Boardwalk Empire was always a very good show with more than its share of fans and no shortage of awards nominations. However, there is no doubt that it never really reached the level of intense critical adoration bestowed upon the likes of Breaking Bad and The Wire, nor the level of fan devotion given to Sons Of Anarchy, for example. This is something of a shame, as it was often just as good as these shows, with a truly superb cast and wonderful period production value. Its final season, which wrapped up in October of this year, was arguably its best, ending the series on a high note with more buzz than it had seen in years. At a condensed eight episodes (all the previous seasons had clocked in at 12), Boardwalk's fifth season made the interesting choice of jumping forward in time, beginning seven years after the end of season four, in 1931. The writers also made use of flashbacks to Nucky Thompson's (Steve Buscemi) childhood for the first time and these added a wonderful emotional melancholy, illuminating important people and moments in his life that made him the complicated man he was for all of the show's run. A criticism that could have been levelled at previous seasons was the sometimes extremely slow pace, but this was rectified by the smaller episode count in season five. The creative team just didn't have the extra room for middling sub-plots this time and so each episode was crammed with all the great Prohibition-era exploits that fans loved to see. Show creator Terence Winter and his team managed to craft a fitting conclusion to their gangster epic, with particularly brilliant writing given to the excellent Michael Kenneth Williams as Chalky White, the explosive Stephen Graham as Al Capone and the oddly hilarious Michael Shannon as Agent Van Alden.
