heat’s Unmissables Awards 2018: The winners

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.

You could say Romesh has had a busy year, what with a travel series for BBC2, a US documentary show, Judge Romesh for UKTV, his own sitcom for Sky and taking over from Jack Whitehall on A League Of Their Own. He's also brilliantly funny in all those things. He told us, "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."

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 Allen's most musically accomplished album to date, full of lush pop wonders.

Whatever happens on The X Factor, Derm is always there being charming, wryly funny and quietly subversive, taking the P out of Simon Cowell most weeks. And O'Leary's secret weapon is his delightful Saturday breakfast show on Radio 2, full of excellent interviews and fun features. Derm 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."

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.

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. We handed over the award to Megan Barton-Hanson, 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."

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…

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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 us, "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."