Justified starts its third season of the adventures of Raylan (Timothy Olyphant), a Kentucky lawman who cannot get a break. Whether taking on the local drug dealers or the distant mob, he tends to leave a few bodies where ever he goes. And last season he even had to take out a mother (Margo Martindale) who guarded her nest of viper children. Ms. Martindale won an Emmy for this role and deserved even more praise for her amazing performance. Topping such a performance will not be easy in season three, but I am confident we will be provided with more dark characters who stay with us long after the episode is over. And should you want to learn a little more about Elmore Leonard, the writer who created Raylan and all his adventures, then you can check out this WSJ interview, "Why He Writes, at 86: 'I Might as Well.'"
Southland starts its fourth season after quite a few bruised egos and bodies in the last season, as well as a very troubling death of a detective. Los Angeles is about as far as you can get from the Kentucky hills, yet the crime and related violence is much the same. And, as with Justified, you get tied up with the characters who seem to be more real than the mechanic, pretty officers you see on so many other shows. This is more Hill Streets Blues than NCIS Los Angeles, and that works perfectly for me. Whether its officer Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie) helping his partner deal with drug addition or detective Lydia Adams (Regina King) dating her partner's son, you have a lot to deal with before the first sign of a wide-eyed, coke-head or wild car chase. It makes for great TV and we are lucky that TNT saw the value of this program when no one else did. The big networks have left a lot of scraps at the table over the years and the eager, smaller networks are all the better for it.
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