Drama

Creating impact, albeit not on the kind of international tabloid-baiting level as Susan Boyle, Torchwood: Children Of Earth was one of the year’s undoubted big hitters.  Losing the show’s previous juvenile snigger, this five-parter, stripped across a week was actually very close to being a remake of Nigel Kneale’s 1979 Quatermass, and was all the better for it. It was taut, philosophical, exciting and somehow managed to ram some of Torchwood‘s camper elements into plotting that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Troy Kennedy Martin’s best work.  It asked questions about exactly how far over the mark a government might go in order to protect itself, and if nothing else, you have to wonder  what other drama could have included the image of a Rachel Whiteread sculpture being dumped into a quarry, with its smashed concrete remains revealing a butt-naked John Barrowman…

All in all it was a pretty good year for telefantasy. BBC3′s Being Human somehow managed to synthesise the best elements of the Buffyverse then dilute it with a British sensibility rooted in Hammer Horror films and Channel 4 contemporary dramas.  Boy Meets Girl stretched the hoary old body swap plot idea across four episodes and tried to approach it with a modicum of realism, succeeding admirably, largely due to Rachael Stirling’s affecting performance as Martin Freeman trapped in a woman’s body.  This was a brave bit of programming for ITV1.

With Heroes dying a slow, convoluted death, it took Misfits on E4 late in the year, to do something new with the ordinary people who have extraordinary powers idea by giving those abilities to a group of repellent youngsters working community service.  Broadcast late, it scored by introducing bad language and sex into a genre usually barren of such things and underscored the post (new) Who shift towards adding comedic fantasy elements into series that might otherwise have become worthy explorations into the dark heart of society.

The second series of Ashes to Ashes continued this dark theme. The fuzzy 1980s nostalgia – although still present – was a less important part of the mix, while Philip Glenister had personally petitioned the show’s writers to make Gene Hunt less of a mythologised hero figure and more a real man. Keen to get to grips with the grittier side of ‘80s policing, it also addressed the first series’ ill-judged response to the Scarman Report (wherein Hunt rubbished the efforts to rout racist and crooked coppers) with a storyline about corruption in the Met.

ITV1 brought back Primeval for a third series, with Jason Flemyng taking over as the main male lead. Although the show enjoyed another successful run, it was subsequently cancelled, much to the annoyance of its fans. Surprisingly a co-production deal was later hammered out with one of the satellite channels for two extra series, with all of the current cast returning. Sadly, a similar fate was not to be on the cards for BBC1’s Robin Hood, which after three years at the heart of the Saturday evening schedule was cancelled. Robin actor Jonas Armstrong had been set to bow out, and a potential successor character named Archer had been introduced in the event of a fourth series… but it proved to be in vain. The BBC’s other would-be Doctor Who, Merlin, reappeared in September and plodded along as it had the first time around – until the final two episodes, when it suddenly burst into life and became the kind of series it should have been a year ago.

Doctor Who enjoyed a slightly wonky run this year, with the consensus being that ‘Planet of the Dead’ was disposable in an annoying way, while ‘The Waters of Mars’ was a brilliant example of pressure cooker drama. ‘The End of Time: Part One’ was quite simply all over the place, unfortunately hampered by the introduction of another group of human scientists working away in a lab – a set up that the series has yet to make look at all convincing.  John Simm’s Master was now some kind of Marvel Comics super villain, and his resurrection horribly reminiscent of the terrible 1989 Doctor Who adventure ‘Battlefield’.  Still, Bernard Cribbins and Timothy Dalton made up for a lot of the episode’s deficiencies.

Even at its worst, every other piece of telefantasy shown in 2009 was still miles better than Paradox – widely regarded as this year’s Bonekickers. Originally touted for a five-night-a-week stripped run, it was eventually shown across five weeks with audiences declining as it went along.  While innovative programming is always welcome and preferable to just another cop show, it has to be done well and Paradox came across as complete nonsense from start to finish.

Away from sci-fi, the trend in TV drama for resurrecting old concepts (that Only Fools prequel finally airs in 2010) continued with the most ill-conceived yet coming from Five. Minder featured Shane Richie and Lex Shrapnel in a low-powered crime comedy caper, with Richie as Archie Daley – hitherto unseen and never mentioned nephew of Arthur – and Shrapnel as his rough diamond associate, Jamie. The series was marketed as sporting the aesthetics of Lock, Stock – as if that franchise hadn’t long since become passé – and seemed woefully under-resourced on screen with long, static, sparsely populated scenes and zero charm or chemistry between the leads. The real beauty of the original Minder was in the casting, not the concept. This was never a show begging to be ‘re-imagined’. Malapropisms alone aren’t enough, and this time the lobster was well and truly off.

Far better was New Year’s Day’s long-awaited return of Jonathan Creek. The one-off special ‘The Grinning Man’ was directed by the notoriously hands-on David Renwick, and was a competent, if not breathtaking, addition to the canon.  Hustle also returned, bringing with it original cast member Adrian Lester (who’d taken the previous year off). The show had floundered a little in his absence, but although he was back, Jaimie Murray and Marc Warren were replaced by Matt Di Angelo and Kelly Adams. Like Creek, Hustle is on again in 2010, although filming of the show has shifted to Birmingham (part of the BBC’s policy of relocating drama production away from London).

Over the pond, the second series of lauded US drama Damages faltered badly. You couldn’t blame the show for playing all its cards first time around, but reassembling the deck for another hand made it seem horribly contrived. Meanwhile, Sky 1 brought us Jack Bauer’s latest ‘long day’ in the seventh series of 24. Here was some audacious, manic and beautifully plotted television. The return of Tony Almeida, which many feared as a shark-jumping innovation, instead proved a huge success.

However, FX’s Dexter is arguably the best drama currently coming out of America; a skewed serial killer saga which continued to delight and test its audience during its third series as the title character forged an unlikely relationship with an unhinged Assistant District Attorney (Jimmy Smits). The duo’s partnership went through many twists, often stretching credulity, but in each case the series would later revisit the more unlikely moments and present new evidence which wholly justified them. It also began a slow-burning storyline in which Dexter’s sister, Debs, slowly began to piece together the truth about him. It’s a plot strand that’s destined to unravel over the next two seasons (Dexter’s been commissioned up to series five).

For the very few still watching, Lost‘s penultimate series was brimming with confidence and the TV equivalent of watching Rolf Harris paint.  Suddenly, those seemingly random moments made at the very beginning of the process began to take shape, proving the show’s creators really did know what they were doing all along.

Law and Order: UK was an attempt to bring a US drama format over here.  Shown on ITV1 in February, this version transplanted the action to London and had former Torchwood boss Chris Chibnall on-board as show-runner. Bradley Walsh and Battlestar Galactica‘s Jamie Bamber were the two leads, and despite impressive performances from them, the series was chopped in half with the latter batch of episodes being held over for showing at a later date.

Perhaps the standout drama of the year, at least in terms of art direction was the adaptation of David Peace’s Red Riding by Channel 4. Heavily promoted and trumpeted as something rather special, the series came across as dark, bleak and impenetrable, yet there was something about its  grimy atmosphere and aesthetic that made it compelling television. David Morrissey, in particular, turned in a career best performance.

Soap operas gentle slide from a position of absolute ratings dominance continued throughout 2009.  The manner in which ITV1 shunted Coronation Street around the schedules didn’t help and instead annoyed the series’ loyal viewers by forcing them to search it out. It was moved from its traditional Wednesday slot for football, while its shift to Thursday was probably as good a solution as any, but this then meant there were three episodes in just over 24 hours, followed by very little for the rest of the week. Furthermore, the channel then continued to shove extra episodes on football-free Wednesdays anyway. It’s now almost impossible to answer the question, when is Coronation Street on?

For those who don’t tune into the soaps on a regular basis, it’s usually possible to keep up with major storylines through a kind of popular cultural osmosis, but in 2009 if you weren’t tuning into EastEnders there was very little chatter elsewhere in the media to appraise you of what had been going on.  Coronation Street appears to have the best year out of the big three, but the show’s recent predilection for crafting various stories in which Rosie Webster actress Helen Flanagan gets her kit off is a bit distasteful, and will surely only generate press interest from lads’ mags and The Star.

Game Shows

ITV1 opened the batting in the traditional game show stakes on New Year’s Day with a revival of The Krypton Factor – which had been off our screens for 14 years. Thankfully using the show’s traditional format rather than the bodged mid-90s reboot, it was at least faithful to the original, challenging its contestants mentally and physically. Similar mixed-discipline tests were found in the second series of Beat the Star, which ITV1 axed after this year’s run. Still on the channel, the Andrew Castle-fronted series Divided appeared to be two game shows in one: a fairly straightforward question-and-answer session requiring the contestants to work together to succeed, followed by a divisive and deliberately unfair division of spoils that encouraged everyone to bully and hector each other in order to claim the lion’s share of the loot. The fact the first show ended with a contestant in tears marked this out as truly questionable television.  Nonetheless, ITV1 has commissioned more of this, to replace Golden Balls. A far better experiment with the 5pm slot was The Chase, which sees contestants face off against quiz experts; however, this was clearly created as a spoiler to the BBC’s rival Eggheads.

The  BBC launched a couple of new afternoon quizzes in a hunt for successors to the aforementioned Eggheads and The Weakest Link. A Question of Genius was a fairly good show hobbled by a slightly too complex format.  Meanwhile the entertaining Pointless, ably helmed by Alexander Armstrong, inverted the classic ‘ranked lists’ notion by asking players to think of the least popular valid answers.  The series’ genius element was the inclusion of Armstrong’s “pointless friend” Richard Osman, who – as well as adjudging the players’ responses – totted up a running total of obscure possible answers. By the series’ end he was able to declare the Central African Republic as the world’s most “pointless” country, in that those surveyed about various geographical matters never thought to mention it.

Five, not previously having held much weight in the game show genre, taxed a troupe of contestants in the impressive Britain’s Best Brain, though much of the publicity was generated not by the show itself but its presenters – Zoe Ball and Jamie Theakston.  The reunification of the presenting duo perhaps shifted attention from the show’s bizarre end game, watching a giant inflatable get bigger and bigger.  What this had to do with brainpower was anyone’s guess.

Elsewhere, Nick Knowles returned with a new game in the National Lottery cycle, Guesstimation, which was a decent format nobbled by the fact it was designed as a “format to fit the purpose” (the purpose being in this case to plug Dream Number and the 2012 Olympics) rather than developed as a series in its own right.

Guesstimation may have completed its run, which is more than can be said for The Colour of Money. Clearly designed as a successor to the now ageing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, it even shares that show’s presenter Chris Tarrant. While Millionaire became a global hit that made its creators into millionaires themselves, ITV actually saw little of the income, as the show was an independent production. It was presumably hoped The Colour of Money, an ITV-made show, would become a hit of similar scale. But it was riddled with flaws.  Here we witnessed contestants attempting to withdraw amounts of cash from different coloured machines, before the device reached its maximum pay-out.  In a pre-Millionaire era, the format would have been a tight, chirpy half-hour; instead, ITV1 loaded the show with unnecessary lard, most of the narrative coming from the players ‘rationalising’ which hued dispenser to go for (“As my husband’s in the forces, I’ll go for khaki”).  Unfortunately, the way the games themselves progressed didn’t provide enough variation, which meant if you saw one episode, you’d seen them all. The show was quickly axed, with the final edition held back until a mid-afternoon slot on December 29.

Still, it seemed in 2009 if you didn’t like a particular game show, another would be along in the minute.  This meant that as terrible as The Colour of Money was, there was always the chance something else would come along later in the year to supplant it as 2009′s game show nadir.  And so it was when Five’s Heads or Tails rolled up on our screens.  A naked attempt to cash in on Deal or No Deal, this was a terribly executed programme with meaningless contortions of the show’s format put in place to string the whole thing out to a desirable running time.  Worst still, the whole business of host Justin Lee Collins flipping the actual coin was poorly realised, and what should have been the programme’s iconic moment  just looked downmarket and naff.

So if Heads or Tails was the year’s worst new game show, what was its best?  Well the aforementioned Pointless was worthy of our esteem, as was ITV1′s The Cube.  This was a brilliantly judged Saturday night show, magnificently presented by Philip Schofield. Here the post production effects and bullet time camera work all coalesced into something that was genuinely gripping, even when the tasks (like walking in straight line while blindfolded) were mundane in the extreme.  If it’s going to return for a second series, our suggestion would be that the risk-to-reward ratio of each game would benefit from another look, but that aside here was the best new ITV1 game show since – probably - Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.

