Yes! It is time. I always save the goodies of my music lists until the post-Christmas, pre-New Year period, but this year I've decided I need to make more lists, and so, before the day of merriment, I'll be bringing you the year's best in TELEVISION and CINEMA.

 

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Some warnings, provisos and apologies: I don't watch as much TV as I do films. Therefore, this list will be without many of the 2013 standards including Breaking Bad, The Good Wife, Scandal, Justified, The Walking Dead, Boardwalk Empire, and some others I've forgotten. Because I just don't watch them, for one reason or another. This is the best of what I've seen in the year's television.

 

No British television programmes make my list, though the superb Broadchurch, the smart Only Connect and the delicious The Great British Bake-Off (which wasn't quite up to last year's standard) are just outside. The best new network comedy was easily The Crazy Ones, combining a revitalised Robin Williams, a game straight woman in Sarah Michelle Gellar and some sparky youngsters (including James Wolk, above), but it still needs to do some deeper character work to really pop. Revenge had a mixed year - Season 3 has been a vast improvement from where the show was at the start of the year, and I look forward to seeing how it recovers from a game-changing mid-season finale.

 

Finally, two comedies that have been real favourites over the past few years, but just weren't quite up to scratch in a great year for television: Cougar Town continues to be a loose, carefree in-joke, and Parks and Recreation continues to be a heart-warming, effortlessly smart experience, even if the new season's cast issues are seeing it wobble.

 

Coming up, unsurprisingly, will be #10. Feel free to SPECULATE and PREDICT.

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Easily the most impressive acting feat of the year - in any medium - is Tatiana Maslany in BBC America's gripping original series. The conceit of the show - that a woman sees a duplicate of herself committing suicide, takes on her identity and stumbles onto a whole load more clones and conspiracies around them - is deliciously absurd, and many of the show's actors play it so, but Maslany is so committed to the emotional honesty of her numerous characters that the show really outdoes herself almost entirely because of her. The individual detail that she gives to each woman, while still having to retain their innate resemble to one another, is astonishing, and I was over the moon that the Golden Globes, at least, recognised this with a nomination for her last week. I'm desperate for another series, and also fearful of where it might go - but with Maslany at the centre, it can't really go too far wrong.

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Oh, this show. Having enjoyed the first series, I'd abandoned Asylum halfway through, but the casting coups for Coven were just too divine to ignore. Kathy Bates! Gabourey Sidibe! ANGELA FREAKIN' BASSETT! And I'm glad to say it's been a macabre delight throughout. Often, it doesn't seem to know where it's going, with characters disappearing for a week and plot avenues suddenly curtailing without warning. But its unpredictability is really part of what makes Coven such a treat. Almost every character has died at this point, but that doesn't mean they're gone. The rules are made up as the show goes along, and that anarchic sense of dark pleasure in the hands of such rich actressing is just something I can't resist.

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It's called Girls, but quite frankly, there are few writers out there who get the general twenty-something middle class condition like Lena Dunham. It might be privileged and naval gazing, but it's also brutally honest without sacrificing the humour and emotional power it needs to resonate.

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The only foreign language entry on my list - procrastination meant I never got to Borgen, while BBC4's Swedish import Don't Ever Wipe Tears Without Gloves was a late, close contender - is France's impeccable drama about the dead returning to a village and freaking everyone the hell out by not acting like dead people are supposed to. Delicate ambiguity and emotional oscillations meant that Les Revenants always kept you on your toes, an eerie sense of dread surrounding you.

two shows i'm yet to see. i loved both seasons of AHS and i was so looking forward to see 'coven' flop ahs fan :( there is always a period of time when i'm watching a tv show (lost, fringe, ahs..) and then it ends and i have never ending list of tv shows i need to watch but never really get to it :(

After the last season not really grqbbing me i never really got round to watching 'Coven' - i really should though. Les Revenants has probably been my series of the year, watched it ALL in about 2 days and i normally struggle with hour long tings! (attention span of a 4 yo hi)

girls is my next thing to watch, along with veep. both of them look great, and ofc julia louis dreyfus !!!!

two shows i'm yet to see. i loved both seasons of AHS and i was so looking forward to see 'coven' flop ahs fan :( there is always a period of time when i'm watching a tv show (lost, fringe, ahs..) and then it ends and i have never ending list of tv shows i need to watch but never really get to it :(

 

Haha, believe me, I know the feeling! So many unwatched boxsets :(

 

After the last season not really grqbbing me i never really got round to watching 'Coven' - i really should though. Les Revenants has probably been my series of the year, watched it ALL in about 2 days and i normally struggle with hour long tings! (attention span of a 4 yo hi)

 

I've even been recommending Coven to people who didn't watch the first two - it's just SO. MUCH. FUN. I remember I binged on like four hours of Les Revenants because I was late starting it. So easy to get lost in!

