It’s a kind of a ritual, I suppose, that began here on Off The Telly back in 2006. Each January, come the publication of the previous year’s ratings, we assembled a new top 50, noting who was up, who was down and how many of our predictions from 12 months ago failed to come true. Which, invariably, was almost all of them.

And so it proves, perhaps fittingly, one last time. My forecast for the TV big-hitters of 2009 turned out to be almost completely wrong: “Doctor Who will be in there, probably when David Tennant regenerates (assuming he does it before 1st January 2010). A soap might be there. If Andy Murray gets to the Wimbledon final, that might squeeze in. Otherwise: talent shows. Especially if Brucie decides to quit Strictly Come Dancing.”

I was right about the talent shows. Here’s the list, with the 2009 entries in bold:

1) Only Fools and Horses (25 December 2001) – 21.4m
2) Euro 2004: Portugal v England (BBC1, 24 June 2004) – 20.7m
3) EastEnders (5 April 2001) – 20.1m
4) Coronation Street (24 February 2003) – 19.4m
5) Coronation Street (3 January 2000) – 19.0m
6) Britain’s Got Talent (ITV1, 30 May 2009) – 18.3m
7) Euro 2004: France v England (ITV1, 21 June 2004) – 17.8m
8) EastEnders (29 September 2003) – 16.7m
9) EastEnders (5 March 2001) – 16.6m
10) Only Fools and Horses (25 December 2002) – 16.3m
10) EastEnders (2 January 2001) – 16.3m
10) Coronation Street (16 February 2004) – 16.3m
10) The X Factor (13 December 2009) – 16.3m
14) Coronation Street (1 January 2001) – 16.2m
15) Coronation Street (3 January 2001) – 16.1m
15) Who Wants to be a Millionaire?: Tonight Special (21 April 2003) – 16.1m
15) Wallace and Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death (25 December 2008) – 16.1m
18) EastEnders (25 December 2002) – 16m
19) Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (19 January 2000) – 15.8m
20) Coronation Street (13 January 2003) – 15.6m
21) Only Fools and Horses (25 December 2003) – 15.5m
21) Coronation Street (11 March 2001) – 15.5m
23) Michael Jackson Tonight Special (3 February 2003) – 15.3m
24) Heartbeat (6 February 2000) – 15.2m
24) EastEnders (28 December 2000) – 15.2m
26) I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! (9 February 2004) – 15m
27) Euro 2000 Portugal v England (ITV1, 12 June 2000) – 14.9m
28) Coronation Street (5 January 2001) – 14.8m
28) EastEnders (5 January 2004) – 14.8m
30) A Touch of Frost (14 January 2001) – 14.7m
31) Euro 2000 England v Romania (BBC1, 20 June 2000) – 14.6m
32) World Cup 2006: Sweden v England (ITV1, 20 June 2006) – 14.4m
33) Coronation Street (21 February 2005) – 14.4m
33) EastEnders (25 December 2007) – 14.4m
35) EastEnders (18 February 2005) – 14.3m
36) World Cup Match of the Day Live (BBC1, 25 June 2006) – 14.25m
37) The X Factor: Results (13 December 2008) – 14.06m
38) Who Wants to be a Millionaire? (1 May 2000) – 13.9m
38) Britain’s Got Talent Final: Result (31 May 2008) – 13.9m
40) Heartbeat (21 January 2001) – 13.8m
41) Inspector Morse (15 November 2000) – 13.6m
42) Emmerdale (22 March 2000) – 13.3m
43) Pop Idol (9 February 2002) – 13.3m
43) Doctor Who (25 December 2007) – 13.3m
45) Rugby World Cup Final (20 October 2007, ITV1) – 13.1m
45) Coronation Street (15 January 2007) – 13.1m
45) The Vicar of Dibley (1 January 2007) – 13.1m
45) Doctor Who (25 December 2008) – 13.1m
49) A Touch of Frost (22 February 2004) – 13m
49) Coronation Street (18 January 2008) – 13m

Just two new entries, four down on last year. The shows that got knocked off the list were the 2008 Strictly Come Dancing final, the last ever episode of One Foot In The Grave and an edition of Heartbeat from 12 January 2003 (these last two were tied in 50th place).

The third most-watched programme of 2009 was the Doctor Who Christmas special, which attracted 12.04m viewers: not quite enough to make it a top 50 festive hat-trick for Russell T Davies.

This final chart means 2001 takes first place for the most number of programmes (10) followed by 2000 (nine), then 2003 tied with 2004 (six each), 2007 and 2008 (five apiece), 2002 (three) and finally 2005, 2006 and 2009 (two).

Not a bad decade, all told, in terms of nation-uniting, mass-appealing television. A memorable 10 years to have both watched and written about.

Only Fools and Horses ends up the most viewed programme of the 1990s and 2000s (but not the 1980s; that honour goes to Live and Let Die). It somehow seems unlikely the forthcoming “prequel” will make it three in a row for John Sullivan.

Lastly, here’s the full top 20 for 2009. All the talent shows appear once, represented by their respective results programmes. The presence of numbers 10 and 19 might have something to do with falling on the day when Britain was “snowed in”. Note also, at number six, “flop show” Strictly Come Dancing.

1) Britain’s Got Talent (30/05/09, ITV1) 18.29m
2) The X Factor (13/12/09, ITV1) 16.28m
3) Doctor Who (25/12/09, BBC1) 12.04m
4) The Royle Family (25/12/09, BBC1) 11.92m
5) EastEnders (25/12/09, BBC1) 11.67m
6) Strictly Come Dancing (19/12/09, BBC1) 11.54m
7) Coronation Street (02/02/09, ITV1) 11.46m
8) Dancing On Ice (22/03/09, ITV1) 11.31m
9) I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here (21/11/09, ITV1) 10.86m
10) I Dreamed A Dream: The Susan Boyle Story (13/12/09, ITV1) 10.79m
11) Children In Need (20/11/09, BBC1) 10.31m
12) Doc Martin (08/11/09, ITV1) 10.28m
13) Gavin and Stacey (25/12/09, BBC1) 10.18m
14) The Gruffalo (25/12/09, BBC1) 10.08m
15) Jonathan Creek (01/01/09, BBC1) 9.91m
16) Comic Relief (13/03/09, BBC1) 9.84m
17) The Apprentice (03/06/09, BBC1) 9.76m
18) The Royal Variety Performance (16/12/09, ITV1) 9.56m
19) Whitechapel (02/02/09, ITV1) 9.26m
20) Kilimanjaro: The Big Red Nose Climb (12/03/09, BBC1) 9.20m

And that’s your lot.