Away from the traditional game shows and into the kitchen, Marco Pierre White’s second stint at the helm of Hell’s Kitchen was pretty unmemorable.  The latest batch of celebrity chefs completed dinner service every night, while their boss seemed more concerned by conjuring up lazy bon mots. The Restaurant’s return  for a third series initially proved every bit as exciting as previous years – and that was despite the fact the show had clearly taken a huge budget cut (less episodes, less eateries opened). The first two episodes proved a complete joy, but come the time the contestants were ensconced in their establishments, it all fell apart. Seemingly in an effort to compensate for the cut in episodes, one challenge and one full service were leavened into every edition, meaning we never saw enough of either. Then, a series of staggeringly poor choices resulted in contestants JJ and James winning the show. That the ‘chef’ in the duo hadn’t cooked once over the series utterly undermined the whole concept. Perhaps the production team felt they were hooking in another charmingly chaotic double-act like last year’s Alistair and James. But no. A culinary clutz  going into business with Raymond Blanc? C’mon! We still like a smidgeon of reality in our reality TV.

Thankfully MasterChef, in all its variants, was superb and has long since felt like an unkillable format… despite the schedulers’ best attempts this year. The scheduling of MasterChef: The Professionals left many viewers perplexed. The series was originally commissioned for an early evening spot, but then moved into prime time at the eleventh hour, even though there wasn’t a regular gap available for it across the week. As a result, Monday and Tuesday editions felt like one-and-a-half episodes each, throwing the whole thing off kilter. Still, the initial rounds were greatly enhanced by the presence of Monica Galetti, who did her best to be completely annoyed just to be there, while Michel Roux Jr developed from his previously taciturn and scary persona into someone rather nice. With a new “regular” series due in January, a celebrity version currently being filmed and a “junior” offshoot in the works, here’s hoping the channel makes enough room in its schedules for all the franchises, perhaps saving some space by getting rid of the endless recaps that litter each show – after all we’re not that stupid, surely?

Stupid, however was at the very core of Total Wipeout, an It’s A Knockout for the 21st century. The cartoonish buffoonery was, on the face of it, inoffensive, but digging deeper behind the trowelled-on irony and lampoonery, the show contributed very little in terms of quality, and seemed to exist purely to provide extra employment for the popular Richard Hammond. The BBC’s baffling devotion to the format saw two full series in 2009, the first of which was needlessly repurposed mere weeks after its end to fill a half-hour Friday night slot. It could be argued this was to the programme’s detriment – it’s certainly highly entertaining for the first few outings (witness Ben Miller crying with laughter when reviewing the show on You Have Been Watching: “It may just be falling in the water but it’s every single kind of fall into the water you can think of!”) but, like Hole In The Wall, the relentless silliness works best in small doses.

Speaking of which, in 2009 there were two new TV quiz shows all about TV itself. As Seen On TV, helmed by Steve Jones (of T4, rather than Pyramid Game or Sex Pistols fame), provided a welcome return for the pre-watershed middleweight puzzler that the BBC had earlier decided to eradicate to save cash.  The concept of a light-hearted panel game is not a bad one at all and it’s something we should have more of, but As Seen On TV was hamstrung by its bizarre refusal to show anything from before the mid-90s, reaching a nadir with a round of questioning about 2008. If Harry Hill couldn’t think of anything funny to say about Wallander, what chance Fern Britton? It almost seemed to go out of its way to be unfunny by choosing ridiculously uninteresting clips. Meanwhile, Charlie Brooker built on his Screenwipe success by launching a new C4 series, the aforementioned You Have Been Watching.  This took the form of a panel game/discussion built around Brooker’s TV predilections. However, the game appeared rather tacked-on, and most Brooker followers would prefer to hear the journalist voice his views without appended frippery.

Factual

Celebrity travelogues continued to be a popular way for factual television to go during 2009.  Billy Connolly: Journey to the Edge of the World was the big ITV1 travel series of the winter, and featured the Big Yin in Canada, attempting to trace the north-west passage. Meanwhile, Last Chance to See saw Stephen Fry follow in the footstep of the late Douglas Adams as he and Mark Carwardine went to visit some of the planet’s most endangered animals. The Around the World in 80 Days format was revived in aid of Comic Relief on BBC1 in October, this time featuring a whole host of celebrities each taking on a leg of the journey rather than doing the whole lot themselves a la Michael Palin. While the show had its moments and undoubtedly raised a lot of money for charity, as a travel documentary it was nowhere near as interesting as the journey undertaken 20 years earlier. By Any Means returned for a second series, this time following Charley Boorman as he travelled from Sydney to Tokyo. While the first run seemed to have a clearly-defined aim the second series abandoned clocking up the number of different modes of transport used, and so it all became a little directionless.

James May proved yet again that of the Top Gear trio he is the one most able to go and make interesting spin-off projects. He followed up his Big Wine Adventure by taking to the road with Oz Clarke again, this time looking at a wider range of British booze in Oz and James Drink to Britain. The show provided an engaging snapshot of the UK’s past and present drinking habits, and showcased the people fighting to keep British brewing alive. May then piped up again at the end of the year with Toy Stories. Inspired by his Top Toys specials in past years, this engaging programme saw him corralling the public into assisting him in building giant projects based on playthings from the pre-Playstation era.  It was fun and pointless, rather like Top Gear without the testosterone, and so all the better for it.

The Hairy Bikers Food Tour of Britain commenced at the end of summer, with the pair embarking on a mammoth gastronomic journey around the country, with most – if not all – of the counties of the UK being represented. It was a huge undertaking, with five episodes shown a week at teatime. And while it was very interesting to see such an idea played out, the shows did seem to become very repetitive after a few weeks with the same format being employed in each and every edition (and even the same types of recipe being cooked from time to time). However, the Bikers returned for a Christmas special in December, based on the theme of The 12 Days of Christmas.

The Frankincense Trail covered Kate Humble’s journey across Arabia as she traced the route (or the bits that she could trace) of the Frankincense traders who would have taken the precious gift to Jesus in Bethlehem. Humble presented well and demonstrated she isn’t just somebody who is confined to countryside programming, even if she did come across as slightly over-enthusiastic at times.

But factual telly wasn’t all about travel.  BBC3 concocted a hybrid of Watchdog and The Real Hustle to create Don’t Get Screwed (piloted early in the year as Don’t Get Ripped Off).  The series attempted to use the techniques pioneered by The Real Hustle to illustrate to young adults how to cope with poor customer service.  Another attempt to attract the kids to a traditionally stuffy subject came with BBC1′s Bang Goes The Theory, a fast-moving concoction of scientific fact, stunts and fun; basically a more straight-faced take on Sky 1′s Brainiac.

The sentence “a fly-on-the-wall documentary about a former model named Katie” could be used to describe both one of the worst documentaries of the year and one of the best. ITV2 continued its baffling obsession with publicity-hungry “entrepreneur” Katie Price, with her split from Peter Andre allowing both members of the defunct partnership to feature in their very own series. A massively more worthwhile use of a TV hour, however, came in October when C4′s Cutting Edge strand screened Katie: My Beautiful Face. This excellent one-off followed model and digital TV presenter Katie Piper as she rebuilt her life after suffering a horrendous acid attack. The documentary traced Piper’s recovery in a dignified and heartening way. Viewers were able to cheer on the subject as she built up her confidence and returned to daily life. Katie Piper’s case has been heavily discussed and she has since been in receipt of huge amounts of support.  The film was also to become the most-watched Cutting Edge of 2009.

Newswipe with Charlie Brooker brought the critic’s sensibilities to current affairs and began with uncertain results, but improved immeasurably when focusing on how news was covered, rather than the news itself.  Highlights included an incisive commentary on the coverage of the G20 protests (which concentrated on the tiny pockets of violence rather than the vast majority of peaceful demonstrations) and the shift on television as to what constitutes current affairs (Jade Goody, instead of international matters with global implications).  In the autumn Brooker was back again, this time with the one-off video game focussed Gameswipe, a show that betrayed his obvious love and knowledge for the subject matter.  Affectionate and amusing, this was perhaps his best piece of telly to date.

Gameswipe was part of wider BBC4 season looking at all things digital.  The centrepiece was Electric Dreams. This three-part series took a modern family and had them live in a simulated 1970s home. Each day the calendar would click on a year and the accompanying technological breakthroughs were then introduced to the house. Yes, there was the obviously Proustian rush of Chopper bikes and microwaveable meals, but the show really got under the skin of how ordinary people lived. Seeing a chest freezer being tarted up with a wipe-clean wood veneer was almost poetic. There was also an oblique fascination to be had in the domestic habits of participants, who had designated the lounge as the “adults room”.  At the end of the three-week TV experiment, the family started an experiment of their own after deciding to open up the “adults room” to all of the clan.  Great stuff.

The arts got a reasonable inning this year.  Starting at the more populist end, BBC2′s Apprentice-style search for an artist, School of Saatchi made a reasonable fist out of trying to let the masses into the tightly sealed knot that is modern art grammar.  In this effort, Matthew Collings was surprisingly enlightening, and proved himself – contrary to all previous television evidence – to be a clear-thinking and erudite commentator.  Meanwhile, one of the most captivating televisual events of the year was happening over on Sky Arts.  Antony Gormley’s fourth plinth escapade “One and Other” attracted a couple of thousand volunteers to stand for an hour each, non-stop for three months on the empty plinth in Trafalgar Square and do what they liked.  A surprising number chose to do nothing but sit or stand and take in the atmosphere or a few photos, but the participants who attracted the most attention were inevitably the nudists, the karaoke singers, and those with a cause to promote.  Like Big Brother in its earliest days, viewers watching the live feed on the Sky Arts sponsored website didn’t initially know what to expect, but would then tune in precisely because they enjoyed that very element of the unexpected.

Baroque! From St Peter’s to St Paul’s in which a typically enthusiastic Waldemar Januszczak crystalised the artistic period and its implications, somehow managing to even find something new to say about St Peter’s in Rome, perhaps the most filmed church outside of The Vicar of Dibley.  The best sequence described the rebuilding of London’s churches by Christopher Wren and Nicholas Hawksmoor, which in illuminating the deliberate variety demonstrated the sullen boredom of most modern ecclesiastical construction.

Finally, the story of artist Kit Williams and his monstrously successful 1979 children’s book Masquerade, was sensitively retold in BBC4′s The Man Behind the Masquerade – possibly the best documentary of the year. Slightly daffy, like the book itself, it prompted viewers to examine Williams’ artwork. Granted, some of the dramatised scenes of naked women and lobsters felt a tad too self-conscious, but for 60 minutes viewers were placed fairly and squarely inside the painter’s mind. And it was a great place to be.

As ever, it was food continued to dominate this year. Feast With Heston Blumenthal represented the first fruits of the chef’s new contract with Channel 4, as every week he went to extraordinary lengths to lay on a sumptuous, often stupendous historical or literary-influenced banquet. While the series successfully counteracted Blumenthal’s slightly flat onscreen persona by busying him with a string of bizarre and fun tasks, it did fall down when representing the final results of his efforts. All food shows ultimately disappoint – we can’t taste the fare ourselves – but our representatives on screen (a group of celebrities invited to dine at C4’s expense) proved maddeningly inept at summing up the experience for our benefit. Comments were rarely more eloquent than: “Delicious”.

Less successful was Heston Blumenthal: Big Chef Takes on Little Chef, in which he attempted to turn round the fortunes of the ailing roadside café chain, while the programme makers and voiceover man did everything in their power to try and paint Little Chef boss Ian Pegler as obstructive and idiotic, even when he was very obviously giving Heston carte blanche to do whatever he wanted.  That said, Pegler’s patter seemed to come from the David Brent lexicon of business jargon. A one-off follow-up show was broadcast in October which updated viewers on how Little Chef had fared since Blumenthal’s involvement – and it appeared things have been going extremely well.

Jamie Oliver was at it too, with his worthy series which sought to improve the welfare of pigs in the British farming system. What the programmes ultimately showed was that Britain has some of the most stringent rules and procedures in place already compared to a lot of other places. Similarly, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall did his best to highlight the plight of chickens in Chickens, Hugh and Tesco Too, a worthwhile cause, but one that we’ve seen on our screens before, and not that long ago either.

Children’s

CBBC rocketed out of the blocks in 2009 with not one, but three, series that attempted to make facts fun. Ed & Oucho’s Excellent Inventions saw the popular CBBC linkman and his cactus chum mix scientific principles with stunts and songs to bring viewers’ creative ideas to life. Little Howard’s Big Question featured comic Howard Read and his cartoon companion taking on traditional theories in a quirky, interesting way. Top Gear‘s Richard Hammond sparked up a stunt-filled science gameshow, Blast Lab, which ran to two series in 2009 and trod similar ground to XperiMental from some years previously.

While CBBC marched gamely on, CITV was still in the doldrums, largely absent from ITV1 and with a digital channel heavily reliant on reruns and imports; though there were new episodes of the channel’s most popular fixture, Horrid Henry. CITV’s big new launch of 2009 was literature series Bookaboo, a Jackanory-like storytelling programme wherein a rather random assortment of celebrities pitched up to offer tales to the titular dog. This was, at least, quite well executed, with Bookaboo himself taking the role of an inquisitive youngster being read to, excitedly interjecting into the story.

