lacerating wit. Jen committed murder at the end of the first season, upping the stakes for both her character and the series itself. And she and Judy (Linda Cardellini), her flaky, kind, very screwed-up best friend, would do many more illegal things before “Dead to Me” came to an end. Over three seasons, “Dead to Me” was ultimately a platonic love story between Jen and Judy, and a two-hander that allowed Applegate — a star since her teen years on “Married… With Children” — to reveal a skill set that was wondrous to behold. To film the show’s final season, she fought through recently diagnosed multiple sclerosis; Applegate was in pain throughout, and could barely walk. But her presence on this list isn’t grading on a curve. Applegate’s creation Jen Harding was a pure, hard-won triumph.

Murray Bartlett as Armond, “The White Lotus” 

Image Credit: HBO

HBO, 2021

There are grander performances on “The White Lotus” — Jennifer Coolidge relaunched herself as a cultural icon by going big with grief and lust over the first two seasons, and Alexandra Daddario and Meghann Fahy both ended their characters’ stories in intriguing, emotionally ambiguous places. But Armond may be the character who most precisely defined what the series is going for, and Bartlett illuminated his inner life with an elegant touch. Every guest at the White Lotus may be allowed to misbehave, but Armond, the hotel’s manager, had to keep his urges in check: He was the help, after all. Bartlett tracked every step of Armond’s disillusionment with his life as he grew frustrated and peevish and — in one delirious viral moment — finally gave in to his self-destructive nature. Armond became, quite literally, the human toll taken by wealthy folks’ carelessness. 

Uzo Aduba as Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren, “Orange Is the New Black”

Image Credit: Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Netflix, 2013-2019

That Aduba won both comedy and drama acting Emmys for this series speaks to its quicksilver shifts between tones; it’s also fitting, as perhaps no other performer hit notes of loopiness and pathos quite so elegantly. We met Crazy Eyes as a benign and somewhat comic threat, pursuing the show’s central character, Piper (Taylor Schilling), past the point of reason. As the series wore on (and as Piper, the white upper-middle-class “Trojan horse” whose presence allowed us to get to know Black and brown inmates, fades from view a bit), we learned more about a woman whose mental health struggles, and whose insecurity as a child who joined a white family through adoption, made daily life a challenge well before incarceration. The series was packed with talented performers, but Aduba — who, true to a nickname viewers came to think of as cruel, held tension and pain in those big eyes — sticks in memory long after the last episode.

Devery Jacobs as Elora Danan Postoak, “Reservation Dogs” 

Image Credit: FX / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2021-2023

Of the namesake friend group that collectively came of age in this Oklahoma-set comedy, Jacobs’ Elora — named after the character from “Willow” — was always the most subdued. To process her grief over a close friend’s suicide, Elora focused on leaving her largely Native community, which she blamed for the despair that ultimately claimed a love one’s life. But by the end of “Reservation Dogs,” that same community came together to help Elora say goodbye to her grandmother, allowing the young woman to pursue higher education in an act of self-discovery, rather than defiant rejection. One of the series’ final installments cast Jacobs in a two-hander opposite Ethan Hawke as Elora’s long-estranged father. The episode is a calling card for a young actor whose wary intelligence holds its own against an established luminary. Elora was finding her path in the world, but so were all the adults around her. 

Christine Baranski as Diane Lockhart, “The Good Wife”/“The Good Fight” 

Image Credit: Elizabeth Fisher / Paramount+

CBS, 2009-2016 (“The Good Wife”); CBS All Access, 2017-2020 (“The Good Fight”); Paramount+, 2021-2022 (“The Good Fight”)

When Diane Lockhart stared aghast at her television while it broadcast reports of Donald Trump’s (first) presidential victory, the scene hit harder than most shell-shocked reactions at the time. Fans of “The Good Wife” had spent seven seasons watching Baranski’s statuesque Diane steer the ship of her Chicago law firm with implacable calm and grace. In spinoff “The Good Wife” — especially from Season 2, the first to be fully conceived post-election, onward — Diane became the ultimate sane woman in an insane world. When the news got strange, Diane got stranger, responding to absurdities like reporting on the “pee tape” by dabbling in psychedelics and other coping mechanisms. Diane was no saint; joining a historically Black firm as a white partner for her second act, she often embodied the amoral view of high-price lawyering espoused by creators Robert and Michelle King. But she was the perfect audience surrogate for her time. If Diane Lockhart could be knocked off her axis by global chaos, who wouldn’t be?

Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope, “Scandal” 

Image Credit: ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

ABC, 2012-2018

Few actors have excelled at delivering Shonda Rhimes’ dense and florid monologues quite the way Washington did for seven seasons. Sure, Washington’s Olivia Pope had love scenes with the president (Tony Goldwyn) and plenty of moments of reflection with red wine and popcorn close at hand, but the archetypal Olivia moment was her storming into a room (perhaps even the Oval Office!) and tearing into whomever she saw first. Washington’s elegant bearing and slightly husky voice served as particularly adept instruments to convey two fundamental aspects of Olivia: her competence, laying out the utter righteousness of her position with verbal precision, and her impatience with those who stood in her way.

