Somewhere

Best of the Year - TV

Best Show:

1) Friday Night Lights

One of the all time great TV shows that, by and large, nobody is even aware of here in the UK.  Friday Night Lights finished its final year in 2011.  Whilst it’s had its low points (the ratings-baiting murder plotline in Season 2 springs to mind…), no show in recent memory has delivered such uniform excellence, and the show’s last season was no exception.  Depicting small town Texan life through the eyes of a beleaguered American football coach, his family and his team might seem like a simple premise, but the show worked wonders with it, privileging themes of family and community over the hoops and whistles that tend to distinguish “high concept” television elsewhere.

2) Community

If Season 1 was a basic, if very very well made, comedy of the sort we’re used to seeing everywhere - ragtag group of people grow to love each other in an unusual setting - Season 2 not only kicked things up a gear, but propelled Community to the top of the comedy heap.  Frequently inspired, hilarious and touching, 2011 saw Community broadcast three solid gold classics in “Remedial Chaos Theory,” “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons,” and “Paradigms of Human Memory.”

3) Homeland

That a show of such high quality only makes it to Number 3 speaks highly of what a good year this has been for TV.  As a bi-polar CIA operative and the American POW who may or may not be a terrorist, Clare Danes and Damien Lewis respectively gave the best performances of their career.  Always privileging character over plot twists and fake-outs, it built to an epic hour and a half finale that was as devastating as it was exciting.

4) United States of Tara

If Seasons 1 and 2 of Tara had been comedy-dramas, Season 3, its final season, turned heavily into dramatic territory as it mapped out the effects of Tara’s dissociative identity disorder on her immediate family.  It’s a tragic look at a family falling apart, one which wasn’t afraid to go into darker territory whilst suggesting that for some people there might be no way out.

5) The Good Wife

If there was one procedural that really stepped up its game this year, it was The Good Wife, which embraced a larger picture of Chicagoan politics that took in a large ensemble, but also knew when to deliver interesting, provocative standalone episodes.  If Season 3 hasn’t quite delivered on the promise set up by the show’s second season, it’s finally revealed a longer plot arc in the States Attorney’s Office’s investigation into Will.

6) Fringe

Little watched, Fringe has quietly morphed from an X-Files clone to the best genre show on TV right now.  Its third season brought an appreciated sense of complexity to its already pretty involved mythology, whilst also staying true to the emotional core at its centre.  Bolstered by especially strong performances from the multi-faceted Anna Torv (she of the excellent Leonard Nimoy impression) and John Noble, it was the science-fiction show most likely to reduce you to tears in 2011.

7) Mildred Pierce

Anything new from Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Safe, I’m Not There) is always cause for celebration, and what better source material than Mildred Pierce.  A five-part miniseries that depicted the rise of deceptively sturdy housewife Mildred (Kate Winslet, wonderful) during the Depression, and her turbulent relationship with both fallen socialite Monty (Guy Pierce) and her toxic daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), it was a masterclass in understatement.  The subtlety of the earlier instalments ensured that the operatic finale really hit home.  Haynes, ever interested in the tragedy of the everyday, excels himself once more as both a screenwriter of small human drama and a director of great performances.

8) Game of Thrones

Slaved over for years, HBO’s adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s epic fantasy series arrived with maximum hype, a budget every bit as epic as its storylines, and a star-studded cast of reputable (and primarily British) actors.  Whilst the show was sometimes prone to long expository sequences and gratuitous sex scenes, it had a pleasing heft to it that was unmatched by anything else in 2011.  Not only did it give us one of the best plot twists of the year, it also gave us a host of wonderful performances from the likes of Peter Dinklage, Emilia Clarke, et al. 

9) Switched At Birth

Surely the biggest TV surprise of the year.  By all rights, a family show about two girls (one privileged girl of Puerta Rican heritage, and one poor white deaf girl) who discover they were switched at birth, and then move their families in with one another, should be dreadful.  Thanks to some sharp, incisive writing about what both brings families together and what pushes people apart, it became one of my most anticipated shows week-on-week.  Props, also, to its brilliant younger cast, who found enough shade in the usual “annoying teen” stereotypes to make the viewer care.

