10 Actors Who Recently Nailed Great TV Performances 

2. Oscar Isaac & Jessica Chastain - Scenes From A Marriage (HBO)

Michael Keaton Dopesick
HBO

You can't properly talk about acting stand-outs in the recent TV season without mentioning HBO's Scenes From A Marriage... but you can't separate the performances of Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain. Sizzling with chemistry and the kind of intimate, truthful connection that only two old friends can muster, they carry the slight story of this miniseries between them.

A remake of Ingmar Bergman's seminal, influential Swedish miniseries of the same name from 1973, at first the thing that stands out the most is how gutsy it is for writer/director Hagai Levi to even attempt, so well-regarded is the original. Levi's smartest choice is to tell the story straight, without narrative tricks or conceits, in only five episodes, relying entirely on the performances of his two leads to carry the emotional weight of the story.

That perceptive decision allows Isaac and Chastain to properly delve into the emotional truth of their characters' failing relationship. Not quite a two-hander (a small supporting cast are brilliantly selected to add light and shade where required) the script is nonetheless densely packed and almost entirely devoted to the couple, their breaking home and their broken lives.

The two long time friends deliver far more than expected. What could have been melodrama feels heightened to genuine tragedy, watching the extraordinary, revealing, wounding and wounded performances unspooling before you, as the characters and their marriage unravel on the screen.

It's a hard watch, and so it's hard to recommend it to everyone wholeheartedly - but if you've got the time and the wherewithal, Isaac and Chastain will take your breath away.

Contributor
Contributor

Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.