Danny McBride as Kenny Powers, “Eastbound & Down” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2009-2013

There may be little as satisfying in comedy as a character who knows less than they think they do — and that’s a note that McBride has played to great effect throughout his career. His HBO series “Vice Principals” was excellent, and “The Righteous Gemstones” still is, but it was “Eastbound & Down,” on which McBride played a smug and delusional former Major League ballplayer, that crystallized his image. McBride’s Kenny Powers returned to his North Carolina hometown in a state of minor-key disgrace; he seemed congenitally incapable of learning or growing, but his collisions with his neighbors allowed McBride to show his keen understanding of hypermasculine puffery and ego.  

Gina Rodriguez, “Jane the Virgin” 

Image Credit: The CW / Courtesy Everett Collection

The CW, 2014-2019

Rodriguez’s heroine, an aspiring writer in Miami impregnated as a virgin by an absentminded doctor, was a deeply normal person in an abnormal situation. The character was a perfect proxy for creator Jennie Snyder Urman’s project of building a kind of meta-novela around mundane life experiences, from co-parenting to sleep training. That made the plucky, luminous Jane the ultimate straight woman, a role Rodriguez performed with aplomb. It took a dextrous actor to sell the many tones and stakes of “Jane the Virgin,” which could play soap opera twists (a love interest comes back from the dead as an amnesiac!) completely straight and elevate everyday life into the stuff of high drama. Rodriguez fulfilled the brief and then some, getting us all to cheer for Jane’s final fairy-tale ending. 

Rachel Brosnahan as Miriam “Midge” Maisel, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” 

Image Credit: ©Amazon/Courtesy Everett Collection

Amazon Prime Video, 2017-2023

Amy Sherman-Palladino writes dialogue in a very particular way; conversations tend to become dueling patter routines, with crisp, clearly defined beats that an actor must hit with precision. And Sherman-Palladino dialogue in the mouth of a stand-up comedian is doubly challenging. Midge Maisel had to emerge believably as a star who could hold the stage, and do so Sherman-Palladino-ishly. Brosnahan made Midge feel like a woman whom one might credibly meet in real life — focused to what may be a fault on her burgeoning career — but also situated her within a comic universe where she was just a degree sharper and quicker on her feet than anyone who didn’t have Sherman-Palladino writing their dialogue. 

Maya Erskine as Maya Ishii-Peters, “Pen15” 

Image Credit: Hulu / Courtesy Everett Collection

Hulu, 2019-2021

Both central performances were key to making “Pen15” work: Series co-creators Erskine and Anna Konkle built an imagined space where they could act out versions of their teenage selves, and Erskine’s coiled, tense anxiety found its match in Konkle’s loopy and loose-limbed goofiness. It’s Erskine, though, who had slightly more to play, with her character’s anxiety over growing up half Japanese in a largely white community; she also played it to the hilt, free-associating, speaking in tongues and summoning every bit of the displacement and very real anger that blooms when one is growing up and uncertain of one’s place in school, and in the world. 

Sarah Paulson as Marcia Clark, “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story” 

Image Credit: FX / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2016

During the blockbuster O.J. Simpson trial and especially in its aftermath, prosecutor Marcia Clark became a national joke — for failing to secure a conviction, sure, but also for her manner, her bearing, her hair. Paulson, who’d already established herself as the most versatile of Ryan Murphy’s repertory company before “American Crime Story,” performed something of a miracle: She gave Clark her humanity back. The series weaves a complicated pattern that draws in race, class, celebrity and gender, but Clark’s thread, in which a woman in the public eye goes painfully unheard, is the most vivid. (Her attempt to win some measure of approval by getting an ill-considered perm plays out like a slow-moving nightmare — a real-life American Horror Story.) By the time she pleads with the jury in a wrenching closing argument, one senses that the case she’s making is not solely to deliver what she sees as justice, but to free herself from the public’s harsh gaze. 

Brian Tyree Henry as Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles, “Atlanta”  

Image Credit: FX / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2016-2022

The elastic magical-realist universe of “Atlanta” was a comfortable fit for LaKeith Stanfield’s Darius, while it drove Earn (Donald Glover) and Van (Zazie Beetz) to the brink of insanity as they tried to find any stability. But as drug dealer-turned-rap superstar Alfred Miles (a.k.a. Paper Boi), Henry gave himself over to the show’s fanciful detours. Whether fighting with a Black Justin Bieber or witnessing the rituals of a freaky Dutch death cult, he knew how to milk the outlandish premises of “Atlanta” for laughs in the moment, acknowledging the absurdity that surrounded him and still trying to beat each scenario’s unwinnable games. By the time each episode of the surreal comedy series ended, though, Alfred’s depression — conveyed through Henry’s weary eyes — was there to remind you how terribly exhausting it is to be alive.

