7. Rectify (Sundance, April 22nd May 20th)
If you're tired of hearing about shows which follow cops chasing serial killers, epic warriors, high level conspiracies, and zombies, then the understated Rectify might be your cup of tea. Another first original series for a network from the producers of Breaking Bad, originally planned to air on AMC with Walton Goggins (Justified, The Shield, Django Unchained) in the lead role, Rectify follows the reintegration of protagonist Daniel Holden into an American Gothic Southern town after he's released from 19 years on death row after DNA evidence vacates his original trial which is not the same as exonerating the man for the rape and murder of his girlfriend from adolescence, crimes to which he had apparently confessed as an emotionally distraught teenager. Despite a slower pace, the series' initial six episodes has garnered
a very high Metacritic score and after watching only the first episode I'd describe the story as an incredibly compelling, slow burning contemplation of an individual's relationship to the rest of the world when basic aspects of that world we all take for granted, things which a convict has little to no experience of when he was incarcerated before graduating high school, are suddenly and unexpectedly thrown back into the mix. Imagine spending more than half your life in a prison cell, becoming intimately familiar with W. Somerset Maugham and vipassana meditation just to get by, then effectively being told, Just kidding. Oh yeah, here's the internet. Rectify does an amazing job of establishing strong pathos with each of the characters including the protagonist, his supportive mother and sister, her District Attorney boyfriend, his antagonistic stepbrother, his more than a little curious sister-in-law, and the various witnesses/perpetrators, law enforcement officers, and attorneys whom were involved in the decades old case as they all try to make sense of what really happened and what will happen now. The questions, Why would somebody confess to something they didn't do? and, What is the truth? loom heavy on the show's pilot which very impressively avoids the trappings of crime thriller conventions to tell a colossally affective human story the likes of which have not been seen since HBO's Six Feet Under.