Scenes from a decade

OTT doesn’t have much truck with the idea of a “golden age of television”. Every era has programmes that are exceptionally good and desperately poor. If there has to be a “golden age”, then it began when TV was invented. It hasn’t stopped. Not even in the face of some of the telly from the last decade.

The ratio of small screen triumphs to travesties is the same as it ever was; there are just more of them. The past 10 years weren’t characterised by new lows or highs; just different ones. What we watched didn’t really change; how and when we watched did.

Here’s a commemoration of sorts in the shape of an A-Z of the decade’s television»

Adventures from each of the seven original doctors are promised; The Web Planet (all six episodes) is already up on the MSN UK website.

Further stories are to be uploaded one per week (I think), and are scheduled to be The Tomb of the Cybermen, Planet of the Spiders, The Talons of Weng-Chiang, The Caves of Androzani, The Mark of the Rani and Survival.

I’m not sure any of the more recent adventures have been licenced, or how long the archive ones will stay up online.

It’s called Let’s Change The World With Music, and was originally knocked on the head by thick-eared suits at Sony after just one listen to Paddy McAloon’s meticulously performed demo tape, thereafter consigned both to a cardboard box in the songwriter’s back room and wistful whispers within fanzines, message boards and forums.

Now McAloon’s efforts have finally made it into the real world. They have lost the mystique of being that most alluring of sonic creations, the Unreleased Recording.

But they have gained the exposure for which they were conceived, and like light falling on long-hidden mementos tucked away for expediency, their merit ought only to climb still further. They are songs of sad beauty and uplifting wisdom, marching under a banner of a pointedly nostalgic aspiration – one that seems to gain in stature by virtue of being from another age.

There’s a vaguely naïve, 1960s ring to it. Let’s not change the world with ideas, McAloon vows, not with less bureaucracy or more intervention, or deregulation or more regulation, but with…songs. With notes and tunes and harmony and… well, with sound itself.

It’s a calculated doff of the hat to a tradition fostered by another group; one that, along with almost every other precedent in popular music, established, fed and watered the mystique of the Unreleased Recording from the off.

What the Beatles didn’t release on disc, what remained in the Abbey Road archives in the shape of alternative takes, studio chatter and wholesale abandoned songs, used to be a puzzle trail winding all the way back to February 1965 with tracks like If You’ve Got Trouble and That Means A Lot, and then even earlier to versions of their very first single, Love Me Do, with and without Ringo on drums.

The Anthology series of albums and TV programmes in the mid-1990s ventured some way along that trail, partly satiating the world’s desire for ‘new’ Beatles material while tantalising fans with the implication there was far more hiding in the vaults.

At the time we overlooked the pointless instrumental versions and the crap bits because, hey, it was The Beatles. Audio glimpses of the Fabs at work in Abbey Road, even mere seconds in length, were seized on as vindication of the belief in the spell of the Unreleased Recording. An alternative take of Maxwell’s Silver Hammer? Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive!

The spell remained unbroken. Yet since then, Apple, still the most hapless music business in the world, has done its best to not capitalise on any periodic returns of Beatlemania. It has seemingly gone out of its way to not release digitally remastered version of the group’s albums, nor sort out a deal with iTunes, nor get the film of Let It Be released on DVD, nor really do anything to acknowledge the arrival of the 21st century.

Maddeningly, the only ‘new’ Beatles endeavour since the Anthology project was the bizarre Love album: a look-at-how-clever-we-are hodge-podge medley of one chorus stuck to the verse of another.

Until now. The Beatles: on Record aired on BBC2 the same week as the launch of the Beatles Rock Band computer game, plus the release of those long pined-for reissues (supposedly done and dusted four years ago!). It has been a rare burst of coordination from McCartney’s people, Starr’s people, the thousands of others representing Mrs John Lennon and Mrs George Harrison, plus George Martin and son.

Given the wait, it was a joy to see this particular publicity bauble do everything right. Its greatest triumph was having the sense to avoid what wasn’t needed. An hour-long documentary about the music of the Beatles should not leave any director struggling for content. Rather it should invite consideration of just what, as well as who, needs to be included.

Attention had been paid to such concerns. We had no contributions from anybody bar the group themselves and George Martin; no extraneous establishing footage, not even any extraneous sound or music; and best of all no narration. That meant no shots of girls screaming as the Beatles arrived at the Shea Stadium followed by a wallpaper voice saying “girls screamed as the Beatles arrived at the Shea Stadium”. Just sound and pictures of and by five people who changed the world with music. Perfection.

In the same way they were the first group to treat the studio as a playground-cum-laboratory, the Beatles were the first group to not bother about all their man-hours behind the microphone being a means to an end. This casual attitude continues to lend every single piece of their rare off-mike gossip and pre-song banter a weight of significance out of all proportion to its superficial, contemporary concerns.

The Beatles: on Record aired dozens of such enchanting moments. There are thousands more yet to be heard. Yet even if they were all suddenly launched into the public domain, the infectious cult of the Unreleased Recording would implore you to believe there are further gems down the back of a Studio 2 filing cabinet or in plastic bags in cupboards from St John’s Wood to the Mull of Kintyre.

And what’s wrong with that? The Beatles were, are and always will be the greatest band in history because of this ability to storm the commanding heights of your emotions time after time after time. They will make you go on believing there is more to be heard of their body of work long after their last member has passed away.