America Ferrera as Betty Suarez, “Ugly Betty” 

Image Credit: Scott Garfield / ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

ABC, 2006-2010

Ferrera’s standout monologue in “Barbie” may have earned her an Oscar nomination, but turn to her TV breakout to see her unpack the impossibility of womanhood with more depth and breadth. Betty Suarez, the working class writer from Queens whose garish taste in clothing inspired the title of the show, came off as painfully naive to the staff of the Manhattan fashion magazine she somehow ended up working at. But Ferrera brought pluck and earnestness — and a hard-earned optimism — to the role, too. Even hidden behind bright red glasses and frizzy bangs, Betty’s wide eyes took in the complicated machinations happening around her; on “Ugly Betty,” as in life, the corporate ladder could not be climbed without painful compromise and sacrifice, and Ferrera made us feel for Betty every step of the way.

Claire Foy as Queen Elizabeth II, “The Crown” 

Image Credit: Alex Bailey / Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection

Netflix, 2016-2017

Both Olivia Colman and Imelda Staunton did well in the role of Queen Elizabeth II as the series about her rise and reign carried on. But they were walking (daintily yet firmly) in the footsteps Foy left behind. As the show’s first and youngest Elizabeth, Foy was tasked with playing both an icon and a woman; she had to deploy both the public side of Elizabeth, dutiful and docile, and the private self, flickering with rage and sorrow. It was a balancing act worthy of Foy’s remarkable subject, and a clever and graceful turn that, through the series’ first two seasons, built in intensity and power.

Niecy Nash as Didi Ortley, “Getting On”  

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2013-2015

Didi Ortley always had something to say. Sometimes it was through an off-the-cuff remark; sometimes she communicated all she needed to with a glance. It took a certain tough disposition to be a hospice nurse for the elderly. And Didi, in her signature baby-pink scrubs, wavered between subtle exasperation with her aloof colleagues (Laurie Metcalf, Alex Borstein and Mel Rodriguez) and a deep love for even her most trying patients. It’s a mundane job, but the stakes are also life-and-death. And Nash showed us how one normal yet extraordinary woman gets through.

Ian McShane as Al Swearengen, “Deadwood”

Image Credit: HBO

HBO, 2004-2006

A quarter-century after the premiere of “The Sopranos,” the term “antihero” has been deadened into cliché. But no character, and no performance, embodied the moral complexity of artistically invigorated serialized stories like Al Swearengen. Initially set up as an antagonist opposite Timothy Olyphant’s purehearted sheriff Seth Bullock, the saloon owner became Bullock’s partner in building a frontier settlement into a true community. McShane’s sonorous voice and Shakespearean delivery were perfectly suited to creator David Milch’s famously florid dialogue. But it’s the rakish charm the actor brought to Swearengen that made Deadwood’s de facto mayor an irresistible draw, even before viewers became fully acquainted with his greater depths. He’s the ultimate American — as depicted by a Brit.

Sydney Sweeney as Cassie Howard, “Euphoria” 

Image Credit: HBO

HBO, 2019-present

She has never, ever been happier! So screamed Sweeney through tears in what was perhaps the crowning viral moment of the built-to-be-Instagram-Reeled second season of “Euphoria.” As an emotionally volatile high schooler, Sweeney provides the fireworks to counterbalance many of the performances that vibrate at a lower frequency; her work and Zendaya’s, for instance, represent two radically divergent ways of responding to pain. Zendaya (who is excellent) shuts down; Sweeney blows up. Her ability to find the emotional limit and push past it gives the show a certain rigorous emotional truth: That really is what it feels like, sometimes, to be going through it. 

Claire Danes as Carrie Mathison, “Homeland”  

Image Credit: Showtime / Courtesy Everett Collection

Showtime, 2011-2020

There was no one like Carrie Mathison. That’s why, perhaps, she kept getting brought into intelligence ops despite certain fundamental vulnerabilities in her spy game, like her tendency to personalize everything or her dangerously high tolerance for risk. This CIA agent’s talent at gathering information sat alongside her mental illness; it was because Carrie saw the world in a skewed manner that she was so eager to pursue hunches, so able to go places others might not dare. And Danes threw everything she had at the portrayal, with a violent, jerky bearing and a twisted cry-face that became notorious as a signal that Carrie Was Emoting. “Homeland” was at its primal, emotional best when Carrie knew she was right but could not get the apparatus around her to see things her way: Vibrating with frustration, Danes conveyed the agony and loneliness of Carrie’s warped, brilliant perspective.

