Jon Hamm's 5 Best TV Performances

• Television

That Jon Hamm guy? He's pretty good at his job. Ever since he rose to fame thanks to "Mad Men" (more on that shortly), Hamm, who was born in St. Louis, Missouri and toiled in a bunch of small roles until booking the beloved AMC drama, is a rare actor who can, if you'll forgive my verbiage here, swing both ways. Despite earning his bonafides as a dramatic performer, Hamm is incredibly funny, and in a number of astonishingly silly projects like "Bridesmaids" and "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" (or, for that matter, "Saturday Night Live" sketches from The Lonely Island like "Shy Ronnie" and "The Curse"), he's proven that he's just as comfortable cracking jokes as he is delivering serious, emotional monologues. He even recently excelled at playing himself in the raunchy comedy "Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass," having previously done so on "Comedy Bang! Bang" and "The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret."

So which Hamm roles — on the small screen, specifically — are the very best of the best? I was asked, by my editors and colleagues, to give a shoutout to his Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne, the villain of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," as well as Falcon in the Netflix reboot "Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp." Still, there's an embarrassment of riches to choose from here, so let's go over Hamm's finest television performances as of this writing.

5. Matt Trent, Black Mirror

The final episode of Charlie Brooker's anthology series "Black Mirror" to air on the British outlet Channel 4 before it moved to Netflix permanently is the holiday special "White Christmas," and it's one of the show's most disturbing installments. It also, as it happens, features an outstanding performance from one Jon Hamm. Written by Brooker and directed by his collaborator Carl Tibbetts, "White Christmas" introduces us to Hamm's Matt Trent and Rafe Spall's Joe Potter, two men who reside in an isolated cabin and aren't on particularly good speaking terms, despite their close physical proximity. When the two begrudgingly celebrate Christmas, Matt starts telling Joe why he's there in the first place, and it's ultimately revealed that both men committed or encouraged misdeeds with an invention called "Z-Eyes," implants that you can put into your eyes and, by extension, ears so that other people can live voyeuristically through you.

Both Joe and Matt are, frankly, depraved, and when you learn the specifics of their crimes and meet victims in flashback, like Natalia Tena's Jennifer and Oona Chaplin's Greta, your stomach will churn. Add in a bizarre twist involving "cookie" versions of people (digital versions of them that are kept in egg-shaped containers), and you've got a great "Black Mirror" episode on your hands ... and an astonishingly good turn from Hamm to boot.

4. Sheriff Roy Tillman, Fargo

When the fifth season of Noah Hawley's FX anthology series "Fargo" began, all that anybody could talk about were nipple rings — specifically, the ones adorning Jon Hamm's (prosthetic) chest in his role as Sheriff Roy Tillman. That's an objectively funny thing to focus on right out of the gate, but true to form, Hamm delivers a wonderfully layered and fascinating performance in this season of "Fargo," which aired from late 2023 to early 2024 and centers around Dorothy "Dot" Lyon (Juno Temple), a seemingly mild-mannered housewife living in Scandia, Minnesota, who has to reckon with the misdeeds of her past.

Hamm actually has an incredibly complicated role as Roy. Not only is he a devoutly religious man on the surface whose "devotion" to the church covers up some of his darker indiscretions — including the fact that, while married to Dot years prior, he was physically abusive — but he's also deeply corrupt. All in all, Hamm gets to show off his comedic impulses and dramatic chops in equal measure as a clear antagonist, and it's clear that he's deployed perfectly on a show as consistently excellent as "Fargo."

3. Dr. Andrew Baird, 30 Rock

When I pitched this list of performances to my editors, I got a tiny bit of pushback on Jon Hamm's short-lived "30 Rock" character Dr. Andrew "Drew" Baird, who has way less screen time than his aforementioned Reverend Gary on "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt." With all due respect, the pick here has to be Drew, because he's the focal point of one of the best-ever episodes of "30 Rock" — the outstanding Season 3 installment "The Bubble." In this pitch-perfect half-hour, we learn that, like Alec Baldwin's admittedly still-handsome executive Jack Donaghy, Drew lives in the titular "bubble." He thinks he speaks perfect French and enjoys a side hustle as a tennis tutor, because he's just too hot to criticize; he can't speak French, sucks at tennis, and is a doctor who doesn't know the Heimlich maneuver. (It gets worse: Tina Fey's maladapted protagonist Liz Lemon exclaims, "He's worse at sex than I am!")

After the events of "The Bubble," Liz decides to free her handsome bubble-dwelling flame Drew into the wilds of New York City, watching as he rides his brand-new motorcycle right into a nearby trash can. The next time Liz sees Drew, he has two hook hands due to accidents involving helicopters and fireworks. (He's still really handsome, though.) Anyone who's ever watched "Bridesmaids" or, for that matter, Hamm's multiple turns hosting "Saturday Night Live" knows that this guy has amazing comedy chops, and I sure am glad that his friend Fey asked him to appear in a small but incredible "30 Rock" arc.

2. Andrew Coop Cooper, Your Friends & Neighbors

If I'm being nice, "Your Friends & Neighbors," the Apple TV series helmed by Jonathan Tropper, is hit or miss. If I'm being borderline mean, this show isn't very good. The premise is promising: Jon Hamm plays Andrew "Coop" Cooper, a man ousted from his high-paying finance job who starts stealing from his exorbitantly wealthy friends and neighbors (get it?) and pawning their watches, pens, and jewelry to pay his bills. When a neighbor's housekeeper Elena (Aimee Carerro) catches Coop in the act, the two team up. All the while, Coop has to hide his newfound criminal enterprise from his ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet), their two teenage children, and his sister Ali (Lena Hall), just to name a few supporting players.

"Your Friends & Neighbors" had a fun first season that dramatically lost its momentum in Season 2, which introduced a foil in the form of the equally fun James Marsden but never really regained the drive of the inaugural outing. Despite that, Hamm is reliably wry and excellent as Coop, a guy who forces you to root for him because he's incredibly likable despite, you know, all the crime stuff. Frankly, "Your Friends & Neighbors" lives or dies on the strength of Hamm's central performance, and he's the only reason the show is still thriving.

1. Don Draper, Mad Men

You knew this was coming. On the verge of quitting acting entirely, Jon Hamm managed to book the lead role of ad man and handsome liar Don Draper on "Mad Men," a stylish 1960s-set drama led by Matthew Weiner (a veteran of other beloved TV dramas like "The Sopranos"). Alongside a talented cast including January Jones as Don's long-suffering first wife Betty Draper, John Slattery as Don's colleague Roger Sterling, Christina Hendricks as the ad agency's office manager Joan Holloway, and Elisabeth Moss as secretary turned copywriter (and Don's protégé) Peggy Olson, "Mad Men" put Hamm on the map as Don, a cheating, lying scumbag with chiseled cheekbones and a cigarette between his lips at all times.

It's a testament to Hamm's performance, though, that you can never truly hate Don, even when he's rampantly committing infidelity, puking in the office from drinking too much, or being an overtly bad parent. Don, who hides a life-changing secret about his time serving in the Korean War, is a densely layered anti-hero who becomes more bedraggled and disheveled as the show continues, letting Hamm fully lay Don's mental struggles bare as "Mad Men" reaches its astonishingly excellent conclusion. If Hamm is only known for one role from now until the end of time, it will be for Don Draper on "Mad Men," and you know what? That's a pretty good legacy to leave.