Stephen Jones - Best New Horror #26

The second, six-part season of the BBC’s thoughtful In the Flesh saw those suffering from Partially Deceased Syndrome (PDS) battling zombie extremists and an MP’s political machinations.

As always, the best thing about The CW’s Supernatural was the show’s easy humour and well-drawn supporting characters—whether it was likeable self-styled “King of Hell” Crowley (the wonderfully droll Mark Sheppard), compassionate Sheriff/Hunter Jody Mills (Kim Rhodes) or a werewolf-loving Garth (D.J. Qualls).

As the war between the angels dragged on, Dean (Jensen Ackles) was cursed with the Mark of Cain, and by the beginning of the tenth season was transformed into a devil-may-care demon himself as the series passed its 200th episode with a fun meta-episode based around a fan fiction-inspired high school show.

Supernatural ‘s ‘Bloodlines’ episode was a back-door pilot for a series about five powerful clans of monsters running the city of Chicago.

Clearly inspired by Tod Browning’s Freaks , Sunset Blvd. and American Psycho , the fourth season of the Fox’s American Horror Story , subtitled Freak Show , continued to push the envelope of good taste.

Now set in 1952 Florida and based around a travelling carnival run by former cabaret star Elsa Mars (series regular Jessica Lange, camping it up with a Marlene Dietrich accent), it featured Sarah Paulson as a pair of conjoined twins (a remarkable optical effect), Kathy Bates as a bearded lady, and Michael Chiklis as a strongman with a temper, while John Carroll Lynch played a truly terrifying homicidal clown.

American Horror Story ‘s two-part Halloween episode, in which the carnival was visited by the spectral Edward Mordrake (Wes Bentley), was classic Dark Shadows stuff, and there were some surprising crossovers with the earlier season’s American Horror Story: Asylum .

After the first season of the same network’s Sleepy Hollow ended with a resurrected Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) and his witchy wife Katrina (Katia Winter) discovering that Henry Parrish (John Noble) was actually their son and the second Horseman of the Apocalypse, the second season concentrated on Henry’s attempts to raise the demon Moloch on Earth.

Meanwhile, Ichabod and detective Abbie Mills (Nicole Beharie) found themselves dealing with, amongst other things, Benjamin Franklin’s Frankenstein-like monster, a Pied Piper creature, the Weeping Lady, a succubus and a vengeful Headless Horseman.

Somewhat less fun was NBC’s Grimm , which lived up to its title as crazy Adalind (Claire Coffee) had her royal baby kidnapped by Nick’s mother (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), a new teenage Grimm (Jacqueline Toboni) turned up in town, poor Sgt. Wu (Reggie Lee) thought he was seeing things, and the wedding between Monroe (Silas Weir Mitchell) and Rosalee (Bree Turner) didn’t go quite as planned. Season 4 opened with Nick (David Giuntoli) having lost his powers but still dealing with a golem, a werewolf, El Chupacabra and a group of Wesen purists.

With the vampires and humans of Bon Temps finally working together to survive, the talky seventh and final season of HBO’s True Blood ended with a wedding and the death of a major character, as all the loose ends were obsessively tied up and original author Charlaine Harris had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-her cameo.

Robert Rodriguez remade his 1996 movie From Dust Till Dawn as a ten-part series on his own El Ray Network starring D.J. Controna and Zane Holtz as the criminal Gecko brothers. Unfortunately, the undead bar belonging to Eiza González’s vampire strip-club queen Santánico Pandemonium didn’t show up until half way through the limited season.

Bisexual succubus Bo (Anna Silk) descended to Valhalla to save Kenzi (Ksenia Solo) in the fourth season of Syfy’s loopy Lost Girl , and although it didn’t last quite as many seasons as the British original, the fourth and final season of Syfy’s Being Human reached its own downbeat conclusion.

Based on Kelley Armstrong’s “Women of the Otherworld” books, Syfy’s Bitten starred Laura Vandervoort as the only living female werewolf called back by her Pack to help solve a series of lycanthropic murders.

Syfy’s entertaining Warehouse 13 returned for a limited, six-part fifth and final series, while the mythology behind the channel’s Haven became even more convoluted during its truncated fifth season as Nathan (Lucas Bryant) and Duke (Eric Balfour) battled to keep the Troubles under control and find Audrey’s buried personality within the evil Mara (Emily Rose).

Despite the occasional participation of executive producer Noah Wyle as Flynn Carsen, TNT’s ten-part series The Librarians was nowhere near as clever or entertaining as the three TV movies it was based on. A new team of globe-travelling Librarians, overseen by a deadpan John Larroquette, attempted to prevent The Serpent Brotherhood from bringing magic back into the world. Familiar guest-stars included ubiquitous Canadian actor Matt Frewer, Bob Newhart, Rene Auberjonois, Alicia Witt, Jane Curtin, Bruce Campbell (as Santa Claus) and Jerry O’Connell.

Created by Brannon Braga and Adam Simon, WGN’s Salem was a dull historical drama based around the 17th century witch trials, while the second season of Lifetime’s contemporary The Witches of East End was apparently aimed at a similar soap opera demographic.

Hulu’s half-hour comedy Deadbeat featured Tyler Labine as a slacker medium-for-hire who fixed ghosts’ unfinished business in New York City. Cat Deeley played his sexy rival, who wasn’t quite what she seemed.

Comedians Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim wrote, directed and starred in a series of seven eleven-minute horror stories on Adult Swim entitled Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories . The impressive guest cast included Zach Galifianakis, John C. Reilly, Jason Schwartzman, M. Emmet Walsh, John Heard, Jimmy Kimmel and Laurie Metcalf.

The inhabitants of Arcadia, Missouri, were concerned when the dead began returning with no memory of their demise in the ABC-TV series Resurrection which, despite having a near-identical premise to the superior French series The Returned , was not based on that show but on a 2013 novel entitled The Returned by Jason Mott. Season 2 found immigration agent Bellamy (Omar Epps) coming to terms with the knowledge that he was also one of the Returned.

Meanwhile, in a transposition of that plot, the residents of the small town of Mapleton overreacted to the Rapture-like disappearance of 2% of the world’s population in HBO’s The Leftovers . Co-created by Damon Lindelof ( Lost ) and original novelist Tom Perrotta, it featured Christopher Eccleston (with a dodgy American accent), a tired-looking Liv Tyler and a welcome guest-shot by Scott Glenn.

The BBC’s action-packed Atlantis jumped into Series 2, with Ariadne (Alysha Hart) now Queen and Jason (Jack Donnelly) and his loyal companions protecting her rule against exiled evil sorceress Pasiphae (Sarah Parish) and her sidekick Medea (Amy Manson), who raised an army of ravaging zombies against the city. Unfortunately, in an attempt to appeal to an older audience, the show lost some of its comedic charm.

Season 2 of Starz’s Da Vinci’s Demons found the Renaissance inventor (Tom Riley) and his companions travelling to the New World, where they discovered the mystical Vault of Heaven.

A young soldier (Christopher Egan) discovered that he was the “chosen one”, destined to lead mankind in a war against the angels in Syfy’s South African-made Dominion , which was set twenty-five years after the events in the 2010 movie Legion .