Jean Smart as Deborah Vance, “Hacks” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of Hilary Bronwyn Gayle/Max

Max, 2021-present

In a 2014 episode of HBO’s “Girls,” Louise Lasser, playing an ailing artist, says, “I hate watching television, because all the old women are shells.” Now, more than a decade later, “Hacks” is rebutting that sentiment season after season. Smart plays a comic coasting on fame, who realizes later in life that she has an opportunity not only to stay relevant but to make history. An opportunity to become (in this universe, where Joan Rivers does not exist) the first woman with a network TV late-night show had been snatched away decades earlier; now is Deborah’s moment to reclaim it. Toward her millennial comedy confidant Ava (Hannah Einbinder), she’s vicious and steely. But her own hard shell conceals rich and rewarding character detail — a vulnerable sense of fear that Smart perfectly calibrates, and punctuates with sharp and welcome laughter.

Kyle Chandler as Eric Taylor, “Friday Night Lights” 

Image Credit: NBC / Courtesy Everett Collection

NBC, 2006-2008; The 101 Network, 2008-2011

Clear eyes, full heart. As the coach of a high school football team in small-town Texas, Chandler provided a vision of a sort of nurturing, gruff-but-fair masculinity that felt like a balm for the show’s small but fiercely loyal audience. Coach Taylor had a clear — even rigid — sense of right and wrong and a no-B.S. attitude with his players; scenes at home, particularly with his guidance counselor wife (Connie Britton), revealed a softer, even sentimental side. In an increasingly cynical time, as the network drama continued to fall away in favor of sharper or more subversive takes on the American family on cable, Chandler’s performance was a late addition to the TV Dad Hall of Fame.

Bridget Everett as Sam Miller, “Somebody Somewhere” 

Image Credit: HBO

HBO, 2022-2024

Everett’s cabaret act is loud, lewd and bodacious. The HBO half-hour “Somebody Somewhere” is that persona’s polar opposite: quiet, low-key and achingly sensitive. As protagonist Sam, a native Kansan trying to put her life back together after her beloved sister dies from cancer, Everett toned way down for a marvelously subtle study in self-discovery. Through moments of connection with her best friend, Joel (Jeff Hiller), Sam came to find community in a place where she once felt isolated. Flashes of Everett at the peak of her powers were deployed sparingly and for maximum effect — as when Sam rediscovered her love for music as an expressive outlet, and let loose a mighty belt. Most of the time, Sam was more subdued — so much so that you almost didn’t notice the confidence Everett gradually gave her, one degree at a time. 

Phoebe Waller-Bridge as Fleabag, “Fleabag” 

Image Credit: Amazon Prime Video

Amazon Prime Video, 2016, 2019

The nameless protagonist of Amazon’s streaming hit “Fleabag” (co-produced with the BBC) underwent two journeys in parallel. In the show’s first season, adapted from Waller-Bridge’s own Edinburgh Fringe show, Fleabag moved through her own version of the stages of grief; in the second, having begun to heal, she tested out her relationship with faith by pursuing a fling with a priest (Andrew Scott). The first season was a quiet marvel, and the second was a sensation — a testament, among other of the series’ qualities, to Waller-Bridge’s increasingly sophisticated understanding of Fleabag’s inner world. That she finally met Scott’s character on an emotional, even spiritual, level made plain just how lonely Fleabag had been before, and just how much her asides to the audience had been attempts at some sort of connection.

Catherine O’Hara as Moira Rose, “Schitt’s Creek” 

Image Credit: CBC / Courtesy Everett Collection

Pop TV, 2015-2020

In the wrong hands, “Schitt’s Creek” matriarch Moira Rose could have just been insufferable. But paired with her old “SCTV” colleague Eugene Levy, O’Hara made a delusional former soap star fallen on hard times into the series’ most fascinating element. After the Rose family was forced to move into a motel upon going bankrupt, Moira must adjust to her new, unglamorous surroundings — and O’Hara depicted the process of discovering how the other half lives with aplomb. O’Hara swapped in and out of ridiculous wigs and costumes that somehow felt as outsized as the performance, and she found increasingly intriguing ways to pronounce certain words and coin others. O’Hara has made a career out of creating unique and bizarre characters — and Moira may be her crowning achievement.

Tatiana Maslany as Sarah Manning/Alison Hendrix/Cosima Nieuhas/many more, “Orphan Black”

Image Credit: BBC America / Courtesy Everett Collection / Everett Collection

BBC America, 2013-2017

There were moments on “Orphan Black” where Tatiana Maslany would have to play a clone in disguise as another clone — in other words, she’d have to imagine how one character would imperfectly try to mimic another character’s mannerisms. It was quite a mindwarp for viewers trying to keep track of which character was pretending to be another character — and yet, Maslany knew how to pull it off. The ambition of “Orphan Black” hinged on star Maslany’s ability to create believable, unique personalities while playing multiple clones that had to often interact with each other: When she wasn’t playing Sarah Manning, the main character who first discovers she’s a clone, she might be playing brainiac Cosima, villainous Rachel, unhinged Helena, suburban mom Alison — or all the others that popped up over the years. All these characters demanded different personalities, looks and backstories. And Maslany provided the exact precision necessary to ground this wild sci-fi tale.

