“Justified” begins its final season Tuesday and “Backstrom” is a newcomer that debuts Thursday, but outside of that big age difference, the premises of the shows have a lot in common.
Both are about men in law enforcement who aggravate everyone around them a little, or a lot. They have bad habits they can’t seem to shake, and both shows are often concerned with whether these men can change. Neither show pretends the scope of that change will be wide: Raylan Givens and Everett Backstrom aren’t trying to be good, necessarily. Uninterested in being liked, they just attempt to be less aggravating and less prone to getting in their own way — when they’re willing to exert effort on those fronts, that is.
Excavating the anxieties and concerns of middle-class white men who have (or take) a fair degree of power over other people has been one of the main concerns of TV for a long time, so much so that I can’t help but celebrate the other kinds of characters, themes and dynamics that have bubbled up in the last few years. It’s not that stories with anti-hero underpinnings can’t be done well, but by this point, they need to reach a very high level of execution to register in such a varied and vital TV landscape.
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The final season of “Justified” arrives Tuesday at 10:00 p.m. ET on FX; “Backstrom” debuts Thursday at 9:00 p.m. ET on Fox.
Ryan McGee and I discussed “Justified,” “Backstrom” and “Grantchester” in the latest Talking TV podcast, which is here, on iTunes and below.
