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A look back at the highs and lows of 2015 television. By Brandon Wolfe Winners 1. Fargo (FX) Last year’s biggest surprise has evolved into television’s most consistently excellent and creatively energized series. In its second year, Fargo unleashed a boldly complex, tightly interwoven narrative concerning a brutal gang war in 1979, the hapless couple (Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst) who unwittingly ignite the fuse between the warring factions and the decent cop (Patrick Wilson) trying to keep order amidst the chaos and bloodshed. With a knockout cast, superb humor, delightful characters, defiant weirdness (those UFOs!) and more Coen Brothers references than you can shake a snow shovel at, Fargo is the best thing on the air right now, you betcha. 2. Justified (FX) After a penultimate season that seemed muddled and confused, FX’s contemporary Western came roaring back with its guns a-blazing, brimming with renewed purpose. The ballad of Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and ...

Check do-not-resuscitate on derivative horror. Review by Brandon Wolfe “Sometimes dead is better,” gravely intoned old Jud Crandall in Pet Sematary , but characters in horror movies (including Jud’s own) never heed that warning. Playing God is too irresistible a prospect, especially when a loved one falls. No, to horror movie characters, dead is worse, until they discover, as they inevitably do, that there’s always something worse than death. Something beyond death. Something beyond human comprehension. Then the realization hits, always far too late, that dead? Sometimes better. This is the object lesson learned the hard way by the university-based researchers in The Lazarus Effect . Engaged scientists Frank and Zoe (Mark Duplass and Olivia Wilde) have been developing a serum designed to temporarily revive flatlining patients in order to extend the window of opportunity for a surgeon to save them. Aided by lab assistants Niko ( Community ’s Donald Glover) and Clay (Evan Peters...

Read on for the ten best and worst television shows of 2014 2014 TV Winners and Losers by Brandon Wolfe 2014 was a surprisingly great year for television, with an unusually large crop of incredible new series debuting alongside a handful of rejuvenated returning favorites. But as with everything, you take the good with the bad, and there was still plenty of bad this year. Here are my picks for TV’s ten biggest winners and losers of 2014. Winners 1. Fargo (FX) The year’s biggest surprise. There was no reason to expect anything from Noah Hawley’s ten-episode interpretation of the Coen Brothers classic. It seemed like the most thankless of tasks; at its best, it could only wither in the shadow of the film. But the show’s best turned out to be much better than anyone could have guessed, matching the humor and tone of the film while staking out its own unique ground. It helped that it was impeccably cast. The very British Martin Freeman disappears completely into the skin (and...