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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 ...

Hat's off to a great series. Review by Brandon Wolfe For nearly every year of its run, Justified has ended each season with some version of the song “You’ll Never Leave Harlan Alive,” written by Darrell Scott. The song, a mournful ballad about the oppressively magnetic pull of Harlan, a hard-luck coal-mining town in eastern Kentucky, lent the series an air of impending dread from the start, seemingly laying out the immutable path its characters were on. The song's recurrence, year by year, seemed to drill home the point deeper and deeper that when the end comes, there is going to be a body count and nobody’s ever after is going to come happily. Harlan’s inescapable grasp was set up in the pilot episode of Justified , when our hero, Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), is sent back to the sleepy hamlet, his hometown, from Miami as penance for gunning down a sleazy kingpin. That shooting, Raylan claimed, was justified, as the man pulled his weapon first, b...

ATX TELEVISION FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING FOR THIS YEAR'S 2015 FESTIVAL Newly Added Panels Include a Farewell to FX's Critically Acclaimed Series " Justified ;" A Special " Boy Meets Girl Meets World " Panel with Producers and Cast from Both the Past and New Series; The Upcoming Fox Event Series " Wayward Pines ;" USA's Comedy Series " Playing House ;" ABC Family's " The Fosters ;" A History of Comedy Central's " Drunk History " with the Show's Creators; A " Cancelled Too Soon " Panel with Graham Yost's " Boomtown ;" And the Addition of " Friends " Creator Marta Kauffman as a First Time Panelist A Season Two Premiere of Starz's " Power " Will Be Featured as a Friday Night Marquee Screening, with Series Creator Courtney Kemp Agboh And Star Omari Hardwick in Attendance, Among Other Cast and Producers ATX Television Festival announce...

TV Review: Justified “Restitution” By: Brandon Wolfe The fifth season of ‘ Justified ’, as I’ve mentioned several times before but can only say with true certainty now, was not quite up to snuff. The show kept many, many plates spinning from week to week, yet there never came the sense that anything truly mattered or was coalescing into a greater whole. Ultimately, in spite of the busyness of the storylines, there simply wasn’t much that felt new or impactful the way previous years had. And watching the season finale, “Restitution”, one can’t help but notice, as it puts the final bow on the year, how little there was to show for it all at the buzzer. Raylan is still playing out his questionable gambit of letting young Kendal Crowe’s life and future dangle as a method of coercion to get his uncle, Darryl Crowe Jr., to come forward and admit he was the one who shot Art. Raylan hopes the boy will recant his story upon news that he will be tried as an adult for the crime, and even atte...

TV Review: Justified "Starvation" By: Brandon Wolfe After a season beset by a certain narrative aimlessness, ‘Justified’ spends its penultimate episode moving its pieces together for its final play, and the positions many of the characters find themselves in this week are tantalizingly dark. As the heroes, villains and those in between march toward the season finale, none find themselves in a good place, and even those with the upper hand have come by it at great cost to their souls. In the aftermath of Picker’s death by explosion, Wynn Duffy is interrogated by the henchmen of Mexican cartel big-shot Mr. Yoon, who is seeking Boyd Crowder’s head (skin, technically) due to the mess made in Mexico several episodes back. Duffy claims that he has killed Boyd and can deliver Boyd’s accomplice, Darryl Crowe Jr., to the men in exchange for sparing Duffy’s own life. Duffy turns to Boyd himself for help tracking Darryl down, which he feels is fair considering his role in ge...

Walt Disney Pictures has acquired The Runner , a pitch for a futuristic science fiction film that will be written by Dave Andron as a potential directing vehicle for Marc Forster . Imagine Entertainment's Brian Grazer is producing with Forster's Apparatus Entertainment partner Brad Simpson. Andron hatched the NBC reinvention of Knight Ride r, and he's supervising producer of the FX series Justified . The premise: In the year 2027, Earth's surface has been rendered uninhabitable due to a devastating attack. A group of survivors living in the Rocky Mountains have discovered a way to send a man back in time. While the volunteer departs under the guise of trying to stop the devastating attack, he has an ulterior motive: to save the love of his life. The concept was hatched by Andron with Blacklight Transmedia. Grazer's Imagine made a first-look deal with that company, which develops big idea concepts on multiple platforms. In this case, The Runner will be simul...

SandwichJohnFilms had the pleasure to get an Exclusive Interview with Damon Herriman this weekend. A name you may not be to familiar with just yet,but trust me this is his year in the US. Damon Herriman was born in Adelaide, South Australia. He began acting in  television  at the age of eight, but it was not until he was cast as Frank Errol in The Sullivans two years later that his career began to take off. Herriman was cast as Mark Jorgensen, the bespectacled best friend of Ben Mendelsohn's Danny Clark in the Australian cult comedy classic, The Big Steal. Recently Herriman has made his way over the ocean and has made an inmpact here in the US. Playing a roadkill truck driver in the film House of Wax .  He has also starred in the Televison show The Unit, Cold Case and Red Belt . He currently plays the recurring role of Dewey Crowe in the FX series, Justified . His biggest role to date will be starring in the upcoming Clint Eastwood film...