Alec Baldwin as Jack Donaghy, “30 Rock” 

Image Credit: NBC / Courtesy Everett Collection

NBC, 2006-2013

Among the endless brilliant grace notes on Tina Fey’s backstage comedy was her refusal to simply treat the Lorne Michaels figure — the boss at a venerable sketch show — as solely a send-up of her old boss from “Saturday Night Live.” Baldwin’s Donaghy was imposing, chilly and gnomic in his pronouncements. But he also came with class resentments buried an inch beneath the surface, thanks to his rough-and-tumble Boston upbringing, and, once the show figured out its tone, he wasn’t just dragged along by Fey’s Liz Lemon but was an active agent of chaos. The glint of manic delight in Baldwin’s eye gave it away: Behind the custom suits and coiffed hair, Jack Donaghy yearned to be not in the boardroom, but as close to the stage as he could get.

Laura Dern as Amy Jellicoe, “Enlightened”  

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2011-2013

“Enlightened” ran for only two seasons, but it represented a remarkable pivot point for both of its co-creators — one of them writing every episode and the other playing the leading role. For Mike White, it brought him into HBO’s stable of auteurs and allowed him to express his lovingly scabrous view of human relations a decade before “The White Lotus” exploded. And for Dern, it let her channel her carefree-Californian image into a woman whose contours defied categorization. She had been a movie star, but Amy Jellicoe, a former corporate go-getter who, after a breakdown, attempts to find inner peace, made Dern a character actress. The painful irony of Amy was that her endless proclamations that she had finally figured out the secrets of life only barely concealed that she as messed up as any of us: angry and insecure, and in urgent need of validation. Her incremental journey toward self-acceptance was beautifully, movingly rendered, performed with sly humor and no small measure of grace. 

Emma Stone as Whitney Siegel, “The Curse” 

Image Credit: Jeff Neumann / A24 / Paramount+ with SHOWTIME

Showtime, 2023-2024

There was a remarkable scene in the early going of “The Curse” in which Whitney Siegel, a would-be HGTV star, had a moment of genuine connection with her husband, Asher (Nathan Fielder); her sweater got stuck over her head while she undressed, and she needed him to help maneuver her out of it. Then she insisted on restaging it for a video to post online, but with bigger and louder reactions, so that it would play. Whitney was utterly jaded about the world around her and yet blind to her own ethical and personal shortcomings — her dream was to document her philanthropic nature for HGTV’s camera, but her project was gentrifying and displacing her actual neighbors, a fact Whitney simply could not face. Stone’s versatility is striking: In “Poor Things,” which premiered during the run of “The Curse,” she played a woman who was experiencing the world entirely anew, for the first time. In “The Curse,” she played someone who had seen it all — or believed she had — and simply wanted to extract from life the fame she believed she was owed.  

Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister, “Game of Thrones” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2011-2019

Yes, “Game of Thrones” had dragons. But what gave the show its era-defining firepower was the distinctive tapestry of ego, humor, desire and rage conjured by its sprawling cast. And Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister embodied it all. In the early seasons, Dinklage made a feast of Tyrion’s tart tongue and insatiable appetites, compensation for being the only halfway decent member of his venomous, incestuous family. As the show evolved, Dinklage’s performance deepened, exposing Tyrion’s fury over living in a world that sees him as a monster and the anguish of being the smartest person in just about every room he’s in. The moment in Season 5 when Tyrion saw his first dragon, and Dinklage’s face washed over in waves of disbelief, awe and disquiet, was a perfect representation of the hold “Game of Thrones” had on the culture in the 2010s. There’s a reason he was nominated for a Emmy for every season of the show — and won four times.

Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes, “The Dropout” 

Image Credit: HULU

Hulu, 2022

It began with the voice. The disgraced tech CEO Elizabeth Holmes earned the trust of investors in part due to her intense bearing and her odd baritone; Seyfried gave us a very accurate sense of what it was like to be in the room with Holmes. But it wasn’t just her vocal performance that impressed — in this series’ telling, Holmes had a canny way of finding the weaknesses of anyone she encountered, whether pitting potential business partners against one another or putting on a show of vulnerability to keep boyfriend and business partner Sunny Balwani (Naveen Andrews) in her thrall. In all, the performance was one that merged technical perfection with a shrewd, cool perception of what goes on inside of a congenital liar. 