10) Revenge

Another surprise: a guilty pleasure that you didn’t need to feel guilty about watching.  Focusing on Emily Clarke’s plot to take down the family that framed her father for mass-murder several years ago, it started off as an enjoyable revenge procedural, before it realised that spinning out the ramifications of Emily’s scheming was much more interesting than a string of self-contained episodes.  Not only did Revenge feel of the moment in its delight for taking down a bunch of rich assholes holidaying in the Hamptons, it was also spearheaded by the best career comeback of the season: Madeleine Stowe as the lonely Grayson matriarch/queen bitch character we’ve all been waiting for, but didn’t realise we had been until now.

Best Actor:

1) Damien Lewis - Homeland

As Soames Forsythe on ITV’s revision of The Forsythe Saga, Damien Lewis excelled at playing repressed emotion and coiled anger.  As a newly freed American POW who may or may not be a terrorist, there were several surface resemblances, but Lewis brought an unexpected sympathy to the part.  Revealing more would be to spoil the tensions of the show itself, but suffice to say that Lewis was never content to let Sergeant Brody be one-note.

2) Kyle Chandler - Friday Night Lights

It wasn’t until the show’s final season that Kyle Chandler won any recognition from awards bodies for his stellar work as Coach Eric Taylor, but he’s been consistent for the entirety of Friday Night Lights’ run.  It helped, of course, that he was acting opposite the equally talented Connie Britton as his wife Tammy, but Chandler was just as adept with the kids that formed the bulk of the cast, be it reluctant father figure, or hard-ass football coach, he played everything with the sort of lived-in mentality that’s all too rare on network television.

3) John Corbett - United States of Tara

Playing the straight man can be tough, particularly when you’re starring opposite as consummate an actress as Toni Collette, especially when she’s playing a character with dissociative identity disorder in a Diablo Cody dramedy.  So props to John Corbett, whose weary husband finally snapped this year on The United States of Tara, so tired was he of supporting his wife and pretending that her condition wasn’t having a negative effect on their two children.  The cast of Tara has always been particularly strong, but this was John Corbett’s year to shine, and Cody found a surprising amount of ground to cover in pushing him into the spotlight in the show’s third season.

4) Michael C. Hall - Dexter

Heading up a show that has long since sunk into mediocrity is a tough act.  Luckily, Michael C. Hall always brings his A-game, even to what has become a repetitive procedural drama spearheaded by a no-longer-surprising firebrand guest turn.

5) Chris Colfer - Glee

Again, an actor that impresses on a show that has gone from bad to worse.  If the final half of Season 2 and first half of Season 3 of Glee have been wildly inconsistent, one of the few things the writers have got right is Kurt’s character.  Which is fortunate, since Chris Colfer is as adept as he ever was at playing vulnerable, lonely, ambitious and humorous.  If the character seems to have had his edges removed recently, his newfound confidence in himself was one of the (too few) success stories on a show that has gone so far downhill that it’s doubtful it’s ever going to recover.

Best Actress:

1) Connie Britton - Friday Night Lights

As one part of one of TV’s most indelible couples, Connie Britton was the kind of actress that could break your heart and make you shout at the screen.  In Season 5 she finally got to follow her own dream rather than that of her husband’s, convincing him to move out east with her after years of supporting his coaching career.  It’s one of my favourite TV performances of all time.

2) Clare Danes - Homeland

Clare Danes is always an actress that, for me, has coasted by on people’s adoration of My So-Called Life.  Even when she was winning awards left, right and centre for Temple Grandin last year, I wasn’t convinced.  I was wrong, because her performance as Carrie Matheson, a CIA agent with bi-polar disorder, was the best she’s ever been.

3) Toni Collette - United States of Tara

A character with dissociative identity disorder, wherein she can be a beer-guzzling male biker, a 50s housewife and a lewd teen at any moment, is the sort of showy starring role that awards bodies flock to.  And flock they did during the show’s more comic-leaning first season.  It’s an understatement to say that the show’s third season embraced the dark side of mental illness, and Toni Collette again demonstrates what an accomplished actress she can be, finding the sadness behind what could be, in another actor’s hands, cloyingly “quirky.”

4) Julianna Margulies - The Good Wife

One of the best career renaissances in recent memory, Margulies is so much better here than she ever was in ER as beleaguered head nurse Carol Hathaway.  It helped that the show built around her was of a higher quality than expected, but Margulies has never strayed into the expected histrionics in a TV year that has seen her lose her husband, her best friend and - in one the show’s most frightening episodes late this season - come perilously close to losing her daughter.

