2014 in Review: Top TV Shows

I've watched a frightening amount of TV in 2014. And not all of it has been repeats of Friends. 

Continuing my ‘best of 2014’ blog series, here’s a rundown of the best TV I've watched this year. I've limited myself to ten again and it was much harder to choose than I thought. So bad luck to The Walking Dead (which I've left off because its full series hasn't been on this year so it seems a bit unfair), Penny Dreadful and the two documentary series I mention later on who just missed the cut. I'm sure their respective production teams are gutted.

Here, in no particular order, are the lucky ten who made it...

Doctor Who

Peter Capaldi has completely changed my opinion of Doctor Who. Before it was a show I might watch on a Saturday if I was in, with Capaldi in the lead role it’s become must see. His Doctor is perfect for me - brooding, sarcastic, socially awkward and emotionally unavailable. The end of the ridiculous and boring Doctor/companion love stories was particularly welcome. Capaldi aside, I also really got into some of the storylines for the first time in many series too, especially the series closer with the fantastic Michelle Gomez as a basically perfect female incarnation of the Master. More of this please. 

Veep
The third series of Veep saw terminally gaffe prone Vice President Selina secure her party’s nomination for the Presidential election, but suffice it to say the course did not run smooth. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is my home girl and she is outstanding in Veep, but then she has to be because her supporting cast are all equally good (Tony Hale’s put upon PA Gary is a personal favourite). After a slow start, the Armando Iannucci penned series is going from strength to strength. The idea of a Selina Presidential campaign - in a fourth series which also features Hugh Laurie - is just too much.

Game of Thrones

Whilst series four has made some missteps (the Cersei-Jamie rape scene was awful on many levels) Game of Thrones is still one of the best series on TV. The acting is excellent across the board - Peter Dinklage's Tyrion and Pedro Pascal’s Oberyn Martel were my stand outs in season four - it looks stunning and the writing remains top notch. The thing that’s really interesting about Thrones now is how far it’s moving from its source material; every season feels less and less like a book adaptation and more like an original drama. I'm quite excited by this, even as a huge fan of the books, and can’t wait for the next season to start to see where the characters are going.

The Great British Bake Off

If ever proof were needed that Bake Off mania is fully set in, I think this year’s Baked Alaska-gate was it. Personally, all that angsty nonsense annoyed me (though I was Team Iain all the way) as did some of the more tenuously themed weeks but I will always love this show. Pleasing, too, that its move to BBC1 didn't dent anyone’s enthusiasm for some good old fashioned innuendo. I also continue to love the judges’ Masterclass spin off mini-series, mostly because Paul.

Strictly Come Dancing

It’s amazing how much the removal of Bruce Forsyth as host rejuvenated my love of Strictly. Claudia Winkleman is the best replacement too - I absolutely love her. This year’s series has been textbook classic Strictly: the good dancers are excellent, the bad dancers are funny, the boring dancers got voted off first and there have been some genuinely surprising eliminations. Even the themed weeks haven’t been too awful. It’s so great to feel enthusiastic about Strictly again. Long may it continue.

My Shakespeare

The only documentary to make this list (BBC4’s Len Goodman/Lucy Worsely dance history show Cheek to Cheek and BBC2’s three part history of sci fi Tomorrow's World just missed out) My Shakespeare is a Sky Arts series where prominent actors and directors discuss their favourite Shakespeare plays and characters. It’s perfect viewing for me, and just the right side of pretentious! My favourite was Kim Catrall on Antony and Cleopatra, but all of the ones I saw were really good - informative, accessible and interesting.

Boardwalk Empire 

My favourite TV show ever bowed out this year, which makes me sad but also happy that it went out on such a strong season. As ever with this show, the writing, acting (Stephen Graham’s Al Capone was my stand out this year), production and everything else were all fantastic. Although the ending was ultimately a bit predictable - no spoilers though - the series built up to it perfectly and it was the right ending, unlike so many other shows. Still kind of hoping for a Lucky Luciano spinoff...

Remember Me

Even though it trailed off in the final third, this BBC take on a modern ghost story was incredibly effective. Which is to say the first two episodes were fucking terrifying. The thing that got me into this show was the idea of Michael Palin playing not only a straight role but a pretty morally ambiguous one at that and he was completely brilliant at it. Ditto Mark Addy (I’m really enjoying his late career renaissance) as the world weary policeman so desperate to find a rational explanation for everything that was happening. The writing was solid and the Yorkshire scenery looked so beautiful, but the twisty turny plot was the most compelling thing about this show. I’d love to see the BBC do more of this sort of short series drama.

True Detective

A cop show that avoided all the clichés of a cop show, looked beautiful and was phenomenally acted? Yes please. I think this show was probably slightly over hyped, but it was still very, very good. Matthew Mcconaughey (continuing his baffling run of excellent form) and Woody Harrelson were both excellent as the mismatched Detectives forced to work together on a string of dark, ritualistic murder cases. The best thing about this show was the way it eschewed all the usual cop show plot devices, character stereotypes and stock scenes and presented something much more interesting and with far loftier themes. The only disappointment was that they couldn’t continue this into the series finale.

