Oh let me count the ways that ‘The Good Wife‘ is the best new show on television! Julianna Margulies is stunning in the role of Alicia Florrick, the wife of fallen politician Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), caught on video multiple times cheating on her with young prostitutes.

Alicia is six months out from the day the scandal broke and life as she and her family knew it was shattered–her husband is in jail for using public funds for his bedroom ventures, she and the kids moved from a swanky upscale neighborhood into a cramped apartment, and she’s working for the first time in over a decade as a junior lawyer at a firm where an old friend gave her a break.

There isn’t a moment when Alicia Florrick enters a room that the scandal surrounding her husband–and how it effects her public image to have stood by him on TV–doesn’t enter with her. And that’s exactly what makes this show so, utterly, unbelievably gripping: she handles the scrutiny and sneering with an almost impossible grace. There isn’t a false note in Julianna Margulies’s performance, her lines are pitch perfect and the overall writing of this show fantastic.

After three episodes so far in its first season, it’s shaping up to be a riveting story of redemption. The show’s writers were smart: rather than focus on Alicia’s fall and the circumstances of her humiliation, they’ve instead chosen to turn this into a brilliant courtroom drama, the likes I haven’t seen in years, and one in which Alicia appears as her law firm’s rising star. Before we have a moment to feel bad for her, she deftly sidesteps sympathy and shows her courtroom chops. You can’t help rooting for her.

This is officially the show I most look forward to each week. If you haven’t seen it yet, episodes are available online and it’s the kind of show that you can step into mid-season. Not to be missed. More sweet redemption is sure to come.