Wanting to believe in the power of music you know exists: it’s why Paddy McAloon’s voice from 17 years ago sounds all the more enchanting. And it’s why hearing the opening bars of an early, incomplete version of Yesterday makes you fall in love with the song all over again.

Perhaps Richard’s scholastic pursuits stretch also to the history of his own berth on British television, for he chooses to close this last-ever edition of Richard and Judy with precisely the same valedictory address he wielded almost exactly eight years ago on This Morning: “As they say, we’ll see you around”.

Then, it was true. Then, enough people were bothered to want to see such vapourish vows materialise into something tangible. Now, evaporation beckons. Richard and Judy’s journey beyond terrestrial television has been the most inconsequential celebrity-hued pilgrimage since Simon Bates tried to voyage around the world the wrong way in 67 days.

“Everything’s going to be digital in a few months time,” vowed Richard in September 2008, and he knew this because he said it. “That’s how everyone’s going to be watching television.” But it wasn’t and we aren’t. Richard and Judy’s New Position, a name that sounded like it had been brainstormed by Richard Curtis, attracted 100,000 viewers on its debut in October. This was a twentieth of those who enjoyed their show on tired, unwatched and unloved terrestrial Channel 4. The new position the pair found themselves in turned out to be burgeoning professional failure.

A patsy was needed. Richard came up with one: every single programme on every other channel on television. “Viewers have been telling us they are torn between watching us and their favourite soap,” he blustered when the show got moved to another new position of 6pm in January 2009. Except this was rather too close to their old slot on Channel 4 to be called a new position, so rather than acknowledge they were assuming any kind of position, the show became simply Richard and Judy – precisely the same title as their old slot on Channel 4.

Then came another new position when the show moved to 4pm in April. This was a tautological assault course of diminishing returns, both for the English language and Richard and Judy’s preferred taxi firm. With the programme pared back to a humiliating once-weekly outing, the pair had only marginally greater cause to find their way to and from their place of work as viewers had to the show’s home on their digital TV menu.

Ratings touched, or rather pitched camp, at 8,000 in April 2009. A month later, marching orders were served.

Exhibiting not only a remarkably elastic interpretation of destiny but also prophetical timing to rival that of the soothsayer in Carry on Cleo, Richard insists this very review you are now reading is “being written about a disastrous moment in our careers when it’s not. It’s just a project that hasn’t worked.”

The word ‘project’ implies a degree of order and determinism the show’s nine-month lifespan has singularly failed to display. A project is something that has pre-conceived aspirations and a methodology, and which seeks to get from a to b, thereby proving c.

In addition, Richard is blinding himself with a potently self-delusional brand of science. He speaks as if he and his wife are somehow personally independent of ‘the project’, when ‘the project’ has their names in the title.

The couple won their £2m contract with Watch on the basis of who they were – two of the most popular presenters of mainstream television – and not on what they would be doing when they got there. They took the money; they have now taken the hit. The last time this writer switched on his TV, Watch was still on air. Richard and Judy were not.

“Welcome to the last of our weekly shows,” whispers Judy at the start of this final communion. There is a Sispyhean air to proceedings. The pair are trapped in a cycle of greeting and fleeting. They labour in the foothills to establish a rapport with a guest, edge upwards towards a plateau of conviviality, only for conversation to be terminated after a few minutes, sometimes mid-sentence, for a sting or commercial break. When our hosts return, a new guest has arrived and they are back at the foot of the mountain to begin all over again.

They are never allowed to reach the summit. They are never permitted to poke their heads inside the clouds of rarefied chat that knit themselves around the peak of a well-planned, sympathetically-timed TV feature. This is a shame, for there is two decades’ of evidence that the pair can prosecute fruitful small screen conversation, but only when they are given enough time to do so.

They need a format that can breathe, and for Richard and Judy this has always meant live television. This is not what they were given on Watch, yet it’s worth pointing out it is not what they asked for either (more evidence, need it be given, of their responsibility for the ‘project’ and its downfall).

If the sort of stunts Richard enjoyed pulling on Channel 4 – waving his fist at the camera while berating the mugger who had just “jacked” his daughter – were now no longer possible, he cannot say he was innocent of collusion. He and Judy are architects of this edifice, one they tried to build from the top down.

With no foundations, there are no floorplans. Not only can you not get from a to b, it’s scarcely possible to get beyond a.

Instead guests are shuttled on and off like trains being signalled ineptly though sidings. For one segment an unidentified man sits on the guest sofa. He is never addressed, he never speaks. Yet he remains on camera for five minutes.

Dialogues are rushed, fractured. Nothing is allowed to be interesting, because this would take time. Jimmy Carr says “the expenses thing…quite a boring story.” “It is actually,” begins Judy. She never finishes. Questionable assumptions go unquestioned. “Everybody’s larynx is pretty much the same,” asserts Jan Ravens. There are few female impressionists because of “the same old boring thing”, i.e. sexual discrimination and gender inequality. Twitter is “banal” says Carr. A book is reviewed. A few bits were “rather good”, especially, for historian Richard, “the war bits”. Quentin Letts compares it to “supermarket chicken: slips down very easily, not necessarily a strong flavour”.

You can tolerate a programme that is lazy, so long as you feel the same. But you can’t tolerate a programme that tries to pass off boredom as entertainment, no matter how bored you are.

At one point Judy waves her white flag. “TV is the main source of our conversation these days,” she sighs. Unlike her husband, she doesn’t know this because she says it. She knows it because it is true.

Madeley and Finnigan do not need a format that has Roland Rivron ripping off Play Your Cards Right or a champagne bar boasting a dozen audience members made to look like fiftysomething housewives let out for the first time in 30 years. They do, however, need enough self-awareness to concede they need enough of the right kind of format to build an empire upon, rather than merely take themselves into exile and assume the masses will follow.

