FX’s 5-Part Thriller Hit Is a Certified Late-Night Streaming Sensation

Although HBO has been the ostensible face of the Peak TV era since the dawn of the century, it has certainly had its fair share of worthy competitors. Among the other cable and premium channels, HBO’s least celebrated rival during its heyday in the aughts was FX. Thanks to dramas like The Shield and comedies like It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the channel had a wide variety of offerings, giving a prestigious sheen to familiar television genres and story archetypes.

In the late 2000s, FX released a cunning new legal thriller that satisfied fans of classic legal procedurals like Perry Mason and Matlock while also delivering the rich character drama of The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. Sporting a stacked cast, led by Glenn Close and Rose Byrne, Damages is quintessential prestige television, and its endless watchability and stirring serialized cases explain why the five-season show has been returning to streaming charts 14 years after its finale.

‘Damages’ Elevated the Legal Thriller Genre

Debuting on FX in 2007 and concluding in 2012 (with its final two seasons airing on DirecTV’s Audience Network), Damages follows the gifted lawyer of Patty Hewes (Close), who runs the Hewes & Associates firm in New York City with an iron fist. Notorious for her ruthless approach when defending high-stakes clients, she takes newly minted attorney Ellen Parsons (Byrne) under her wing. Season 1 primarily focuses on the defense of a billionaire, Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson), who is accused of insider trading, and future seasons see Patty rolling up her sleeves and engaging in questionable ethics on behalf of her clients.

Damages burst onto the scene in its inaugural season, and it maintained its peak throughout its entire run. The series, created by the writing and production trio of Daniel Zelman, Glenn Kessler, and Todd A. Kessler, pushes its legal procedural structure to lurid heights, following grave acts of distrust and foul play. Legal shows often rely on the comfort of familiarity, but Damages fearlessly killed off numerous key characters and made the glossy world of top-notch law practice a treacherous pit of deception and blood. There are always deeper, more sinister plots at the show’s heart, and the serialized nature of its season-long arcs forces viewers to reckon with the morality of each character.

‘Damages’ Is an Acting Masterclass From Glenn Close and Rose Byrne

The driving force behind Damages is the push-and-pull relationship between Patty and Ellen, which is one of the best character dynamics in any Peak TV show. Close, a Hollywood legend who was just announced as a recipient of an honorary Academy Award, and Byrne, a versatile actor who took a huge leap after earning her first, long-awaited Oscar nod, are electric together. Byrne, in particular, goes toe-to-toe with a dramatic heavyweight in Close, despite the naive and vulnerable nature of the her own character.

Moral lines and black-and-white positions are non-existent in this perverse, inscrutable relationship between an idealistic young lawyer and a savvy, cutthroat veteran who has embraced her own cynicism in her approach to winning every unwinnable case. Close, who won an Emmy for her performance, captures the full spectrum of Patty’s relationship with Ellen, beginning with a budding mentorship and evolving into an unexpected maternal bond. During the prestige television boom, antiheroic protagonists were the norm, but this didn’t always hold true for female characters. In the same vein as Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and Walter White (Bryan Cranston), Close’s Patty Hewes upends the preconceived notions of attorneys, who are supposed to represent honesty and decency on television. Patty’s practice is unforgiving, and she becomes increasingly lost in the corruption of her line of work thanks to Close’s measured performance.

Yet the most subversive aspect of Damages comes from the casting of sitcom legend Ted Danson as the smarmy, ruthlessly conniving Arthur Frobisher, whose innate charm as Sam Malone on Cheers is used as a weapon to avoid all repercussions. The ensemble, which also includes the likes of prolific character actor Zeljko Ivanek, comedy icon Martin Short, William Hurt, and Timothy Olyphant, keeps you on your toes throughout the seasons. Combining the breezy entertainment value of a classic network drama with the engrossing dramatic depth of a prestige cable series, Damages is bound to have a long shelf life on any streaming platform it lands on.