The Best Television Show of 2014 — Sons of Anarchy

The best television shows of 2014 are counted down with the top prize going to Kurt Sutter’s outlaw biker drama Sons of Anarchy, which came to an end just over a week ago…

By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer

Television seemed to hit a real high mark in 2014 with some new shows that hit the ground running just as fast as many of the established serialized dramas that took years to develop. At the same time more and more players like Netflix entered the market with binge watching delicacies that tempted viewers to stay up all hours of the night because they just couldn’t go to bed without seeing one more episode.

The day of the network drama is virtually dead as NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX barely offered up anything that landed on the radar of the best of the year and that’s in large part because when you try to appeal to the biggest possible audience, you lose the core group who are looking for something special to watch on a Tuesday night. If I can flip over on a random night and catch some procedural cop drama and without batting an eye, figure out the characters, the plot and where things would probably go next week, you’re not going to capture me as a viewer.

No, the shows that really seemed to encapsulate TV watchers this year were the series that required you to be an obsessed megafan. The kind of person that went out and bought books and soundtracks for a show and then spent an entire week theorizing about what went on in the previous episode before trying to come up with ideas about what was going to happen next. Predictions on top of predictions that were ultimately dashed when the master storytellers went in a completely different direction the next week.

2014 was a really good year for television from the brand new shows that debuted to the beloved series that came to an end. With more choices springing up each and every day it’s hard to narrow down a list to the best of the best because inevitably something is going to get left out and that’s a tough decision to make. Still, the best television is always subjective to the viewer so with that thought in mind I present the top shows on TV for 2014.

BEST TELEVISION SHOW OF THE YEAR — SONS OF ANARCHY (FX)

Chances are if you’re a regular reader of this website, it’s pretty clear that I’m a massive fan of ‘Sons of Anarchy’ but the final season still worried me — for better or for worse. When an all-time favorite series like this is about to end, questions start to arise about the creator getting it right or getting it terribly wrong. It’s probably not fair to judge a series based on a few episodes or even worse just the way a show ends, but that’s the age we live in when it comes to great television. These shows are built like books — we want a strong start, an incredible middle and an enthralling end.

‘Sons of Anarchy’ managed to give us all that and more with the final 13 episodes that brought Jax Teller’s tragic tale to an end.

From the very beginning of the series, creator Kurt Sutter loosely based the show on Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’ so the chances of a happy ending were pretty slim. Still, it was about the journey to get there and some of the episodes this year were just heart wrenching in their execution. There was plenty of violence to go around and brush the screen with fresh blood each week, but what really separated ‘Sons of Anarchy’ from every other show this year was the dialogue and tightly packed story telling where everything stretched and then came back together in the end.

The acting this season was also off the charts with special recognition going to Kim Coates for his beautiful, sweet scene alongside Walton Goggins as well as Theo Rossi and Charlie Hunnam for a tortured confession inside a prison where both men welled up with tears before everybody in the audience joined them (myself included).

The close of a show is always going to carry more gravity than many of the other series on television so ‘Sons of Anarchy’ certainly had a leg up on the competition, but the fact that the conclusion was met with applause and a true sense of closure really brought down the house for this series. Maybe this is as much recognition about the series as a whole as it is a single season, but ‘Sons of Anarchy’ earned it by giving us seven of the greatest years we’ve ever experienced on television.

From the music to the acting to the plot to the dialogue, there just haven’t been many shows to ever grace television like ‘Sons of Anarchy’ and television isn’t as great today as it was just over a week ago when this outlaw biker drama was still going full throttle at 100 miles-per-hour down the highway.

2 ) TRUE DETECTIVE (HBO)

In only eight episodes, creator Nic Pizzolatto managed to turn ‘True Detective’ from a star driven HBO series to one of the most talked about TV shows of the past five years. The show was written as an anthology — meaning the story told would only fit in these eight episodes and then if the show returned, it would be with a brand new cast and characters and no connection to the past — but from the debut to the finale, this felt like a tour de force that was absolutely must see TV each and every Sunday night.

The brilliance of ‘True Detective’ came through in the lines drawn from the very opening episode that straddled between cop drama, supernatural science fiction and good old-fashioned American horror. There was a creepy vibe given off from the moment we entered the sugar cane field in Louisiana where a body was found, bound to a tree and adorned with antlers and symbols that screamed cult ritualistic murder. But as the pieces of this puzzle started to fall into place, more of the edge lines began to disappear. Words like Carcosa and the Yellow King started to become daily vernacular for fans of this show and you couldn’t just watch an episode a single time out of fear that you might miss something another viewer would pick up on instead.

The cinematography was sheer perfection especially the tracking shot director Cary Fukunaga set up in the fourth episode where he followed star Matthew McConaughey as he ran through houses, out back doors and over fences all without a single break as the camera raced alongside him during this nearly six minute chase scene. Flashbacks were all the rage in television this year (I’m looking at you Boardwalk Empire), but ‘True Detective’ set the bar for how to do it the right way.

There probably wasn’t a more compelling character on all of television this year than McConaughey’s turn as troubled cop turned bartender turned vigilante investigator Rust Cohle and whether he was spouting atheistic lines while mowing down a group of tent dwelling religious nuts or spouting off about the space time continuum, whenever he was speaking, we were glued to his every word.

