10. VeepVeep had a pretty good year by all accounts, in particular allowing Tony Hale to finally nab that Emmy he has been so deserving of for years. 2013 saw Vice President Selina Meyer and her staff thrown into the forefront of things. Whilst before she’s always been more of a figure than an actual presence in this fictional world of politics, too tangled up by bureaucracy to make an impact, here they're thrust right into scandals and front page news stories. This allowed Armando Iannucci to really let fly with the bewilderingly imaginative insults Veep and The Thick of It are so well known for while injecting a real burst of energy as the staff try to sort out these monumental fuck-ups. The season two finale, ‘DC’, sees the political winds changing every second, causing the entire staff to go into a frenzy, scrambling to find out what exactly is going on, in turn bringing the best out of this fantastic ensemble cast.
9. Orphan Black
Whilst BBC America is usually just a channel for airing BBC produced shows in the US, it does occasionally create its own original content. Orphan Black is the one that made a big splash in 2013, and it's all down to Tatiana Maslany in what is sure to be her breakout role/roles. The premise is utterly farfetched, there's no denying it, as outcast Sarah Manning discovers she is just one of many clones who are now being hunted down. Teaming up with the remaining clones, Sarah and herselves attempt to find out who is behind everything while trying to keep their own personal lives in tact. It's the performances of Maslany as every single clone that really sells Orphan Black, with each one having an entirely different persona: housewife, cop, science student, criminal. She manages to slip into each iteration with absolute ease, each one played with their little idiosyncrasies. Several of the best performances of the year all happen to come from one person in the same show. It becomes obvious that, without this central performance, Orphan Black could quite easily collapse in on itself as utterly cheesy. Thank goodness we have Tatiana Maslany then!
8. Hannibal
Bryan Fuller is no stranger to writing shows about death. His two biggest hits, Dead Like Me and Pushing Daises, tackled the issue of mortality in a light and often cartoonish way, to the point where the popping colours and fantastical set design of Pushing Daisies seem to be ripped straight from an actual Saturday morning cartoon. Hannibal, a prequel to the Hannibal Lecter stories set before his incarceration, is a lot, lot darker and yet it still retains that beauty, albeit a very morbid one. A disconcerting mood permeates even the most innocent-appearing scenes and everything is produced with such care and effort. With star performances from Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen, Hannibal is visually sumptuous and extraordinarily creepy, managing to avoid being a cheap cash-in for the franchise.
7. Dates
At the start of Summer, Channel 4 hosted the oddly named "Mating Season". A season of television based around the world of dating that, despite its awful name, it did manage to produce two of my favourite shows of 2013 (more on the other later). The first of these is Dates, created by Skins co-creator Bryan Elsley. Focusing on a series of dates set up on a online, Dates felt like the romantic equivalent of 1999's Tube Tales. Each episode saw a different couple go about their dates with, usually disastrous results, while the story of Oona Chaplin's Mia weaved its way through the series. The greatness of Dates is derived from both its realism, each one feels extremely naturalistic and not overly fantastical, and its super cast, made up of exciting and brilliant British and Irish actors, some well known and some up-and-coming. Each episode was superbly written with near perfect casting to compliment the characters; a masterpiece in original British drama which had that same freshness that Skins did when it was introduced to our screens way back in 2007.
6. Bob's Burgers
2013 was the year I discovered Bob's Burgers and I'm almost ashamed that it took me this long to get around to it. It feels like a nice replacement for those disappointed by the route The Simpsons has been taking in recent years. Despite its status as a cartoon, Bob's Burgers features one of the most realistic families on television today. Each character is so perfectly realised, doing away with the standard tropes you'd associate with each member of the family in your standard sitcom in order to actually tackle the struggles and dreams of each character rather deftly. The confusion and mixed emotions of being a teenager are wonderfully portrayed in Tina, the oldest child, who wants nothing more than to be seen as one of the adults while Louise, the youngest, tackles growing up and beginning to fancy boys. Though they often appear at one another's throats, the Belchers are a family who absolutely adore one another and, when the chips are down, protect each other with their lives. It's a heartwarming show that is constantly hilarious (one episode features Gene becoming friends with a talking toilet) with a wide array of brilliantly quirky characters, such as Teddy, that surprisingly never stray into the fantastical. It only seems to be getting better and better.
