Michael Connelly's favorite TV show in 2011 wasn’t one of his own. The man who created Hieronymus “Harry” Bosch, whose The Lincoln Lawyer keeps finding screen adaptations, and who has published more than 42 novels and sold 74 million copies worldwide, pointed at a neo-Western instead.
That was Justified. It was one of seven picks he handed over in a 2011 interview with TV Guide, and the striking part is that every single one has held up. Connelly’s taste runs in three directions: shows about the writing process itself, shows that live inside the mind of crime and deduction, and shows carried by top-tier actors doing careful character work. More than a decade later, the list still works as a watch order.
Justified, the one he wanted to write for
Justified ran from 2010 to 2015 and stars Timothy Olyphant as Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, a loose cannon with an unconventional approach to upholding the law in the Appalachian Mountains. Nick Searcy, Erica Tazel and Walton Goggins fill out the cast.
The show is based on the work of Elmore Leonard, a storyteller Connelly has a particular soft spot for. He called Justified a “perfect realization” of Leonard’s writing and said he would “love to work on it.” That never happened. But the series kept its near-perfect critical reception across all six seasons, so it’s a safe bet Connelly stuck with it to the end.
Castle (official site) is the job, minus the hard parts
Connelly called Castle a “fantasy version of what I do!” and he’d know. He guest starred on the mystery police procedural four times during its eight-season run.
The premise practically writes his invitation. Nathan Fillion plays Richard Castle, a bored, blocked mystery novelist who starts shadowing homicide detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic) while a copycat murderer in New York City duplicates the crimes from his books. She becomes his muse. The copycat hook is a thrill on its own, but the chemistry that develops between Castle and Beckett is what carries the show, and it’s what makes this one an undisputed winner.
Californication, where the writer’s block gets ugly
If Castle is the daydream, Californication is the hangover. Connelly described the Showtime comedy-drama as the “dark side of the Castle fantasy,” and the comparison is exact. David Duchovny’s Hank Moody is another troubled novelist who can’t write, but he handles it with sex and drugs rather than police ride-alongs. The show, which ran from 2007 to 2014, sits in that uncomfortable space between fame, luxury and excess.
It’s also a treat if you care about rock music and the culture around it. Connelly never got a guest spot here (that we know of), but RZA, Rick Springfield, Steve Jones, Tim Minchin, Tommy Lee and Zakk Wylde all turned up before the final episode aired in 2014.
Kojak, the one that made him a crime writer
This is the pick with a backstory. Connelly watched Kojak with his father when it originally aired, and he called those evenings “great bonding time.” His dad, he said, “loved shows where the stakes were high. Life and death, justice prevailing, things like that. I think that helped set me on the path to what I do now.”
So Harry Bosch owes something to Telly Savalas. Kojak ran five seasons and 118 episodes from 1973 to 1978 and follows Lieutenant Theophilus “Theo” Kojak, an incorruptible cop with a fondness for dum-dums, a drawer full of catchphrases and a habit of saying exactly what he thinks. He’s quirky, witty and willing to bend a rule, which is to say he’s the template for half the TV detectives working today. The show set up tropes the genre still leans on, so its influence stretches well past Connelly’s bookshelf.
Veronica Mars, which he found late like everybody else
Connelly missed Veronica Mars while it was on the air. Most people did. The neo-noir mystery drama premiered in 2004 and was canceled after three seasons in 2006. By 2011 he and his daughter had caught it in reruns and gotten hooked.
Kristen Bell plays the title character, a student (high school first, then college) moonlighting as a private investigator under the guidance of her detective father. The fans never let the show die. A film sequel arrived in 2014 and a fourth season landed on Hulu in 2019, both largely funded by that same fan base. Whether Connelly chipped in is anyone’s guess.
Dexter, for the performance he couldn’t shake
Talking about Justified got Connelly onto the actors he admires most. Olyphant is one. Jennifer Carpenter is another, for her work as Debra Morgan, sister to Michael C. Hall’s Dexter in the psychological crime thriller Dexter. Connelly praised the show’s whole roster of characters along with the “uniqueness of the show.”
That uniqueness is the entire pitch. Dexter, which aired from 2006 to 2013, centers on a psychopathic vigilante serial killer, the exact sort of person who’d be sitting across the interrogation table from a Connelly protagonist. And like Veronica Mars, the show refused to stay finished. Dexter: New Blood, Dexter: Original Sin and Dexter Resurrection have all arrived in recent years.
NCIS, and the two words Connelly wants for himself
Mark Harmon rounds out Connelly’s list of favorite performers. The author singled out Harmon’s Jethro Gibbs on the CBS procedural NCIS for being “relentless and reliable,” two qualities Connelly said he hopes describe him too.
NCIS started in 2003 and hasn’t stopped being a hit. Gibbs isn’t at the center of the action much these days, but the franchise keeps running on the deliberate nuance built into each of its characters. The mothership is still going, and around it sit JAG, NCIS: Los Angeles, NCIS: New Orleans, NCIS: Hawai’i, NCIS: Sydney, NCIS: Origins, NCIS: Tony & Ziva and NCIS: New York. Actors like Harmon leave and drift back. Nobody, it seems, ever separates from this franchise for good.
