If there's any proof that prestigious awards don't always determine what makes a television show great, look no further than Dark Winds. The AMC series, set in New Mexico in the early 1970s, has been criminally overlooked in every awards season for its first two seasons, despite it being masterfully crafted and filled to the brim with incredible performances by a mostly Native American cast. But AMC doesn't need awards to see the vision. In its third season, Dark Winds continues to be a phenomenal thriller series that is the best neo-Western of the current era of television.

Ahead of the Season 3 premiere, Dark Winds has already been renewed for a fourth season. Judging by this season's endurance, the series will likely be around for a few more, just as long as showrunner John Wirth can keep up the pace of adapting Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn & Chee novels into stunning episodes. It also helps that Robert Redford and George R. R. Martin produce the series, among others. With any crime show, there runs a risk of the plot drying up over time. As unique as each crime case can be, at the end of the day, the killer is almost always caught. As it turns out, the creatives and cast behind Dark Winds avoid that pitfall by using the crime plot as a front. The real drama lies in the way the search for justice peels back the layers of its fractured characters.