Comedy for kids also continued, with a second run of the excellent Sorry I’ve Got No Head on CBBC proving that pre-watershed sketch comedy is more than possible and thoroughly enjoyable, and a Comic Relief one-off, Class, starring Sam and Mark as multiple characters in a school-based knockabout. Kids’ gameshows also enjoyed a renaissance, with excellent new programmes such as Keep Your Enemies Close and Wait For It... While a seasoned viewer would be able to pick out the bits cribbed from other shows (Wait For It…‘s “drop zone” into a gunge pit is lifted from Scratch & Sniff’s Den of Doom, and Keep Your Enemies Close ‘s pulling-poles-out-of-a-moving-box game is near-identical to one from last year’s Hot Rods), the shows were entertaining enough for the target audience to lap up.

A gold star for effort must go to STV, who, having tired of the ITV network’s intermittent provision of children’s programming, put together it own weekend morning series, wknd@stv, made up of repeats and imports from the library. This did at least offer an opportunity to enjoy a number of series which hadn’t been seen for some years (and thus will be new to many kids) such as Captain Zed and the Zee Zone, Minty, Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century and Get Wet.

BBC2′s The Well was a short form horror series produced by BBC Switch, the slightly hazy department brought in when it was decided the BBC Childrens shouldn’t cater for anyone over the age of 12.  This fairly spooky haunted house story would probably have gone unnoticed to everyone outside its target audience had it not appeared to be the last work of new Doctor Who companion Karen Gillan before moving to Cardiff.  Gillan wasn’t given much to do but be a bit posh and offer scorn and exposition.

Predictably the kids’ telly highlight of the year remained The Sarah Jane Adventures, which continued to do some excellent work, it’s just a shame that its greatness is so clearly hewn from the telefantasy shows of the 1970s, rather than constructed from something of its own.  Still, that’s a minor grumble, particularly when it should be applauded for simply existing at all.

Comedy

In 2009, BBC1 trialled a new series from Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, the writers behind Channel 4′s much-garlanded Peep Show (which itself launched its sixth run in 2009). The Old Guys was a passable half-hour starring Clive Swift and Roger Lloyd-Pack, but suffered from the general apathy toward traditional sitcoms both among the audience and within the BBC (which binned both Not Going Out and After You’ve Gone this year despite both shows having a relatively strong following, proven by the fact that the former received a last-minute reprieve).

The misfiring remake Reggie Perrin, starring Martin Clunes, shared little with its Leonard Rossiter-helmed precursor, bar the lead character’s name, and found itself caught between two stools; the show had to be retooled to suit modern times and tastes, but also had to include numerous throwbacks to the original to keep Perrin purists happy. Any attempt to trade off the goodwill of the older show was offset by the baggage of having to live up to the forebear. Though original writer David Nobbs was on board, the programme could quite easily have been made without him and with a different lead character. Whether it would have been, of course, is another story. The Amanda Holden-starring Big Top also proved a dire misfire. Commissioned, its rumoured, as “the new ‘Allo ‘Allo” this ensemble comedy boasted a great cast, but terrible scripts and flat, static action… curious considering the show’s circus setting.

Staying in sitcomland, the return of Red Dwarf was one of the more unlikely TV stories of the year – perhaps the decade. And yet, it proved to be exactly the right commission for Dave, part of UKTV’s portfolio of channels exploiting the BBC’s back catalogue of programming. Here, they took the strategy a step further, breathing new life into a much-loved but long dormant franchise, and were rewarded with stellar ratings as a result (over two million tuned in). The three-part story itself was patchy, although perhaps better than we could have reasonably expected. Co-creator Doug Naylor sensibly junked most of the innovations introduced during the show’s final series (the return of the Red Dwarf crew in particular), but over-reached himself in producing a hugely self-reflexive tale which felt more like a tribute to the show than a continuation of it. Many of the production team worked on the revival purely out of goodwill. Now it’s been recommissioned for a full run (sadly, rumours abound of a return for Duane Dibley) it would be interesting to know how those working relationships develop.

BBC2′s Psychoville was a new show from Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, two of the creators of The League of Gentlemen. Dark, grisly and very funny it was certainly a worthy successor and was such a hit that it is coming back for both a one-off special and another full series. Krod Mandoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire also appeared on BBC2, but was rather less impressive. An odd hybrid of British and American actors and a lack of real laugh-out-loud moment made for a poor piece of comedy.

As is now becoming familiar, Channel 4′s output in this genre was a complete waste of time. Two of the Comedy Showcase pilots from last time, Plus One and Free Agents, were spun off into series, but both suffered from utterly repellent characters in predicaments that were impossible to care about. Looking at the new run of Comedy Showcase, the idea of likeable leads seems to have gone out with analogue television, reaching a new low when two consecutive episodes – Camous and PhoneShop – featured unpleasant white men speaking in patois.

One of the stars of PhoneShop, Emma Fryer, also wrote and appeared in Home Time on BBC2, playing a virtually identical character – a dull, unpleasant and irritating individual. In 2009 Michael Palin argued that new talent no longer enjoys the kind of freedom bestowed back in the day on the Pythons, but watching the rise of both Fryer and Dan Clark, writer, star and director of the appalling How Not To Live Your Life, you could argue that the more people out there trying to stop them, the better.

Miranda was much better and served up a surprise smash hit for BBC2, pulling in around five million viewers a week over its two showings. This was a thoroughly likeable and endearing series that had nothing to do with real life and only existed to make people laugh – the “You Have Been Watching” sequence at the end summing up its unpretentious, old-fashioned approach. It’s questionable as to how long Miranda’s relentless cheerfulness can last before it grates, but this was perhaps the most impressive debut of the year.

ITV1 continued its more traditional approach to sit-com with Mumbai Calling. An awful comedy, it had apparently been made in 2007, but finally made its debut after being found down the back of a filing cabinet by somebody at ITV towers. Quite frankly they should have left if there.  Office-based sitcom Lunch Monkeys had its moments but suffered from – yes – unlikeable characters and inevitable comparison to similar shows set in a workplace environment, while Off The Hook was a poor BBC Switch-backed attempt to clone E4 hit The Inbetweeners (to the extent that it starred James Buckley, also one of The Inbetweeners‘ regular cast); but with its Saturday lunchtime replay in mind, Off The Hook was never able to capture the edgier end of the teen experience in the way E4′s post-watershed show could.

ITV2 followed 2008′s No Heroics by dusting off long-forgotten 2006 Channel 4 Comedy Lab one-off, FM, and turning it into a series. This radio-station sitcom – starring The IT Crowd‘s Kevin O’Dowd and current C4 golden boy Kevin Bishop – was able to use its setting as a basis to invite real-world pop and rock stars into the storyline. The show suffered, however, from poor visibility as the reality-led ITV2 is not seen by the audience as a key supplier of comedy output.

Moving away from sitcoms and onto sketch shows, The Impressions Show was a lively mainstream affair that featured more hits than misses, with Debra Stephenson proving a revelation. Channel 4′s patchy TNT Show did at least demonstrate the station was still willing to hand slots to largely untried talent.  However, the best sketch show by some distance in 2009 was BBC4′s Cowards.  Based on a Radio 4 series, it featured skits that sat just the right distance between “humorous” and “unusual”, with sketches diverse enough to be distinctive, but recognisable enough to be funny. More would be welcome.

Al Murray’s Multiple Personality Disorder was a spectacular misfire from the creator of the Pub Landlord. Despite trying to branch out with new characters, the series featured little in the way of humour and some dreadful characters, including a terrible camp Nazi.  Mathew Horne and James Corden’s reappearance on BBC3 (which had successfully incubated Gavin and Stacey) in the shape of sketch show Horne and Corden was a disaster on a similar scale. The duo received a hurricane of criticism, although much of it seemed to be because TV critics wanted to put the boot into James Corden for being boisterous at award ceremonies. Mathew Horne later said the criticism was unfair as the show was aimed at a specific youth audience and wasn’t supposed to be the new Gavin and Stacey, which was a fair point. What it didn’t excuse though, was the fact a lot of the material was massively underwritten and relied purely on Horne and Corden’s relentless mugging. The two are fine performers but they need other writers to provide more satisfying material.

But BBC3 wasn’t a complete laugh-free zone.  Two of its best shows of the year appeared solely as one-offs. Silent comedy Ketch! & HIRO-PON Get It On, screened in February, gave rare airtime to mime; while Vidiotic, one of a group of pilots shunted out silently and unpromoted in a middle-of-the-night slot around March (see also Brave Young Men) featured a mix of specially-filmed skits and repurposed archive content, blended together into a strange, surreal but enjoyable alternative view of the world.

2009 was a big year for stand up.  Stewart Lee’s long-awaited return to TV after staging Jerry Springer: The Opera came with a satirical new BBC series. Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle rolled in with some finely-formed barbs at modern life, delivered in a freeform style now rarely seen on TV (“I’m just going up the Zavvi, mum!”). However it was BBC1′s large arena stand up shows Michael MacIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow and Live At The Apollo that garnered the larger audiences, particularly when transmitted on Saturday nights, which was quite a novel move for the channel.

Transferring from Radio 4 to BBC4, I’ve Never Seen Star Wars was an unexpected pleasure as some of the Corporation’s talent establishment (and oddly David Davis) lined up to be taken through their cultural blind spots by Marcus Brigstocke.  Though none of them admitted to not having seen the film in the title, it was certainly entertaining to witness John Humphrey’s cooing over Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Esther Ranzen (returning from a spot on the radio version) discovering Alien, and the joy of watching Hugh Dennis nibble on road kill.  Unflappable through most of the series and on serious form when required, even Brigstocke seemed genuinely moved when he had to reveal that the legendary Nigel Havers had received a potentially career-changing tattoo for his little show; there were plenty of surprising moments on television this year but none of them were quite like Dr Tom Latimer revealing the silhouette of a scorpion permanently printed on his upper arm.

Also coming from radio, Dave Gorman transferred his quirky series Genius to BBC2, shot through with a genuinely entertaining and witty presentation (“…and here’s that address again in red”), the show encouraged creative thinking and good humour, and would therefore be very welcome back on our screens. We Need Answers was a transition from a stage show, but its quirky, witty, deliberately low-budget roustabout concept just about worked. It’s Only A Theory, meanwhile, used humour (from Andy Hamilton and Reginald D Hunter) to analyse a range of scientific and cultural theorems, some more serious than others.

Onto TV comedy’s seemingly most ubiquitous form – the panel show. QI returned, and with a vengeance: the sixth series, originally due for autumn 2008 transmission on BBC2/BBC4 was shunted into early 2009 to run on its new BBC1 home. The channel then began the seventh series at the end of the year, which due to its expanded length will spill into early 2010. Fry, Davies and guests continued to be interesting and entertaining throughout.

Dave continued its successful Argumental, a series which has clearly grown in confidence from the warm reception for the first run.  The show’s prominence was underlined late in 2009 when the BBC bought a clutch of episodes – a rare move for a UKTV commission (though not, as some reports had it, completely unprecedented).

The worst panel show of all though, remains Mock The Week. Sold as satire, it’s simply a bunch of people shouting abuse, with gifted comedians such as Frank Skinner and David Mitchell having their well-crafted gags interrupted by Andy Parsons and Russell Howard shouting out hackneyed old rubbish about Charles Kennedy being drunk and Gordon Brown having one eye. Most of the gags were so lazy and predictable it could have been filmed any week of the year. Sadly too, Frankie Boyle, the only regular participant who can actually craft and deliver a joke, had every gag followed by the rest of the panel expressing mock outrage, killing the humour stone dead, despite everyone else doing equally tasteless material, only with relentless mugging to ensure we like them.

Entertainment

One of the year’s heavily-promoted launches, the Graham Norton-fronted Totally Saturday, flopped massively on BBC1, making it the second such shiny-floor catastrophe in recent years (Johnny & Denise: Passport to Paradise being the other). Although Totally Saturday wasn’t the car crash some suggested – it was at least competently made – the obvious problem was most of the features were interchangable with those that turn up every week on Saturday Night Takeaway, just not as well produced. The item where members of the public had to dress up as giant Scrabble tiles was a case in point: Norton seemed embarrassed asking the contestants to do it, they were embarrassed at having to do it and hence it was embarrassing to watch. Despite attempts to recapture the success of Noel’s House Party, viewers no longer warm to this format. It would be a shame if Saturdays consisted solely of song-and-dance shows designed to fill the Cowell/Lloyd-Webber coffers, but ratings suggest this is what viewers currently want.

Jonathan Ross returned to our screens but, even if he had cut down on the swearing, the fact remained that Friday Night… was a bad show to begin with, and Ross is a poor interviewer. This was never better illustrated than during the interview with David Mitchell, in which our host had clearly only read one thing about him – a newspaper interview which emphasised his rather modest flat. Ross simply asked: “Have you got a telly? Have you got a computer? Have you got a mobile phone? Have you got an iPod?” for five painful minutes.

