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Louise Thomas
Editor
Everyone remembers the great TV performances.
From James Gandolfini’s hulking, kvetching Tony Soprano, to Brain Cox’s ailing, foul-mouthed Logan Roy in Succession, the very best TV shows often force top actors to bring their A-game, week after week.
But what about those performances that get left by the wayside? Sometimes, actors still manage to turn in remarkable work despite some squiffy material.
Whether it’s shoddy sitcoms such as King of Queens, or bloated, saccharine dramas such as The Newsroom, substandard TV has nonetheless been home to many a fine performance over the years.
In the case of someone like Tom Hanks, whose early TV role is best left forgotten, their reputation managed to overcome the dreariness of the material. Others, perhaps, weren’t so lucky.
Here are 13 great performances in TV shows that weren’t quite up to snuff…
John Cho – Cowboy Bebob
Netflix’s adaptation of Cowboy Bebop was doomed to begin with – in translating the seminal anime series to live-action, it drained the quirky space western of all its charm and verve. But that’s not to discredit the performers, who give the project a good old college try: John Cho, playing maverick bounty hunter Spike Spiegel, is particularly valiant in his efforts to inject some panache into a TV show that’s sorely lacking.
Olivia Colman – Secret Invasion
Marvel’s body-snatcher spy series Secret Invasion may well be the nadir of its Disney+ MCU fare – a turgid and cheap-looking affair that was, despite the presence of Samuel L Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn, not really watched by much of anyone. Oscar-winner Olivia Colman is also among the stars here, and manages to turn in some really quite strong work as an MI6 boss, making a cake from material that could only generously be described as crumbs.
Jeff Daniels – The Newsroom
The Newsroom, Aaron Sorkin’s showy follow-up to famed flop Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, was mostly pure, unadulterated cringe fodder – a mawkish, self-important ode to the most insufferable people on earth. But Jeff Daniels, playing principled news anchor Will McAvoy, did his very best to sell the reality of this guff. Sorkin dialogue is its own skill, and Daniels revelled in the quickfire back-and-forths; if the framework around him had been better, this performance could have really been something.
Dennis Franz – Beverly Hills Buntz
There’s a whole lot of oddity to Beverly Hills Buntz, the comedic spin-off to seminal cop show Hill Street Blues that focused on Franz’s irascible Norman Buntz – few eyebrows were raised when it was cancelled partway through its first and only season. Franz, however, didn’t put much of a foot wrong. Thankfully, the show’s cancellation paved the way for his casting in NYPD Blue, which ran for 12 seasons and gave Franz the Emmy-splattered role of a lifetime, grizzled New York copper Andy Sipowicz.
Tom Hanks – Bosom Buddies
Remember Bosom Buddies? The answer, I’d guess, is almost certainly “no”. This wonky sitcom about two male advertising execs who cross-dress in order to secure a room in an all-female hotel, was scrapped after two seasons, thrown somewhere into the pile of forgotten TV misfires. What was notable about it, however, was the fact that one of these two men was played by Tom Hanks – just a few years before he would become one of Hollywood’s biggest-ever stars. The material may have been lacking, but Hanks still evinced some of the megawatt charm that would propel him to greatness.
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Jessica Henwick – Iron Fist
Of the set of Marvel series that Netflix launched before the rights transferred over to Disney (Daredevil, Jessica Jones, etc), Iron Fist may be the worst. A messy dirge of an action show, the series was nonetheless girded by a couple of its supporting turns, particularly Jessica Henwick (The Matrix Resurrections), playing ace martial artist Colleen Wing.
Walton Goggins – Deep State
For two decades, Alabama-born actor Walton Goggins has quietly been one of the most consistent and versatile actors across the whole medium of television, in series such as The Shield, Justified, and the Danny McBride/Jody Hill collaborations Vice Principals and The Righteous Gemstones. Mediocre British espionage thriller Deep State is miles off his best projects, but Goggins – stepping in as series lead for its second season after the departure of Mark Strong – still oozes class and charisma.
Seth MacFarlane – Family Guy
It may have run for more than 20 seasons and counting but Family Guy has never really beaten the “bad show” allegations. Cheap, shock humour and paper-thin storytelling make the hit animation a missable prospect for many TV fans – but, despite this, you can’t knock MacFarlane’s voice work. Lending his voice to characters such as British-inflected baby Stewie, obnoxious talking dog Brian, and warbly grotesque Peter, MacFarlane proves an extremely versatile talent, and with a formidable knack for joke delivery. Without him, Family Guy would have been dead in the water.
Debi Mazar – Entourage
HBO Hollywood-insider comedy Entourage may have been something of a critical whipping boy, thanks to its rampant sexism and dubious dramatic merits, but there were, in the margins, a handful of decent performances. Debi Mazar, best known perhaps for her role in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas, is particularly sharp, as A-lister Vincent Chase’s hard-nosed, sassy publicist Shauna.
Jenna Ortega – Wednesday
We can admit it: Netflix’s Wednesday wasn’t actually very good. Stack it next to previous Addams Family adaptations, such as 1993’s pitch-perfect comic masterpiece Addams Family Values, and the whole thing seems false, twee, and laboured. Key to the series’ juggernaut popularity, however, was Ortega’s star-making turn as the macabre young cynic Wednesday Addams. Christina Ricci left pretty ginormous shoes to fill, but Ortega, somehow, manages to fill them.
Wendell Pierce – Jack Ryan
Wendell Pierce was phenomenal as The Wire’s seasoned homicide detective Bunk Moorland, and perhaps even better as Treme’s boisterous trombonist Antoine Baptiste. But his most underrated achievement may be livening up Prime Video’s Jack Ryan, an otherwise insipid spy thriller starring John “Jim from The Office” Krasinski. As CIA handler James Greer, Pierce is always the most watchable thing on screen: the series may have been better off just focusing on him.
Richard Schiff – The Good Doctor
Medical drama The Good Doctor was increasingly the subject of ridicule towards the end of its run, thanks to its preposterous and crass handling of its lead character, autistic supersurgeon Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore). But credit must go where credit is due, and in this case, it’s due to Richard Schiff, who classes things up as neurosurgeon Aaron Glassman. Schiff’s best work lies elsewhere – namely, his part as world-weary political speech writer Toby Ziegler in The West Wing – but he lends The Good Doctor a pathos and gravitas that, frankly, it never deserved.
Jerry Stiller – King of Queens
In most ways, King of Queens, starring Kevin James as schlubby deliveryman and Carrie Heffernan as his long-suffering wife, was an amalgam of hacky sitcom tropes. But one shining light of the series was the late Jerry Stiller, best known as the fiery curmudgeon Frank Costanza on Seinfeld. Here, he’s in much the same mode, as Heffernan’s crotchety misfit father – and he plays the part to perfection.
