10 TV Shows That Changed Dramatically

FX’s extraordinary Atlanta is an example of what can happen when a network puts total faith in a creator. When the show began in 2016, star and writer Donald Glover was already somewhat of a hot commodity. Around this time, he blew up to a significant degree thanks to his renaissance man prolificacy. Luckily for fans, the network was smart enough to leave well enough alone.

Atlanta’s elevator pitch, and the focus for its first season, is simple enough. Glover plays Earn, a smart but often unlucky young man attempting to break his cousin, a rapper on the rise by the name of Paper Boi. The show is a character piece, a slice of life in the titular city, as well as a satire of the music game (one Glover knows well in his Childish Gambino guise).

There were surreal elements from the off, but once Glover is let off the leash, things really go wild. As and when he wishes, Atlanta goes off on location, sets episodes in a haunted house (with Glover playing Teddy Perkins, one of TV’s wildest one-off characters), or eschews the main cast altogether.

TV is hardly an auteur’s medium, but Atlanta more than almost any show has a defining vision throughout, even when it shifts style, personnel, and continent from episode to episode.