'Happy Valley' and other crime dramas top British list of 2014 TV shows

It seems the critics couldn't get enough of the crime drama genre this year.

The Yorkshire drama Happy Valley was the best programme of the year, according to the poll of 22 critics from the Radio Times magazine and RadioTimes.com.

The six-episode series follows police sergeant Catherine Cawood, played by Sarah Lancashire, as she comes face to face with the man who destroyed her family. A second series of the programme described by the poll as a "bitingly raw crime drama" is expected to go into production in 2015 for release later in the year. The show was a huge ratings hit for BBC One in the UK before it was acquired by Netflix for distribution in the United States and Canada.

Line of Duty, a BBC production written by Jed Mercurio, was the second-best rated show, according to the poll.

Programme has been commissioned by for a third and fourth series Credit:

Radio Times declared that Line of Duty, now in Season 2, provided the scene of the year: "17 solid minutes in a claustrophobic police interview room as a very assured suspect was slowly dismantled by two anti-corruption detectives." The show, set in a fictional anti-corruption police unit, was broadcast on BBC Two in the UK and Hulu in the U.S.

Fan favourite Sherlock claimed the No. 3 spot in review. The four-episode third season broadcast at the start of 2014 following on from the shock ending that left fans hanging at the end of Season 2.

Shooting on the special will begin in January 2015, with the series shooting later next year. Credit:

"With only two series and six episodes under their belts, Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss bravely retooled Sherlock as a relationship drama, giving the characters heart and subtlety absent in the source material," the Radio Times critics wrote.

A Christmas special is a slated for 2015, but fans won't get their next full-season Sherlock fix until 2016.

Two men, six meals, in six different places on a road trip Credit:

Michael Winterbottom's comedy drama The Trip to Italy, starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, placed No. 4 in the Radio Times poll. It was in Season 2 after beginning in 2010 with The Trip. The show charts Rob's driving tour of Italy from Liguria to Capri for The Observer newspaper, which Steve accompanies him on. The poll calls the conceptual comedy "a luxury bitter chocolate of a show."

U.S. drama True Detective, which was broadcast in the UK on Sky Atlantic, rounds out the top five. "T Bone Burnett’s ominous soundtrack and the woozy atmosphere of the Louisiana bayou were the grease atop this Southern-fried delight," the critics wrote.

Debut series The Honourable Woman, starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Stephen Rea, and Channel 4's new six-part comedy Detectorists also appeared in the poll.

Here's a look at the full top ten:

Happy Valley

Line of Duty

Sherlock

The Trip to Italy

True Detective

The Honourable Woman

Toast of London

Detectorists

Doctor Who

Homeland