1. Happy Valley | BBC1
What we say: “In some of the most psychologically perceptive writing and acting (from Sarah Lancashire’s Catherine) that TV has ever seen, Happy Valley progressively reveals deep and bleeding layers of grief, deceit and guilt within three generations of the Cawood family. The concept of “backstory” in fiction often refers merely to character flavouring such as relationship and employment histories, but, in Happy Valley, enough crucial events have happened before the opening episode to fill another six parts.”
2. Line of Duty | BBC2
What we say: “Line of Duty swaps maverick cops for the forensic detail of police procedure, and manages to make it just as compelling. The scenes in which Hastings and Arnott grill Denton in the AC-12 interview room – and then the even more gruelling session as deputy chief constable Mike Dryden is finally brought in for questioning towards the end of the series – are just as tense as the indelible action moments such as the car-jacking and Denton’s wine-bottle attitude to neighbourhood watch. It’s a combination of focused writing, flawed characters and a plot with enough to chew on until the end that helped this second series to deliver on the promise of the first. Whoever Mercurio throws into the mix for the promised third has got a lot to live up to. Can’t wait.”
3. The Honourable Woman | BBC2
What we say: “If the storytelling was occasionally stately, it was always with the goal of deepening characterisation and thickening atmosphere. (And no one ever mentions the infrequent but beautifully handled action sequences.) Every frame felt weighted with significance, each utterance loaded with subtext. This was a series that distinguished very deliberately between the indulgent and the self-indulgent, between the provocative and the inflammatory. Somehow, Blick walked numerous tightropes, without ever falling off.”
4. The Good Wife | More4
What we say: “It’s unusual for a series to hit its stride so far in, but by now, five seasons of experience have hardened its resolve. It moved away from being a family-focused drama about a wife standing by her husband – they’re only together now for the sake of their image – with a side of law and politics, to a meaty political and legal drama in its own right, with a side of family. It juggles all three elements remarkably well, partly due to the fact that its storylines are typically of-the-moment and bitingly satirical.”
5. The Trip to Italy | BBC2
What we say: “Just watching The Trip to Italy was enough, as it was about as good as television got last year. Genuinely original, interesting television. Director Michael Winterbottom, with a lot of help from Coogan and Brydon, has taken the travelogue and not just breathed new life into it but set the defibrillator on it, too.”
6. Grayson Perry: Who Are You? | Channel 4
What we say: “There was something incredibly honest about it, for all of TV’s constructs, the editing process and the multiple takes. You get the feeling that with Perry, what you see is what you get. Without gushing like an emotional hydrant, his responses always seem honest, considered. He’s either the most brilliant communicator on television at the moment or a terrific con man. I’d vote for the former. Imagine a Grayson Perry chat show.”
7. True Detective | Sky Atlantic
What we say: “True Detective retains an odd power, a way of lazily coiling around you before pulling tight. Cohle’s unsettling flights into conscious phantasmagoria – the brain-altering hangover of his heavy drug use – are used sparingly, and become even more affecting for their rarity. It’s a great example of Fukunaga’s controlled direction, which feels downright languorous in the early running but finds a whole new gear at the celebrated climax of episode four.”
8. Peaky Blinders | BBC2
What we say: “Cinematic visuals, thumping music, torrid family melodrama and ripe dialogue (“I couldn’t trust the hearts and livers of the English pansies and posies they’ve given me as operatives,” spits Sam Neill), Peaky Blinders forges new territory for British TV drama, and it passes the second series test because its visionary creator has a masterplan that stretches over multiple future seasons. I hope we get to see them all.”
9. Game of Thrones | Sky Atlantic
What we say: “When this show gets it right, it’s impossible to tear your eyes from the screen. From Tyrion’s furious trial speech through to Oberyn’s day of reckoning with the Mountain, via Jon’s desperate attempt to hold the depleted Wall, this was a season built on epic confrontations, packed with moments where your heart leapt to your mouth, daring you to take even a single breath.”
10. Fargo | Channel 4
What we say: “Fargo will return next year, telling a brand new story with a brand new cast. That’s obviously a risk, but Fargo clearly delights in taking your expectations and blasting them clean out of the sky. Series one only had to prove itself as the equal of the movie. But series two needs to be the equal of the last series. On the basis of what we’ve just seen, that’s going to be a much harder task.”