 

girls is my next thing to watch, along with veep. both of them look great, and ofc julia louis dreyfus !!!!

 

hold that thought boo!!

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As high as second on an early draft of this list, Elementary is one of the most underrated shows airing at the moment. It's such a valuable show in terms of the rarity of a non-sexual opposite sex dynamic, so perfectly played by Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu (my BABE). It's inevitably formatted as a procedural show, but Sherlock's peculiarities frequently give these stories unexpected twists, and when it delves into the darker character stuff, it really is compelling to watch.

I've seen none of all this list except Les Revenants which was REALLY GOOD. Although it got so mysterious it almost felt like it was taking the piss out of itself by the end. I can normally deal with ambiguity but I'd appreciate some sort of clarification in the second series please!

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Easily the funniest show of the year is Veep, Armando Iannucci's frantic political comedy that is blessed with a quick-witted cast that has comic marvel Julia Louis-Dreyfus at the centre. It's smart and satirical, using catchphrases ("Sue, did the president call?"), physical comedy and schadenfreude in its fully-equipped comic arsenal to consistently bring huge laughs.

I've started rewatching 'The Thick of It' because I just finished all of Veep and it's made me realise that it's actually FAR funnier rather than the watered-down americanised copy i thought it was. Julia is indeed amazing in it.

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Showtime's new masterstroke is an exemplary example of a programme having the whole package. From the fascinating true story on which its based, to the superb, often unexpected casting and the crisp, intelligent writing, everything about Masters of Sex just works on a high level. Allison Janney's performance, in a subplot that almost seems created just because she exists, is on a level above even that.

Only one I've watched here is The Returned but what a show that was. It had a glorious setting that helped match the mysterious, dramatic nature of the show. Just found out though that the second series is planning on being shown from November 2014 :(. I suppose that not rushing it helps to keep the quality.

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Netflix had a good year - from the two episodes I watched, House of Cards looked good, and while the new Arrested Development wasn't a patch on the previous series, it was a delight to see them all return - but it's finest moment of original programming was easily this, Jenji Kohan's womens prison comedy-drama. After stumbling through the first few episodes over a few weeks, I then polished off the majority of the series in a couple of days - binge-watching is a thing, and it was perhaps inevitable with a cast so diverse and charismatic as this. It's a thoroughly detailed portrait of prison life, energetic and fun while never blinking on the frightening and dark sides of that life.

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Many have said that Mad Men has lost its brilliance, but for me, Season 6 was the equal of its predecessors - and even on an off day, an average Mad Men episode outclasses most other television. The emotional clarity with which the show can trace character arcs, interpolate historical events and understand the working environment is often breathtaking.

Veep :wub: Julia is a gift from the Heavens. Just bought the first season on DVD, something I don't normally do for TV shows.

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Edited December 19, 201311 yr by Regina

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One of the lowest points of the cultural year was when this absolute gem of a television show was cancelled. Mike White's singular creation was a maddening thing, to be sure, but few shows have ever shown such intelligence and astute observation through such a weird and awkward prism as Laura Dern's Amy Jellicoe. She was irritating, ridiculous, irresponsible, and yet somehow right - a fascinating creation whose appealing qualities are exactly those which are sure to drive you mad. Enlightened finds moments of real transcendence amongst snarky comedy and pitiful human beings, often finding tragic truths and bittersweet realities inside.

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But this list simply wouldn't be complete without what is quite easily the finest television show I've watched this year. I'd never watched Buffy before, outside of a few glimpses when I was a youngster whose parents denied him the dark pleasures of blood-sucking nasties. So, earlier this year, wondering what television show from the archives I should dig into, I chose this, and it didn't take long before I started binges that would last hours, becoming an obsessive fan whose weekends were consumed in the town of Sunnydale and who turned his technology backgrounds into tributes to a TV series that's now been dead for ten years. Buffy doesn't deny the horrorful delights of its genre, but neither does it let them dominate; what we have at the centre is a smart, generous heart, a superb cast of characters (my favourites were the lofty snark of Cordelia and the aloof Anya) and an unrivalled knack for mining original, macabre drama from a huge variety of dark forces. I can see the influence of this show in many of my favourites since, but Buffy did the unthinkable, dethroning all comers and finally becoming the finest television show I've ever watched. I'm still not over the end. I've got a lot of grieving to catch up on.