Kate Winslet as Mare Sheehan, “Mare of Easttown” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2021

It comes as little surprise that, since Mare took steps toward forgiving herself in the final episode of “Mare of Easttown,” fans have been anticipating a Season 2. Mare, consumed by roiling emotion that she hid behind a tough attitude and draws on her vape, felt so rounded, complex and real that it seems painful to leave her behind for good. A has-been high school athlete whose life since graduation had been a mix of a few ups and a lot of downs, Mare forced herself through each day on her police-detective beat, until the possibility of solving a complex and knotty case — and the new friendship of a county cop (Evan Peters) — brought her to life. “Mare of Easttown” was a portrait of grief that somehow never quite felt heavy, in part because Winslet lent Mare a let’s-get-through-this gumption. You believed that she was in pain; you also, somehow, believed that she would be OK. 

Jessica Walter as Lucille Bluth, “Arrested Development”

Image Credit: Fox

Fox, 2003-2006; Netflix, 2013-2019 

“Arrested Development” boasted one of the deepest benches in television during its three-season run. (The bench remained intact for its Netflix revival, but the less said about those installments, the better.) But Walter was perhaps the series’ most reliable laugh-getter. Her Lucille Bluth, an all-seeing matriarch of a disgraced family who sustained herself on vodka and criticism of her four adult children, vacillated between shrewd near-omnipotence about her family’s business and an above-it-all delusion. She was utterly, delightfully out to lunch — until the moment she would snap back in, remembering the Bluth philosophy that family life is a war, and insults are one’s best weapon. 

Keri Russell as Elizabeth Jennings, “The Americans” 

Image Credit: Courtesy FX

FX, 2013-2018

Matthew Rhys, whose character’s sad-eyed ambivalence about his career as a spy embedded in American society, gave “The Americans” its soul, but Russell gave it its steel. Together, the actors (who met on the show, and are now partners in real life) played Russian agents whose mission was to subvert their adopted homeland in order to win the Cold War. Russell’s Elizabeth, raised in the USSR but such a master of disguise that she could hide her contempt at playing an American housewife, was doggedly focused on seeing the mission through. That meant egging on her increasingly doubtful husband, Philip, assigned to her in a tradecraft arranged marriage; it also meant committing to their relationship to an extent that,  so utterly certain was she that the cause was just, she sometimes found herself lost in the game. 

Michael Chiklis as Vic Mackey, “The Shield”  

Image Credit: 20th Century Fox / Courtesy Everett Collection

FX, 2002-2008

The pilot of “The Shield” set the template for the show. Toward the end of the episode, LAPD detective Vic Mackey and his so-called Strike Team — who both investigated gangs and were a gang — raided the home of a drug dealer after Vic had been tipped off that the newest member of the team, Terry Crowley (Reed Diamond), was investigating them. Vic — seemingly without remorse — killed the drug dealer, and then used the dealer’s gun to shoot Crowley in the face. It’s a murder that would come back to haunt Vic as “The Shield” went on, and it showed that the Shawn Ryan-created series wasn’t fucking around. FX’s first major scripted show announced itself as a competitor with HBO at that moment, and “The Shield” kicked off basic cable’s Golden Age. At its center was antihero Vic, who could be brutal in one moment and a warm, loving dad in the next. Chiklis’ riveting, charismatic performance had viewers actually rooting for Vic, especially when the show pitted him against someone even worse, which Ryan loved to do. In one of the great series finales, which we won’t spoil, Vic sure did get what he deserved — and Chiklis absolutely nailed it.   

Regina King as Angela Abar/Sister Night, “Watchmen” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2019

King had established herself as a vital star of the Peak TV era with multiple Emmys for “American Crime” and a show-revitalizing arc on “The Leftovers.” When that latter series’ creator, Damon Lindelof, brought her in to lead his adaptation of the graphic novel “Watchmen,” he presented her with her toughest challenge yet: Alan Moore’s comic book series had proven itself near unadaptable with a disastrous 2009 film version. Fans needn’t have worried: Lindelof’s gut-renovation of the story framed King as a superheroine for our time. Existing in an alternate-reality America but haunted by a history of racism that exists in reality, too, Angela Abar took on crime as the alter persona Sister Night; her grit and her inherent unflappability in the midst of comic book madness gave the story the grounding it needed. By the time Angela took a tenuous, series-ending step into the unknown, she, along with the woman who lent her toughness and humanity, seemed capable of anything.

Steve Carell as Michael Scott, “The Office” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of NBC

NBC, 2005-2011, 2013

Despite Ricky Gervais’ beloved performance on the original “Office,” the series he co-created, Carell made such an impact as Michael Scott that Zoomers who have watched “The Office” a dozen times have no idea it’s not the franchise’s only iteration. Carell’s Michael was inappropriate, misread social cues, craved acceptance and made terrible decisions — and yet (unlike the sharper, meaner tone of the U.K. version), he was a character you couldn’t help rooting for. It’s because of Carell that Michael could say or do something remarkably offensive or off-tone one minute, but would have your loyalties a moment later as he movingly conveyed the struggle to save face or to get out of the latest jam he’d caused himself. (After all, he didn’t know any better — even though he really, really ought to.) “The Office” struggled to figure out what it wanted to be after Carell left, but his return in the series finale made clear just how fond fans had grown of this oafish, lovable boss. 

