Pose

By turns sensational and emotional, uber-creator Ryan Murphy's series about 1980s NYC drag ball culture has spectacle, sizzling dialogue, an astonishing sense of place, and characters you want to root for. Most viewers will be all in for the show's very first scene, when Elektra Abundance and her cabal of "children" tiptoe through a museum at night, stealing royal clothing out of an exhibition for their next walk-off. When they're stymied by a locked door, Elektra demands her children hurl a bench through the glass to escape: "I look too good not to be seen!" Moments later, moving like a ruler across a club floor for a howling crowd of fans, Elektra spots the cops, come to take her and her housemates away. She elegantly brandishes her wrists, ready for the cuffs -- and sweeps out the door to the Black Maria, secure that no one in the place has ever seen a walk finish like this before.

Those who lived through the 1980s will be in heaven spotting little pieces of bygone pop culture, all set to a blissfully apt period soundtrack: Mary Jane Girls, 10cc, and Chaka Khan are highlights. Even those not familiar with vintage drag ball (or its two most prominent related touchstones, 1990 docu Paris Is Burning and RuPaul's Drag Race) can get behind a story in which despised outsiders find a way not just to survive, but to live deliciously. "Balls are a gathering of people who are not welcome to gather anywhere else; a celebration of a life the rest of the world does not dream worthy of celebrating," Blanca explains to wide-eyed newcomer Damon. True, that. They were also a place where like-minded souls could find each other, build something glamorous and enviable, and most powerfully of all, choose each other as allies and family members. More than anything else, that last part is what Pose gets exactly right -- and why it will grab viewers' emotions while it dazzles the eye.