5) Emmy Rossum - Shameless US

Who’d have thought that the star of blockbuster films such as The Phantom of the Opera and The Day After Tomorrow could transition so seamlessly to TV, and even match the peerless performance of Anne-Marie Duff, the actress who played Rossum’s role in the original British show.  A show that slides all too easily into farce (especially given William H. Macy’s misjudged performance as family drunkard Frank Gallagher) needs a strong emotional anchor, and Rossum provides just that.  It’s a multi-faceted performance that’s more consistent that the show around it, and one that came as a genuine surprise from an actor primarily utilised as little more than a pretty face in her big screen work.

Best Supporting Actor:

1) Michael B. Jordan - Friday Night Lights

Actors who used to star in The Wire are ten a penny on TV, popping up in the odd episode of everything from The Good Wife to Fringe.  Michael B. Jordan, thankfully, was handed the de facto young lead of Friday Night Lights’ final season and ran with it.  After the show almost entirely replaced its cast at the beginning of Season 4, it was going to be difficult for a new set of characters to work their into our hearts in the same way that Matt Saracen, Smash Williams and Tyra Collette, but as Vince Howard, Michael B. Jordan brought a pleasing hardness to the show.  Playing off the privileged white coach/working class black football player dynamic exploited in films such as The Blind Side, the writing and the acting never condescended to Vince, whose reunion with his mother in Season 5’s finale is one of the most moving episodes in the show’s history.

2) Mandy Pantinkin - Homeland

Playing opposite such an explosive personality as the one Clare Danes portrays in Homeland requires a certain amount of understatement.  As Carrie’s mentor and friend, Mandy Patinkin is able to portray an intense, quiet sort of desperation that somehow felt more piercing than the louder moments on the show.

3) Peter Dinklage - Game of Thrones

A universal favourite, and the one star of HBO’s fantasy epic to really break out with awards bodies.  And whilst I don’t wish to denigrate the fine work of the show’s extensive cast, Peter Dinklage was a constant source of pleasure.  In a story as given over to being dark, especially one that occasionally slips into being dreary (seriously, how many times must we hear that winter is coming?), it was Dinklage’s comic performance that brought you back, a performance that also never forgot to pathos in being the unwanted son of a great leader.

4) Sean Berdy - Switched At Birth

Switched At Birth boasted one of the best young casts on TV (besides Friday Night Lights, of course), and once it got past its initially hideous-seeming concept, it revealed one of the most charming actors on network television in Sean Berdy.  Playing the deaf best friend of Daphne who, unexpectedly, falls in love with the more privileged (and hearing) Bay, he was a constant delight.  Surprisingly for a show like this, the writers seemed intent on demonstrating the difficult in setting the parameters of such a relationship between young adults, which paid off in an unexpectedly emotionally searing finale.

5) John Noble - Fringe

If Anna Torv has been Fringe’s secret weapon these past two seasons, then John Noble has been a reminder of constant quality.  His performance as Walter Bishop, the mentally unbalanced genius responsible for the war between two parallel universes, he acts as the emotional anchor for a show that’s grown increasingly confident in its flights of fancy this year.

Best Supporting Actress:

1) Gillian Jacobs - Community

Words can’t adequately express how much I enjoy Gillian Jacobs’ performance as Britta on Community.  Initially drafted in as a knowing hipster love interest for Joel McHale’s Jeff Winger in Season 1, the writers (and Jacobs) realised in Seasons 2 and 3 that she’s much better a girl who has, in the words of Jeff, “seen the world, but doesn’t understand it.”  She’s also, crucially, hilarious, throwing herself into a part that would be unflattering in other hands, but is, somehow, loveable and believable here.

2) Naya Rivera - Glee

If there is one good thing to have come out of Glee’s uneven last two seasons, it’s the prominence of Santana.  Like Brittany, she was originally presented to the audience as a one-liner machine, sexy and bitchy in equal measure.  By exploring her nascent homosexuality, the writers hit upon a goldmine, as Rivera mined a seam of affecting heartache at the possibility that not only her friends wouldn’t accept her for who she was, but that Brittany perhaps didn’t love her back.  Culminating in one of the show’s standout musical numbers - a mash-up of Adele’s “Someone Like You” and “Rumour Has It” - she, like Chris Colfer, found subtlety and nuance in Ryan Murphy’s occasionally tone-deaf writing.