11. The Leftovers | Sky Atlantic
What we said: “Yes, The Leftovers is baffling. And possibly – probably, knowing Lindelof – there won’t be answers to all the questions. It is also relentlessly bleak, there are an awful lot of characters, and it takes itself very seriously. There is a beauty about it too, though. Plus promise – that if you put the effort in you will be rewarded, with a drama that is more about people after a catastrophic event, than the event – whatever the hell it is – itself.”
12. The Americans | ITV
What we said: “In the richly detailed but morally murky 1980s world of The Americans, two KGB agents pose as a US suburban couple. But take a step back and you notice another example of audacious international infiltration: how did this intense drama end up on Saturday night ITV? And will the channel stick with it for the just-announced third season? I hope so. We’re almost halfway through season two and though The Americans is juggling more plotlines than a nested Matryoshka doll, it barrels forward with a real sense of purpose. It’s the Homeland you can watch without wanting to bang your head against a wall.”
13. The Walking Dead | FOX
What we said: “The start of season five was a mini-action movie with suspense, explosions, a daring rescue (I’m #TeamCarol), and blood swirling down the drain. Traditionally, the first few episodes of a show’s new season are a little bit slow as it struggles to set up the narrative. The Walking Dead managed to go out on a bang, leave viewers staring down the precipice for half of the year, and start off with another bang as it slowly pulled us away from that cliff.”
14. Gogglebox | Channel 4
What we said: “Although its premise sounded almost aggressively dreary at first – normal people in their own homes watching the same old mediocre programmes as you, and sometimes passing comment on them – it captured the public imagination remarkably quickly. The secret, as we’ve all since discovered, is that you’re not really watching normal people. You’re watching eccentrics and peacocks and people so hungry for fame that they’d willingly appear on a reality show called Desperate Scousewives. As a result, it can be a riot.”
15. Rev | BBC2
What we said: “It’s not just Rev’s heart and soul that are good. The performances are wonderful, by Hollander and Colman (both heading rapidly towards national treasure status) and by everyone else. It’s clever – smartly written by James Wood (and Hollander too in this opener), and sharply observed. Relevant (Rev-elant?) too, it may even say something – not just about a profession struggling for relevancy itself in the modern world, but about a place and a time, Britain today.”
16. Hannibal | Sky Living
What we said: “It has a cast of TV and movie veterans (Mads Mikkelsen, Hugh Dancey, and Laurence Fishburne), it’s built on a bankable franchise, and features one of the most famous villains in cinematic history. It’s smart, it’s calculated, and it’s sleek. It carries the eeriness of The Silence of the Lambs, and the grossness of its sequels.”
17. Detectorists | BBC4
What we said: “Although billed as a comedy, this BBC4 show, which Crook also wrote, might not be side-splitting, but that’s not to say it isn’t funny, as anybody who has seen the scene in which Lance plays the mandolin crosslegged in front of a pub full of bemused drinkers will attest. With its wistful tone, subtle, folky score and confidence in letting dialogue and sentiments breathe, it’s a show that does not feel the need to shout about its strengths. “
18. Marvellous | BBC2
What we said: “Inspired by an article in the Guardian, Peter Bowker’s film is Neil Baldwin’s life story, a story that somehow manages to be both ordinary and extraordinary … Marvellous gets away with its sentimentality … and it also works because it’s funny. Toby Jones’s portrayal is a lovely, very human, performance.”
19. Orange is the New Black | Netflix
What we said: “In many ways, its success can be seen as a defiant middle finger to traditional television models. Showrunner Jenji Kohan, who also created Weeds, took Orange to various cable executives; they all passed, leaving Netflix to take the chance. ‘Nothing is taboo for Jenji,’ says Laura Prepon. ‘We’re just trying to tell these stories in an authentic, honest way, about these women who are stripped of their creature comforts and are thrown into this environment where it’s not about the makeup and the wardrobe and the hair. It’s about what these women are dealing with.’”
20. Louie | FOX
What we said: “The fourth season has somehow managed to take the show to a whole new level, moving even further away from straight laughs into more daring philosophical and emotional territory. One moving vignette has CK watching in stunned silence as his daughter and lover duet on their violins in the cramped corridor of his apartment building. Then, in two bittersweet back-to-back episodes, we flash back to CK’s schooldays and his teenage existential crisis. There’s little comedy, just the heart-stopping drama of young Louie’s pot-smoking entangling him with the local drug dealer, leading to him rejecting his mother and betraying his father-like science teacher.”
