Television series

Damages

Name: Damages
Genre: Drama, Legal
Released: 2007
Cast: Glenn Close, Rose Byrne, Tate Donovan, Ted Danson, Anastasia Griffith

This is the show that made 'flashback' feel like a threat. Patty Hewes is one of television's great monsters — brilliant, magnetic, capable of ruining you and making you thank her for it. Ellen starts as her protégée and ends up as her mirror. Told in scrambled time with a corpse-shaped question mark over every season, it's a legal thriller that trusts you to keep up.

TVMaze rating

7.9

If you liked this

Killing Eve2018

Same electric charge as Patty and Ellen — obsession dressed as professional rivalry, two brilliant women circling each other with something closer to love than hatred, tipping into violence.

But Loses some of its nerve after the first season; the tonal control that made it thrilling gets shakier as it goes.

Big Little Lies2017

Opens with a death and works backward, exactly like Damages, and lets its cast of famous, formidable actresses be genuinely frightening as well as glamorous, which is trickier than it looks.

But Trades legal grit for Monterey wealth-porn — gorgeous but a softer, glossier world than Patty Hewes would ever tolerate.

The Good Wife2009

The best mainstream legal drama of the era — sharp, funny, and unafraid to let its heroine become someone she wouldn't have recognised at the start.

But Network-friendly pacing and a case-of-the-week structure that Damages' relentless serialized dread never had to bother with.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Sweet Smell of Success1957

Long before Patty Hewes, there was J.J. Hunsecker — a Broadway columnist who destroys people for sport and grooms a hungry young operator to help him do it. Same mentor-monster blueprint, six decades earlier.

Some of the best dialogue ever put in a film noir, snapped off like whip-cracks, and a portrait of institutional cruelty that hasn't dated a day.

But Black and white, 1950s pacing, and a New York that no longer exists — an adjustment if your reference points are all prestige cable.

Better Call Saul2015

A masterclass in slow corrosion — watching a decent-ish man talk himself into becoming someone worse, one perfectly reasonable, perfectly justified compromise at a time.

But Glacial by design; if you came for courtroom fireworks you'll be waiting several seasons for a payoff.

Ozark2017

Another story about smart people rationalising terrible things to protect what they've built, with the same nerve-shredding sense that everyone is one mistake from disaster.

But More crime thriller than legal drama, and considerably bleaker in its view of family loyalty and what it costs.

Michael Clayton2007

A corporate-law fixer film with the same queasy sense that the people signing the checks are the real villains — tight, tense, and over in two hours.

But One sitting, one story — none of the slow-build, multi-season immersion that makes Damages so addictive.

House of Cards2013

Swap litigation for legislation and you've got the same pleasure: a ruthless political operator who breaks the fourth wall to let you in on the con.

But The Netflix version curdles badly by its later seasons, for reasons on and off screen.

The Firm1993

A glossy, paranoid thriller about a young lawyer who discovers his dream firm is rotten to the core — the mentor/protégée poison delivered in blockbuster form.

But Broader and pulpier than Damages, with a satisfying-but-simple ending Patty Hewes would never allow.

Suits2011

If you want the mentor/protégée dynamic without quite so much moral vertigo — the same law-firm hierarchy, the same charisma, just dialed way down on the dread.

But Glossy and consequence-light; nobody's soul is actually at stake, which is sort of the point and sort of the problem.

Whiplash2014

Take Patty and Ellen's mentor/protégée grinder, strip out the law, and drop it in a jazz conservatory: a ferocious authority figure breaking a talented student down to build them into something harder.

One of the most intense two-handers ever filmed — a masterclass in how mentorship curdles into abuse, and how the student starts to crave it.

But Punishingly tense and just 106 minutes — a gut-punch rather than the slow-simmer immersion Damages offers across five seasons.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room2005

Arthur Frobisher is a Ken Lay type in miniature — a beloved CEO whose empire turns out to be built on lies. This is the real thing: the actual fraud that class-action lawsuits like Damages' fictionalize.

A jaw-dropping, genuinely entertaining documentary about greed and self-delusion at the top of a company everyone trusted — it plays like a thriller because it basically was one.

But No Patty Hewes to root for or against — just executives, tape recordings, and the slow accumulation of real human damage.