5. Fly on the wall documentaries
2013 managed to be a year packed full of really interesting fly on the wall documentaries that sound absolutely terrible on paper, most thanks to Channel 4. A one-off look at the day to day life in a Fried Chicken Shop that aired last year managed to get a full series this year and retained what made that one-off documentary so surprisingly good, taking a completely uncynical look at the vast array of characters that just really wanted some fried chicken and showing these often completely opposite people crossing paths and interacting which made for often extremely heartwarming viewing. Gogglebox, which features members of the ordinary public just watching TV is probably the worst sounding of the lot but, yet again, made for absolutely delightful viewing that often left me with a stupidly big grin on my face. It sounds cliched to say but, after a while, you begin to feel like you know these families and what makes them tick, to the point where watching retired teachers Leon and June, a couple that are clearly madly in love even if they're usually having a go at one another, discussing their own mortality brought tears to many eyes. It's probably also impossible to have got through 2013 without hearing someone talk about Educating Yorkshire, in particular that moment in which Mr Burton knicks an idea from The King's Speech to help Musharaf overcome his stammer. It really was one of those punching the air kind of moments which you'd only see in fiction. Yet here it was, occurring at a high school in Dewsbury. The whole show captured imaginations and raised public opinions of teachers and schools at a time when the education system is coming under fire.
4. Game of Thrones
Before you say anything, this is not just an excuse to use yet another photo of Oona Chaplin. Nope. Not at all. This year saw Game of Thrones tackling The Red Wedding, proof that George RR Martin really does like torturing both his characters and his audience. Any other author would place such a shockingly horrific twist at the end of the book. Not Martin, instead choosing to chuck it in when everything seemed to be going fine and dandy, with absolutely no warning of this horrifically violent wedding. HBO's adaptation deftly handled this scene which led to a whole other generation of Game of Thrones fans who hadn't read the books to have exactly the same shocked and beffudled reactions as those had read the books the first time they got to that chapter. While a lot of emphasis is placed on 'Rains of Castemere' as the stand out episode of this season, 2013 also saw Daenerys actually get to do something and become completely and utterly badass, and the almost buddy-comedy tales of Brienne and Jaime. With a lot more shocks in store for fans of the series, the year long wait between seasons wasn't exactly made easier by yet another stellar effort.
3. The Returned
Channel 4 took a hell of a risk this year in airing The Returned, a French drama about a town in which the dead start coming back to life. Subtitled dramas have always been the reserve of BBC4, aimed more at the high brow audiences who don't mind having to read along as they watch. It's fair to say that how well The Returned would do on a mainstream channel was anyone's guess. Luckily for us, The Returned is probably one of the most wonderfully intriguing shows to air this year. Focusing on how the families of the deceased react to the return of their beloveds, it became easy to forget this was, ultimately, a fantasy drama. The writing was on another level, deftly portraying the emotions of both the deceased and those alive as they tried to cope with what is happening. Even so, there was that fantasy element weaving its way in and out of the series which always remained intriguing, whether it was trying to figure out how these people had died, which were even dead in the first place, and why they were brought back. The finale brought us more questions than it did answers but I, for one, am extremely excited to see how the series progresses, if not just to hear more of the superb Mogwai soundtrack.
2. Breaking Bad
And with that, 2013 brought us the final few episodes of this superb drama and left us all in a slump once it was done. The final half season of Breaking Bad contained some of the best, most tightly written and directed episodes this show has ever produced, and, in some cases, some of the best episodes of television full stop. Each episode brought a new theory as to how Vince Gilligan et al were going to bring it to a close and each episode ramped things up even further, stand out 'Ozymandias' showing us that anything could happen and will happen, and that no-one is safe as Walter White's empire begins to truly fall apart. It has been an absolute treat watching Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul as Walter White and Jesse Pinkman transform both as their actors and as actors over the course of the show. While it might not have the extreme detail of The Wire, Breaking Bad still had some superb writing and acting that pushed it into the zenith of great TV. Emotionally dense, riveting, and often times absolutely stunning, Breaking Bad really made a mark on 2013 and probably on TV forever more. You might not want to marathon the final season, however. The tension of each episode on their own, with a week to calm down, was enough for me; I can't imagine how I might feel after watching them all in one go.
1. Orange Is The New Black
While House of Cards was riveting stuff, with a superb performance from Kevin Spacey, and the new episodes of Arrested Development were great when you got used to what Mitchell Hurwitz was actually trying to do, Orange Is The New Black is the one Netflix original series that made a real impression on me. Funny, emotional, and loaded with great characters, it was so easy to just fall down that "just one more episode" hole of on-demand TV. It is those great characters that really makes Orange Is The New Black the stand out show of the year. Each one is treated with such care that, although Piper Chapman is our window into the world of a women's federal prison, no character really seems to take centre stage, with the spotlight shone on each pretty equally. It feels a lot like The Wire in this sense in that even the smallest character is fleshed out remarkably well and with as much attention of the likes of Alex or Red. Orange Is The New Black is quite easily the most enjoyable, interesting, and exciting show of 2013; one that, upon finishing it in about 2 days, I wanted to jump straight back into.
