Mr Inbetween

"Mr Inbetween" is a half-hour Australian crime drama that ran three seasons on FX from 2018 to 2021, created by and starring Scott Ryan as Ray Shoesmith, a Sydney standover man and contract killer. Every episode is directed by Nash Edgerton, brother of Joel, and the whole thing grew out of a 2005 indie feature Ryan made called "The Magician." The early setup is deceptively small: Ray does jobs for a local crew, co-parents a young daughter with his ex, looks after a brother with a serious illness, and starts dating a woman named Ally. That's the machine. A man with an ugly job trying to be a decent dad, a decent brother, a decent boyfriend, in that order.

Scott Ryan writes Ray like he's known him his whole life, because he basically has. The dialogue is loose, funny, dryer than a bad martini, and it never announces itself. Episodes clock in around 25 minutes and waste none of them. Nash Edgerton, a stunt coordinator by trade, shoots violence like it's a plumbing problem — quick, ugly, over before you've adjusted in your seat, and it lands harder for it. Justin Rosniak as Ray's mate Gary is one of the great sidekick performances of the last decade, a walking disaster you'd absolutely still get a beer with. Brooke Satchwell brings real warmth as Ally without ever tipping into sitcom-girlfriend energy. And Ryan himself carries the show with a face that can go from friendly to lethal inside a single reaction shot.

It's small. Deliberately, ideologically small. If you want serialized mythology, kingpin monologues, or a body count that trends on socials, this isn't that. Some episodes are essentially character sketches with a job attached, and a viewer looking for plot momentum can mistake the restraint for coasting. The Australian accents are thick and the slang is thicker; a few conversations will slide right past American ears on first watch. And the tonal jumps — a school pickup, then a broken nose, then a beer with mates — take an episode or two to click.

If you loved "Barry," "Fargo" season two, "Get Shorty," or the quieter stretches of "The Sopranos" where nothing much happens and everything does, you're the audience. Fans of Jesse Armstrong-flavored awkward comedy will feel at home in the domestic scenes. People who need a big antihero speech, a prestige-TV score swelling on cue, or a season-long conspiracy will tap out by episode three and call it slight. It rewards patience the way a good short story does.

DROP EVERYTHING because this is what happens when a writer with something specific to say gets a director who trusts him and a network that stays out of the room. Twenty-six episodes, three tight seasons, no filler, no franchise ambitions, no pivot to a spinoff universe. The show has clear moral weight — about masculinity, care, and the cost of the work Ray does — and it earns every ounce of it through behavior, not dialogue. Nobody makes a speech. Nobody explains the theme to the person across the table. The camera watches, the jokes land, the violence hurts, and the credits roll before you're ready. That's craft. It ended when Ryan decided it was done, which is the rarest thing on this list. Watch it.