Justin Lee Collins and Alan Carr departed the Sunday Night Project and launched separate chat shows, C4′s Alan Carr: Chatty Man and ITV2′s Justin Lee Collins Show; however, neither is a Parkinson-level inquisitor, and it appears the serious talk show remains out of favour in preference for those where the host is able to spar with guests in a more sparky, sarky manner.

Piers Morgan did at least attempt to bring back to our screens a more conventional version of the format, but Piers Morgan’s Life Stories clearly suffered from a lack of decent guests – after all does a primetime audience really care about the life and times of Vinnie Jones?  Still, for Morgan it didn’t really matter if a particular series didn’t work as there would be another along in a minute, such was ITV1′s confidence in his pulling power, Morgan was all over the channel in 2009. This was, of course, thanks wholly to his involvement in Britain’s Got Talent, which along with The X Factor continue to pull in enormous ratings.  It was a particular surprise in relation to the latter show which seems to have been going through the motions for the last couple of years.  Certainly, the quality of the participants has, if anything, gone down and you have to assume that this year’s winner, Joe McElderry, is going to seriously struggle to sustain a long term career as a recording artiste.  David Sneddon, anyone?

However, it seems the sheer scale of The X Factor is enough to pull in the audience. Sadly, Strictly Come Dancing suffered from abysmal press this year, despite the fact that this so-called “ailing”, “disastrous” series was still pulling in over nine million viewers, putting it comfortably in the top 10 ratings every single week. The bad publicity generated regarding Strictly‘s scheduling clash with the aforementioned X Factor was absurd when, as the BBC pointed out, the two series had been shown simultaneously on 40 previous occasions.

The low point of the entire year was the Sunday Mirror‘s front page the day after the first show being devoted to the “news” that Alesha was a flop – based purely on the views of a dozen jealous teenage girls posting on DigitalSpy. The press are now swallowing the ITV1 press office’s stuff completely, hence the complete lack of coverage when the channel cynically scheduled Coronation Street against EastEnders in November. That said, the Strictly line-up this year was rather dull – weren’t we promised Richard and Judy?

Sport

Sky Sports has been the provider of Live England Cricket series in the UK for the last couple of years, and it was good to see in 2009 it hadn’t rested on its laurels. Bringing in Shane Warne as a guest commentator for The Ashes was a genius move – funny, astute and articulate, he provided an interesting foil to David “Bumble” Lloyd and company and enjoyed a great rapport with his co-commentators. The coverage was punctuated with some fabulous documentary sections during the intervals, which evocatively traced the history of the Ashes.

ITV1′s most public mistake this year was missing the winning goal in Everton versus Liverpool, which clearly wasn’t ITV Sport’s fault – it was an automation cock-up – but allowed everyone to criticise the company, especially as many still believed the FA should have awarded the FA Cup contract to the BBC anyway. In the event, the FA Cup proved to be a disappointment for the channel with a succession of low ratings. In addition, the station had been forced to give up the rights to covering F1 racing in order to afford the Champions League, only to be saddled with a dreadful contract with far fewer games and an obligation to show matches such as Panathinaikos vs Atletico Madrid on primetime ITV1, (resulting in one of the channel’s lowest ever audiences).

Setanta Sports closed down in 2009, but its demise was regarded a self-inflicted failure after the station’s desperate attempts to ape Sky and splash the cash on contracts of quantity, rather than quality. As they always had second choice in deals, they were never going to be able to compete. The arrival of ESPN has been rather quiet, emphasised by its FA deal, where the station haggled over the price for months, clearly preferring to get value ahead of huge slabs of content. ESPN’s undoubted big triumph though, is getting Sky on side, commissioning them to produce their programming and sell the channel, well aware most football fans have to purchase both anyway.

In conclusion…

So all in all, 2009 has been an unspectacular year for television, thanks in part to the impact of the recession on TV budgets.  Perhaps the worst channel of the year was Channel 4. Julian Bellamy, Head of Programming, complained their rivals were completely lacking in originality, while simultaneously poaching Ruth Watson and Heston Blumenthal to do exactly the same shows they were doing on other channels. It was good to see Wife Swap finally get the chop, about three years too late, but do we really have to see every single episode of Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares USA? One or two might be a novelty but an entire 16-part series is a waste of time.

Quite possibly one of the most surprising moves in television this year was the bizarre decision by ITV1 to axe established favourites such as Heartbeart, The Royal and Kingdom. Sunday night gentle family fare they may be, but all three shows pulled in huge numbers and were solid, dependable series. Officially Heartbeat and The Royal were said to be “on hiatus”, but the sets for the shows were destroyed and the cast moved on to other work. Meanwhile a more predictable, but no less disappointing announcement was the cancellation of The South Bank Show.

Craziest channel of the year was undoubtedly STV, which in 2009 jettisoned many of ITV1′s most popular programmes from its schedules (including The Bill), in favour of broadcasting extremely cheap, home grown fare.  Apparently it was all to do with economics.  Still, The Hour, a risible 60-minute daytime magazine show which looked like absolute rubbish was, by the end of the year, triumphantly winning its slot in Scotland, trouncing even the BBC’s powerhouse of daytime quizzes.

This year we lost – amongs others  – Jade Goody, Keith Floyd, Mollie Sugden, Wendy Richard, Maggie Jones and Troy Kennedy Martin.  A bizarre line up consisting of battle-axes, eccentrics, a 21st century celeb and a true TV giant.  If anything their collective obituaries speak to the continuing diversity and quality of television in this country.  Whether it be applauding at the hem of Susan Boyle, or tuning in to experience Waldemar Januszczak’s latest small screen essay, TV in 2009 could at least rightfully claim it featured something for everyone.

I would never have seen this coming in a million years, but The Wicker Man‘s Edward Woodward has joined the cast of EastEnders. I presume that he’ll only pay a short-lived character, but hey, what a coup for the show!

Drama

As ever, but perhaps surprisingly this year given the hand of Michael Grade at the tiller, ITV1 enjoyed a mixed 12 months in drama. Its bold adaptation of He Kills Coppers back in Easter ended up as a fusion of The Long Firm and Our Friends in the North, with Rafe Spall excelling as ambitious police officer Frank Taylor. Meanwhile, The Children, by Lucy Gannon and starring Kevin Whately and Geraldine Somerville, superbly evoked the messiness of extended families – but lost points for bolting a superfluous murder story onto the plot.

Midnight Man was even less successful, an old school conspiracy thriller starring James Nesbitt as down-at-heel investigative journalist Max Raban, who suffered from a phobia of daylight… except when the plot required him not to. In a multi-layered tale, he stumbled upon a seemingly government-sponsored death squad taking out ‘undesirables’ – but, alas, the character archetypes offered up here were so hackneyed (grubby reporter; soulless millionaire – played by Alan Dale; aggrieved ex-wife etc) it was hard to get involved.

Things were even worse in Flood, a bland US co-production of the disaster porn variety, which depicted a deluged London. Of a slumming-it cast – including David Suchet, Robert Carlyle and Joanne Whalley – Sir Tom Courtenay stood out for his appallingly phoned-in performance. Bafflingly bad. On a descending scale, we then come to the aforementioned Rock Rivals, clearly fitted out by Shed Productions as a “guilty pleasure”, this dramatisation of an X-Factor-style competition did little favours for leads Michelle Collins and Sean Gallagher who seemed uncomfortable in their respective Sharon Osbourne and Simon Cowell roles. With neither character displaying an ounce of likeability, viewers voted to watch something else instead – however this same subject would prove more fertile ground for Peter Kay later in the year. 

Britannia High, a modern day reworking of Fame, was commendable in the scale of its ambition (a live finale, a spin-off album masterminded by Gary Barlow, an online radio station), but lamentable in terms of plot and characterisation – both horribly hackneyed and clichéd, and it too ultimately suffered at the hands of a viewer vote to watch anything else instead.

But these relative failures have nothing on Harley Street, another of ITV1′s vehicles for Suranne Jones, which saw the former Coronation Street star playing a dynamic private doctor, struggling with a cut-glass accent. The show, some sort of weird throwback to the ’80s avarice-dramas, seemed woefully out of step with its bland sorties into the world of the over-indulged. Even its efforts to intersperse some working-class grit into the mix were misguided: Dr Robert Fielding (Paul Nicholls) a northern lad who loves his parents, turns in night shifts at the local NHS hospital just so he’s keeping it ‘real’. Laughable. If ever a series was designed to be unloved, this was it. Although BBC execs were doubtlessly grateful it showed up on the tail of Bonekickers to take some of the heat off that stinker.

Of course, the BBC suffered its fair share of failures – with the aforementioned Bonekickers leading the pack. From the creative team who brought us Life on Mars, starting with the show’s name upwards, here was perhaps the most misconceived drama of the year. Presented as some kind of Time Team meets Indiana Jones in Bath, the series was forever battling with a remit to make archaeology sexy and essayed Scooby Doo plots, appallingly clichéd characterisation (Hugh Bonneville’s lascivious, eccentrically attired and textbook-spouting Prof ‘Dolly’ Parton being the worst offender) and some jaw dropping dialogue (“Identify yourself, creepy caller!”).  It’s little wonder the press gleefully bundled in to kick the whole concept to pieces, and unsurprisingly ratings sunk with each passing episode, rising only slightly for the final instalment.  The BBC and Kudos later announced Bonekickers won’t be excavated for a second series.

Thankfully, Matthew Graham and Ashley Pharoah’s Ashes to Ashes performed rather better, even though it had the unenviable – and some might say unwise – task of following on from Life on Mars. While the show’s creators insisted they wouldn’t have gone ahead with this sequel if a strong idea hadn’t presented itself, it’s kind of hard to know what that was, other than setting the drama in 1981 (and, interestingly, we’ll be shunting forwards a year for the second series). In truth, this felt like more of the same. 

Keeley Hawes as the central character of Alex Drake was unpopular with some, but perhaps this had more to do with the character, rather than Hawes’ performance.  A greater problem was the tension existing between the series’ core genres, cop show and fantasy, failed to cohere.  There were too many appearances from the clown and not enough clarity in the detective work.  These different strands rarely overlapped making it – at times – an irritating programme to watch as your attention was cast hither and thither. 

The first series concluded with an attempt to tinker with the show’s central premise by having Drake  recollect meeting Gene Hunt in “real life” when she was a child.  However, given we are being led to believe Alex has created the fictional world in which the drama takes place, isn’t the most likely explanation of her meet up with the Gene Genie simply to assume her imagination is retrofitting Hunt into her memory?  Regardless of this psychological conundrum, it seems clear Ashes to Ashes will never be a premier league proposition, but like stablemates Hustle (set to return in revamped form in January) and Spooks, it’s good, solid entertainment. 

Speaking of which, Spooks now on its seventh series, seemed to benefit from the real-life Litvinenko affair, with the Russians once again (alongside Muslim extremists), the enemies of freedom. The show even spawned a spin-off series that was broadcast on BBC3. Spooks: Code 9 was set in the near future following a nuclear attack that had wiped out the south of England, and was patently aimed at a much younger audience than its progenitor. Unfortunately like much of recent BBC sci-fi, it suffered from a premise that worked at the level of high concept, but fell apart when it hit the ground.

Other drama franchises proved to be in sound health. Doctor Who appeared for its fourth series, and the last one to feature David Tennant as the Doctor. This year’s episodes were a mixed bunch, with ‘Planet of the Ood’ and ‘The Doctor’s Daughter’ both betraying a sense of running low on fresh ideas.  Catherine Tate’s casting as the companion wasn’t particularly well received among fans but she seemed to win around a lot of people with her performance. The series is now well-placed for a major reboot come 2010, and hopefully a slight change of focus away from the Earth-bound stories and the family of the companion.

Who‘s spin-off show, The Sarah Jane Adventures returned for a 10-part series, and featured a change in the main cast with the departure of Maria. Anji Mohindra took the role of new kid Rani and was an immediate improvement on her predecessor. One of the best stories of the run was ‘The Day of the Clown’ which featured an superbly sinister performance by one-time light entertainment star Bradley Walsh. Conversely, one of the poorest stories this year was ‘Secrets of the Stars’ which featured a rotten turn by one-time light entertainment star Russ Abbott. 

Meanwhile Torchwood remained the Doctor Who spin-off that still doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s clear there is a decent, entertaining series buried somewhere, but it is hidden beneath layers of silliness and crude sexual innuendo. Hopefully, the forthcoming third series (which will be stripped across a week early next year) can resolve some of these now longstanding problems.

Back to the parent show and while the finale to this year’s Doctor Who was over-laden with characters and under-endowed with plot, it achieved a first for the series by securing the number one position in the viewing charts for its week of transmission. Winter Saturday nights, meanwhile, were pepped up no end by Merlin a show that was obviously designed as a seat-warmer for the Time Lord, but was entertaining in a light and fluffy sort of way, even if things did get a bit samey with an evil sorcerer turning up at Camelot most weeks. The show would have benefited from taking the action away from the castle a little more often.

