--- description: In a year with a lot of vote-splitting, the Minnesota saga pleased enough of the people enough of the time to win. title: TV Critics’ Poll Names Fargo Best Show of 2014 image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcbecd9aeb76eba90/69876d772dce01e8699dc4cc/110_0421_fargo_cl_hires1.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # TV Critics' Poll Names _Fargo_ Best Show of 2014 by [James Poniewozik](/author/james-poniewozik/) ## James Poniewozik Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Dec 8, 2014 8:44 PM CUT  FARGO "Morton's Fork" -- Episode 110 -- Airs Tuesday, June 17, 10:00 pm e/p) -- Pictured: (L-R) Allison Tolman as Molly Solverson, Bob Odenkirk as Bill Oswalt -- CR: Chris Large/FX FARGO "Morton's Fork" -- Episode 110 -- Airs Tuesday, June 17, 10:00 pm e/p) -- Pictured: (L-R) Allison Tolman as Molly Solverson, Bob Odenkirk as Bill Oswalt -- CR: Chris Large/FXChris Large/FX by [James Poniewozik](/author/james-poniewozik/) ## James Poniewozik Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close Dec 8, 2014 8:44 PM CUT Entertainment site Hitfix today released the results of [its annual TV critics’ poll](http://www.hitfix.com/whats-alan-watching/fargo-wins-hitfixs-3rd-annual-television-critics-poll "undefined"), and this time it was _Fargo_ that would go far. FX’s new series (miniseries? serial miniseries?) finished number one both for best show of the year and best new show, finishing ahead of _The Good Wife_ and _Transparent_ respectively. (_True Detective_‘s Matthew McConaughey won the separate [Best Performance poll](http://www.hitfix.com/news/tvcriticspoll/best-performances/ "undefined").) As always, just because I vote in the polls doesn’t mean I agree with all the choices: I’ve already published [my own top 10 of 2014 list](http://time.com/3592117/best-tv-shows-of-2014-poniewozik/ "undefined"), so you can compare these lists with mine if you want. But honestly, I don’t need a list like this to confirm my tastes–that’s what my own is for. It’s much more interesting to me to see how they reflect the averaged-out preferences of a particular group. This year, it sheds a little light on what a wildly diverse group of top shows 2014 gave us. I don’t just mean there was a lot of good TV, but there was no one show dominating most critics’ lists as _Breaking Bad_ did last year. (Even if I was one of a few dissenters in 2013, putting _Enlightened_ #1 and _Breaking Bad_ #2.) This year, a casual glance down the individual critics’ picks find many different, plausible top picks: _Transparent_ (my choice), _The Good Wife_, _The Americans_, _True Detective_, _Game of Thrones_. Hitfix’s own Alan Sepinwall picked _The Leftovers_ as his #1, and while I though its season was too uneven, I loved its high points so much I immediately regretted not ranking it higher. As for _Fargo_, it would not have been my guess for the top spot, and yet in retrospect it seems obvious. The show has had its detractors–The New Yorker’s [Emily Nussbaum, for instance](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/23/snowbound-2 "undefined"). But in general it was a show a lot of critics loved or at least liked a lot, without a major backlash, which meant it was high enough on enough lists to rack up a lot of points. It stood up better over time and in memory (compare _True Detective_, which was an obsession for two months last winter but ended up #5 on the Hitfix list), and it didn’t run the risk, like _The Good Wife_, of running a fall season that didn’t quite measure up to its earlier winter season. Not everyone agreed one single shows was the best in 2014, but enough critics–myself included–believed that _Fargo_ was _one_ of the best to make it tops overall. (A key factor here is that critics vote in the poll by ranking their top 10 picks; so even though _Fargo_ tied _The Good Wife_ and _Transparent_ in #1 picks, it got enough close-to-#1 picks to make the difference.) Agree or not, Hitfix provides enough data to make an [interesting deep dive for TV geeks](http://www.hitfix.com/news/tvcriticspoll/ "undefined")–not just each critic’s individual ranked lists, but how many votes each show got, from whom, and in what place. Go ahead and do some investigating of your own–that’s what Molly Solverson would want. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3623284/fargo-best-show-of-2014-tv-critics-poll/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3623284/fargo-best-show-of-2014-tv-critics-poll/"},"headline":"TV Critics' Poll Names Fargo Best Show of 2014","datePublished":"2014-12-08T20:44:46.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T02:39:12.431Z","description":"In a year with a lot of vote-splitting, the Minnesota saga pleased enough of the people enough of the time to win.","url":"https://time.com/3623284/fargo-best-show-of-2014-tv-critics-poll/","keywords":["Television","Polls"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcbecd9aeb76eba90/69876d772dce01e8699dc4cc/110_0421_fargo_cl_hires1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"James Poniewozik","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/james-poniewozik/"}],"articleSection":"Entertainment","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcbecd9aeb76eba90/69876d772dce01e8699dc4cc/110_0421_fargo_cl_hires1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"110_0421_Fargo_CL_hires1","caption":"","creditText":"Chris Large/FX","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/entertainment/","name":"Entertainment"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3623284/fargo-best-show-of-2014-tv-critics-poll/","name":"TV Critics' Poll Names Fargo Best Show of 2014"}}]}] ```