Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

More soap opera than science fiction, the BBC’s eight-part Outcasts followed the trials and tribulations of a group of bickering Earth settlers trying to build a new future on a distant planet called Carpathia. Unfortunately, despite an ensemble cast that included Liam Cunningham, Hermoine Norris, Daniel Mays, Eric Mabius and Jamie Bamber (whose character was killed-off in the first episode), not only was the show a dull reworking of the 1994–95 series Earth 2 , but the central mystery also owed much to Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles . The series was quickly moved to another time-slot because of disappointing viewing figures.

Despite occasional flashes of welcome humour, the third season of the BBC’s Being Human was a grim affair as vampire Mitchell (Aidan Turner) rescued ghost Annie (Lenora Crichlow) from Purgatory and was forced to face the consequences of his bloody massacre of a passenger train in the previous series.

While werewolves George (Russell Tovey) and Nina (Sinead Keenan) found themselves expecting a baby, unexpected visitors dropping by the housemates’ new Barry Island home included teenage vampire Adam (Craig Roberts), who was really forty-six years old; party-loving zombie girl Sasha (Alexandra Roach); werewolf traveller McNair (Robson Green) and his son Tom (Michael Socha); stressed-out social worker Wendy (Nicola Walker); persistent policewoman Nancy Reid (Erin Richards), and mysteriously resurrected vampire Herrick (Jason Watkins), who claimed to have lost his memory.

An eight-part spin-off show, Becoming Human , was available on the BBC website (and subsequently edited-together as a TV special). It involved schoolboy vampire Adam (Roberts again) teaming up with a werewolf (Leila Mimmack) and a human (Josh Brown) to solve a mystery.

Relocated to Boston, an American version of Being Human starred Sam Witwer as vampire Aidan, Meaghan Rath as ghost Sally and Sam Huntington as werewolf Josh. The first season aired over thirteen episodes on the Syfy channel.

In the second season of Syfy’s Haven , loosely based on a Stephen King story, all the main protagonists discovered that there were secrets in their past they never knew about.

Bi-sexual succubus Bo (Anna Silk) learned to work with the Fae, despite the new Ash (Vincent Walsh), while werewolf detective Dyson (Kris Holden-Ried) sacrificed his ability to love in the second season of Syfy’s Lost Girl .

The third season of the channel’s enjoyable Warehouse 13 saw the return of Jaime Murray’s terrific H. G. Wells, while Eureka ’s Douglas Fargo (Neil Grayson) made a return visit to the Warehouse, which was apparently destroyed in the season finale. Kate Mulgrew, Anthony Michael Hall and Aaron Ashmore joined the cast as semi-regulars.

The third series of Syfy’s Sanctuary ended with the inhabitants from Hidden Earth coming to the surface, and the fourth season kicked off with Dr Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping) travelling back in time to Victorian London to prevent Adam Worth from changing history. In the two-part finale, Magnus put her long-term plans for the Sanctuary network into action, as Caleb (Gil Bellows) plotted to turn the human race into Abnormals.

Syfy’s likeable Eureka (aka A Town Called Eureka ) ended its fourth season with an accidental spaceship launch, but it was back three months later with a Christmas special in which everyone was turned into cartoon characters.

Based on the series of dark and gory high fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin, HBO’s terrific ten-part Game of Thrones was, quite simply, one of the year’s best TV dramas in any genre. The superlative cast included Sean Bean (whose lead character was surprisingly killed off in the penultimate episode), a scene-stealing Peter Dinklage, Mark Addy, Lena Headey and Jason Momoa.

With its fourth season, HBO’s True Blood finally inherited the mantle of 1960s daytime soap opera Dark Shadows as Sookie (Anna Paquin) returned from fairyland to find that Fiona Shaw’s possessed witch had cast a spell over Eric (Alexander Skarsgård), causing him to lose much of his memory.

In a major departure from the original books, a leading character was surprisingly killed off by Skarsgård’s vampire, and the season finale featured the shocking deaths of three, or possibly four, other major characters. Veterans William Schallert and Katherine Helmond turned up in nice cameos.

The sixth season of Showtime’s Dexter jumped ahead a year as Michael C. Hall’s killer-with-a-code encountered a pair of religious “Doomsday Killers” (Edward James Olmos and Colin Hanks), a reformed Brother Sam (rapper-actor Mos Def), a septuagenarian serial killer (veteran Ronny Cox) and his own dead brother (Christian Camargo).

With its delayed fourth and fifth seasons filmed in Ireland, ITV’s always bonkers Primeval returned in January for seven episodes as Connor (Andrew-Lee Potts) and Abby (Hannah Spearitt) escaped the Cretaceous Period only to find that the ARC (Anomaly Research Centre) had been rebuilt and was now controlled by mysterious magnate Philip Burton (Alexander Siddig), who had his own secret agenda. Despite the introduction of a new team of dinosaur-hunters, previous cast members Lucy Brown and Jason Flemyng returned for an episode apiece.

The series was back with a further six shows in May, and included an episode in which a velociraptor was accidentally sent back to 1868 London, where it gave rise to the legend of “Spring-heeled Jack”.

There were more CGI dinosaurs in Fox’s much-delayed Terra Nova , executive produced by Steven Spielberg, in which the annoying Shannon family (led by Jason O’Mara and Shelley Conn) travelled back from a dystopian future to 85 million years in the past to make a new life for themselves in what was basically a thirteen-part reworking of Land of the Lost with added rebel factions and conspiracy sub-plots.

Not content with boring audiences rigid with the family values of Terra Nova , Steven Spielberg also executive produced TNT’s tedious War of the Worlds -inspired Falling Skies , in which a history professor ( E.R .’s Noah Wyle) and a rag-tag group of resistance fighters mostly talked their way through yet another alien invasion of Earth.

If Terra Nova and Falling Skies could make dinosaurs and alien invasions dull, then AMC’s increasingly pointless The Walking Dead was guilty of doing the same thing with zombies, as the ever-dwindling band of survivors (led by Andrew Lincoln’s cuckold Sheriff) took refuge on a seemingly-tranquil rural farm until they went and looked at what was kept in the barn. It was perhaps no surprise that creator and executive producer Frank Darabont stepped down as showrunner after just a few episodes into the second season.

Despite its lethargic pacing, the show still managed to rank as the top-rated cable TV drama amongst young adults in the US, with average viewing numbers of nine million.

Sam (Jared Padalecki) returned from Hell without a soul, and angel Castiel (Misha Collins) went off the rails in the disappointing sixth series of The CW’s Supernatural . In the best episode of the season, Sam and Dean (Jensen Ackles) were transported to an alternate reality, where they were actors in a TV series called. Supernatural .

The seventh season kicked off with the brothers trying to find a way to stop a power-mad Castiel, and Buffy cast members Charisma Carpenter and James Marsters turned up as a pair of bickering married witches.

The third season of The CW’s unwatchably awful The Vampire Diaries was joined by the equally turgid teen witch series, The Secret Circle , also based on a bunch of books by L. J.Smith and executive produced by Kevin Williamson. At least Natasha Henstridge was on hand in the latter show to chew up the scenery as a scheming older witch.