Their show’s production company, Cactus, shares its name with something that can flourish in the harshest of conditions, deprived of all the staples most other varieties depend upon to survive. After trashing the laws of chemistry, Richard has now junked the principles of botany. He and his wife may still be welcomed back to terrestrial television, but only once they learn to adopt one last new position: supplication.

Just how will daily doses of adult telefantasy fare on BBC1 next week?

It’s undoubtedly a courageous move of the Beeb to schedule such a niche programme in primetime five nights on the trot.

But there’s been a lot of publicity (in Radio Times at least) and the fact there’s nothing much new on the other channels might work in its favour.

Here’s an episode-by-episode prediction:

Monday
No big-hitters to compete with the debut episode, and this plus the novelty factor plus a few people’s hope of seeing an appearance by Dr Who means Torchwood will probably win the slot. It’ll be close, though, seeing as how Coronation Street prefaces ITV’s 9pm offering, while BBC1 has Panorama.

Most watched, in order:
Torchwood (BBC1)
Real Crime (ITV)
The Supersizers Eat…The French Revolution (BBC2)
The Hotel Inspector (C5)
Inside Nature’s Giants (C4)

with Torchwood getting 5.4m

Tuesday
There’ll be some inevitable seepage here, a phrase that seems somehow apt for Torchwood, as interest wanes and the twin guns of Big Brother and Ladette to Lady swing into action.

Most watched:
Ladette to Lady (ITV)
Torchwood (BBC1)
Big Brother (C4)
CSI: Miami (C5)
Girl with a Pearl Earring (BBC2)

with Torchwood getting 4.9m

Wednesday
Second prize again tonight, although if Big Brother wasn’t in decline it would have been third place. More people will give up on the show when they realise they’re only halfway through and Dr Who still hasn’t turned up. A rubbish sitcom about war journalism could push BBC2 into last place for the second night running.

Most watched:
Trial and Retribution (ITV)
Torchwood (BBC1)
Big Brother (C4)
Panic Room (C5)
Taking the Flak (BBC2)

with Torchwood getting 4.1m

Thursday
Third place, thanks to Trial and Retribution and a new series of Mock the Week. It might even be fourth, if Gerry Robinson trying to save a pie-and-pasty firm proves more appealing than John Barrowman trying to save the time-space continuum.

Most watched:
Trial and Retribution (ITV)
Mock the Week (BBC2)
Torchwood (BBC1)
Gerry’s Big Decision (C4)
The Mentalist (C5)

with Torchwood getting 3.6m

Friday
Will there be a sudden surge of interest as the end nears and, according to Radio Times, “Gwen stands alone when the final sanction begins”? It feels unlikely, and any boost in viewers won’t be enough to push it back up the chart. Instead it could well sink down to fourth, given the competition.

Most watched:
Doc Martin (ITV)
RHS Hampton Court Flower Show (BBC2)
Big Brother (C4)
Torchwood (BBC1)
NCIS (C5)

with Torchwood getting 3.8m

The Adventure Game

Patrick Dowling, co-creator of The Adventure Game and producer of Vision On and Take Hart, has died. He was 89.

Dowling was a pioneer. He conceived new ways of using television to delight and inspire generations of children, and had the imagination and tenacity to see his ideas come to full fruition.

In doing so he exploited the power of the small screen to both entrance and intrigue.

Dowling’s work was never didactic, in the way of so many of the BBC’s early children’s series. Instead he demonstrated how it was possible to make the educational seem entertaining, and vice versa.

The secret was charm. His programmes twinkled with it. Vision On, which he co-created with Ursula Eason in 1964, junked all pre-ordained nostrums about television for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, not merely because they were outdated, but because they were boring. Simple, obvious perhaps, but brave for its time.

The show became an inspiration to everyone, not just its target audience. This was recognised formally when Vision On won a Bafta in 1973 for Best Specialised Series: a category open to all programming, not one reserved exclusively for children’s output.

Dowling and Eason also established the idea of the children’s TV presenter as teacher-cum-clown: a template of such possibility and reward that it persisted in British television more or less unchanged for the next 30 years.

Dowling ended Vision On in 1976 and replaced it with Take Hart. In doing so he played benefactor to someone whose influence he was able to project into all the hearts and all the paintboxes in the land.

Even today, Tony Hart‘s spirit lives on in anyone who ever used a wooden stick to carve a giant face on a sandy beach; anyone who ever added a pair of eyes, hands and feet to that superfluous blob of plasticine in the school artroom; anyone who ever borrowed the family Pritt Stick, Copydex or Gloy Gum to doodle the outline of something on a bit of paper, shower the paper with glitter, then tip the paper on its side to reveal…a glittery doodle; anyone who ever filled a used washing-up bottle with paint, suspended it upside down by string, pricked a tiny hole in the lid then let it swing back and forth all over the back of an old bit of wallpaper; and anyone who saw other people, people like them, getting their drawings shown on national television and felt moved to try and do the same.

Everyone, basically. Tony Hart’s spirit lives on in every single one of us: a skyscraper of a legacy, for which Patrick Dowling can rightly take credit.

By penning the early scripts for Hart’s plasticine pal Morph, Dowling also helped launch the career of the character’s creators Peter Lord and David Sproxton: animators who went on to gain world acclaim as the founders of Aardman Ltd.

Then came The Adventure Game. Dreamed up with Ian Oliver, this was a rich mix of verve, wit, derring-do, intelligence and celebrity. Among its many accomplishments as a television show, The Adventure Game showed how to be sequentially smart *and* silly, with neither undermining the potential of the other.

You can read an interview that Dowling and Oliver did for Off The Telly in August 2004. Both were gracious in giving up time to revisit their memories of the programme, and in answering questions at length and with great humour.

Patrick Dowling ensured what could have been an outpost of children’s television instead became a crucible of startling illumination and exuberant play; a crucible whose sparks and flashes flicker at the back of millions of minds, and always will.

