The new season was weak – but there was plenty of good stuff worth watching in 2011. Here's a pick of the 10 best

It's been a mixed year for US television, with established hits stumbling (oh Glee, where did it all go wrong?) and one of the weakest new seasons in recent years (farewell, The Playboy Club, Charlie's Angels and Prime Suspect: you won't be missed).

But there were some nice surprises – Revenge provided a welcome return for the primetime soap, while Once Upon A Time demonstrated that Disney and ABC still understand a thing or two about family-centric Sunday night viewing, although I'm less convinced about ABC boss Paul Lee's belief that we're dying to watch men behaving sadly. (If you thought Man Up was bad, wait until Work It airs).

On the cable side, Boardwalk Empire ended the season on a high, Game of Thrones proved that people will invest in fantasy if it's cleverly done, American Horror Story allowed the great Jessica Lange to chew the scenery to shreds, The Borgias saw the welcome return of the sonorous tones of Jeremy Irons and The Boss finally gave Kelsey Grammer something worthwhile to do.

Elsewhere, the remake of The Killing stuttered under the weight of attempting to fashion something that forged its own path even as it honoured the original, while the US version of Shameless worked best when it placed its child stars, in particular Cameron Monaghan's Ian, centre stage.

It was a year in which twentysomething women became sitcom staples, as the year's two biggest new sitcoms, 2 Broke Girls and New Girl, saw former indy darlings Kat Denning and Zooey Deschanel expand their appeal. Thankfully not every female character on TV was sharp-tongued and snake-hipped or ditzy and adorkable – the year's two most interesting female characters were Claire Danes's determined bipolar CIA agent in Homeland, and Laura Dern's anxious and angry Amy in Enlightened, both of whom were allowed to be refreshingly unapologetic about their sins.

Finally, while some returning shows (cough, cough, The Office) seemed stagnant, others (Parks and Recreation) hit new and ever-entertaining heights, and there was even a surprise feelgood story as the initially derided Happy Endings was given the chance to breathe, and in doing so built itself into a word-of-mouth hit.

So what were the best shows of the year? The New Yorker's TV critic Emily Nussbaum recently posted a impassioned call for the end of top 10 lists but I have a sneaking love for them, so here's mine. (I haven't yet seen The Walking Dead, Louie or the most recent series of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, and I'm not including Downton Abbey, even though it aired in the US this year.)

1. Community

A purely subjective choice, but I love Dan Harmon's quirky comedy more than is good for my health. It's the little moments, the sly references to earlier episodes and other shows that make it dearer to my heart than any sitcom since Spaced (to which it bears a resemblance). Well, that and the fact that Danny Pudi's Christian Bale-as-Batman impersonation makes me literally cry laughing.

2. Game of Thrones

DB Weiss and David Benioff's adaptation of George R R Martin's dark, sprawling fantasy works because it is so completely committed to the depiction of a fully realised world. The audience is thrust completely into this world, whether eavesdropping political machinations in King's Landing or treading in Jon Snow's footsteps on The Wall. Plus it was that rare thing in this spoiler-ridden era, a television show that managed to keep its most spectacular plot twists entirely under wraps.

3. Friday Night Lights

Consistently one of the best shows on network television, NBC's football drama bowed out with a emotional final season and a near perfect final episode in which the fates of everyone from coach Eric Taylor to bad boy Tim Riggins were settled in way that felt both honest and true. Few dramas have pulled off sincerity as well as Friday Night Lights yet because it wore its heart on its sleeve its final impact was considerable.

4. Breaking Bad

The best show on television right now just had its best season. In a completely objective list this would deserve to be the No1, for the way in which it stares unflinchingly into the darkness at its protagonist's heart. Beautifully acted, tautly scripted and seemingly incapable of the sort of character cop-out that has dogged other great shows, Breaking Bad is arguably the finest television show of the past decade. Here's to a strong final season.

5. Homeland

Featuring Claire Danes as a paranoid CIA agent with trust issues, and Damian Lewis as an army veteran who may or may not be a terrorist, Homeland was one of the season's best new shows. Created by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon, formerly of 24, Homeland often played out as a nuanced answer to 24's robust take on good and evil. More importantly, it eschewed cheap tricks in favour of making you truly concerned for its characters, regardless of the lies they all told.

6. Parks and Recreation

In its third season, this comedy about a disparate group of losers and misfits in the parks department of the fictional town of Pawnee, Indiana was unstoppable. From the (rather lovely) relationship between Ben Wyatt (Party Down's Adam Scott in scene-stealing mode) and Amy Poehler's Leslie, to Nick Offerman's deadpan performance as parks director Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation mixed the heart-warming with the hysterical without missing a beat.

7. Justified

Some shows just make it all seem effortless, and this modern-day western starring Timothy Olyphant as the laconic Marshal Raylan Givens is one of them. Justified's second season played out as brutal hillbilly noir with events slowly but inevitably coming to a head between Raylan and murderous matriarch Mags Bennett (an outstanding Margo Martindale).

8. Revenge

It's a sudsy melodrama stuffed full of impossibly beautiful and ridiculously catty people who say things like "What part of get out are you having trouble with?" and "If I end up getting framed, I'll see that everything you cherish so dearly is ripped from those greedy little claws of yours" with completely straight faces. It's also absolutely brilliant. Not since the eighties heyday of Dynasty and Dallas has a show been so totally and gleefully over-the-top, no wonder Madeline Stowe is having the time of her life as the ice queen to end them all.

9. Treme

Frustrating? Maybe. Slow on plot? Possibly. Idiosyncratic? Definitely. Yet Treme is also that rare beast, a show operating entirely on its own terms. The second season of the jazz drama meandered all over the place as it continued its tale of post-Katrina life in New Orleans. Naysayers have claimed that this lacks the taut storytelling hit of The Wire, but what gives Treme strength is its heart and its optimism. The Wire was the tale of how a city was abandoned and failed from top to bottom; Treme is the story of how a city rebuilt itself after disaster. At its best it is a joyous hymn to human spirit and our ability to find the strength to carry on.

10. Rescue Me

Yes, there were better shows out there, yes, in later years it became mired in melodrama and, yes, Denis Leary might want to lay off the unpleasant parody videos, but there was something compelling about the dark-hearted tale of the men of the Ladder 62/Engine 99 firehouse, and when it ended, four days before the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the event at its bleak centre, it did so under its own uncompromising terms to the sound of The Pogues and with Tommy Gavin's ghosts still circling.

• Agree? Disagree? In the comments below, tell me what I missed out, got wrong, should have remembered, really ought to be watching …