Vote for the Best Mystery!

Voting for the inaugural Yahooies!, Yahoo TV’s awards honoring the best of the 2014-15 TV season (including summer shows), continues today with the next category: Best Mystery.

And the nominees are…

Bloodline: He did do it… but why?

The mystery wasn’t who was killed or whodunit… that’s spelled out clearly in the twist at the end of Bloodline’s first episode. The mystery — which won’t be spoiled here — becomes why the Rayburn family civil war turns into murder. “I’m going to tell you everything,” Emmy nominee Kyle Chandler says in voiceover as Rayburn brother John. “It’s not very pleasant, but it’s the truth.” What unfolds is a slow-burning thriller so intense you find yourself forgetting to breathe during certain scenes, and the sheer pleasure of watching one of the best performances of the TV season in Emmy nominee Ben Mendelsohn’s mesmerizing, heartbreaking turn as eldest Rayburn sibling Danny. — Kimberly Potts

Broadchurch: How will the trial end? And who’s the Sandbrook killer?



Season 2 of Broadchurch gave us two mysteries: Could a man we all saw confess to killing 11-year-old Danny Latimer at the end of Season 1 actually get off? And who killed Pippa and Lisa, the cousins at the center of the Sandbrook case, which had originally given DI Alec Hardy (David Tennant) his heart condition? Over the course of eight skillfully-scripted, beautifully-edited episodes, choices Hardy and DS Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) had made in Season 1 — the consequences of which viewers had never even thought to consider — came back to bite them, and the Sandbrook investigation proved that you don’t need a town of suspects to keep viewers guessing, just three (an estranged husband and wife and their neighbor, who’d lost his daughter and niece). — Mandi Bierly

The Fall: How will Gibson catch Spector?

The cat-and-mouse game between Stella Gibson (Gillian Anderson) and serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan) continued in Season 2, with Gibson — the detective we like to describe as “so unapologetically feminist, unapologetically promiscuous, and unapologetically better than everyone else on the Northern Ireland Police force that she inspires celebratory fan tributes with titles like ‘Stella Gibson being a boss’ — finally getting to interrogate Spector. “What was fascinating about the process,” Anderson told us of filming that 20-minute power play, “was that because we haven’t sat face-to-face in scenes before, it was as much about the actors dancing as it was about the characters dancing and observing each other, sussing each other out. … It’s almost like two cobras facing off.” And the best part, of course, is that their battle isn’t over. — M.B.

The Jinx: Did Robert Durst do it?

The thing that made HBO’s profile of real-estate heir/accused killer Robert Durst so fascinating? It was all completely, frighteningly real. Durst steadfastly denied being involved in the multiple murders he was accused of, but he also couldn’t resist taunting the authorities from behind his high-priced lawyers. And the season finale — which saw Durst mumble a bathroom confession that he “killed them all, of course,” not knowing his microphone was still on — was arguably the most satisfying TV conclusion we’ve seen all year, real or fictional. — Dave Nemetz

Mr. Robot: What’s real?

“Nothing is real,” the Beatles once sang. They could have been describing USA’s hit summer drama, which unfolds through the highly unreliable eyes of emotionally troubled hacker, Elliot (Rami Malek). Trying to untangle fact from fiction is one of the pleasures of the series, as viewers are invited to try and guess what — if anything — is happening to Elliot in reality versus his imagination. Like, has his father really returned from the dead in the form of a hacktivist calling himself Mr. Robot? The kicker is, even if Elliot ever finds an answer to that mystery, we have no idea if we can trust him. — Ethan Alter

Pretty Little Liars: Who is A?

We spent three full seasons trying to read the clues and the tea leaves to figure out who stole the A game from Mona at the end of Season 2 — and boy, was it a doozy. Even though CeCe Drake had been a sassy suspect from her first appearance, who could have possibly predicted that she was once Charles DeLaurentis, long lost brother to Alison? Whether you loved this reveal or hated it, there’s no denying that showrunner I. Marlene King delivered on her promise for “answers,” and we can’t wait to see where the mystery goes this winter after a five-year time jump. — Breanne L. Heldman

Related: Vote for the Most Satisfying Series Finale!

Related: Vote for the Best Sex Scene!

Winners will be revealed the week of Sept. 14.

image