Patrick Dowling: 19th August 1919 – 17th June 2009

CHAIRMAN: Can I begin by welcoming you all to this question-and-answer session, and to thank the members of the panel for agreeing to join us so bright and early. I trust that, if we’re not all quite awake at the moment, we certainly will be by the end!

[polite laughter from the audience]

CHAIR: Sitting on my left is Richard Pugh, who was an assistant commissioning editor in the BBC Drama department when Planet of the Dead was made.

RICHARD PUGH: Good morning.

CHAIR: And on my right is Michelle Ryan, who played Lady Christina in the episode, and who can currently, if I’ve got this correct, be seen in the cinema in Pirates of the Caribbean: Warriors of the Deep.

[knowing chuckles from the audience]

MICHELLE RYAN: Hello.

CHAIR: I’d like to begin by asking Richard to explain the background to the episode, specifically the thinking behind a one-off episode at Easter, a strategy that had not previously been tried with Doctor Who and was never attempted again.

RP: Well, I…

CHAIR: I’m sorry, I do believe we already have a question from the floor.

QUESTIONER 1: It’s not a question. Doctor Who had been on at Easter before.

RP: Yes, but surely as part of an ongoing series?

QUESTIONER 1: Er…

CHAIR: Richard, the background?

RP: To what?

CHAIR: Planet of the Dead.

RP: Well, I’m not sure there’s much to say. It was agreed that there would be a number of one-off episodes of Doctor Who during 2009, and that one would be at Easter.

CHAIR: Agreed by whom?

RP: I’m sorry?

CHAIR: Who decided to schedule a one-off episode for the Easter weekend?

RP: I can’t quite remember. The BBC is a big place!

CHAIR: You were working in the Drama department at the time, so presumably you were involved in the decision?

RP: I don’t think so.

CHAIR: Who was?

RP: In the BBC?

CHAIR: They made the programme!

RP: You know I really don’t recall.

CHAIR: Are you sure?

RP: Er…

CHAIR: You see, I’m just trying to establish responsibility.

RP: Of course.

CHAIR: Were you responsible?

RP: No.

CHAIR: Who was?

RP: You know I really don’t recall.

CHAIR: I see. In that case, perhaps you can tell us a little about the process involved in commissioning and producing the episode.

RP: Well, it was all pretty standard stuff, really.

CHAIR: Go on…

RP: Signing contracts, checking the budget, that sort of thing. I’m sure you don’t want to hear a lot of boring stuff about the BBC accounts!

CHAIR: No, true, I’d rather hear about the production of this episode.

RP: Everything came in on time and on budget. It was all very painless.

CHAIR: I see…

RP: And it was a joy to be involved in Doctor Who. It really was. I’d always watched it when I was growing up!

CHAIR: What you’re saying is actually quite interesting. You’re implying you didn’t really have any involvement in the actual creation, the production, of the episode at all. And yet you were at the BBC Drama department.

RP: That’s correct.

CHAIR: Who commissioned and produced Doctor Who.

RP: Well, it was made by BBC Wales.

CHAIR: But commissioned by your department.

RP: Ex-department.

CHAIR: Don’t you think, in retrospect, the BBC Drama department should have been having more direct input into Doctor Who? At this stage in the programme’s history?

RP: I’m not sure what you mean.

CHAIR: I mean, actually supervising its production, to the extent of signing off scripts, vetting ideas, offering notes during filming and editing…

RP: Well, all of that is…

CHAIR: Is standard procedure in commissioning departments.

RP: But not on Doctor Who.

CHAIR: Exactly.

RP: Er…

CHAIR: Oh, a question from the floor.

QUESTIONER 2: I’d like to ask Michelle, why do you think the Doctor, who is a character driven above all else by morals, should, in this episode, become best friends with a thief and then arrange for her to escape punishment?

MR: I’m sorry, I…

QUESTIONER 2: I just don’t see how it sets a good example to viewers, that’s all. Especially families. A credible example, rather.

CHAIR: Maybe Richard can elaborate?

RP: I wasn’t party to decisions about storylines…

CHAIR: Of course, I forgot.

RP: But I’m sure the Doctor always does what he believes to be right. He’s one of the good guys, after all!

QUESTIONER 2: But I don’t think this episode showed that he is. After watching it again the other day, I wasn’t sure what he was: good, bad, anything.

CHAIR: Richard, to what extent was the BBC concerned by aspects such as characterisation at this point in Doctor Who‘s history?

RP: Well, Doctor Who was one of the BBC’s flagship programmes. We all took great interest in its success.

CHAIR: I’m sure you did. But at this particular point in its history?

RP: So?

CHAIR: A critical moment.

RP: In what way?

CHAIR: Well, the next actor to play Doctor Who had been announced. I would have thought everybody at the BBC would be concerned that those remaining episodes starring David Tennant were not overshadowed by this news, and the expectation of things to come. That they were just as fresh and exciting as previous ones. That everyone involved was still at the peak of their game.

RP: We never had that much of a hands-on role in the programme.

CHAIR: But you had done. Not you personally, but…

RP: No, I think you’ll find…

CHAIR: I think you’ll find that to begin with, Mal Young, head of BBC Drama, was an executive producer on Doctor Who.

RP: Yes, but he left.

CHAIR: And wasn’t replaced. Or rather, his role on Doctor Who was not filled with a replacement.

RP: Look, I really don’t see what…

CHAIR: With the greatest respect, what I’m trying to establish is the exact degree to which supervision of Doctor Who had passed out of the BBC’s control and was, at that point in its history, being left entirely to the own devices of writers and producers working exclusively on the programme. With, in the case of this episode in particular, certain…consequences.

RP: Just what do you mean?

CHAIR: Another question from the audience.

QUESTIONER 3: Hello. I’d like to ask Richard, why was so much of this episode a rehash of a previous one? Characters from mixed backgrounds stuck on a bus facing an unknown alien enemy. That was the plot of an episode from the previous series.

QUESTIONER 4: And someone speaking in tongues, saying stuff like “They are coming”. That had all been done before.

