Television: Cry me a River and pay tribute to the Don – the small-screen year

In a year when there has been so much top-class TV, picking my 10 best programmes is tricky. Like an avid reader with a pile of books by the bed, I have hours of TV still to watch or stream – series that I know from their first episodes are worth watching: Fargo, Empire, Better Call Saul and The Americans, among others.

But for this top 10 shake-out the TV hours can be whittled down a little by eliminating consistently good returning formats (I didn't spot much in the way of new interesting ones), such as Room to Improve, the Bake Offs, Operation Transformation and 24 hours in A&E. Also out are returning dramas that I never miss, because they are good to the point of brilliance, including Catastrophe, Homeland, The Bridge and The Good Wife.

So here, in no particular order (as they say on the still-top-of-its-spangly-game Strictly Come Dancing) are my top 10 for 2015, chosen mostly because I'd happily make time to watch them all again.

Ciarán Deeney's beautifully nuanced, perfectly paced Man on Bridge (RTÉ) told the story of Arthur Fields (born Abraham Feldman), who for half a century took photographs on O'Connell Bridge in Dublin. As one contributor says, Fields may have unwittingly been "one of the greatest archivists of social history in Ireland". He was a strange man, obsessive about his work, and it came, as we see, at a high cost to his family. Choosing Chris O'Dowd as a narrator gave the nostalgia-filled film a light counterpoint to the sadness that could envelope it.

After losing the rights to broadcast Coronation Street and Emmerdale, TV3 took an expensive chance and plunged head first into the soapy water around the fictional Dublin town of Red Rock. The good-looking twice-weekly drama has delivered strong stories, even stronger characters (including fearsome warring matriarchs), snappy dialogue and a satisfyingly zippy pace. It takes a while for a soap to build an audience; with luck this one will.

The northside boy Aiden Gillen nailed it – the mannerisms, the voice – as the late taoiseach Charles Haughey in the three-part drama Charlie (RTÉ). It tried to do too much, but after a busy first episode – mostly lost in a confusion of beige suits, oatmeal sofas and clunky exposition – it settled down to deliver a moving ending.

There has been no escaping period dramas in 2015. One of the easiest on the eye and brain was Poldark (BBC), a reboot of the 1970s series based on Graham Winston's 18th-century-set novels. The Clondalkin actor Aidan Turner was a top choice as the Cornwall war hero turned mine owner. It was all tricorn hats and breeches for the men, heaving bosoms and flouncy skirts for the women. Once you grasped the basic plot – conniving Warleggans versus honourable, shirtless dreamboat Poldark, and the love triangle with housemaid Demelza and his posh ex-girlfriend – it was perfect Sunday-night drama.

For a more cerebral period drama, Wolf Hall (BBC), the earnestly good adaptation of Hilary Mantel's two Man Booker Prize-winning doorstops, had the lush look of a modern TV classic. At its centre was the magnetic, scene-stealing Mark Rylance as Cromwell in the politically toxic court of Henry VIII (played by Homeland's Damian Lewis). Wolf Hall had the intrigue of a modern political thriller, with snappy dialogue that owed more to contemporary drama than to ye-olde-English pastiche. The time shifts meant you needed to pay attention throughout or risk losing the plot.

There were two excellent true-crime investigations. The three-part The Murder Detectives (Channel 4) followed a real case, the murder of an English teenager. We're so used to seeing gritty police dramas that sometimes it was hard to remember that these were real parents, and real police, and that this was the aftermath of a real crime. It also showed how meticulous and unglamorous detective work really is.

Also unmissable was the six-part, Emmy-winning The Jinx (Sky Atlantic), in which Andrew Jarecki profiled in chilling detail the bizarre life and criminal times of Robert A Durst, New York real-estate mogul long suspected of several murders. Durst's accidental revelation at the end was breathtaking. (Yes, two series in the true-crime section: a reviewing misdemeanour.)

Original, inventive and very dark, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Netflix) followed the preternaturally chipper Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) on her adventures in New York city, like a wide-eyed, resilient Mary Tyler Moore for the 21st century. And what a backstory: Kimmy was one of the Indiana "mole women" who escaped from 15 years in a bunker held captive by the leader of a doomsday cult (Jon Hamm). Yes, it was a sitcom, but it was created by Tina Fey. Hilarious and entirely binge-worthy.

No other cop series of 2015 was as inventive, nuanced and downright brilliant as River (BBC), by Abi Morgan. Lead detective and giant of a man Det Sgt John River (Stellan Skarsgård) was haunted by "manifests": dead people linked to past cases, among them his former partner (Nicola Walker), who was shot dead before his eyes.

River was most unusual: a gritty police drama suffused with grief and loss. There were so many hauntingly beautiful scenes; you'll never again hear the disco classic Love to Love without thinking of this show.

Hardcore sci-fi fans may have found Humans (Channel 4) maddeningly basic: its theme of singularity, in which robots became human, is bread-and-butter stuff. But for those who tend to shy away from futuristic drama this was a thoroughly absorbing series with terrific acting and a pacy script layered with teasing moral conundrums. It was set in a London where everything looked reassuringly familiar. But all of the low-status, low-paid jobs – cleaning, looking after old people, punching train tickets – were done by humanoid robots, or synths.

The drama kicked off when an ordinary middle-class family bought their own synth, Anita (superbly played, with just the right amount of creepiness, by the gorgeous Gemma Chan). In an emotionally powerful side plot, William Hurt played a lonely old man whose synth had reached the end of its life. The crux came when it looked as if the synths were getting a bit too human.

I've been a fan of Mad Men (Sky Atlantic) since the first cocktail-fuelled, smoke-filled scene, in 2007, and its ending was the unmissable TV event of the year. The final episode wasn't perfect. (I'm still smarting at the cornball romcom ending that Matt Weiner gave the great Peggy.) But, beyond the gallery of perfectly realised characters that drove Mad Men into the TV history books, it was always going to be about what happened to Don Draper (Hamm again).

After a final on-the-road-themed series in which he was mostly an alcohol-fuelled, red-faced, messy-haired loser – Don’s hair had always been a mood signifier – he didin’t fall to his death from a skyscraper (an ending telegraphed in the mesmerising opening credits). Instead he sat cross-legged in a California hippy centre, perfectly coiffed, a beatific smile spreading on his face, dreaming up the Coca-Cola spots – among the greatest ads of the 20th century.

Draper hadn’t been changed by his hippy experience. In true Don fashion he was using it. He was back in adland.

tvreview@irishtimes.com