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Steve McQueen’s BBC drama, a Game of Thrones trailer, The Assets cancelled + lots of new shows commissioned

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The BBC’s Rich Inner Life of Penelope Cloud, Zoe Saldana’s Rosemary’s Baby and Channel 5’s Suspects trailer

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Question of the week: what was your favourite show of 2013?

Lots of TV blogs and sites have top 10s and 20s of the year’s programmes. Not wishing to be left out of the crowd, I thought I’d do one, too. But in my usual chaotic fashion, I decided to just list as many as I remember liking and then turn to you, my lovely readers, in the hope you’re more organised. And that you’ve nothing to do.

Anyway, this is really just the new shows that I loved in 2013. Feel free to list old shows, new shows or even DVDs you enjoyed last year.

The winner by a mile for the coveted top slot was:

Hannibal (review)
Elegant horror of the finest order, a simply sublime season that instead of being built around gore (although there was some incredibly disturbing imagery), hamminess and archness à la The Blacklist gave us a true horror: the fear of going mad, with FBI investigator Will Graham slowly beginning to doubt his own sanity. With a season-long arc that was hard to perceive until the final episode, it ended with a single image that made the whole thing worthwhile. Astonishing TV in almost every sense, from the dialogue to the visuals to the acting to the soundtrack to the throw-aways at the end of episodes that will haunt you for a long time after viewing.

Having said that, they cast Eddie Izzard in a key role so it wasn’t entirely perfect.

The runners up (no particular order)

  1. The Americans
  2. Serangoon Road
  3. Anno 1790
  4. The Tunnel
  5. Y Gwyll
  6. Engrenages/Spiral
  7. The Almighty Johnsons (season 3)
  8. Banshee
  9. The Blacklist
  10. House of Cards

But how about you?

And now it’s time for Hinterland, not Y Gwyll

It was in Welsh and called Y Gywll when it aired on S4C last year, but now, thanks to my suggestion at the BAFTA preview (no doubt), it’s on BBC Wales in both English and Wales. Compare and contrast:

The bilinguality is handled quite well and adds a new element to the show, although you can spot the joins if you look hard. Mattias is now the English-speaker in a community of Welsh-speakers. The other cops all speak Welsh and purely through the editing, there’s an element of him seeming to force them to ‘behave’ and speak English. But since a lot of the locals speak Welsh, Mattias finds he has to rely on the others to question those who either can’t speak English or won’t, or who won’t confide in him, only in a local. There’s not a lot of Welsh in it but there’s more than zero.

Episode 1 was on Saturday, but you can watch it on the iPlayer if you missed it. No word yet on its BBC4 air date and what languages it’ll be in on that channel, though.