Sunday, August 21, 2011

AFT Awards: Best Drama Series

This is the twenty-first category of the 5th Annual AFT Television Awards, my personal choices for the best in television this past season. Nominees are listed in the order I’ve ranked them.

Best Drama Series


Last year’s nominees: Breaking Bad, Dexter, Mad Men, Sons of Anarchy, True Blood

Emmy nominees: Boardwalk Empire, Dexter, Friday Night Lights, Game of Thrones, The Good Wife, Mad Men

Semi-finalists: The Chicago Code, The Closer, Covert Affairs, Hawaii Five-0, Human Target, In Treatment, No Ordinary Family, Parenthood, True Blood, Undercovers

Finalists: Sons of Anarchy deftly handled an international storyline and stayed on task while remaining extraordinarily compelling. Treme graduated to a second year with even more intriguing and complicated characters and storylines. The Walking Dead presented a wondrously fresh and chilling take on a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by zombies. Game of Thrones took some time to develop, but got really, really good by season’s end with its ever-revolving legions of royalty. Lights Out lived far too short a life as it told a fascinating one-season arc with honest, vulnerable characters.

The nominees:

Justified entered into its second season with fascinating new villains and a magnetic storyline. The Good Wife created mesmerizing scenarios and characters in its superior and strong second season. Dexter followed a fantastic fourth year with a deeply introspective and meaningful fifth year. Boardwalk Empire launched slowly out of the gate but proved to be exceptionally well-done and entirely intriguing.

The winner:

Mad Men refocused its fourth year with a new business and an equally enthralling cast of characters and series of events.

Next up: Best Comedy Series

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