Starting in the winter, Survivors marked yet another sci-fi comeback, and remained entertaining viewing. The opening episode did a fairly good job of updating the premise for a modern audience, and the new characters seemed to fit in quite well. You could see the show owed a debit of inspiration to Spooks with the killing off of an apparently important player in the first episode. Our band of heroes are, in the main, engaging – Max Beesley particularly impressive as the amoral Tom Price. And come the series finale, was Paterson Joseph really being written out so he’d be free to take on the mantle in that other sci-fi comeback?

But there were some flaws. Insights into a secret government lab added little to the drama; wouldn’t it have been more exciting if their presence had only been signified by occasional sightings of the lone helicopter? Worse still, the issue of law and order (a highlight from the original series) was horribly fumbled. The idea of the group struggling to take communal responsibility for justice was simply swept aside when a government representative took the decision to enforce a death sentence upon a criminal. In this post apocalyptic world, we can still rely on the authorities to do our dirty work. And, dramatically, that’s a wasted opportunity

Remaining on a fantastical tip, Apparitions starred Martin Shaw as a zealous exorcist. A ratings failure, chances of the show’s resurrection look poor, and that’s a great shame. A fusion of mad plots (women possessed by the spirits of aborted babies, a sex offender battling the spirit of the patron saint of rape victims) and utmost seriousness, this was an unusually rich – and often times – shocking offering.

Another debuting series was the ambitious Echo Beach / Moving Wallpaper from ITV1. A clever idea in principle, the pair of series were set on opposite sites of a television production: one looking at the making of a soap, the other – the soap itself. Unfortunately for ITV1, and despite having some big names behind the two shows, the public never really took to the idea and the soapy half of the pair – Echo Beach – was axed. The characters from Moving Wallpaper are set to be retained, but this time there will be no companion show, just an ‘in-house’ zombie thriller featuring Kelly Brook.

The Royal Today was a much more successful product from ITV1. Running daily, this half-hour spin-off from The Royal capitalised on the success of the BBC’s Doctors. Other new series in 2008 included The Invisibles on BBC1 in May.  This was a drama starring Anthony Head and Warren Clarke as two burglars. It was as entertaining as you would expect of a show from the pen of William Ivory, but evidently ratings were not good enough, and so it was cancelled after a solitary run. 

Elsewhere, the Corporation attempted a couple of high concept thrillers. Neither proved terribly effective. The Last Enemy starred Benedict Cumberbatch as a researcher who returns to the UK to find a country cowed under the tyranny of excessive government surveillance. Ponderous and pretentious it may have been, but sporting a giant talking computer as a central macguffin, suddenly it all looked a bit silly. Meanwhile, Burn Up boasted Rupert Penry-Jones along with Bradley Whitford and Neve Campbell in a clunky eco-thriller which failed to convince in its tale of an oil magnate who suddenly develops a conscience. It didn’t help the script felt like it was written some time circa 1987.

But 2008 did give us some huge drama hits. As well as regulars such as Silent Witness (which had two series this year), Foyle’s War, Poirot and New Tricks, there were also a number of other popular series returning for second runs following successful launches last year. Kingdom, the Norfolk-set Stephen Fry television equivalent of Horlicks was back on ITV1, nestled snugly in the Sunday evening schedules. Inspector Morse spin-off Lewis was also back, with the promise of a further run for 2009.

Game shows

While the drama genre seemed to be in rude health (judging by the number of series broadcast if nothing else), 2008 was a quieter year for game shows.  Gladiators returned with much hoopla to the (newly rebranded) Sky1. Although this was an impressively confident production, it lacked the ‘ITV hysteria’ of the original run, depicting the Glads as characterless lunks in black. A second series, however, is on its way, so here’s hoping there’s a bit more comic book on offer.

Celebrity MasterChef and MasterChef: The Professionals proved that Shine’s TV cookery show could do just about anything. The former brought us one of the TV moments of the year, as Holby City‘s Mark Moraghan cracked under the oh-so pervasive pressure and told Marcus Wareing to “shove it up your fucking arse” before fleeing the kitchens of Petrus. The latter brought a formidable new presence to the world of the TV chef – Michel Roux Jr. In his first continuous onscreen role, he proved pleasingly taciturn, offering up mealy-mouthed compliments that somehow invigorated that blandest of all platitudes: Good. “I find the fish good” or “The flavours… are good.”

While Masterchef graduated from daytime to primetime, Channel 4′s culinary contest Come Dine With Me did likewise, but to less pleasing effect.  Somehow the format seemed perfect at five 30-minute episodes a week, and the shift to hour-long weekly shows (with the consequent reduction of dinner party hosts from five to four) stripped the programme of much of its indefinable sizzle. 

Far better was Argumental which was that rarest of things – a digital channel commission that actually felt like proper telly. This production for Dave not only had the good fortune to employ John Sergeant as host just as his Strictly storyline was coming to fruition, but in its debating format employed a simple structure that felt as though it had been around for years. Honestly, you could stick this on BBC2 and no-one would know…

Back at Channel 4 again, and if you’d been away from the UK for a decade and returned this summer, you would have been staggered to hear of the bitching and backstabbing behind the scenes on Countdown.  It seems ever since Richard Whiteley passed away, the series has been all at sea – which is amazing given that a large part of Whiteley’s appeal was his obvious inability to gain mastery over the format.  Meanwhile, erstwhile presenter Des Lynam’s performance on Sport Mastermind proved what a terrible quizmaster he is.  Seeing the man who was once the ultimate unflappable TV host stare at the camera like a rabbit in the headlights and stumble through his script was horrifying.

However, 2008 was perhaps the first year in a while in which a game show failed to really grip the public imagination. Deal or No Deal is still trundling along nicely for C4, while BBC1′s National Lottery: Who Dares Wins returned for a second run and consolidated itself as the show with a format so good even Nick Knowles couldn’t ruin it.  BBC4 again attempted a highbrow quiz, but where previous entrants had failed because they were just too smug, Only Connect worked pretty well (although we could without the self-consciously cerebral music stings next series please).

Factual

2008 for some reason seemed to be the year of the television travelogue. Louis Theroux appeared in a couple more specials in which he set out to seek out oddballs in Louis Theroux: Behind Bars and Louis Theroux’s African Hunting Holiday. He also reappeared in November and December with a double bill on law and order in Philadelphia and Johannesburg. Joanna Lumley got to fulfil a childhood ambition and went to see the Northern Lights. We also had an intriguing series in which Jonathan Dimbleby travelled across Russia in… Jonathan Dimbleby’s Russia. Until now he has never really come across as being the most personable of chaps, but his sojourn across this vast nation was fascinating and presented him in quite a different light.

Charley Boorman’s made his third big journey in By Any Means for BBC2 in September. In contrast to the previous series, this time it all felt very rushed, with a number of places covered only briefly as Charley, his producer and cameraman attempted to journey from Ireland to Australia using as many different modes of transport as possible.

Over on Five, Paul Merton was off to India, and while this is the sort of programme the channel should make more of, it was difficult to escape the feeling it all felt a little familiar. Merton does make for an affable host, and it is to be hoped he can continue his association with Five. Meanwhile, fellow comic Stephen Fry’s sojourn across America was a worthwhile attempt to cover the whole country in a single series. Unfortunately, while Fry was as good as ever, the problem with this series was that it was just too short. Covering 50 states in six shows was a massive task.

Animal and human welfare was also on the TV menu this year. Jamie Oliver’s latest crusades covered both chickens and people, with Jamie’s Fowl Dinners and Jamie’s Ministry of Food. In the former Oliver attempted to bring to attention the plight of the nation’s battery hens, while, in the latter, he tried to educate people who can’t or won’t cook. Laudable as his attempts were, he attracted considerable flack from the press for seemingly targeting working-class people and portraying them as lazy uneducated slobs. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall also studied the battery hen problem in Hugh’s Chicken Run (appearing in the same month as Jamie’s Fowl Dinners), and despite seemingly managing to convert some to the joys of free-range, its hard to escape the feeling most have probably already reverted to buying the cheaper supermarket product and TV dinners.

Fearnley-Whittingstall popped up again in River Cottage Spring and River Cottage Autumn. Also cooking on the television this year was Delia Smith with her series Cooking for Cheats, in which we could all learn how to prepare tinned mince.  Meanwhile, Stefan Gates took another tour of the world’s most dangerous spots in Cooking in the Danger Zone, while The Supersizers Go… saw Sue Perkins and Giles Coren experience food from a variety of historical periods. Meanwhile Gordon Ramsay at last found himself a half-decent magazine show format with Gordon Ramsay: Cookalong Live.  Not great, but a million miles better than The F Word.

Away from the hotplate, this was the year Ruth Watson checked out of her Kitchen Nightmares inspired series on Five, The Hotel Inspector, to helm a, er, Kitchen Nightmares inspired series on C4 – Country House Rescue (fact fans might like to note Ramsay’s show bore the working title Restaurant Rescue). Essentially more of the same, Watson continued to prove she was the quintessence of “redoubtable”, gleefully effing and jeffing when property owners failed to take her advice on board. Meanwhile, back on Five, firebrand Alex Polizzi proved a more than adequate successor, as The Hotel Inspector continued journeying around Britain’s most horrible hostelries.

A surprise pleasure this year was BBC2′s variously scheduled Return to… documentaries, which revisited the Corporation’s slew of docu-soaps from the turn of the century. Celebrating the likes of Castaway, Vets in Practise, The Cruise and – surely the most forgotten of the lot – Lakesiders, this was a good humoured exercise, surprisingly candid at times as various proponents admitted to manipulating either the programme-makers, or the subjects to their own ends.

Other standout factual programmes of the year included Life in Cold Blood - David Attenborough’s last natural history series for the BBC; Channel 4′s Can’t Read, Can’t Write  - in which award-winning educator Phil Beadle attempted to teach adults basic literacy; Griff Rhys Jones on Anger, which saw a seemingly mild-mannered comedian-cum-presenter demonstrating he can blow his stack as easily as the rest of us; and Ian Hislop Goes off the Rails – a programme examining the impact of Doctor Beeching’s railway reforms. Hislop also helmed a documentary exploring the role of conscientious objectors during the World War I.

Sticking with the theme of war, Laurence Rees returned with another excellent series covering the events from the 1930s to the 1940s in World War II: Behind Closed Doors. Worth a look too was a show tucked away on Five featuring a celebrity who seemed to be everywhere just a couple of years ago: Dom Joly’s The Complainers. Here, Joly looked at the trials and tribulations of modern life and set out to investigate just why so few people are prepared to complain when they have suffered an injustice. It wasn’t all serious though, as was witnessed by his encounter with an irate man in a café who he had spoken of as a “beardy-weirdy lesbian type”  in a segment showing how annoying mobile phones can be.

As already pointed out by Charlie Brooker, 2008 was the year of the personality documentary and Dawn Goes Lesbian was perhaps the absolute personification of this trend.  Journalist Dawn Porter made a series of programmes for the constantly struggling BBC3 in which she tried out an alternative lifestyle.  This was essentially Bruce Parry’s Tribe for the Hampstead set, with London’s gay scene instead of the Babongo.  Over the course of an hour we watched Porter become the very best of friends with a Fenella Woolgar look-a-like who she ultimately spent the night with, afterwards stressing both parties kept their pyjamas on.  Much of the programme was issue-led (there’s abuse in lesbian relationships too etc), but at times Porter seemed not quite up to the task of taking on the issues.  This became more apparent in her C4 documentary on mail order brides.  Here, instead of trying to get to grips with the subject in hand, she spent more time letting the viewer know which of the men smelt the worst.

Far, far better programming came in the form of BBC4′s Pop, What Is It Good For?  Paul Morley offered up a list of his favourite songs of all time, explaining why and interviewing the people who made them.  Although he can come across as a rather cynical figure, faced with his heroes, you really saw Morley’s passion and the esteem in which he holds their music. 

Comedy

Things started badly for TV comedy in 2008, with ITV1′s Paul Merton-fronted series Thank God You’re Here. Based on an Australian show, it involved celebrities having to improvise their way around a comedic scenario that would always begin with the eponymous phrase. Merton seemed slightly out of place here and the standard of humour frankly wasn’t that high.

Far better from ITV1 was TV Burp, which enjoyed two series in 2008, one starting in January and a mammoth 25-part run that commenced in October. TV Burp has long been the most entertaining thing on the box, but you have to wonder how they are going to maintain the quality and laughs in the show over a six-month span. Too much burping could well result in viewers feeling sick.

The Kevin Bishop Show appeared on Channel 4 in July and was faster than The Fast Show in its presentation of sketches. Some of Bishop’s impressions were perhaps less than perfect, but he displayed enough promise to probably guarantee a further series, even though he was guilty (as is much of recent television comedy aimed at “the kids”) of taking unchecked juvenilia too far.  It might be amusing to refer to “Wanking The Dead” in a pub chat about telly, but surely in the process of making Bishop up as Trevor Eve and finding a corpse for him to masturbate, the ‘joke’ starts to pall.