24: Live Another Day

Jack Bauer comes to London and mayhem ensues - what’s not to love? Ok, so there were some issues with the way the show was Anglicised (anything to do with transport for a start), the allusions to Wikileaks were about as subtle as a brick to the face and some of the plot details extremely dubious but it’s 24 and it was so much fun. It also inspired the most brilliantly snarky Guardian episode blog which is still worth a read months after the series has ended. Hopefully the cliffhanger ending - no spoilers - means we haven’t seen the last of Jack just yet.

Theatre Review: Off The Page

My relationship with the Guardian newspaper is tricky. On the one hand, their factual news coverage is great and I love their culture section. When I’m looking for a theatre review, I always look for theirs first (Michael Billington is my homeboy). On the other hand, I almost exclusively hate their self righteous, indulgent, lefty nonsense comment pieces with a passion. I’m middle class and pretentious but don’t vote Labour or Green. The Guardian and I will never completely get on.

It was for this reason I had distinctly mixed feeling about their collaboration with the Royal Court theatre (also pretentious, middle class, lefty) on the Off The Page project. The idea behind Off The Page was to team up some of the Royal Court’s best talent with Guardian writers to create short, around four-to-nine minute, microplays on some key topics - music, education, fashion, food, sport and politics - essentially creating dramatised versions of Guardian comment pieces.

Alarm bells ringing? Yep, me too. My first reaction to Off The Page was to recall this Russell Howard bit and I can’t say, having watched all six plays, I’ve ever been able to lose that cynicism. Four-to-nine minutes is really not a long time to make a point, certainly not with any subtlety (and let’s be honest Guardian writers are hardly known for their subtlety at the best of times). The experience of watching some of these plays is akin to someone hitting you repeatedly in the face with the Guardian for four-to-nine minutes. Certainly almost none of them have anything particularly interesting to say about their topic and in a few cases the thing they try and say is achingly banal.

Four-to-nine minutes is also not a huge amount of time to do anything interesting performance or production-wise either, though the plays have attracted an impressive line up of (presumably Guardian reading) acting talent. Just a shame that, with a couple of exceptions, they weren’t given anything interesting to do or say.

Below are six short reviews - microreviews? - of the individual pieces ranked in my order of preference.

PPE
You know that thing they about jokes that if you have to explain it then it’s not funny? I think the only interesting thing about this piece is that it proves the same is true of microplays. This few minutes of nonsense is literally impenetrable if you’ve not read the accompanying blurb. According to said blurb, it’s a musing on politics which shows how politicians have lost touch with the public after the global recession. It shows this through the medium of dance. Yes, really. The most Guardian thing that’s ever happened? Possibly. A worthwhile endeavour? No.

School GateThe education piece features Anna Maxwell Martin as an awful middle class pushy mother who’s worried about the free school that’s opened next door to her (presumably) awful middle class child’s traditional school because the free school is run by an Islamic organisation. Her slightly less awful middle class friend isn’t worried about this and sends her daughter there, who then duly emerges from her after school club dressed in a hijab. The fact that there are some people who don’t like anything to do with Islam in their backyard is sadly not a revelation worthy of a play, however micro.

Britain Isn’t EatingThe food microplay (sick of that word yet? Yep, me too). A politician says something stupid about foodbanks, attempts to prove that they’re unnecessary by cooking a meal with only the supplies that someone using foodbanks might have (including no gas or electricity), fails, goes on another rant about foodbanks. Another uninteresting plot - and the one that tries to ram the Guardian the furthest down your throat. A nice performance by Katherine Parkinson as the politician though.

Devil in the DetailHere’s another earth shattering revelation - some fashion designers won’t lend a dress to a reality TV star going to the Pride of Britain awards but will lend to an up and coming actress off to her first BAFTAs, despite the fact that the former knows more about fashion and the latter doesn’t actually want to wear one of that designers dresses anyway. To be fair, I guess if you’re not interested in fashion then this might be an earth shattering revelation and, in that case, the fashion microplay might be an interesting illustration of the politics of fashion. And it is a well constructed and sweetly acted little thing too. Not bad.

Death of EnglandA stereotypical, prejudiced England football fan goes off on an epic rant at his dad’s funeral in the sport microplay. The rant takes in the state of the England football team and English identity more generally, ending up in a massive brawl. I liked this one quite a bit, not because it had anything hugely interesting to say, but because Rafe Spall’s performance as the central character is fantastic, if quite a difficult watch. The whole piece, more or less, is his monologue and he imbues it with real emotional depth and a sense of being wounded on oh so many levels - pretty impressive given the time he’s on screen. Worth watching.

Groove is in the HeartBy miles, the music microplay is my favourite and the only one that has anything genuinely interesting to say about it’s subject. This one takes on ideas of memory, love and grief and the way we associate them with music. Almost scriptless, and with a lovely performance from Tobias Menzies, this one genuinely moved me and is the only one I’ve watched repeatedly. Especially recommended for people who have made a mixtape on an actual tape, but generally recommended for everyone.


Overall Off The Page was an interesting experiment, but not one I’d like to see repeated. All of the microplays (if it’s the last time I ever have to see that word I would be so happy) along with interviews and other background content are available on the Guardian website for your viewing pleasure. Or otherwise as the case may be.