Legal Dramas Don’t Get More Addictive Than This 6-Part Series That Keeps Getting Better

There are plenty of incredible legal dramas, but they don’t get more addictive than a six-part series that keeps getting better with every new season. The greatest legal dramas of all time have a quality to them that pulls the audience into their stories, elevated by captivating characters and compelling cases that elevate the series’ storytelling.

Such is the case with How to Get Away with Murder, a six-season legal thriller that began on ABC in 2014. The series stars Viola Davis as defense attorney and law professor Annalise Keating, whose life is turned upside down when she and her interns become the subjects of investigation into the death of her husband, Sam.

How To Get Away With Murder Is An Addictive Legal Drama

How to Get Away with Murder‘s seasons built on top of one another, using a tried-and-true formula for legal dramas to become extremely addictive. While the show focuses on the overarching plot involving Sam’s death, it also shows Annalise and her interns taking on various legal cases, sometimes week-to-week, as any legal procedural would do.

However, this formula is broken more and more as the series goes on and the mystery begins to spiral into a much larger story. Annalise and her interns, known collectively as The Keating 5, grapple with different, multi-episode cases each season, while the original murder plot hangs over their heads throughout the series’ run.

Viola Davis Made How To Get Away With Murder Even More Special

Davis’ lead performance is the biggest highlight of the show, making her the most compelling How to Get Away with Murder character. Her commanding presence onscreen, coupled with her attempts to maintain a balance between heroism and corruption, adds to Annalise’s complex nature. As the series goes on, Davis peels back layers of her character that make her all the more intriguing.

This includes Annalise learning the truth about what happened to Sam, and the subsequent actions she takes. This ends up having widespread repercussions throughout the series, as the show uses this as a jumping-off point for the wider narrative it tells as seasons progress.

For her performance as Annalise, Davis became the first Black woman in history to win an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series. She received awards from various ceremonies throughout the series’ run, her last being an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series for the final season.

How To Get Away With Murder Has A Real Ending

The ending of How to Get Away with Murder is made stronger by the fact that it has a definitive series finale. Unlike other legal series that, while strong, wound up getting cancelled due to poor ratings, the Davis-led show maintained strong enough viewership throughout to justify a definitive final season.

Because of its strong lead performance, compelling storyline, and an ending that ties up all loose ends, How to Get Away with Murder is a perfectly bingeable legal drama. It helps that thrilling aspects and morally gray choices by its characters all coalesce to form an edge-of-your-seat narrative that gets better with every season.

All episodes of How to Get Away with Murder are streaming on Hulu and Disney+.

Release Date

2014 – 2020-00-00

Showrunner

Shonda Rhimes