Top 20 TV shows of 2011

1. Boardwalk Empire

Channels: Sky Atlantic, HBO
Starring: Steve Buscemi, Michael Pitt, Michael Shannon

Let the record show that Boardwalk Empire owned 2011. It deserves the title not only for its all-round awesomeosity, but also for being the most improved show of the year: an award usually given tokenly to the kids on sports day who weren't going to win anything else. Not so here.

Here's why. When Boardwalk Empire was announced it looked suspiciously like HBO's straight-up Sopranos replacement: gangsters, guns, blood, tits, the whole works. The details made telephiles salivate. Steve Buscemi, Michael Kenneth Williams, Stephen Graham, Michael Shannon; Prohibition-era Atlantic City; a pilot costing $18 million directed by Martin Scorsese. As a friend of mine remarked at the time, "It's not like it's going to be bad, is it?"

He was at least half-right. In its early season one episodes, the production money practically seeped out of the screen. The period detail was perfect, right down to Nucky's tie-pins. It was obvious from the word go that we were looking at expert directors, writers, designers and cast, the cinematography was better than anything I'd seen on TV before, and it seemed like we were in for a speakeasy treat. But about five episodes in, my interest waned a little: I'm all for a slow burner, but this one was burning a little too slow for my tastes. A few months later, I picked it up again and watched the rest of the season one episodes in a couple of days. They were smartly scripted, just as well-shot, and left me looking forward to the second outing at the very least.

Nucky's 'Tits or GTFO' platform: an unlikely hit with the Women's Temperance League.

You could tell from season two's outset that something had changed. The focus on frustrated war hero Jimmy Darmody, played with a face full of icy resentment by Michael Pitt, was an excellent decision. Now we were getting down to it. Here was a real heartbeat for the show; a character with issues: a wife he didn't seem to have ever loved; a mother with whom he had an obvious, beguiling sexual tension; a desire to overturn Nucky, the only father figure he'd ever had. He allied himself in business with the Commodore, his biological father, despite hating him for raping his mother when she was a child. Later we were given a pretty strong suggestion that his mother had more or less raped him when he was a teenager. Layer upon layer of trauma was built up inside him. "To the lost," he'd toast his fallen comrades every time he took a drink. He might have been drinking to his own childhood.

We got more change out of the supporting cast too. Chalky White's power among Atlantic City's African-American community was called into question; this sharp-suited dandy punching above his weight in a white man's world was also revealed to be secretly illiterate. Margaret Schroeder began to occupy the same space as Carmella Soprano: the gangster's wife troubled by her conscience. She looks the other way and reaps the benefits, but she hates herself for it.

The most fascinating extra character, and my favourite detail of the whole season, was Richard Harrow, otherwise known as 'half-a-face guy'. Here was the story of the Elephant Man, condensed into about fifteen minutes every other episode. He hung mournfully around Jimmy's house, gazing at his wife and son, longing for normality. ("How does it feel to have everything?") He kept a scrapbook of images depicting husbands and wives, children, the life he could never have. In episode five, he took a packed lunch to the woods and lay down on the leaves. You thought he was enjoying the peace and quiet until his own shotgun crept imperceptibly into the bottom of the frame and into his mouth, only for his plan to be foiled by a thieving dog and a subtext-laden conversation with two men in the woods.

If you go down to the woods today, you'd better go in disguise. Particularly if half your face is missing.

If the breathtaking season finale demonstrated one thing, it was Boardwalk Empire's total commitment to narrative integrity. There was no other conclusion the season could have reached. The writers knew it, and they refused to compromise it for the audience or the actors. Its first chapter now closed, this show can go anywhere. The stories to tell are endless: we could find ourselves seeing nothing but Arnold Rothstein next year, or we might be packed off to Illinois to watch the Scouse Al Capone's rise to power. (Agent Van Alden's relocation to Cicero, and recent comments by Terence Winter, suggest as much.) This thing's going to run and run for years, people: hitch up your petticoats and hold on to your boaters. Ed

Defining moment: I can't tell you the real one, because it'll ruin the best season finale any show's come up with in years. Let's go with Jimmy giving in to his mother's seduction in the Princeton flashback episode. "I think there's no one else in all the world," she tells him. "There's only you and me." The noise and lights of a passing train, symbolic and foreboding, colour what happens next.

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Disagree? Well, broadly speaking, you can get fucked. Start your own TV website. Nah, it's all love. If you reckon there are glaring omissions, it'll be because none of us saw them, or because we forgot them. Or maybe we just know more than you. Ever think of that?

Still, we're all for equal opportunities, so let us know what you think below. If it descends into wanton mud-slinging, insults and threats then so much the better. Go on, we can take it.

Otherwise, thanks for watching us talk telly in 2011. We'll be back with more of the same in 2012. Which is in, like, eight hours. Happy new year!