3) Evan Rachel Wood - Mildred Pierce

Opera-singing, stepfather-bedding daughter-from-hell Veda is surely a role made for Evan Rachel Wood, whose dangerous sexuality rivals that of even Mila Kunis.  Not remotely believable, more the incarnation of pure evil, Wood’s powerhouse performance threatens to unbalance Haynes’ 50s mileau, but - ultimately - gives the final two episodes a charge that simmers.

4) Madeleine Stowe - Revenge

The fact that Revenge has been one of the surprise success stories of 2011 is in large part down to Madeleine Stowe.  As Victoria Grayson, she should be a straight-up villain: rich, stuck-up and guilty of framing the lead character’s father of an act of terrorism.  Stowe, shored up from her early 90s fame, instead gifts Victoria with a sense of wounded pride and regret, so that even were the writing not as astute as it is, would hint at something deeper going on behind the sharp exterior.

5) Karine Vanasse - Pan Am

Pan Am is unlikely to last much longer, and if it doesn’t, surely Karine Vanasse can find another show worthy of her talents.  The lightness of foot inherent in the show’s pilot episode has been few and far between since, but if there’s anyone who epitomises what the show so clearly wants to be, it’s Vanasse.  She can go from froth to heartbreak in a second, demonstrating that balancing the show’s uneasy mix of tones isn’t as easy as you’d think.

Best Episode:

1) “Always” - Friday Nights Lights

Show finales are a hard thing to get right.  I can think of only a few that have ever got it completely right (Angel’s “Never Fade Away” being my ultimate standard-bearer on this one), but Friday Night Lights really hit the nail on the head.  No big character deaths or shocking twists were required.  Instead, the tension turned on whether Coach Eric Taylor would follow his devoted wife Tammi to a new job opportunity on the east coast.  Allowing for perfect, low-key endings for beloved characters such as Tim Riggins, Vince Howard and Matt Saracen, it was a perfect send-off for a great show.

2) “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” - Community

This spot could just as easily be filled by any number of other fantastic episodes Community put out this year, but, for me, “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons” was the peak.  It also summed up the show’s ethos perfectly: funny, but unexpectedly moving.  Revolving around a complex game of the aforementioned game, the study group put their best foot forward in trying to show lonely, suicidal Neil that life really was worth living.  Treading a seemingly impossible line between humour and earned sentimentality, it also hit important character beats for Pierce and Jeff, both of whom had a point to prove through a game that was, ultimately, more self-serving than either would care to admit.  Crucially, though, the episode gave what is maybe the greatest gag of the TV season - Abed and Annie’s silent, mimed sex scene between a warrior and a lonely nymph.

3) “The Weekend” - Homeland

Episodes with big plot reveals are often those we remember most, but few are as well-structured, or written as this.  Arriving mid-season, the plot revolved around a weekend spent in a cabin between Carrie and Brody.  Both of them find something in the other that they’re unable to find in their daily lives, Brody in a family life heavy with responsibilities he’s unsure how to handle, her in a job where she must hide who she really is.  The confrontation between the two - after Brody realises that Carrie suspects him of being turned in Iraq - is a masterpiece in dramatic tension, as Carrie continues barraging Brody with questions as to where his loyalties lie.  It’s also beautifully framed by Saul’s trip across state to ferry a young, female terrorist to Langley, the gradual opening up of both prisoner and captor marking a much-needed counterpoint to the emotional fireworks placed at episode’s end.

4) “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide” - Fringe

Perhaps the most adventurous episodes Fringe has yet produced, “Lysergic Acid Diethylamide” involved Peter’s journey into Olivia’s mind in order to retrieve her for the battle against Earth-2.  Whilst the basic concept borrows liberally from Buffy’s Season 5 episode, “The Weight of the World,” that doesn’t stop this being an emotionally engaging, inventive forty minutes.  Part-animated, Olivia’s return to the real world is one rooted in overcoming her childhood fear of her family, her reticence to confront her true feelings, and her love for Peter.  It’s a rare case of a will they/won’t they romance that viewers actually care about, aided by Anna Torv’s remarkably attuned performance as the emotionally unavailable Olivia.

