When "The Good Wife" premiered in the fall of 2009, insiders whispered that Alicia Florrick, the good wife, was modeled after Silda Spitzer, the remarkably resilient former spouse of Elliott Spitzer, former New York prosecutor who ended-up himself prosecuted on charges of using public funds to support his prostitute habit. In the first few episodes, Alicia stood mute and shell-shocked as her politician husband admitted to "indiscretions," was tried and sent to jail. With only mild irony, the good wife emerges as the amazing woman as soon as hubby gets fitted for his orange jumpsuit. Played with tremendous grace, style, and power by Julianna Marguiles, Alicia Florrick, a la Silda Spitzer, returns to her old law practice. A little out of practice after thirteen years as wife and mother, she wobbles before she restores her professional standing. As "The Good Wife" evolved, it outgrew its need for "ripped from the headlines" comparisons. Episode by episode, Marguiles quickened, toughened, and deepend Alicia's character. Her imprisoned spouse becomes simply a footnote or sidebar as Alicia struggles to keep her family intact and build her career in a law firm riddled with scheming, scandal, and intrigue.

One of two intense medical dramas NBC introduced in the fall of 2009, "Mercy" had all the advantages its one-named rival "Trauma" did not. First, it had talent behind the scenes. Liz Heldens from "Friday Night Lights" created the show and led the writers, proving once again that the best way to dramatize the real world is to show it realistically"”ugliness and all. Second, it had attitude and guts to stay true to its revolutionary premise, the well-informed notion "that nurses remain [not only] more generous caregivers, but that they are more intuitively apt, smarter, more committed and as technically able as their [physician] superiors, with none of the accompanying arrogance." In a winner-take-all ER smackdown, you always would go all-in with the Mercy Hospital nurses. The main character, nurse Veronica Flanagan Callahan, has just returned from a tour in Iraq, where she clearly learned more in each day than the pompous, presumptuous doctors learned in all five years of medical school. Of course, Veronica gets neither the respect nor the reward she deserves, but "Mercy" dangles the possibility of true love as just recompense for Veronica's skill and compassion. Taylor Schilling plays Veronica with exactly the right balance of toughness and vulnerability, skillfully juxtaposing her consummate skill as a nurse with her intrepid ingenuousness in matters of the heart. If only "Mercy" had survived into a second season, all the tangled threads in the story might have come to their proper denouement. If only.

Fiercely reminiscent of Lord of the Rings and at least as complicated, HBO's "Game of Thrones'" chronicles the genuinely epic story of seven noble families' struggles over control of Westeros, their mythical homeland. Observing all the properly epic conventions, and developing truly epic heroes and villains, "The Game of Thrones" was adapted for television from George Martin's fantasy novel, Song of Ice and Fire. The ten-episode series weaves together seventeen major characters' political and sexual schemes, mixing-in plenty of knightly sword-play and lots of nightly trysts. Mark Addy, Peter Dinklage, Iain Glen, Jennifer Ehle, Lena Headey, and Sean Bean lead a powerful cast. Shot entirely on location in Ireland, "Game of the Thrones" is as beautiful as it is complex and treacherous, and the landscape lends itself to The Game's mystic and horrible undertones. While the Lannister and Stark families challenge the Baratheon family's rule, "an ancient evil awakes," and only a band of renegade knights errant stands between Westeros and "the horrors beyond the realms of men." Somehow, in "Game of Thrones'" far away medieval realm, civil war and imminent apocalypse look a lot more noble, sexy, and glamorous than they appear in the post-modern world.

How many television shows can claim the honor of creating a new term in the English language? "Grey's Anatomy" qualified for the Oxford English Dictionary with its phrase "McDreamy," the residents' term for the hot young surgeon with whom they worked and studied. And original coinage is just the tip of the program's linguistic iceberg as it has remained arguably the best written show on television for more than five seasons. Both narrative and dialogue dazzle in every episode; accompanied by the right music, the closing sequences guarantee a good cry. Enrolled in the nation's toughest and most competitive residency, five young women doctors struggle to survive forty-eight hour shifts and the rigors of a program supervised by five famous doctors who are determined to shape them up or break them down. The women focus on, often obsesses with their careers, and romance, in the words of one viewer, "like take-out pizza, is consumed on the run." Just before the show's 2005 debut, Alessandra Stanley described it as "a Girl Power version of "˜ER'," still the best one-phrase summary ever. All those young girls, and only one McDreamy.

Christina Hawthorne is the Chief Nursing Officer at a hospital in Richmond, Virginia who is a constant advocate for her staff as well as her patients, even when it may threaten her job. When the hospital (Richmond Trinity) closes its doors the staff moves on to James River Hospital, where the working atmosphere seems brighter. Hawthorne finds she also faces extra stress due to her changing relationship with Chief of Surgery Dr. Tom Wakefield (Michael Vartan from Alias, Monster-In-Law). Seems he wants a commitment from her but she may not be ready. Nurse Hawthorne is ably played by Jada Pinkett Smith (A Different World, The Nutty Professor) who also is executive producer of the show. Pinkett had sworn off doing any more television but found this one a perfect fit and an interesting challenge. Also starring in Hawthorne are David Julian Hirsh (Lovebites, CSI: NY) as Ray Stein, RN and also Suleka Mathew from Men in Trees, The West Wing as Nurse Bobbie Jackson who is Chief Nursing Officer at James River Hospital, and Christina Moore (90210, Burn Notice) portrays Nurse Candy Sullivan.

4 Blocks is a German TV series that follows the story of a Lebanese family living in Berlin. The show premiered in 2017 and ran for three seasons, ending in 2019. It revolves around Ali "Toni" Hamady, who attempts to leave his criminal past behind and start a legitimate business, but his efforts are hindered by his brother's recklessness and a rival gang's thirst for power.