May 2014: Best Release

Source: Project Fandom

For the second month running, HBO's finest drama yet steals our Best Release award.
It's rare that not even halfway through a year, we've stumbled upon multiple potent Film of the Year, TV Show of the Year and Game of the Year contenders, but 2014 is evidently daring to be different, with The LEGO Movie, Derek and South Park: The Stick of Truth each having gone the extra mile to impress over the course of its first five months. Moreso than any of its competitors, however, Game of Thrones is currently experiencing one of its strongest runs to date, especially as none of its instalments so far have earned anything below a 4* score here at On-Screen.

The best episode of Season Four (before tomorrow's finale, at least)? "Mockingbird". Despite not playing host to the compulsive and dramatically captivating trial of Tyrion Lannister in the King's Landing throne room or indeed his eventful trial by combat in the capital city of Westeros' outskirts, the seventh 'chapter' of perhaps the show's best series yet thrived in its intricacies. In fact, we'd wager that the lack of a major setpiece allowed its producers and writers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to place further emphasis on the various thematic and narrative strands of the current run than ever before, whether through the brilliant retrospectives we gained on Tyrion's relationships with Jaime, Bronn and Oberyn (RIP, incidentally) in his cell-bound sequences or Petyr Baelish's utterly gripping political machinations in the Eyrie (as end-of-episode cliffhangers go, Lysa's flight through the Moon-Door is a tough one to match!). Whilst our brief solitary excursion to Castle Black for "The Watchers on the Wall" last week was a memorable diversion from the status quo, if "Mockingbird" is even partially indicative of what Benioff and Weiss have in store for us in Monday's heartbreaking denouement, "The Children", then we can undoubtedly prepare for one of the show's most emotionally rigorous send-off outings yet.

As ever, here's a full list of all of our monthly Best Release award victors for 2014 so far:
JANUARY 2014- 12 YEARS A SLAVE
FEBRUARY 2014- THE LEGO MOVIE
MARCH 2014- CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
APRIL 2014- GAME OF THRONES: TWO SWORDS
MAY 2014- GAME OF THRONES: MOCKINGBIRD