CHAIR: One question at a time please.

QUESTIONER 3: I remember watching the episode with my two young children, and even they noticed how much of it was the same.

RP: I don’t think there should be a law against repeating a good idea…

QUESTIONER 3: But that’s the point. It wasn’t a good idea this time round, because it was a rehash of something that’d been on 12 months before. It was like they couldn’t be bloody bothered.

CHAIR: Was that something that concerned you at the time, Richard?

RP: I’m sure any worries we might have had about repetition would have been passed on to the production team.

QUESTIONER 4: I have a question for Michelle. Why was the bus that was damaged when it landed on the alien planet suddenly seem to be completely good as new when it was flying in the air at the end of the episode?

MR: I’m sorry, I…

CHAIR: If I may, I’d like to return to the matter of David Tennant’s characterisation of the Doctor at this point in the programme’s history. It didn’t worry you that he might become a bit demob happy? Not commit himself fully? Not, to be frank, to be very bothered?

[a still is displayed from the episode]

RP: Er, well what you’ve got there is David showing just one side of the Doctor’s personality.

CHAIR: Precisely. Just the one side. And no other. For much of this episode!

RP: I didn’t realise this was going to be quite so much of an interrogation…

CHAIR: Not an interrogation, Richard, just a question and answer session. We ask the questions and you…

RP: I’m giving you all the answers I can. It’s just a shame they don’t seem to be the ones you want to hear.

[murmurs from audience]

CHAIR: On the contrary; we’d be overjoyed to hear any answers you have to give us. They’ve been in short supply so far…

RP: Look, I…

CHAIR: I see there’s another question from the floor.

QUESTIONER 5: I have a question for Michelle.

CHAIR: Good.

QUESTIONER 5: Michelle, did you choose to play your character as somebody with all the charisma of a tent-peg, or is that merely your default acting style?

MR: I’m sorry, I…

CHAIR: No abusive questions, please.

QUESTIONER 5: I’m just saying what I felt.

CHAIR: Well, you certainly didn’t get many good lines.

QUESTIONER 4: Nobody got many good lines. Who has conversations about “chops and gravy” in real life?!

[audience applauds]

RP: But Doctor Who isn’t about real life.

CHAIR: Isn’t it? I thought the very core of this episode was about real characters from real life. If not, what were all those clunking references to the recession doing there? Icelandic banks, somebody losing their job?

[silence]

QUESTIONER 6: I have a question. What was the deal with the break-in at the start? Was it a homage to The Return of the Pink Panther?

[more audience laughter]

RP: You tell me. You seem to know more about the episode than I.

CHAIR: Which is a shame, seeing as you were in the BBC Drama department at the time of its production.

RP: Look, I’ve already told you…

QUESTIONER 6: And the music: whose idea was it to try and ape Raiders Of The Lost Ark?

CHAIR: I thought it was more like One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing, to be honest.

QUESTIONER 4: And what about the flying pancakes with metal teeth?

RP: What about them?

QUESTIONER 4: If, as claimed in the episode, they generate their worm-holes by flying faster and faster round a planet, how do they ever work up enough speed to create a massive hole, as surely they’ll all pass through it the moment it starts to appear?

RP: I’m stumped.

QUESTIONER 5: And if things like London buses can pass through the hole in the other direction, why didn’t other things from Earth end up disappearing and landing on the alien planet?

CHAIR: Richard?

RP: I really have no idea.

CHAIR: These things didn’t occur to you at the time?

RP: As I’ve already explained, we didn’t have anything to do with the storyline…

CHAIR: Do you regret that you didn’t?

RP: In what way?

CHAIR: I’m asking if you’ll apologise for…

RP: For what?

QUESTIONER 2: I have another question for Michelle. Why were the policeman in the episode portrayed in such a lazy, clichéd fashion, as being hopeless, clumsy oafs?

MR: I’m sorry, I…

CHAIR: At least somebody is.

[long pause]

CHAIR: Perhaps it’s best that we take a short break…

RP: I really don’t see what the point would be in my returning.

[he starts to leave]

CHAIR: Michelle, I wonder if you would…

RP: I don’t see the point in either of us returning, to be honest.

CHAIR: Oh.

RP: Goodbye.

CHAIR: In which case, er, in which case I should thank both our guests for their participation in this session…

RP: Don’t bother.

[they both leave; the audience begins to disperse]

CHAIR: And I’ve, er, and I’ve been asked to remind you all that the next panel, titled ‘We’ll Have A Gay Old Time: Sexuality and Gender in The Flintstones‘, has been postponed until this afternoon, due to the speaker being locked out of his house…by a giant pet dinosaur.

[Note: Following her role in Doctor Who in 2009, Michelle Ryan was cast as the lead in the TV biopic Jade: Catch A Falling Star. After a few years spent "taking a break from the business", she returned to the screen in 2017 appearing opposite Michael Sheen in No 10: Cameron's Den. Doctor Who was cancelled by the BBC in 2012 due to falling ratings.]

A conviction of similar import has infected the producers of Comic Relief Night. But while Stephen and Hugh went for constructive criticism, the Red Nose brigade prefers the opposite. They believe every Comic Relief Night must have “a Peter Kay in it”. Preferably the man himself, even if, as in 2005 and 2007, he’s not actually live in the studio. Or, as was the case this year, even if he’s not actually done anything new at all, but is still “in it” thanks to a caption that introduces stand-up Jason Manford with the patronising statement “is he Peter Kay’s son?” and a clip from a DVD that was released in the shops a few years ago in which Peter talks about filming his appearance for the 2005 fundraiser which viewers are reminded was “the most famous Comic Relief video ever”.

It’s a box-ticking, event-telly-by-numbers mentality, and it made for the most tedious and unsatisfying Comic Relief Night since…the last one. These jamborees are not getting any better as they get older. They’re not getting any better as you get older either. The silliness of their – and your – early years is long gone. Likewise the easy ideals and the casual pursuit of cash.

