The Blacklist was one of network television’s few breakout hits last year, and after I caught up on it this summer, I realized why. It’s James Spader, playing Raymond “Red” Reddington, a murderous criminal mastermind who decides to help the FBI catch the world’s worst criminals. When he is not spitting out campy insults at the FBI agents he doesn’t like, he is giving brilliant fatherly advice to one agent he does like (Elizabeth Keen, played by Megan Boone) or he’s killing the people who get in his way, with some of the sociopathic delight of Hannibal Lecter. The performance is a tour de force and Spader makes it easy to ignore the weaknesses in the formulaic weekly plots. As TV anti-heroes go, Reddington is my current favorite.