Was there a more quotable show this year? (You are like the Michael Jordan of being a son of a bitch). Was there a better-acted show on television? (The fact that Matthew McConaughey didn’t end up with an Emmy still disgusts me). ‘True Detective’ had it all and in eight tightly packed episodes it became one of the greatest single seasons in television history and by far one of the best things to happen in 2014.

3 ) GAME OF THRONES (HBO)

When ‘Game of Thrones’ — by far one of the greatest series on television — comes in third place you know it was a good year for shows across the board.

The fourth season of this epic HBO drama hit new high marks this year with justice being doled out in the form of a poisoned cup, a trial that put a beloved character’s life on the line and the real tragedy that follows this show around like a ball and chain bound to its ankle. There’s just not going to be many happy moments of ‘Game of Thrones’ and maybe that’s what makes this show so great is creator George R.R. Martin isn’t concerned about the good guys winning — he’s concerned about telling the best story possible even if that means the most beloved new character gets bludgeoned and has his head smashed into a million bloody pieces in the eighth episode of the year.

They follow that up with the ninth episode — ‘The Watchers on the Wall’ — which ends up being an hour long battle that looks better than any of the ‘Lord of the Ring’ movies could ever imagine (and they didn’t stretch it out for three films like ‘The Hobbit’) and they did it on a miniscule budget by comparison. The finale was therapeutic in many ways as a major villain was dispatched, but not without sacrificing the freedom of another character who was forced to go on the run after committing patricide.

If there’s one bad part about ‘Game of Thrones’ it’s the fact that there are only 10 episodes each year. This is a series that could go on for 52 weeks a year and it’s hard to imagine fans would ever dare miss a single episode, it’s just that good. The previews and the teasers have already started for season five and trust me, this will be back on the best of list for 2015 as well because ‘Game of Thrones’ is not only great each and every year, but the consistency in the execution from script to screen is just flawless.

4 ) FARGO (FX)

Enter another anthology series for the best of the year category because Noah Hawley seemed to do the impossible with this show — find a way to do a Coen brothers movie as a TV show without the Coen brothers having any actual participation in the series. This was like fan fiction at its very best and the execution was amazing.

Much like ‘True Detective’, ‘Fargo’ was can’t miss TV week-to-week and while the original movie was definitely a classic, this was like the sequel we always wanted and never got. The story of a down on his luck insurance salesman, who accidentally befriends a ruthless hitman seemed like a simple enough plot, but then Hawley started interweaving a grocery store magnate that tied back into the original movie. A not quite Marge Gunderson cop, who was put on the case to investigate the murder of her mentor and an undying loyalty to uncovering the truth. And another truly excellent performance from Billy Bob Thornton, who plays a wry killer dancing on the graves of dead men all in the pursuit of a bigger and better payday.

‘Fargo’ was another series who used flashbacks and flash forwards to move the story along instead of dragging it down into the mire. Much like the original movie, the unmistakable humor was just under the surface at all times, but the show worked best when it was a twist and turn thrill ride that never had to get any louder than the soft hum of heater roaring through the dark on the snowy roads in the middle of rural Minnesota.

5 ) THE WALKING DEAD (AMC) / HOMELAND (SHOWTIME)

The reason why I’m putting these two shows together in the No. 5 slot is because they deserve equal recognition for what they managed to do this year — resurrect themselves from an otherwise abysmal previous year.

‘The Walking Dead’ season four started out fairly strong and the mid-season finale was like a page ripped directly from the comic books. And then the show proceeded to opt for essentially an entire half season of character study that nearly forced me to tune out at one point. The same could be said for ‘Homeland’ — a show that was once maybe the best on television in its first season, but was now stuck so far behind the 8-ball with an unwillingness to let go of a character that probably shouldn’t have survived the initial 13-episodes was just brutal to watch.

Then fall 2014 came and both shows were miraculously saved.

‘Homeland’ managed to avoid a few bumps in the road and potential potholes (Carrie nearly drowning a baby in a bathtub and then later banging a prospective witness in a terrorist plot still bug me) but overall the way this series has managed to change into a taut political and international thriller has been nothing short of spectacular. Once mired in the sludge that was Nicholas Brody, ‘Homeland’ came back stronger and better than ever in season four with a ‘keep them guessing’ plot and as the season finale draws near this show has become one part ‘House of Cards’ and another part ’24’ and that’s just good television right there.

Meanwhile, over in the zombie apocalypse that is ‘The Walking Dead’, if you would have asked me when this season started if I expected Rick Grimes and his group of survivors to get out of Terminus before episode seven or eight I would have said you were crazy. Instead, they busted out in the season debut in maybe the best single hour of television this year. And I’m still trying to figure out when mid-season finales became a thing but ‘The Walking Dead’ manages to do it better than most and this season was no exception when they killed off a character who had just recently been redeemed and loved by the audience. The message was clear — nobody is safe so don’t blink.

There’s still a couple more weeks of ‘Homeland’ to go and an entire second half of the season for ‘The Walking Dead’ but based on what I’ve seen so far in the latter part of 2014, these shows have managed to not only find their groove again but they are both sitting on the edge of being some of the most compelling TV of the entire year.

THE BEST OF THE REST

Honorable mentions go out to: THE LEFTOVERS, SILICON VALLEY, JUSTIFIED, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D., and COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODDYSEY