10 Actors Who Recently Nailed Great TV Performances
5. Hamish Linklater - Midnight Mass (Netflix)
After the macabre double gut punch of his two Haunting Of... miniseries, Mike Flanagan's latest horror masterpiece for Netflix was a slight departure: a traditional horror story set in a remote island community ripped apart - physically and metaphorically - by the arrival of a young priest and the secrets he keeps.
Less subtle than Flanagan's ghost stories but wider in scope, Midnight Mass is a tour de force of storytelling that foregrounds character over spectacle as it slowly builds to a gut-wrenching finale, the divisions within the sleepy village splintering into chasms.
A huge amount rests on Hamish Linklater's shoulders in the central role of Father Paul: the actor has frequently been the best thing in whatever movie, show or play he's performed in, but the kind of focused, slightly skewed mania required of this role is something that few actors are capable of.
Linklater delivers like gangbusters. Never less than compelling, his performance as Father Paul adds to the heightened, unsettling quality of the storytelling. The priest's off-kilter yet bulletproof conviction carries the show's narrative as Flanagan carefully builds the tension in the story alongside the tension in the community.
Everyone is great in Midnight Mass, particularly next big thing Rahul Kohli as troubled Sheriff Hassan and the effortlessly wonderful Samantha Sloyan as the fanatical Bev Keane - but the show wouldn't be what it is without Linklater's flawless, magnetic delivery.