Michaela Coel as Arabella Essiedu, “I May Destroy You” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2020

In a show that centered the horrors of rape and its aftermath, Coel’s portrayal of a sexual assault survivor was devastating and deeply uncomfortable. As Arabella raced against the clock to meet a publishing deadline, she began recalling fragments of a night out when she was assaulted. Depicted with heartbreaking wit and anguish, Arabella combed through every aspect of her life, including her friendships and self-image, as she tried desperately to compartmentalize and move forward. Coel also created and wrote the series, but her work as an actor brought it to vibrant and painful life: Through a blend of rage and sorrow, Coel’s performance addressed the anguish and perseverance required to confront trauma and to survive.  

Sandra Oh as Dr. Cristina Yang, “Grey’s Anatomy”

Image Credit: ABC / Courtesy Everett Collection

ABC, 2005-2014 

Brilliant, deeply loyal and viciously competitive: There had never been someone like Cristina Yang on television before. The “Grey’s Anatomy” character whom creator Shonda Rhimes always said she related to the most, Cristina began the show as an intern ready to battle with her classmates — but to her great surprise, they became her family. The friendship Cristina formed with Meredith (Ellen Pompeo), her “dark and twisty” other half, would become the spine of “Grey’s Anatomy” until Oh left the show in 2014 at the end of Season 10 — they were each other’s “person,” to use the language Rhimes invented, an argot that’s now just the way people talk. As portrayed by Oh, Cristina was sarcastic, highly skilled, introverted, loving, thoughtful, cold, sexual and funny — sometimes in a single scene! When she left the Seattle hospital for a new job in Zurich, Cristina and Meredith danced it out one last time to Tegan and Sara’s “Where Does the Good Go,” and it was the perfect ending for a character that for 10 seasons made TV a more interesting place.    

Rhea Seehorn as Kim Wexler, “Better Call Saul” 

Image Credit: Greg Lewis / AMC / Sony Pictures Television

AMC, 2015-2022

An oft-repeated piece of “Breaking Bad” lore is that Jesse was originally set to be killed off in the series’ ninth episode, but Aaron Paul was so good that Vince Gilligan changed his mind. There’s no reason to believe similar plans were in place for Wexler in “Better Call Saul,” but the strength of Seehorn’s performance probably brought her closer to the center of the series as it unfolded. Indeed, she became the beating heart of the “Breaking Bad” prequel. In a show full of dramatic deaths and marches toward sealed fates, it was Wexler’s slow moral decay (culminating in a breakdown on an airport shuttle) that was the most devastating. Playing opposite Bob Odenkirk, who also delivered one of this century’s most important TV performances, Seehorn brought a rich familiarity to a character that didn’t have the benefit of having been introduced on “Breaking Bad.”

Andre Braugher as Capt. Raymond Holt, “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of Fox

Fox, 2013-2018; NBC, 2019-2021

Before “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” Braugher was best known for playing characters in positions of authority, like the clever interrogator Det. Frank Pembleton in “Homicide.” So at first glance, his taking on the role of a dry, earnest police captain on “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” wasn’t a stretch. Except it was: Braugher brought his Juilliard-trained gravitas to the part, but he also infused it with an unexpected playfulness and an acerbic delivery that elicited some of the show’s biggest laughs. Braugher added humanity and depth to Holt’s rarefied position as a gay Black man who managed to rise through the NYPD — yet he never forgot that “Brooklyn Nine-Nine” was a comedy, and punctured Holt’s vanity too. In a series that developed a rich, deep ensemble, Braugher was the guiding force who made it all work.

Carrie Coon as Nora Durst, “The Leftovers” 

Image Credit: Courtesy HBO

HBO, 2014-2017

Everyone on “The Leftovers” was suffering — the show depicts the aftermath of an inexplicable global cataclysm — but Nora Durst suffered more than most. The sudden disappearance of 2% of the world’s population wiped out her family; she was the only one left. Through the series’ three-season run, Coon found pathos and, crucially, texture within her character’s unremitting grief. Nora’s series-ending monologue, which could be described in broad terms as being about what it took to bring herself back to life, belongs in the pantheon. That’s particularly true because every beat, every word, felt earned by the work Coon had done in illuminating Nora up to that point.

Michael Kenneth Williams as Omar Little, “The Wire” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2002-2008

“Omar comin’!” Williams’ portrayal of stick-up king Omar Little turned the gangster trope on its head while expanding narrow views of Black masculinity. Based on a real-life Baltimore hit man and robber, Omar was both cruel and beautifully tender. Though he stole and killed, his sound moral code was such that he never harmed innocent civilians. Almost always dressed in black with a shotgun swinging from his side, Williams’ Omar was both mystifying and disquieting, an amalgam of violence and poverty who always appeared just a bit untouchable. Williams died in 2021, but his creation of a character this complex on one of the most important television series in modern history lives on.

