Justified Changed TV Without Us Even Noticing
It wasn’t Peak TV. It was better.
Calling the main character of a series “A law enforcement officer who doesn’t play by the rules” can sum up the lead role of so many cop shows. A renegade who takes justice into his (or her, but statistically, his) hands, but it all works out because of a strong moral character. It’s a classic, but it’s a classic for a reason: rooting for the good guy even in the face of others not believing in him is one of the most enduring narrative devices of all time.
But in 2010, amid one of the best ages for TV ever, one series took this tired formula and breathed new life into it not through a new twist on the premise but simply by carefully crafting perfectly honed characters and a compelling story. And in doing so, Justified quietly changed the cop show game forever.
Walton Goggins and Timothy Olyphant create magic as Boyd Crowder and Raylan Givens.
Justified has your classic police drama setup: Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) is a U.S. Marshal enforcing his own brand of justice in Appalachian Kentucky, but even that synopsis is a vast oversimplification. Based on Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens books, Justified takes the police drama and elevates it in every way. There are no “procedurals” here — the cases are complex and never repetitive, and the interpersonal drama always takes the front seat thanks to an all-star bench of supporting actors.
Leading the supporting cast is Boyd Crowder, played with trademark enthusiasm by Walton Goggins. His wide-eyed fanaticism as Boyd is constantly a scene-stealer. Raylan and Boyd share a history — they “dug coal together,” as Boyd loves to remind him — but Boyd is a longtime criminal in Harlan County, and Raylan can never quite trust him.
Under the careful supervision of Graham Yost, now serving as the showrunner for Apple TV+’s hit sci-fi series Silo, Justified never got stale. While other shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad were seizing the spotlight, Justified was quietly churning out some of the best crime drama ever, constantly re-examining its own morals without ever overstaying its welcome. Through constantly changing season-long villains and episodic crimes punctuating it, it feels like one of the last truly great classic TV shows.
Timothy Olyphant as Cobb Vanth in The Mandalorian was heavily influenced by Justified.
Justified may not have had the same cultural footprint as its contemporaries, but its influence is still prevalent even today. The series had a more metropolitan reboot in the 2023 series Justified: City Primeval, which brought Harlan to Detroit. You can draw a straight line from it to other neo-westerns like Fallout and The Mandalorian, and Goggins and Olyphant basically play sci-fi versions of their Justified characters in them.
Justified was just like its main character: unassuming, plain-spoken, but quietly genius and underpraised. In the streaming era full of miniseries structures and a departure from traditional storytelling, it’s a breath of fresh air, even if it was the last gasps of a dying era.
