Top TV Dramas of 2014 so far (Update)

July 8th Update: I’ve added the sublime British zombie show ‘In the Flesh.’ Honestly, 9th place feels too low for it so things may very well shift come 2015. Its a full-hour show, with episodes running 55-59 minutes, sometimes (mostly the early episodes) it feels like an hour-long show, other times it doesn’t feel as if I spent 60 minutes watching it. The best bits of In the Flesh give the 4-way #5s a run for their money. We shall see.

I’d previously ranked my Top TV Shows of 2014 (so far) in my extensive look back at the 2013-14 television season and now that I’ve had a chance to catch up with a lot of shows (save for AMC’s Turn, Halt & Catch Fire, and WGN America’s Salem), I’m going to update the drama side of things. The comedy side stays static enough I won’t bother to update it.

Again, I rank shows based on 2 factors: its quality, and how much I liked it, assigning approximately 50-50 weight to each factor. Some shows I like more than they’re good, and some shows I admit are good and well-done, I just didn’t enjoy it as much as it was good. It’s a very unscientific, unquantitative method that I nonetheless still manage to (attempt to) give structure to.

Without further ado, the rankings!

Top TV Shows (Drama) of 2014 So Far
1. (tie) The Good Wife (CBS)
1. (tie) Game of Thrones (HBO)
? Hannibal (NBC)
? Bates Motel (A&E)
5. (tie) Penny Dreadful (Showtime)
5. (tie) House of Cards (Netflix)
5. (tie) True Detective (HBO)
5. (tie) Fargo (FX)
9. In the Flesh (BBC Three)
10. Vice (HBO)
etc: -The Americans (FX)
-Justified (FX)

Notes:
*Yes, this is the jankiest ratings ever. It’s not a final ranking. It’s still in flux and fluid.
*I don’t know if Hannibal and Bates Motel should tie for 3, if Hannibal should be 3 and Motel 4 or Motel 3 and Hannibal 4. This needs time to settle. The first 10 episodes of Hannibal were stellar but its last couple of episodes had too many abstract scenes and boring parts. The best of Bates didn’t match the peak of Hannibal, but stayed mostly uniformly strong throughout its second season. We shall see
*4-way tie for 5th. Each show had strengths and weaknesses/disinterest from me. It is a possibility the 4-way tie remains in the final end-of-year rankings
*Yes, Vice is a news-documentary show. My prior justification for its inclusion:

“I do not have a news/documentary category. In its stories, it showcases real human drama however, so under those auspices, I’m including it on this list. Deal with it.”

As the latter half of the year includes such returning shows such as Boardwalk Empire, Sons of Anarchy, and Homeland that have regularly made my year-end Top TV lists and new shows such as The Strain and Tyrant, both on FX, and whatever else foreign shows I discover, Vice could very well fall off the list. Or it might remain. Qui sait. Regardless of how it shakes out, Vice is a great docu-news show that is 60 Minutes for Generation Y (and not only because it’s half as long for our short attention span ADD generation).
*Yes, Good Wife. Yes. Damn season 5 was a triumph.