Bryan Cranston as Walter White, “Breaking Bad”  

Image Credit: AMC / courtesy Everett Collection

AMC, 2008-2013

Vince Gilligan famously pitched “Breaking Bad” as the story of a man who “transforms himself from Mr. Chips into Scarface,” and it’s his brilliant writing that made it near impossible to pinpoint when, exactly, Walter White became a monster. But Cranston’s larger-than-life portrayal of the chemistry teacher turned meth kingpin kept fans with him long after he’d gone evil. With “I am the one who knocks” and “Say my name,” Cranston delivered some of TV’s most quoted and memed bits of dialogue. But it’s wordless moments like Walt’s meltdown in the crawl space — a seething outburst that twisted into a nihilistic laughing fit — that cement Cranston’s as one of the defining television performances of the prestige-cable era.

Lisa Kudrow as Valerie Cherish, “The Comeback” 

Image Credit: HBO

HBO, 2005, 2014

Those who read “The Comeback” as the story of one woman’s humiliation — as the series was misunderstood in its first season — are half right. Valerie Cherish, a faded actress so eager to reclaim the spotlight that she subjected herself to a reality-TV show, was brought low, time and again, in ways that beggar belief. (Consider the dramas Valerie endured while wearing a giant cupcake costume.) And yet the miracle of “The Comeback” lies in how Valerie got back up. She was a Hollywood monster, but a recognizable one — and her dream, one that kept her pushing herself forward, was to be truly seen and understood. Kudrow made that desire evident in every wince, every false smile and — yes — every petty humiliation. 

Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson, “Mad Men” 

Image Credit: AMC / courtesy Everett Collection

AMC, 2007-2015

There’s no Peggy without Don, no Don without Peggy. As it evolved, “Mad Men” became a classic two-hander, built on the chemistry between Jon Hamm’s miserable man in the gray flannel suit and Moss’ ambitious secretary turned copywriter. Hamm could easily be in this spot, but Moss gets points for degree of difficulty. As if by force of will, Peggy came to take over the series, her road to success intersecting with Don’s downward spiral. Where she began, naive and disempowered, seemed entirely disconnected from where she ended up, an ad-world star — and yet Moss, showing flashes of steel underpinning her pleasant, soft-spoken exterior, made it all make sense. It’s hard to think of another actor who might have sold the utter disconnection from self that led Peggy to, for instance, ignore the fact of her pregnancy and brusquely move on after birth; this character’s journey, as brought to vibrant life by a signature star of this era of television, was at once the story of a generation of women in the workplace and fundamentally, weirdly individual.

Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy, “Succession” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of Macall Polay/HBO

HBO, 2018-2023

No element of this list prompted as heated a debate among our staff as the question of which “Succession” cast member should get special mention. Were we not limiting ourselves to one performer per show, the Top 10 might have included Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, Matthew Macfadyen and Brian Cox. In the end, though, we — unlike the board of Waystar Royco — placed our favor upon the self-described eldest boy. Strong’s work on “Succession” converted it from a chamber drama into something grander, more bizarre and more elementally human. In the spoiled-yet-struggling addict Kendall, boorish entitlement and laudable ambition nestled together; he was capable of delivering a ludicrous, misjudged rap performance at a family party and then of showing you, moment by painful moment, how it feels to realize that you are playing the fool. Strong’s particular method of finding his way into character has been much dissected (including in a New Yorker profile) and brought him in for some teasing. However he got there, though, Strong did something near miraculous, and distinguished himself as the first among equals. 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, “Veep” 

Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO

HBO, 2012-2019

Who else could it be? Over seven seasons, Louis-Dreyfus delivered the signature comedy performance of the century so far, and did so with such focused intensity that it was easy to forget that “Veep” was a comedy at all. The evolution of the plot allowed Louis-Dreyfus to rove: As the sitting VP to an unseen president who hardly cared for her input, Selina Meyer existed in a state of impotent frustration, a perpetual sense of living on tenterhooks just in case she might, maybe be needed. Granted some small wins and then a big one — the presidency, briefly — Meyer got to live out a fantasy of power that proved only a fantasy. Back at the bottom, she had to grieve her loss, and then plot a way back, both emboldened and embittered by the memory of how good it had felt to win. Through it all, Louis-Dreyfus’ deftness with a profane insult, her ability to convey the physicality of a tense person attempting to seem relaxed, and her sheer willingness to go anywhere to convey Selina’s abject need for power made a sometimes uneven show into an all-timer. The fact that we never learned Selina’s political beliefs is somehow perfect: She was the creature that our political system created, mutable to the point of meaninglessness, willing — and able! — to say just about anything that prolonged her moment in the spotlight. 

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