heat magazine's Unmissables Awards 2018: The winners
heat has crowned the best of the year in TV, film and popular culture
Last updated 4th Dec 2018
heat magazine's prestigious Unmissables Awards, decided by the elite panel of experts over at the publication, reward the finest achievements of the year in all areas of entertainment and pop culture. Their readers voted in the hotly-contested category of Best Soap, too.
So without further ado, and with a suitably dramatic drum roll, here are the results...
Unmissable TV Moment Of The Year: Bodyguard opening scene
Great TV isn't just about epic 13-episode binges, it's also about those indelible sequences that as soon as you watch them, become rooted in your mind forever. So in this category we considered such wide-ranging scenes as the lovely Rahul's total joy on winning Bake Off, US drama Sharp Objects only revealing how its crimes were committed during the end titles, and our winner – the opening of Bodyguard. Yes it went on for 20 minutes, but it's the best TV drama start ever.
Unmissable comedian of the Year: Romesh Ranganathan
You could say Romesh has had a busy year, what with a travel series, a US documentary show, Judge Romesh for UKTV, his own sitcom AND taking over from Jack Whitehall on A League Of Their Own. He's also brilliantly funny in all those things. He told heat, "I want to say thank you, this is an amazing for me because heat magazine related things are the only thing that my wife gets excited about to do with my career. I say career, personal life, anything to do with me really. The only time she's interested is when I appear in heat magazine so for me to win Comedian Of The Year is not only a career boost for me, it also enables me to go home and say to her, 'I'm better than you thought I was, can you please show me some love and affection?' So, thank you for saving my marriage, heat magazine."
Unmissable Album of the Year: Lily Allen – 'No Shame'
Lily Allen has always been a divisive figure but this album reminded us not only how brilliantly witty and blunt she can be with her lyrical prowess but also how spectacularly catchy her melodies are. Full of brutally honest insights into her life, 'No Shame' was her most musically-accomplished album to date, full of lush pop wonders.
Unmissable TV & Radio presenter of the Year: Dermot O'Leary
Whatever happens on The X Factor, Dermot is always there being charming, wryly funny and quietly subversive. Dermot says, "Thanks heat, this is really nice of you. I really appreciate it because you've been very supportive of me for my whole career at heat and my career's about 18 years long! So, thank you, thank you so much. It means a great deal to me."
Unmissable TV Comedy of the Year: Derry Girls
It had an unknown cast, and it was set in Northern Ireland in the '90s when conflict was all the rage. Not a recipe for TV Comedy Gold you might think. But creator Lisa McGee's sitcom about a group of teens with daily life at their strict Catholic school was an instant hit – as fresh, vibrant and hilariously funny as any new TV comedy of recent years. Now we can't wait for series 2 which they've just finished filming.
Unmissable Reality Show of the Year: Love Island
Just when we thought Love Island couldn't get any better than the Chris/Kem series, along comes Dani Dyer, in a masterstroke of casting, to make the 2018 run utterly riveting from the first minute to the last. Megan Barton-Hanson accepted the award, representing the cast, and she said, "I want to say a massive thank you to heat for voting Love Island the best reality show of this year. I can't wait to tell everyone. It was an amazing experience."
Unmissable podcast of the Year: Dear Joan And Jericha – Julia Davis & Vicki Pepperdine
In a world of myriad true crime and fairly bleak factual podcasts, sometimes what you really need is a damn good laugh. Performers Julia Davis and Vicki Pepperdine, who also worked together in the awesome TV series Sally4Ever, gave us the year's biggest podcast treat with this stunningly rude, utterly hilarious collection of terrible agony aunt advice. Has to be heard to be believed…
Unmissable TV binge of the Year: The Haunting Of Hill House (Netflix)
This is our category only for shows that arrive in full, ready for a big binge, and our winner, about a family torn apart by ghosts, is not just the best horror story seen on TV for years, it's also a superb 10-episode drama as good as any this year. Episode 6 in particular, shot in just four long takes, is a work of genius.
Unmissable actress of the Year: Jodie Whittaker
It now seems ridiculous there was any kind of fuss at all about the casting of Jodie Whittaker as the 13th Doctor. After about five minutes of seeing her in that first episode in October, she'd made the role her own, as they say on The X Factor. Now we've seen her first season in full (with a New Year special to come), it feels like she's taken the Doctor to new heights. It's one of the biggest acting challenges out there, and Jodie has knocked it out of the park. With bells on. That's why she's won for Best Actress in 2018 in such a great year for female roles.
Unmissable Film of the Year: Mission: Impossible – Fallout
In a great year for movies, the Mamma Mia sequel was massive fun and made us shed many tears, Black Panther was the ultimate superhero movie, A Quiet Place was a chilling triumph for husband-and-wife team John Krasinsky and Emily Blunt, while A Star Is Born had so many beautiful moments. But incredibly, the sixth entry in the Mission: Impossible films was even better, even more thrilling and entertaining than all those. Yes, really.
Unmissable TV drama of the Year: A Very English Scandal
It's been an astonishingly good year for TV drama – and any one of these shows would be a deserving winner. But Russell T Davies's three-parter based on the true story of how 1970s Liberal Party Leader Jeremy Thorpe actually got involved with a plot to bump off his secret gay lover had everything: a dream cast (Hugh Grant, Ben Whishaw), legendary director (Stephen Frears of The Queen fame), and the dazzlingly witty script from Davies (Queer As Folk, Doctor Who).
Unmissable Actor of the Year: Benedict Cumberbatch
Yes, Benedict Cumberbatch won this award last year for his deeply moving turn in the one-off drama The Child In Time. But if anything that was a mere dress rehearsal for the extraordinary intensity of performance he achieved in the stunning five-parter Patrick Melrose, which combined outlandish physical comedy with the depths of post-traumatic despair.
Unmissable Entertainment Show of the Year: Would I Lie to You?
A closely fought category, but the long-running WILTY, built round the lovely chemistry between host Rob Brydon and team captains Lee Mack and David Mitchell, is not just the funniest panel show on TV, most weeks it's the funniest thing on TV full stop. The current series has yielded even more classic episodes than ever. Host Rob Brydon told heat, "Dear Heat readers, this is fantastic thank you so much. I'm sure if Lee and David were here – if they could bothered to be here, that is – they would be equally as pleased."
To see the full list of 2018 winners and runners-up, make sure you pick up this week's heat magazine, OUT NOW.