These Are Pedestrian’s Top 10 Favourite TV Shows of 2014


Earlier this week, we brought you a list of the films we enjoyed the most this year. Because it’s that time, and because ranking things in an orderly fashion is the path to inner-bliss, we’re coming at you again, with a list of Pedestrian’s Favourite TV Shows of 2014.
As with our previous list, although we as a group consider our taste to generally be pretty spot on, this list is not meant to represent the ‘best’ shows of the year, but simply a lively office poll of the ones we enjoyed the most.  
The below shows represent shit that we binge-watched on our laptops in the dead of night, the shit we badgered our friends into checking out, and the shit for which we could barely make ourselves wait another week.
As usual, we hope some of your favourites made it on to this list, and if not, we eagerly look forward to you wishing a series of unending plagues and torments upon us. Enjoy!

Nick Kroll’s reality TV parody-slash-sketch comedy series Kroll Show got even weirder and wilder in its second season, delving deeper into its outsized world of toilet babies, rich dicks, gigolos and murderous pet plastic surgeons. Kroll says that the show’s upcoming third season will be its last, and while it will be sadly missed, at least it’s going to go out on one hell of a high.


Bob’s Burgers is one of the funniest and most eccentric animated shows on the air right now – season four’s train robbery episode had us in fits of laughter. In addition to the sharp writing and left-field references, one of its strongest points is the burger-slinging Belcher family themselves. Bob, Linda, Gene, Tina and Louise actually like and support one-another, and their affection for each-other makes them all the more endearing to us.

In HBO’s Silicon Valley, a young software developer with a game-changing idea and zero business sense finds himself in a world where unimaginable wealth is at stake, and everybody wants a piece of him. This scathing tech industry satire, from Office Space creator Mike Judge, gets every detail just right. Tragically, Christopher Evan Welch, who played billionaire Peter Gregory, passed away five episodes into the first season, but he left behind a truly memorable performance. 

Excellent as the Coen Brothers’ 1996 film may be, nobody was necessarily crying out for a TV series spun off from it. But then Fargo arrived, and was just as off-beat, funny and dark as anyone could have hoped for. The fantastic first season starred Billy Bob Thornton, Allison Tollman, Colin Hanks and Martin Freeman in snowy Minnesota. Much like American Horror Story and True Detective, this anthology show’s second season will be set in a different time period (1979) with a completely new cast of characters. Bring it on.

The Real Housewives of Melbourne is everything we’ve ever wanted out of a reality show. From cashed-up bogan-slash-psychic Jackie Gillies to queen of mean Gina Liano (we bow down before her), these women kept us riveted. We hung on every pampered pet party, every ski weekend, every high heel on the tennis court, and every fight, including the now-legendary Mission Beach bust-up. We literally can not wait to see what new housewives Gamble Breaux and Pettifleur Berenger bring to the table.
Please Like Me put Josh Thomas’s face on the side of buses in the U.S., which is the true measure of stardom, and his success could not be more deserved. In the show’s funny and sad second season, the endearingly hopeless Josh continued to navigate love, family and the pitfalls of twenty-something life, with very occasional success. Quirky but also realistic, quietly funny but also very dark at times, Please Like Me is one of the best sitcoms to come out of Australia in a long time.
There are a few great sketch shows on the air right now, but we went for Inside Amy Schumer, because the second season took its creator’s trademark style to so many surprising places. The familiar, self-absorbed Amy of old was still around in sketches like the brilliant Animal Rescue Hotline, but bits like the truly inspired Aaron Sorkin parody The Foodroom took the show to the next level. The kicker was A Very Realistic Military Game, one of the year’s most biting bits of comedy. 

House Of Cards, whose second season came out in one binge watch-ready chunk, is one of the juiciest and most entertaining political dramas around right now. Kevin Spacey stars as the brilliant and ruthless Frank Underwood, and at the end of the last batch of episodes, he had successfully plotted and schemed himself all the way to the U.S.  presidency. The third batch of episodes comes out in February – plan accordingly.

At this point, you know what you’re going to get with each new season of Game Of Thrones – intrigue, tragedy, dragons, exposed flesh, plotting, more plotting, and at least one spectacularly violent GIF-worthy death. Even so, the show is at the absolute top of its game right now, and, for non-book readers, the show’s fourth season closed with each of its main characters facing a major new crossroads. The battle at the wall that closed out season four is one of the most spectacular things we’ve ever seen on TV. Well played, Thrones

This really was Matthew McConaughey’s year. Not only did he win an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club and scale new blockbuster heights in Interstellar, he staged a takeover of TV as well, starring in one of the year’s most acclaimed and beloved shows, HBO’s True Detective. The dark, gothic procedural, about the 17 year-long hunt for a serial killer, captivated us like nothing else on TV this year. McConaughey and Woody Harrelson made for one hell of an onscreen pairing. We can’t wait to see what season two, with Colin Farrell, Vince Vaughn and Rachel McAdams, will bring. 

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