Old-timers Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse were back on BBC1 this year with another batch of shows. Ruddy Hell, It’s Harry and Paul was distinctly patchy, but the re-titled Harry and Paul showcased some of the best stuff the pair has done for years. Little Britain USA, on the other hand presented a series that looked increasingly tired and past its sell-by date. 

February brought us another run of That Mitchell and Webb Look that followed on more or less from where it had left off. Also returning for the umpteenth time was Mock the Week, a show that looks like it might be good but is always unfailingly disappointing.  Meanwhile, 8 Out Of 10 Cats always feels like it’s going to be terrible – awful set, appalling title sequence, a guest booking policy that seems to be no more sophisticated than get who was funny on Buzzcocks last week, appalling editing that renders half the show inaudible – but it always turns out to be good fun, thanks no doubt to Sean Lock, the best panel game participant in Britain. Nobody, even Paul Merton in his prime, is as good at going off on tangents and gently mocking the sheer pointlessness of news-based satire.

In sitcoms, Sunshine was a three-part BBC series from the pen of Craig Cash and Phil Mealey, starring Steve Coogan. Never quite sure what it wanted to be, the show was diverting enough, but had a tendency at times to be overly mawkish and sickeningly sweet. An unexpected and largely unnoticed sitcom was far better. Tucked away on E4 was The Inbetweeners – a series about a group of sixth formers in a comprehensive school married filthy humour with four excellent leads. Pleasingly, there is going to be a second term.

As good as The Inbetweeners was, perhaps the best sitcom of the year was Gavin and Stacey. As Henry Normal pointed out – there are loads of scenes when everyone’s laughing but nobody’s the butt of the joke – a refreshing approach. The sequence where the entire family got fantastically over-excited over Gavin’s dad’s (three-second) appearance on the news was probably the best portrayal of family life on TV since the early days of The Royle Family. We’ll put aside memories of that horribly disappointing Christmas special, though, and hope for the best when the recently announced third series rolls around.

Conversely, quite possibly the least funny sitcom that has ever been broadcast appeared in March, and it starred Adrian Edmonson. Teenage Kicks – which had been sat on ITV1′s shelves for several months – featured the former Young One as a father who had been forced to move in with his two kids. It was appalling. This was a show that made jokes about ‘comedy’ Chinese accents. Better from the channel was the second series of Benidorm which featured a terrific performance from cast newcomer Geoffrey Hutchings as the perma-tanned tanning salon king Mel. A third run has been commissioned for 2009.

In the main though, there were too many sitcoms in 2008 that dispensed with a laugh track and served up naturalism in place of jokes. Step forward both The Visit and The Cup, the latter being the third sitcom in a year to feature Steve Edge acting gormless. How many more times must people try and remake Phoenix Nights? Northern whimsy is not in itself hilarious – most of these were no more edgy than Last of the Summer Wine.

Of course, were Peter Kay to do anything as good as Phoenix Nights again we’d be happy. Sadly it was almost impossible to judge Britain’s Got the Pop Factor… with an open mind as the man hasn’t done anything for four years except mime to other people’s records and release the same DVD over and over again. The sheer scale of this one-off Channel 4 comedy spectacular was a big problem.  Running for two hours may have been accurate, but it meant jokes were stretched to breaking point. Once you’ve seen one inappropriate musical segue, you’ve seen them all. Plus, surely we have now bled dry that seam of comedy that sees celebrities sending themselves up? Here it was like one prolonged back slap, and while it may make sense of the plot to record a generic song for the winner, singing it three times on the programme and then releasing it is not comedy, it’s advertising.

Soaps

On paper there were two soap highlights this year, Dot’s monologue in EastEnders and the death of Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street.  Yet neither event plucked at the heart strings as quite they should.  In fact, given its rich and long history, the death of a beloved character on the Street should be a major event, however, Vera’s demise joins that of Mike Baldwin in somehow failing to be affecting at all – and all this from the same soap that was able to render us senseless with despair simply through Hilda Odgen fumbling with a pair of Stan Ogden’s specs. 

If they’ve lost the ability to do the quiet emotional moments well, 2008 was also the year in which soap set-pieces failed to feel extraordinary.  The early part of the year was punctuated in Coronation Street by David Platt continuing his reign of evil, at one point going on a violent rampage around the street before redeeming himself in the eyes of his mother and grandmother following a spell in a young offender’s institute. A long lost face from the past returned to the street when ’60s character Jed Stone found himself subject to the machinations of the show’s latest hate-figure Tony Gordon.

EastEnders’ big story was the return of Ricky and Bianca and the latter’s numerous offspring. It was also the year in which Frank Butcher passed away, albeit off-screen. Charlie Brooks returned in the role of Janine for the funeral, with a more permanent homecoming later in the year.  The Branning family were paid a visit by Jim too, following his stroke (and that of John Bardon who plays him). Bardon’s appearance was quite something, really, and considering he didn’t utter a line he still managed to convey every aspect of the script that had been written for him. Further turmoil came for Dot with the long-awaited return of her son Nick at the end of the year. It’ll be interesting to see how long he sticks around this time, and how his relationship with his mother will develop.

Elsewhere, the police force were abolished in Holby. Or rather, Holby/Blue was axed following a disappointing showing. Meanwhile, the BBC announced that as part of its regional strategy, Holby City hospital would in future be filmed in Cardiff rather than Bristol. Quite what the wisdom of this is was difficult to discern, given that Cardiff is only 49 miles down the road from Bristol.  It seems like a whole load of unnecessary fuss and trouble for little reward.

Perhaps the most significant event to happen in soapland, was scheduling, as Emmerdale and Coronation Street were moved off Sundays and into midweek slots. Their departure made Sundays, normally ITV1′s best night of the week, seem weak with mediocre light entertainment formats such as Beat the Star brought in as replacements. In addition, weeknights on ITV1 have become terribly crowded and monotonous. With The Bill and Tonight taking up space, the only primetime weekday slot left to try something new in is 9pm to 10pm.

2008 may be regarded in the future as something of watershed, as soaps could no longer rely on securing the number one slots in the ratings – Doctor Who, Britain’s Got Talent, The X-Factor, The Apprentice and even New Tricks topped the charts this year, while nobody seemed to care that EastEnders and Emmerdale now clash every week, thus halving their audience.  In fact, Emmerdale only pulls in a million more viewers than The One Show.

Entertainment

Family entertainment was the hot ticket for telly in 2008.  The X-Factor enjoyed a particularly strong series, despite its many devices to inject tension having now long passed into self-parody.  Similarly, John Sergeant and a last-minute vote pull ensured Strictly Come Dancing remained prominent in the public eye, which in this type of show is all for the good.  Britain’s Got Talent excelled earlier in the year, in no small part thanks to the excellence of Ant and Dec.  Unlike the aforementioned X-Factor and Strictly, Britain’s Got Talent‘s big problem is the acts featured seldom bare seeing more than once. As such brevity is the key here, and ITV1 wisely refused to turn the whole thing into a protracted series, instead bundling it out in late-spring so that we weren’t too bored of the finalists by the time the finale came around. 

While those established talent formats endured, 2008 demonstrated that any new talent shows are going to struggle.  In particular The One and Only typified everything wrong with current television, simply taking a well-worn format and trying to apply it to a new group of contestants, in this case tribute acts. Not only did this do nothing that Stars in their Eyes hadn’t already done with a great deal more humour, but it was also made by the people behind Fame Academy and followed that show’s (tedious) format to the letter, right down to the contestants voting each other off in the presence of Carrie and David Grant. It was also ridiculous to offer a residency in Las Vegas as a prize and then put a Robbie Williams tribute act in there, given the man is a complete unknown in America.  Last Choir Standing later on in the year at least gave us some nice music to listen to, but similarly failed to ignite widespread public interest. 

That show was co-presented by Nick Knowles and Myleene Klass, but seemingly every other series of this kind shown on the BBC in 2008 was presided over by Graham Norton. There are many things the man can do but unfortunately he remains completely useless at trying to sound sincere or reading from an autocue – the two basic requirements for a Saturday night light entertainment host. After The One and Only, he fronted I’d Do Anything, a slightly more entertaining outfit.  However, when you string all these shows together along with Strictly, it adds up to about nine months of the BBC1 Saturday schedule offering slight variations of the same format.

Amusement of a more traditional kind came in the form of For One Night Only, an ITV1 entertainment extravaganza, and probably the most explicit sign of the return of the aforementioned Michael Grade.   This was followed up at Christmas by one-off specials featuring Take That and Girls Aloud.  Both stuck rigidly to the chat and songs format established way back in the 1960s and ’70s when the likes of Cliff Richards and Lulu essayed similar fare across the screens, and both were far better for it.  Such throwaway extravaganzas are exactly the kind of programming ITV1 should be making.

Contrary to various reports, Big Brother didn’t flirt perilously with failure in 2008, rather it has now settled into a groove, and although its days of massive ratings and column inches may well be over, the latest series demonstrated there is still a sizeable core of viewers willing to tune in.  Of course it didn’t help it all ended with a massive anti-climax this year, with the victory of the deadly dull Rachel. Still the series as a whole was okay and far better than Big Brother: Celebrity Hijack.

I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! also felt a little less remarkable, although Ant and Dec’s chat is getting pleasingly ever more ribald.  Not a vintage outing, but plenty to warm the hearts of those who watched it (not least the friendship that developed between Joe Swash and George Takei – perhaps this year’s most heart-warming relationship).

In conclusion…

2008 has been a year of controversy, and no one generated more hot air than Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand for their now infamous radio broadcast.  In the resulting furore, Ross pulled out of presenting the British Comedy Awards and it’ll be interesting to see what form his chat show takes when it returns in the New Year.  Perhaps the most telling thing about this whole business for him is that it illustrated how absolutely desperate he is to hang around with any fashionable comedian going, a la Gervais. If he was still knocking about with Rowland Rivron none of this would have happened.

Of course we all remember the resultant media fallout, the low point of which was Emily Maitlis reading out Mock the Week jokes about the Queen’s pussy on Newsnight.  The papers were therefore bound to be on red alert for any future indiscretions and the ubiquitous John Barrowman provided them with some more fodder when he supposedly exposed himself while giving a BBC radio interview.

Happier times were remembered as Blue Peter celebrated its 50th Anniversary with a number of special programmes. Two new presenters were introduced at the same time, with the relatively new Andy finding himself as the senior face on the show. Hopefully the mooted move to Salford won’t be of detriment to the series, given that it seems to be finding its feet again following the slump it suffered in the wake of the Richard Marson resignation. Meanwhile in children’s telly Grange Hill fizzled out and came to an end after 30 years, the last episode featuring another return appearance from Todd Carty as Tucker.

On digital, the UKTV channels underwent the start of a rebranding process, with each of them getting bizarre new names, despite for the most part showing more or less the same sort of programmes they had transmitted 1000s of times over the years. UKTV Gold, once a mighty force in archive programming, was renamed GOLD (Go On Laugh Daily) and now concentrates on cycling through the same old comedy programmes on a permanent basis. UKTV Drama became Alibi, with a remit to screen crime-based drama, while Watch was the replacement for UKTV Gold+1. This is where the once-mighty Richard and Judy fetched up after leaving Channel 4, although their attempt to crack the evening schedules failed, when they realised they wouldn’t ever topple the soaps.

And it won’t stop there: in 2009, UKTV People becomes Blighty, UK History becomes Yesterday and UKTV Documentary will transform into Eden. Bizarre names all of them, but Dave somehow seems to have caught on in the minds of the public – whether you like it or not it is certainly more memorable than UKTV G2.

BBC4 remained the best channel on TV. The Pop on Trial series in January led to some fascinating roundtable debates chaired by Stuart Maconie, supplemented by wonderful archive programming including complete episodes of Top of the Pops. In fact, BBC4′s archive stuff was always entertaining, with the likes of The Rolf Harris Show getting an airing. But surely the biggest surprise was the rerun of Washes Whiter, the 1990 series on the history of advertising. This was a bizarre repeat run, as most of the theories had been long disproved and the general points it made are now extremely out of date.  Nonetheless, it was a treat to see it again.

Sad news came with the death of comedy legend Geoffrey Perkins in a car accident. He wasn’t a household name by any means, but was involved in some of the most famous television comedy since the 1980s, as well as appearing on screen in a number of series. It would have been easy for this news to have slipped under the radar, but BBC2 duly showed a special edition of Comedy Connections as a tribute. Emmerdale lost its longest-serving cast member this year with the death of Clive ‘Jack Sugden’ Hornby. His passing marks the real end of the Sugden family in the series, with only his daughter Victoria, his ex-wife and adopted son now remaining.  Meanwhile for fans of Saturday night telly, the death of Jeremy Beadle in January was particularly sad news.