5) “The Good Parts” - United States of Tara

Bryce, the terrifying alter who killed Tara’s other, friendlier alters Buck, Tee and Alice, worked so well because, over three seasons, we had come to care about these alters.  Yes, they were facets of the protagonist’s splintered personality, but one of the third season’s strengths was in showing how each of these personalities existed to protect her from something awful and unknowable within herself.  By destroying Tara so absolutely, and by seeing both her children drift away from her (Kate with a newfound positivity and Marshall with a newfound bitterness), just as her husband admits that he might not be able to cope anymore, Tara’s final show of strength, as she expels Bryce and seeks help at an institution was especially moving.  Desperately sad, but also unflinching to the realities of mental illness, it proved that Diablo Cody’s mixture of snarkiness and miserabilism had found the perfect match in this original, surprising TV series.

6) “Prom Queen” - Glee

The fact that Glee can sometimes get it so right is what makes it such a frustrating show so much of the time.  Its ability to pander to its lowest common denominators, privileging one-liners, increasingly unbelievable Sue Sylvester sub-plots and life lessons from the increasingly creepy Will, is second-to-none.  But with “Prom Queen,” it hit upon the crippling cruelty and instability of being a teenager.  Glee has always excelled at the big moments over the more intimate ones, and this one, which brings Kurt’s bullying storyline to a head whilst dovetailing this with Santana’s anxiety over her sexuality and Quinn’s own fractured sense of self.  It also features some great musical numbers, including the unnecessary (but amusing) return of Jonathan Groff, who here gets to duet with Lea Michele on “Rolling in the Deep,” and a po-faced rendition of Rebecca Black’s unlikely hit, “Friday.”

7) “In Sickness” - The Good Wife

There are several great dramatic moments during the second season of The Good Wife, but none was quite so gob-smacking as Alicia’s realisation that her husband (who’s just been elected in as States Attorney) not only cheated on her with a prostitute, but has also slept with her best friend and colleague, Kalinda.  ”In Sickness,” which reflected the aftermath of this revelation, in which Alicia calmly, firmly moves her husband out of their shared home and announces her plan for a divorce, are moving in their finality.  It also contain Margulies most shining moment, as she finally breaks down telling her children, when her daughter accuses her of not trying hard enough to protect them.

8) “Winter Is Coming” - Game of Thrones

I had problems with Game of Thrones‘ first season, but there’s no denying the sheer scale of that opening episode.  Introducing us to such a swathe of characters and making us care about them is no easy feat, particularly when each one has a long and involved backstory.  But “Winter Is Coming,” which trade on both fantasy and horror tropes, evoked a wonderful sense of menace and spectacle that was never quite matched in the series (ambitious though it undoubtedly was) that followed.  Homeland might have been the best new show of 2011, but Game of Thrones was the appointment viewing for many after this opening episode, the epic and the intimate in perfect harmony.

9) “The Homecoming” - Switched At Birth

Love triangles are a staple of TV shows, especially those featuring teenagers, but Switched At Birth showed that with good writing and believable character motivation, it’s still possible to create compelling television from this familiar set-up.  By carefully revealing that Bay isn’t quite the spoilt, privileged teenager she initially appears to be, and that Daphne isn’t as perfect, or free of bitterness and regret as she first appears, the show created a rivalry in which we cared about both sides.  That two of the members of this love triangle were deaf was treated as incidental to the feelings running underneath it, but its testament to the show’s writing that one of the most edge-of-your-seat moments was an argument between two characters, completely in subtitles.

10) “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” - Pan Am

Pan Am seemed doomed to failure in failing to reproduce the exquisite fluffiness of its pilot episode, or to entertain comparisons to Mad Men as a studied dissection of sixties mores.  If, ultimately, the show ended up trying to replicate the former more than the latter, “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” demonstrated that Pan Am was capable of a more even-handed writing than we’d seen elsewhere.  Involving a trip to Berlin during Kennedy’s famous speech, we see Collette face up to her difficult childhood in France, where she was raised as an orphan.  It’s a wonder what a good actress, coupled with a decent character, can do for a show that hasn’t quite found its feet yet.  Collette’s rendition of the German national anthem was a triumph, and one that Pan Am has struggled to top since.

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