20 Best TV Shows Of 2016
18. Luke Cage
Luke Cage was, like its Netflix/Marvel stablemate Jessica Jones, an entry into the superhero genre that managed to be about much more than its crimefighting, enhanced powers trappings.
Luke Cage the series, much like the character's comic origins, owed a lot to the blaxpoitation films of the 19070s. Showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, a former music journalist, mixed that with 90s hip-hop and placed it in the real world of 2016, one in which racial prejudice still exists, black men are killed by police officers, and there are movements like Black Lives Matter.
Cage isn't just a superhero, he's a black superhero, and that's important to the the plot and its characters. And oh what characters they are. From Simone Missick's Missy Knight to Alfre Woodard's Mariah Dillard, the show has the best cast of any superhero TV show, and uses most of them to good effect.
A great conflict between Mike Colter's Cage and Mahershala Ali's captivating villain Cottonmouth builds to a head, and while the second half of the season - which puts Erik LeRay Harvey's Diamondback at the centre of the battle in Harlem - isn't anywhere near as strong, it's still an excellent series overall. Sweet Christmas indeed!
Best Episode: Manifest