Of course, television in 2008 hasn’t just been about what’s flitted across the cathode ray tube in the last 12 months.  Indeed CRT televisions are starting to look a bit quaint, and the sight of one in the background of an aspirational ITV1 drama is a sure sign you’re watching a repeat.  If 2008 on screen has been rather unremarkable, it will perhaps be remembered as the year in which the telly became less a piece of furniture situated in the corner of your living room, and more a concept.  Increasing numbers are viewing television via watch again mediums such as the BBC’s iPlayer.  That’s not to say the TV schedule is to become a thing consigned wholly to the past.  For those weary of proactively deciding what they want to watch, good old fashioned telly will always be there for you to flick on, demanding nothing more of you than your idle attention, and that’s perhaps why the medium is, and will remain, so enthralling and powerful – even when there’s nothing much on.

The Press Association broke the story this evening. It’s said he is going to leave after the 2009 Christmas special. But will it be Paterson Joseph who takes over do you think?

Here’s the blurb…

TENNANT TO QUIT DOCTOR WHO
By Laura May, PA
SHOWBIZ Tennant
Embargoed to 2200 October 29

David Tennant announced tonight that he is vacating the Tardis and leaving the BBC’s Doctor Who series at the end of this year.

Tennant’s decision brings to an end his popular four-year tenure as the time lord.

The BBC confirmed that the actor will complete the filming of four special episodes to be screened this year and in early 2010 as well as 2009′s Christmas special.

Various news sources are today reporting that the Soccer Saturday host is in line to take over the job, and while his name seems to have come right out of left-field I have to admit that I can’t think of a better candidate. Jeff has been absent from the screens of terrestrial viewers for some time, but has earned himself a cult following on Sky Sports News’ regular footy fix. Most of the viewers of Countdown probably have no idea of who Stelling is, but his combination of witty banter, repartee with co-presenters and his natural television presence should serve the show very well indeed. But who can pick the numbers and letters now that Carol has gone?

In the last 12 months the public has been cheated, deceived and lied to by TV. Or at least, that’s what the rest of the media would have you believe. ITV suspended premium rate phone-ins in March, Richard and Judy was investigated due to irregularities on the “You Say We Pay” competition, cookery show Saturday Kitchenwent under scrutiny, and amazingly, even good old Blue Peter wasn’t above the law – in a couple of wicked ploys, a cat wasn’t given the name chosen by viewers, and some children stood in for contest winners.

The BBC was shown to be guilty of having production staff pose as prize winners, and as a result the Corporation suspended all competitions. Meanwhile GMTV was investigated by the Serious Fraud Office over a scandal connected with their phone-in quizzes. Callers were being charged for teasers they had no chance of winning. GMTV was subsequently fined £2 million by OFCOM and had to offer refunds to all of the entrants, although quite how many bothered to take the trouble of asking for a 25p refund is debatable. Best of all though, each day the company’s presenters had to read out a groveling apology. Sadly, this was curtailed when GMTV decided to complete their community service by bunging up a caption and have a nameless person prostrate themselves instead.

The avalanche of TV’s year of scandal swept over the entire schedule, with late-night quiz shows also being scrutinised. The regulatory bodies quickly became involved and a new set of rules was put in place to ensure the public were no longer taken for a ride. The BBC too, introduced a new code of conduct with regard to viewer competitions.

Caught in the media glare of scandal, and haemorrhaging internally thanks to looming job cuts, a bedraggled Beeb was dragged into further controversy later in the year after a trailer for a documentary about the Queen was accused of being misleading. ITV then found itself at the centre of a dispute regarding whether or not Alzheimer’s sufferer Malcolm Pointon was actually shown to die on screen. Television executives resigned, the BBC announced staff would participate in compulsory retraining courses and OFCOM became involved in umpteen more cases. BBC1 Controller Peter Fincham stood down as a result of the Queen debacle and was replaced by the former Director of Programmes at five, Jay Hunt.

With the scandals having run their course (at least for the time being), one can now reflect on the fact this furore has actually highlighted a more pertinent issue. 2007 should be remembered as the year in which our news gatherers proved themselves unable to leave a story alone – even when it had become exhausted. There seemed to exist a fear of running out of things to report, meaning journalists would flog an item for all its worth, just in case another one didn’t come along.

In the case of the “TV scandals”, the story perhaps reached its apotheosis when it was revealed in a wave of sensation that, on occasion, reporters recorded scenes of themselves nodding at interviewees after the interview had actually been recorded. This blatant and silly attempt at creating a mountain out of a molehill made everyone concerned look undignified – the journalists for endlessly stringing out the story, and the programme makers for reacting like rabbits caught in the headlights. What was required was for someone to put their head above the parapet and confirm what we all knew – yes this sort of thing happens in television, but – phone scandals aside – it’s not a big deal and reporters really should start sticking their microphones somewhere else.

Back in the world of make believe, Doctor Who gave us “Blink” and “Human Nature” – surely the best three-episode run in the series’ history. Both stories illustrated just how multifarious the franchise has become, with shocking monsters for the kids and weighty themes for adults, while in the midst there were some shattering performances from Jessica Hynes and Carey Mulligan. Meanwhile “Utopia” worked purely because of Sir Derek Jacobi and the fact every element of the episode sacrificed itself for the greater good – namely a fantastic final reveal. Those four installments aside, series three didn’t really deliver in the way its predecessors had – and enough said about the appearance of a wizened John Burton Race as the Doctor in theseason finale.

Related to Who was The Sarah Jane Adventures. Here was good, intelligent and grown-up drama that could be enjoyed by the whole family. As an ever breathless, slightly spiky Sarah Jane, Elisabeth Sladen gave us a children’s character of rare complexity. Alas, as the series developed, it didn’t take long for some of the clichés of kids’ TV to take hold (hidden passages, mum and dad remaining outside the loop, new crazes proving sinister), and with its own (admittedly very watchable) “Father’s Day”/”Random Shoes” episode in the form of “Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane”, the show no longer felt quite so fresh. But it remained Doctor Who‘s likeable, younger sibling.

Staying in the science-fiction genre, in June came Jekyll written by Steven Moffatt. Here was a modern-day, very dark blend of horror. There was a lot of structural cleverness and genuine innovation in terms of how the whole Jekyll and Hyde scenario played out, but unlike his Doctor Who scripts – which seemed scrupulously plotted - Jekyll careered from one big set piece to another. Worse still, it featured a totally unrealistic secret organisation, peopled by the most appalling American accents of the year.

Primeval, ITV1′s bash at Saturday night sci-fi, proved that when the channel can’t get a handle on a genre (business reality shows, cookery or sitcom, for example) it really can’t get a handle. This was dopey, illogical, entirely predictable, and saddled with a leading man clearly radiating embarrassment about the whole endeavour. Still there was something about it that niggled away, suggesting it might just turn things around in the second series.

The second and final run of Life on Mars disappointed after embracing the formula, much of the time treading water until the fate of Sam Tyler was revealed. All the performers did their best with the material, but too often the show would find itself dishing up wilfully confusing scenes with Tyler, before dabbling in a quagmire of issues (this week, institutional racism; next week, immigration; the week after, drugs). The downbeat ending was still exhilarating though, riskily providing closure while suggesting the suicide of its lead character. It’ll be interesting to see how the sequel, Ashes to Ashes, deals with that …

Heroes was perhaps the best new genre series of the year, despite the often meandering narrative and the constant drift into thudding portentousness – typified by the poetic voiceover which topped and tailed many episodes. Although nothing was ever quite as exciting as the opening edition, with time-traveling Hiro’s exuberant scream in Times Square before discovering an upcoming apocalypse, skilfull plot revelations and shocks – plus the introduction of Zachary Quinto’s charismatic Sylar – kept viewers loyal.

It was an interesting year for mainstream drama. Doc Martin, essentially Born and Bred without the period setting and oompah theme tune, continued in its charming fashion until a rubbish final episode left most viewers frustrated. Kingdom, Stephen Fry’s venture into Sunday nights proved a huge disappointment. You can understand why this wet series about a kindly country solicitor is an appealing prospect for the star – it’s filmed just up the road from his home. But with Tony Slattery putting in a cartoon turn as a comedy yokel, while Fry did the Peter’s Friends pity-me singleton act again – absorbing the woes of all around him – this was damp, uninteresting fare. A by-numbers Sunday night production to rival even Wild at Heart.

Following a successful pilot episode, the Inspector Morse spin-off Lewis returned for three episodes, with the promise of more to follow. School drama Waterloo Road enjoyed two series – one in January, and a 20-part run in the autumn. Also returning for the BBC were Waking the Dead, Hustle (its fourth run); Sea of Souls (for what looks as if it was the last hoorah); andSpooks (its sixth series proved to be the most exciting for years).

Holby Blue, or rather, Holby/Blue - a second spin-off from Casualty, this time featuring the work of the police – provoked the usual comments about the BBC lacking any ideas. But despite being part of the Holby franchise, the series had very little connection to either of the other two shows, apart from a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance from Charlie Fairhead in the first episode. The next series will apparently feature storylines that are more closely intertwined with those of Holby City. Casualty itself underwent something of a revamp for the autumn, with a stack of new characters coming in and the introduction of a new “film” effect look that drew complaints from viewers, much in the same way a similar aborted step had done some 10 or so years earlier.

But top marks to ITV1 for actually broadcasting a raw VT, non-filmic episode of Heartbeat in November. This was apparently down to “somebody putting the wrong tape in”.

2007 brought us two fictionalised takes on life behind the scenes at an American late night comedy show - 30 Rock on five and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip on More4. The former crackled with life and sunshine; the latter forever laboured under a self-styled shroud of gloom. The production qualities of both were, as you’d expect, superb. It was content, not style, that fostered the difference between carefree, infectious exuberance and relentless clever-clever pomposity.

Talking of which, it seems almost everyone in the world hated This Life +10, but perhaps this was because they wanted it to be just like the show was a decade ago. Instead Amy Jenkins came up with a different approach to suit the portrayal of characters in a different period of their life, capturing the frustrations of thirtysomethings just as she had of twentysomethings.

A few one-off dramas brightened the schedules in 2007. The Antique’s Roadshow interlude in Stephen Poliakoff’s Joe’s Palace was a particular treat, but the drama itself seemed to frustrate many viewers – Poliakoff has never been interested in giving the audience the complete story.Recovery, a one-off about a family man struggling to come to terms with brain damage following a road accident, was a welcome reminder of David Tennant’s range. Unresponsive and sullen throughout most of the film, he made space for co-star Sarah Parish to carry the production. One moment, where this married couple were forced to re-evaluate their relationship and consider a platonic future together, proved particularly moving. Possibly the best drama of the year.

Another offering, Party Animals and the two new episodes of The Thick of It offered somewhat differing interpretations of Westminster politics, the impression being the reality was somewhere in between. The pre-publicity for the former suggested nothing less than a bonkfest between the Houses but instead delivered a West Wing-style romantic yet intelligent drama with real heart. Meanwhile, The Thick of It portrayed everyone as equally cretinous – and was perhaps the best comedy of the year, with a career best performance from Peter Capaldi: “You were like a sweaty octopus trying to unhook a bra”.

Sticking with BBC4, Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe at last moved beyond dark metaphors and wank jokes, to start fulfilling its long held promise. Brooker’s investigation into television news was a highlight, particularly as Screenwipe‘s various annoying runners and researchers didn’t appear. We hope for more of the same in 2008. Flight of the Conchords entertained many who appreciated the series’ musical parodies and likeable characters, others, however, felt it to be irritating stuff with every comedy song relying on nothing more than weaving naturalistic dialogue into lyrics as if this in itself was funny.

Over on BBC3, The Mighty Boosh unleashed their third series of strangeness in November, the location this time shifting to a shop called Nabootique; but for those who couldn’t buy into it, it just seemed like two blokes kicking the corpse of Vic Reeves (who’s still alive anyway – how surreal!). Ruddy Hell It’s Harry and Paul! may not quite have hit the heights BBC1 expected, but three new sketch shows marked out the winter for the terrestrial BBC. The Peter Serafinowicz Show was not quite as polished as Look Around You, but its star still managed to include enough spot-on parodies of everything from television shopping to E! News to suggest he still may be a big talent for the future. Alas, as the series continued, it became he’d stacked all the good stuff in the early episodes and while beautifully made, the laughs thinned rapidly, as viewers were left to question if the whole thing was actually meant to be a gentle evisceration of the sketch show format, viciously pointing out its weaknesses. If a second series is in the offing, then let’s hope he can straighten things out, and for God’s sake Peter, do your Terry Wogan.

The Armstrong and Miller Show, on the other hand, proved a recurring treat. Surely expectations weren’t particularly heightened about the duo’s return to the form? And yet the show delivered regular, funny skits, surprisingly irreverent for a BBC1 birthing. Finally, The Omid Djalili Show. In pre-publicity, the Iranian-born funnyman set the bar low, making it clear he had no real enthusiasm for sketch comedy. This was apparent in the finished product – lacklustre and perfunctory.

