Richard Vine: The second series of Jed Mercurio’s brutal cop corruption thriller saw Keeley Hawes giving the performance of a lifetime as DI Lindsay Denton

Gabriel Tate: With uncanny prescience, The Honourable Woman scrutinised the biggest issues through the most intimate human experiences. Who could ask for more from television?

Rebecca Nicholson: The political and legal drama hit extraordinary new heights in its fifth season, with a shock move that suggested anything was possible

Sam Wollaston: Was the Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon vehicle a travelogue, a comedy, a food show, scripted reality, or something else entirely? Or was it simply as good as television gets?

Julia Raeside: It’s been an excellent year for drama, but one documentary truly stood out, as the potter met a wide variety of people from all over Britain and turned them into art

Graeme Virtue: The noir-ish HBO series, starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, was a rare serial killer story that favoured strangeness over gore, and viewers were hooked on the mystery

Andrew Collins: This story of Birmingham gangsters avoided the curse of the second series with new characters, torrid family melodrama and a sense of its own greatness

The fourth season of HBO’s epic fantasy series wasn’t without flaws, but it took chances with the source material and created some iconic, heart-stopping moments

Stuart Heritage: What could have been a disappointing movie rehash turned out to be a brilliantly original, superbly cast masterpiece

Guardian TV: The complete top 30 countdown of Guardian critics’ best TV shows of 2014. At number one, it’s Happy Valley