8. Southcliffe (Channel 4, 2013)
You may think I'm being obscenely premature in including this. After all, at the time of writing the last episode was only broadcast two days ago. But this was never your run-of-the-mill Sunday night drama. This haunting 4-parter was the best British drama since This Is England '88. Starting with the story of troubled ex-military man Stephen Morton (Sean Harris doing what he does best), Southcliffe was not the ultra-violent misery and murder-fest it was touted as in the press. Rather it was a slow-paced and haunting study of grief and it's after-effects. Stephen makes a living doing odd jobs around the town for people who treat him with derision, as well as caring for his bed -bound mother. He finds solace in an obsession with the military, but when he takes young soldier Chris (Joe Dempsie of Skins fame) out on an ill-advised mock military excursion, he earns himself a savage beating from Chris' violent ex-SAS uncle. This, to use a cliché, is the straw that broke the camels back. Stephen goes on a killing spree that leaves the town in shock. And so Southcliffe has its raison d'etre - to examine how a town reacts to such unimaginable horror. Among the most moving of the stories is that of Paul (Anatol Yusef), an admittedly rather unlikable character who loses his whole family in the killings. His slow, mainly wordless descent into the depths of grief is difficult to watch. His final moments, played out to Otis Redding's That's How Strong My Love Is, are perhaps the most poignant moment in a series filled with subtle pathos.