86JUSTIFIED - TIE

Aired: FX, 2010-Present

Graham Yost, after working on two major miniseries for HBO, Band of Brothers and The Pacific, segued into something entirely different in Justified. A sort of hard-boiled Western, the series is based on a character, U.S. Deputy Marshall Raylan Givens, who appeared in several Elmore Leonard novels, and the pilot was based on Leonard's short story, "Fire in the Hole." The series is set in a specific place, a hardscrabble, coal mining region of eastern Kentucky where the locals are battling meth addiction and corporate mining concerns and now Givens, the lawman reassigned from Miami and sent back into his rural roots. Leonard's tonal palette is a guiding light; behind the scenes, bracelets were made up with the letters W.W.E.D What Would Elmore Do. "They're trying to stay in my mind, you know, and write offbeat lines and hard lines and do what I do, and I think it's great," Leonard said.