Phew, now I know it's OK to laugh at this next bit!

Now there’s a ruthless streak to affairs. No messing around is allowed; everything must be orientated towards the accumulation of money, with reminders of “the real reason we’re here tonight” at least every 10-15 minutes (meaning even more time for you to finish doing the pots); and above all, in order to ensure a punitive a Comic Relief as possible, there must be as much relief from comics as possible.

This year’s effort hit a new extreme in this regard. Not one comic was allowed a go at presenting until three and a half hours had elapsed. And that was Alan Carr. Followed by Graham Norton. That was it. Two comics.

The bulk of the wallet-wounding anchoring was done by people who had nothing to do with comedy. One, David Tennant, had nothing to do with anchoring. The others were just TV faces, some more capable at reading an autocue (Fern Britton, Jonathan Ross) than others (Claudia Winkleman, Davina McCall).

None of these distinguished themselves with much in the way of memorable wit or attention-grabbing antics. Winkleman, McCall and Britton couldn’t muster much composure either, alternately shrieking (“Hiya! Hello! Hiya, hiya! Hello! Hiya! Hiya!”) or blubbing buckets after the serious bits.

Britton hugs herself while sobbing about young mothers

So much for the presenters. What about the bits in-between? Maybe this was where the titular comedy was to be found. Wrong again.

Where were the corporation’s most popular comedies? Why weren’t My Family, The Green Green Grass of Home and Not Going Out involved? Surely if you’re purporting to be “the biggest night of comedy ever” you’d want to cast your net wide enough and rope in fans of the hits as well as more alternative offerings.

Oh, but wait, because they weren’t invited either. No room here for, say, a special one-off episode of The Thick Of It, or a bit of nonsense from Adam and Joe, or Stewart Lee and Dave Gorman, both of whom had new series debuting on the BBC just days later, or a chance in the mainstream spotlight for something like Lead Balloon?

Nope. Nothing too off-the-wall and leftfield was to be found, and with nothing too populist or conventional either, all that remained were relics from a third, weird, hybrid kind of camp that was sold as being big on Big Names and Big Laughs and low on anything unexpected, i.e. fresh, exciting and fun.

Mostly this took the shape of The Collaboration, which has become a wretched obsession of Comic Relief Night. Yet again the thinking appears to have been: let’s marry one thing with another and, er, that’s it. Let’s not bother thinking how or why these two parties should be combined with a view for creating a bit of humour. No, the simple fact that they have been combined is enough. That is the joke. Right there. Look. Two names instead of one! Mwhahahahahahahaha!

Norton explains how Things Are Just Getting Started

Hence Comic Relief “does” The Apprentice; Catherine Tate “meets” Little Britain; Armstrong and Miller “meet” Mitchell and Webb; Harry and Paul “meet” Dragon’s Den; Ronnie Corbett “does” The Sarah Jane Adventures (even though all his bits were filmed separately from the rest of the cast); French and Saunders “do” Mamma Mia (“as you’ve never seen it before!”)…

The number of forced couplings was greater than ever, and consequently fused new compounds of joylessness in the brain of the viewer. In each case form was valued above content. The act of being seen to be doing something was raised above that of actually doing…something. Anything.

But hey, it’s Comic Relief, where isn’t being seen to do something the only thing that matters? Nobody’s bothered about groundbreaking telly! They just want a short-term injection of laughter juice to lubricate their wallets – right? Cue Horne and Corden, whom the BBC is currently spraying everywhere like that foam they use to put out fires at petrol stations. Nobody remembers the flipping thing anyway. Apart from Peter Kay, of course, “Comic Relief’s most famous video”.

A marriage of, and which belongs in the, convenience

Such an argument might hold water were it not for the way that at the same time as rustling up fag packet conceits of uber-expediency the programme tries to place so much store on legacy at every possible moment.

You’re implicitly encouraged to think back to previous Comic Reliefs by the references to “record-breaking totals”, old fundraising films and archive trips by Connolly, Henry et al, and the deluge of iconography that resonates through 21 years of red noses, wet sponges, custard pies, bathtubs of baked beans and men dressed as nuns towing cars.

In short they try to have it both ways. They want to make you treat it all as a one-off tin-rattle, but also as an unfolding initiative that has already achieved x number of tangible goals and hopes to nail y number in the future. And it just doesn’t work. Nothing is satisfactorily reconciled. The night becomes just another telethon with grisly mock-sincerity and ghastly unfunny set-pieces.

Maybe that was the worst aspect of all about this year. The fact that it was just another fundraiser. That its personality has been dissolved into an uber-weak solution of salt tears and unctuous sentimentality. That this has become a celebration of negatives, not positives, where:

1. Nothing spontaneous is permitted.

2. Nobody is allowed to run onto stage hooting and causing havoc.

3. Nobody must essay an amusing cameo during one of the pop acts, lest you disturb the likes of The Script and their rent-a-Bono front man dedicating an appalling version of David Bowie’s Heroes to “everybody we’ve helped tonight; you [the audience] are their heroes.”

4. Nobody must deviate from their markings on the stage, despite the roving cameras.

5. Nobody must deviate from their autocue, even if that means uttering phrases like “It’s television, but not as you know it, because it’s slightly better” (McCall); “an hour and a half of the best TV ever”  (Winkleman); “it’s wrong to single people out” (Winkleman, before doing just that); and “look out for a guest appearance by Geoffrey Palmer in this first sketch” (Carr; Palmer was the very first face you saw).

6. Nobody is allowed to refer to previous, better, Comic Relief nights, except when talking about Peter Kay.

Patrick Kielty; he's "a great supporter of Comic Relief"

Naturally there has to be some order to proceedings. You wouldn’t want, say, shots of empty seats, or the camera to catch a member of the audience leaving to go to the toilet, or a film about the impact of alcoholic parents upon their children to be followed directly by a sketch about the impact of alcoholic parents upon their children.

