See also:
The Best Pop Culture Characters of 2016 (via Slate, featuring contributions by David)
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Pamela Adlon, Better Things
Pamela Adlon’s an easy actress to love — the snark, the easy-going sexiness, that amazingly funny voice — but Better Things showcased her talents in a way that came as a genuine surprise. Adlon’s embracement of motherhood — in all its highs and lows, its comforts and its pains — perfectly complemented the show, her natural charisma turning explosively realistic within its aesthetic. She proved to be not just insanely good with comedy, but powerfully grounded in the heavier moments, too.
Sterling K. Brown, The People v. O.J. Simpson & This Is Us
The small-screen’s MVP for 2016. Sterling K. Brown first emerged as the standout star of the standout cast of the year, his brazenly empathetic portrayal of Chris Darden in many ways an encapsulation of The People v. O.J. Simpson’s nuanced assessment on race and imagination. His elevator scene with Sarah Paulson, to take the best example, was among the show’s most cathartic moments. But perhaps even more impressive? The sheer honesty he continues to bring to the treacly, manipulative This Is Us. The show is an overblown melodrama that manages to move its audience through pure willpower. With Brown, however, it doesn’t take so much: He tells his character’s story in the eyes and the smiles, giving us a window into his soul. With razor-sharpness, he cuts through the series’ artificiality to provide something blisteringly real.
Walton Goggins, Vice Principals
Walton Goggins’ terrific work in hour-long series like Justified, The Shield, and Sons of Anarchy was certainly distinct, even as it was kept within the somewhat limited confines of serial drama. Accordingly, Vice Principals, Danny McBride’s raucous horror-satire, gave him a chance to try out something completely different. And he thrived: Goggins’ performance in the new series was one of seething intensity and unabashed flamboyance, an outwardly hilarious creation that was also incredibly thoughtful in its specificity. This was a comic tour de force — played with a touch of menace.
Brian Tyree Henry, Atlanta
Atlanta was widely praised upon its fall debut, but one element that didn’t receive nearly enough appreciation was its quality of acting: the main quartet of cast members was among the very best TV had to offer in terms of performance variety. And Bryan Tyree Henry was the perfect example. His melancholy-slapstick-paranoid take on a low-level rapper was always so inspired, always so surprising, and frequently so, so funny that the more I watched Atlanta — a great show through and through — the more my mind fixated on the man behind the (not quite) legend that was Paper Boi.
Judith Light, Transparent
Jeffrey Tambor and the rest of the Transparent cast were excellent as ever in Year 3. Nonetheless, Jill Soloway very consciously structured her third season around Judith Light’s maddening but wounded matriarch, Shelly, as she progressed toward her finale. A tragic Shelly-centric flashback episode near the season's midpoint featured a younger actress than Light in the role, but it still proved instrumental in the latter’s evolved approach to the character. Suddenly, Light was both softer and coarser, more absurd (“To Shell and Back!”) and more clearly in pain — a collection of contradictions, seemingly at-odds, until one of the most magnificent scenes in all of TV or movies this year, Shelly’s (and Light’s) unforgettable rendition of “Hand in My Pocket,” transcendently brought it all together.
John Lithgow, The Crown
Winston Churchill is not, exactly, an underrepresented figure in popular culture; many greats have played him, including — in the past decade-and-some — Brendan Gleeson and Albert Finney. Maybe it’s the relatively sharp writing of Peter Morgan, maybe the benefit of an extended, serialized narrative, but John Lithgow in The Crown still managed to give entirely new perspective on the historical giant. He keyed into Churchill’s stubbornness, his old guard persona facing swift condemnations in the post-war world — and, eventually, his mix of peace and resentment, coming to terms with the conclusion of his tenure as Britain's steady leader. It was a grand, larger-than-life impersonation, as expected. But more impressively, it was also a deeply human one.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Veep
Yeah, yeah — enough with the accolades for this record-breaking Emmy winner, already. I try to keep this list fresh with minimal turnover, but this season of Veep found Julia Louis-Dreyfus digging even deeper, going even further, as embattled President Selina Meyer. The actress took on a large role behind the scenes of Veep this year, and the relatively rich character work showed both in the writing and the acting. As she came to terms with the death of her mother, her estrangement from her daughter, and finally, the likely end of her political career, Selina emerged as one of the most fascinating characters on TV. Louis-Dreyfus was just brilliant in channeling it all.
Sarah Paulson, The People v. O.J. Simpson
How do you recreate a figure whose image — whose entire essence — has long been cemented in the cultural imagination? The ostensible burden placed upon Sarah Paulson quickly revealed itself as a blessing, an improbably freeing opportunity to right a wrong through her art. Paulson’s Marcia Clark was not the Marcia Clark of the 1990s; she was not the woman Tina Fey had caricatured just a year earlier on Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. She was a feminist icon, a flawed fighter, a legal wiz constrained both by her own racial blindness and by the gender blindness of those around her. Paulson’s pointedly authentic transformation did more than could have reasonably been expected: It changed minds.
Keri Russell, The Americans
Russell moved to the fore of The Americans this season as Elizabeth Jennings confronted the unbearable betrayal of a new friendship — as well as, more insidiously, the challenge of teaching her daughter the ways of Soviet spycraft. Russell’s stoic, quietly aggressive take on Elizabeth was sometimes mistaken for a lack of range, an inability to be more expressive. But it’s always been a smart, intuitive take on the character. And this past season, as she — along with Elizabeth — finally let all that repression loose, Russell slyly proved how good she’s been all along.
Lili Taylor, American Crime
After recurring in the first season of John Ridley’s anthology, Lili Taylor was moved to the center of the action for American Crime’s empowered second chapter. She was, in a word, heartbreaking. As the working-class mother of an alleged rape victim, Taylor exuded feelings of guilt, helplessness, and determined love with incomparable rawness. In its severity and its humanity, this role set the stage for what might just have been the finest work of Taylor's career. (That’s saying something.)
John Turturro, The Night Of
As The Night Of progressed and, steadily, lost its grip on its primary storyline, a strange thing happened: The saga of John Turturro’s John Stone — his struggles with eczema, a live in-cat, and all — became the main source of the series' intrigue. Here was the perfect melding of direction and character, of vision and performer: The cold distance permeating The Night Of mixed with the engrossing strangeness of Turturro’s style made for a lovely mini-character drama, a glimpse into a dusty corner of New York City that radiated life. Turturro pulled off the impossible balance of sliminess and sympathy in the part.
Rutina Wesley, Queen Sugar
Rutina Wesley, one of the many underused actors given a chance to shine in Queen Sugar, was at the very heart of Ava DuVernay’s expression. Both the series’ most openly political character and the binding force of the family at its center, her Nova Bordelon embodied Queen Sugar’s activist spirit, striving to balance her commitments to her many causes as well as to her loved ones. Wesley played this unique definition with passion, throwing her mind, her heart, and her body into a role that demanded all she had to give.
Aden Young, Rectify
Aden Young has always been great on Rectify. But it was in the fourth and final season of Sundance’s Southern gem that his turn as Daniel Holden really came full-circle and achieved a sense of completion. If you watch Rectify beginning to end, it’s hard to argue that Young was anything but extraordinary. His honest, challenging, at times morbidly funny rendering of loneliness and isolation was uncompromising; even better was his patience in tracing Daniel’s growth, taking him through four seasons with the kind of performative discipline and depth that only TV can provide. Overall, this was a monumental feat of acting.