21. Grantchester | ITV
What we said: “The fact that every episode of Grantchester so far has wrapped up with a sermon, nodding to the motives behind the crime, might seem like an obvious contrivance, a launchpad for a handy montage of the aftermath for the various victims, suspects and red herrings. But it works well, and makes you realise how often other crime shows bodge their endings.”
22. Sherlock | BBC1
What we said: “Yes, the second episode might conceivably have benefited from a few minor nips and tucks along the way. But I am willing to overlook these infinitesimally small flaws in return for the ceaseless flow of wit, invention and intelligence being delivered to me via a set of performances so finely calibrated, by turn so careful, so showy, so heartbreaking, so hilarious, and always so attuned to each other that together their story is even greater than the sum of its astonishing parts. Yes. I consider that the bargain of the bloody year.”
23. Transparent | Amazon Prime
What we said: “Jeffrey Tambor has now taken on a role for which he deserves to win, at last, the industry awards that have stubbornly eluded him. In Transparent, a series made for Amazon Prime, he plays Mort, a divorced father of three. In the first episode, he summons his children over for dinner and they assume – in classic Jewish family-style – that he’s going to tell them that he has cancer. In fact, Mort is transgender and has, for some time, been living a hidden life as Maura. ‘This is definitely the most transformative role of my career, and I don’t just mean in the externals,’ says Tambor.”
24. Veep | Sky Atlantic
What we said: “As for the Veep herself, Meyer’s new power and prominence, as she puts herself forward as a legitimate contender to take up residency in the Oval Office, have brought a fresh perspective to the series. Similarities could be drawn with Parks and Recreation’s Leslie Knope, a character who also improved immeasurably after the series’ creators stopped using her as the butt of every joke and made her that bit more authoritative.”
25. Doctor Who | BBC1
What we said: “I’ve been enjoying Peter Capaldi as the Doctor. More alien, more rock’n’roll, less boyband than the last two. And he’s brought a touch of menace and darkness to the show (this episode being a fine example) that I also approve of. I suspect my approval may mean he gets the opposite from the kids. Yeah, well, so what, it’s not your show any more. Love you, now go to bed.”
26. The Mindy Project | E4
What we said: “When column inches were stacking high about Girls’ Hannah Horvath living in a pointedly white world and show creator Lena Dunham was chewed out for not having the vision to write non-white characters in non-cliched ways, everyone overlooked the fact that Mindy Kaling had created Lahiri and that this is how it could be done – a navel-gazing asshole whose ethnicity is incidental and whose feminism is intersectional by default.”
27. Great British Bake Off | BBC1
What we said: “Even in those most crucial final moments, irreverent presenters Mel and Sue sidled around the marquee, minesweeping offcuts like two St Trinian’s gels totally famished after lacrosse. Their carefully judged mischief lightened the whole mixture like stiffly beaten egg-whites. Plaudits all round for a successful series that stuck to the recipe. It was a good bake.”
28. Looking | Sky Atlantic
What we said: “It stands on the shoulders of its predecessors, but is very different to what has come before it. In fact, it has attracted comparisons not to gay-themed shows at all, but to Girls (they share an Instagram-ey hue and 30-minute episodes) and Sex and the City (Looking is also largely about a group of friends dissecting various degrees of romantic disaster).”
29. The Knick | Sky Atlantic
What we said: “The Knick is swanky, enjoyable drama. You can feel the budget dollars piling up in scenes where Owen’s character hails a cab in a turn-of-20th-century Manhattan street, and there are numerous spikily written scenes, including one in which the young daughter of immigrants is required, as the only bilingual member of the family, to translate to her mother a diagnosis of terminal tuberculosis. The series works very well as a sort of historical prequel to ER.”
30. House of Cards | Netflix
What we said: “The baroque threats, the dismal Machiavellianism, the joyless sex, eyeliner by the bucketload, hundreds of mood-enhancing sidelights, pompous incidental music, murder masquerading as suicide ... Season two picks up just where season one left off. So nice to have you back, old friends.”
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