Suits Season 1

If you want a drama that takes its characters as seriously as its plot, Suits Season 1 is available on and right now. The 1-season run is exactly the right length for what it is doing. An 8/10 rating says what the writing already makes obvious: this one works. Gabriel Macht's performance alone is worth the time investment. Put it on tonight and see for yourself.

Suits Season 1 arrived without much fanfare and built its audience the hard way — through word of mouth. Suits Season 1 trusts its audience to sit with discomfort instead of resolving it too quickly. Manhattan attorney Harvey Specter finds the perfect associate in streetwise prodigy Mike Ross. The trouble is, Mike's a college dropout — not a lawyer. Gabriel Macht and Patrick J. Adams lead a cast that brings real weight to the material. It was aired in 2011. Suits Season 1 resists tidy resolutions in a way that respects how messy real consequences actually are. It rarely drops the ball, and when it does, it recovers fast.

For anyone looking for storytelling that takes its characters seriously, Suits Season 1 delivers. It stands on its own even without an obvious comparison point. The complete run is available and best experienced without too much prior knowledge of where it goes. Gabriel Macht's work here is the kind that gets referenced in career retrospectives. It makes everything else feel thin by comparison.