Except you got all of them here. The most inflexible, fiercely-controlled Comic Relief Night failed to even sort out a sensitive running order or common sense camera cues.

£57 million was raised, most of it before the night began. And still they couldn’t find the money for one decent sketch. Good on the mystery donor who gave £6m. They were the only one to emerge from the occasion with any fucking dignity.

Upon such enervating trivialities history turns. The condition of the then-Chancellor of the Exchequer’s teeth commanded just as much significance in the fall of Margaret Thatcher as Geoffrey Howe’s desolate resignation speech or Michael Heseltine’s bombastic leadership bid. A quick afternoon nap in the office; whether to take that business trip to Paris; the vagaries of an infected wisdom tooth … in politics it is frequently the less obvious and the otherwise guileless actions that catalyse the most startling of consequences.

Margaret‘s greatest achievement was to colour such incidences with just the right degree of pathos so they appeared culpable but not melodramatic; to draw your attention to less well-known details of this universally familiar story with a subtle, yet brutal, poise. The results were startling. It’s safe to say that the sight of John Major in a sweater sitting on a sofa has never before been imbued with such toxicity.

John Major strikes a ruthless, smart-but-casual pose

An entire generation has passed since these events took place: long enough for them to fade from mere recollection and anecdote and become part of this country’s heritage, with cause and outcome clear to see.

Of those involved, only Ken Clarke remains in the public eye. Everybody else has retired, gone to the House of Lords or died.

All of this worked in the programme’s favour. A dramatisation rushed out by ITV in September 1991, Thatcher: The Final Days, suffered not just on account of its cardboard sets and unexceptional (as in unstylised) script, but because it was too soon. It could not compete with the resonances from the real thing that still lingered in the mind. Plus it had Sylvia Sims as Mrs T, who had the voice and the wig but nothing else.

Come 2009, however, and the real thing is so far in the past as to be ripe for reawakening on its own terms. Only John Sergeant’s reverse-doorstepping in Paris, and possibly the sequences involving Alan Clark (all of which appeared, nearly word-for-word, in BBC4′s 2004 adaptation of his diaries, including the occasion when Peter Morrison, Thatcher’s leadership campaign chief, is found snoring at his desk) seem over-familiar.

What a pleasure it was, then, to get reacquainted with the incredible fall-out to Howe’s speech, as opposed to the speech itself, given a nonetheless suitably under-the-top recitation by John Sessions; or the mood in Thatcher’s suite inside the British embassy in Paris once the result of the first ballot was known: a telling contrast between Morrison (Rupert Vansittart) panicking and Charles Powell (James Fox) sitting in the shadows giving a silent but deadly thumbs down.

Geoffrey proposes a toast; "now go fetch my shawl"

What perverse fun was to be had in revisiting the acclamations-cum-accusations that roared around Mrs T on the occasion of her tenth anniversary in office; or the even earlier Cabinet showdown following the Brixton and Toxteth riots in 1981.

And even the lengthiest flashbacks to 1975, when Thatcher challenged Ted Heath for the Tory leadership and won, defied convention by waspishly turning secondary aspects (Maggie clucking in her family home, Maggie doing a screen test) into matters of supremely primary importance.

Lindsay Duncan may not have quite got the voice of 1970s-era Thatcher (“like the book of Revelations read out over a railway station public address system by a headmistress of a certain age wearing calico knickers” – Clive James) but she certainly had everything else, enough to make anybody who lived through those times feel simultaneously entranced and enraged.

She even provided possibly more humanity than the lady would no doubt like to think she deserved; anybody who prides themselves in informing no less a person than the Queen that “one must always fight – what else is there?” wouldn’t think kindly of the nation seeing her blubbing over the breakfast table.

The levee breaks; Denis dabs the tears amid the toast

Duncan was assisted, nay honoured, by a style of filming that flattered her at every turn. At times it was enough to simply angle the camera straight at her and let that bewitching stare and the viewers’ emotions do the rest.

These were the points where the drama strayed close to GBH territory: a landscape of knowing pauses, cryptic glances and lingering reveries. One scene, where Thatcher appeared to be possessed by a childhood incantation, seemed almost a pastiche of a Bleasdale script.

At other points the lens ducked and bobbed and skulked in the shadows, as if afraid to get too close or reveal too much of the machinations in progress. Then suddenly the camera would be scuttling down corridors in pursuit of this or that character, then circling warily, then shifting focus mid-shot from foreground to background … a fusillade of technical acrobatics and playfulness, in short, that matched the script page for page. It was impossible to not be sucked utterly into this neurotic, demotic world.

The Boss barks at a minion; the camera takes cover

Plaudits must go to director James Kent and, in particular, director of photography David Odd, who in a neat bit of synchronicity also shot Thatcher: The Final Days.

Might it be more than just coincidence that both productions concluded in exactly the same way, with a shot of the protagonist staring directly into the camera with proud antagonism?

That closing frame came all too quickly. This was such a glorious ensemble and Lindsay Duncan such an utterly mesmerising prime minister that it was a shame a full-blown series could not have been produced about Thatcher’s entire premiership, rather than an unavoidably compressed stand-alone play.

Robert Hardy (Whitelaw), Philip Jackson (Ingham), Oliver Cotton (Heseltine), Kevin McNally (Clarke), Nicholas Le Provost (Hurd), Roy Marsden (Tebbit): they all effortlessly inhabited the skins of the once-ubiquitous Tory guard, while Ian McDiarmid pulled off that most remarkable of accomplishments, a portrayal of Denis Thatcher that for once made all the trademark quirks and foibles plausible, even sympathetic.

"There's lasagne in the fridge I've earmarked for tonight"

Unlike the subject herself, this was a drama that deserved to go on and on and on. So many decisions, conceits and schemes from that era are only now making their true presence felt upon the country, not least in the shape of the worst recession since the Second World War. So much of what was then established, in so far as the language and presentation of politics, is only now reaching maximum percolation.

There are many more seams to be mined, and Margaret set a template for those who are so desired to start digging.