Back for another go were The Green Green Grass, Lead Balloon, Saxondale and Hyperdrive. If you’d enjoyed them first time around, chances were you would have done so again. The Christmas special of Extras was a delight, but only for those who’ve been grinding their teeth in Ricky Gervais’ direction for the last five years. Starting with a pretentiously classy opening title sequence, the tone was set for what followed. Here was comedy used as high-minded bludgeon. The vacuous nature of celebrity surely didn’t merit such a heavy handed treatise. It’s funny that Gervais can’t keep a straight face when doing an appeal for Comic Relief, but get him to talk about fame and he can out-pontificate Michael Parkinson. Surely this is the moment critical opinion swings against him.

For the rest of the BBC’s terrestrial comedy output, it was the old favourite panel shows that provided the laughs. Have I Got News For You and QI trundled on much as before, while Never Mind the Buzzcocks continued to find a new lease of life under the previously insufferable Simon Amstell. Of course he made his name on Channel 4, and it says a lot about that station’s consistently poor comedy output that they didn’t have the interest or inclination to find him a vehicle and let him go to the Beeb to finally become famous.

Russell Brand’s Ponderland led the line for C4, and has to be congratulated for at least not wheeling out the same tired clips. However, it was bafflingly stripped across a whole week so came and went all too quickly. The IT Crowd and Peep Show were much the same as before, while Star Stories had a rude energy that made for mindlessly entertaining viewing. Apart from that, there was next to nothing. It says much about the current state of C4′s comedy that the prime Friday night slot in December – surely a time when ratings are at their highest – was devoted to the never-ending Ugly Betty and the millionth repeat of the awful Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere. Is there really nothing else?

ITV1 brought us a new entry into the topical quiz show with News Knight, in which Sir Trevor McDonald unconvincingly delivered quips via auto cue, and Reginald D Hunter joked about little else other than the colour of his skin. Even less successful was the painful Ben Elton vehicleGet a Grip. Elton came across as he normally does, but it was very obvious that his co-star Alexa Chung was reading her jokes from a screen. Predictably then, Harry Hill’s TV Burpremained ITV1′s only decent comedy series

Worst of the year though was a tie between Bonkers - an ITV1 sex comedy featuring Liza Tarbuck as a fruity mum who finds herself sharing her home with a movie idol who only she can see – and Roman’s Empire: quite simply, a stupid over-frantic affair. Mathew Horne was much better served by Gavin and Stacey, which despite its BBC3 placing was at heart a warm-hearted family affair which would happily appeal to anyone aged 18 to 80. Not overdone, not heavy-handed, not cynical – just wry and warm with a great story to tell and a fantastic ear for natural dialogue. Its secret was placing believable people in believable predicaments.

There wasn’t a lot of believability in our soaps this year. Emmerdale‘s “Who Killed Tom King” storyline dominated the show from Christmas until May. A number of the villagers were put in the frame in a huge publicity campaign (including specially-shot internet material), so the revelation it was Tom’s son, Carl, felt like a massive anti-climax. Much of the rest of the year was taken up with affairs and yet another fire. The Sugden family really should be more careful with matches and lighters.

EastEnders found itself in the doldrums – again achieving its lowest ever ratings. After killing off Pauline Fowler at Christmas, few of the long-established cast remained, with only Adam Woodyatt left from those who’d appeared at the very beginning. New boss Diederick Santer came in to try and turn things round later in the year with a raft of fresh characters, however the show’s biggest problem right now is casual viewers don’t have a clue who half the Walford residents are. The promised return of the Butchers is perhaps an indication that something needs to be done.

Nonetheless, the Christmas episodes produced massive ratings, far higher than the Yuletide episode of Coronation Street. Yet, here was everything that seemed wrong about the soap; while Corrie deftly engineered the downfall of a love triangle through a believable mix up of Christmas presents, EastEnders went for that old faithful plot device of playing back secretly recorded evidence of infidelity in front of a crowd of people (“Sharongate”, anyone?). Lots of snot, shouting and tears ensued, but it was difficult to care. The saddest news for the show this year was that Jim Branning actor John Bardon suffered a stroke. Apparently it is planned the illness will be written into the storylines when he is well enough to return.

The BBC announced in November it had bought a new Australian soap for 2008, Out of the Blue, to replace Neighbours. Quite rightly, the Corporation had refused to get involved in a tit-for-tat bidding war with its commercial rival, and now it looks as if five will create an Australian soap hour when it starts showing Neighbours, paired with Home and Away.

Once again Coronation Street was the year’s best soap, although things dipped for quite a while after the Tracy and Charlie storyline. In particular, the sacking of Bruce Jones, who played Les Battersby, was a blot on the show’s copy book. The character disappeared on a whim in the spring, notionally traveling the world as a roadie for a Status Quo tribute band, but Jones never came back – a consequence of revealing too much regarding his co-stars in an apparent drunken stand-up rant. His screen wife Cilla also left, albeit in agreement with the producers leaving her son, Chesney, behind with lodger Kirk.

Demonic David Platt dominated the storylines on the cobbles over the summer and towards the end of the year with his antics becoming increasingly ridiculous, culminating in his attempt to commit suicide by driving his car into the canal. Where the show excelled was in depicting Platt as someone who fell through the cracks in the healthcare system – he wasn’t mad enough to be diagnosed with anything, but his personality was sufficiently twisted that reasoning with him remained impossible. On a lighter note it was good to see the return of Jim McDonald … so it was. A couple of promising new characters appeared in December in the form of bookies Dan and Harry Mason (the latter played by former Bad Girls actor Jack Ellis).

There was a lot of mainstream stuff in documentary this year, so Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell, Paul Watson’s epic observational film tracking the destructive ravishes of Alzheimer’s, was uncommonly brave television. As Malcolm Pointon succumbed to his condition, he became abusive and violent, and Barbara clearly struggled with her conflicting feelings for the man. Alas, the show was overshadowed days before transmission thanks to that whole fakery scandal, and it will be a grave injustice if the film is only remembered for the fall-out.

Television as a force for change sort of petered out over the course of the year, perhaps in part because Jamie Oliver’s school dinners campaign seems to have run into all manner of problems. However, Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS? saw the former Granada Chief Executive struggling to apply his own brand of business know-how to the National Health Service. In many ways a painfully slow-moving show, this aptly reflected the bureaucratic malaise at the heart of the problem. Time after time Robinson encountered management groups, all seemingly set up solely to pass responsibility on to another department. Where targets had been brought in to try and make work practices more efficient, it had instead instituted a culture of shirking. Robinson’s exasperated exhalation became an ersatz soundtrack.

After a three-year break, off-beat reporter Louis Theroux bounced back onto our screens with a slew of new films. His first offering, Gambling in Las Vegas, revealed a Theroux who’d gone back-to-basics. Jettisoned were the grisly celebrity ride-alongs of the When Louis Met … years. Instead, the reporter returned to the role of observer, making low-key forays into fascinating subcultures. With the freak show element also dimmed down a shade, Theroux’s 2007 farepoints towards future fascinating shows to come.

In the main, documentary in 2007 seemed to be about travel, eating and heritage. September’sMichael Palin’s New Europe was a bit of a let-down. Our hero did all of the usual things you expect him to – including drinking the local evil spirit, performing on stage somewhere and seeing an animal being killed – but it felt a bit meandering and without any real focus. Long Way Down saw Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman travel from John o’ Groats to Cape Town on motorbikes. The show was entertaining enough and made for an interesting alternative to Palin’s excursions. However, perhaps a better documentary double-act came in the form of the second series of Oz and James’ Big Wine Adventure. Continuing where they left off, the duo explored the wines of the USA. May actually works better with Oz than Clarkson and Hammond on Top Gear. Here he is allowed to branch out more and let his personality sparkle.

Staying on a culinary theme, there was a return for Heston Blumenthal, who was In Search of Perfection with a second series of culinary boffinary. Another trip into the great outdoors beckoned with Ray Mears’ Wild Food, in which the survival expert ate some seeds and unpleasant-looking bits of trees. Other similar experts on television this year included Bear Grylls, whose Born Survivor series was shown on Channel 4 in the spring, and Bruce Parry who appeared in the third series of the excellent Tribe.

This was also the year in which Britain celebrated itself in documentary form, with another run of Coast, a Trevor McDonald-fronted copycat called Britain’s Favourite View, a good, solid series in Great British Journeys, Griff Rhys Jones climbing some British mountains in – well -Mountain and Alan Titchmarsh’s The Nature of Britain. Having attempted to rip off the BBC’s heritage shows, ITV1 had another bash with You Don’t Know You’re Born - a genealogy series that wasn’t as good or popular as Who Do You Think You Are?.

One jewel that was hidden away in the BBC crown was Falklands Night, shown in April to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Falklands conflict. A number of other programmes on the subject were broadcast around this time (including some fascinating ones featuring veterans returning to the Islands), but BBC Parliament devoted a whole evening’s worth of screen time to the subject laying on reams of superb archive footage from 1982.

BBC4, meanwhile, gave us some particularly choice fare. Comics Britannia was fantastic stuff, until it came to the last installment, which offered a strangely slanted history of adult comics, rather contrary to the generally well-researched previous two episodes. Perhaps the best documentary of the year, though, was the similarly paced The Secret Life of the Motorway. This series uncovered a wealth of fascinating archive footage and information. The first episode revealed there were so many Irish immigrants working on the M1 four priests were employed to minister to them and their families. The second offered one of the great documentary interviews of the year as two pensioners sat eating breakfast in a service station. He waxed lyrical about how much he loved going there and all the interesting people he’d met (listing most of them) and then, when asked what she liked about the place, the wife said sharply, “I hate coming here”. The third episode was perhaps most interesting of all, as it outlined the bizarre plan to run motorways directly through Central London and the protest pressure which ensured the idea was swiftly dropped.

Talking of which, Grandstand was cancelled at the start of the year, with little fuss. The elements that comprised the show are still present on Saturday afternoons, just without the overarching brand connecting them, so it feels as if little has changed. The saddest thing on telly, though, was the complete loss of any pop music programming, with Popworld followingTop of the Pops and CD:UK down the dumper. With the only other music shows on telly beingLater With Jools Holland, Live from Abbey Road and late night affairs like Transmission, it means the only place mainstream pop can appear is filling the gaps on variety programmes, such as the lottery and Strictly Come Dancing, or kids’ TV. That can’t have been the case since the 1960s.

With so little pop on screen in 2007, the gap had to be filled by something and inevitably the creep of reality TV continued. Hell’s Kitchen allowed us to enjoy Barry McGuigan mashing pan after pan of spuds. Unlike its US counterpart, which really ratchets up the tension, the series was pretty tame, enlivened only by the sacking of Lee Ryan and the exile of Jim Davidson. The latter was an accident waiting to happen – after performing his stupid woman voice and his Zippy voice, a country winced at the probability his Chalkie voice would soon follow. However, fittingly, it was a foodstuff that brought him down – or rather his assertion that gay men “mince”, causing much offence to Brian from Big Brother. Lee departed over a comment made by head chef Marco concerning a “Pikey’s Picnic”, a slur on both the traveling community’s cuisine and etiquette, thus he achieved an almost unique feat of leaving a reality show with an ounce of dignity. Head chef Marco Pierre White, on the other hand, was made to look like a vain, thick-headed idiot.

The Apprentice was as good as ever with a move to BBC1 having done it no harm at all. The culinary derivative, The Restaurant began as a clumsy, over-populated attempt to reheat its big brother’s success, but rapidly turned into good viewing, as the number of contestants diminished, and we viewers adapted to Raymond Blanc’s avuncular persona. Challenges, in the main, were both televisual and relevant, and the show perfectly cast – from the chalk ‘n’ cheese champions Jeremy and Jane, to reluctant restaurateur and his moll Sam and Jacqui, via Oedipal-tinged duo Tom and Nicola, and the hopeless, but thoroughly decent Martin and Emma (“Is that a cocktail?”).

Controversy raged over Celebrity Big Brother when thousands of complaints were made to OFCOM over claims housemates were making racist marks against Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty. The row went on for a while with, ridiculously, Hertfordshire police being called in to investigate. Despite the furore, Goody’s career wasn’t ruined as many had predicted, while Shetty ultimately did well out of the debacle. The Celebrity brand of the show has been rested, which is a good thing, because what the race row managed to cover up was that 2007′s run had been a load of rubbish.

Big Brother 8 disastrously opened with a houseful of women, most of whom came across as incredibly annoying, shrieking every two seconds with cries of, “Oh my God, oh my God!”. More contestants were subsequently introduced, but viewers quickly dropped by the wayside as the weeks went by, and the show recorded its lowest-ever viewing figures. Every year since its inception BB has been able to engineer some kind of controversy to inflate the viewing figures – failure to do so this time left the series badly weakened. Still, it was actually quite a decent run, although it took far too long for the likeable characters to emerge.

On the back of the continuing success of Dragon’s Den, ITV1 attempted to get in on the act with Fortune: Million Pound Giveaway, and Tycoon. While Fortune was stymied by the inclusion of Jeffrey Archer, everything about Tycoon was just plain wrong, from the lacklustre “Tycoon Tower” itself (a tiny block on London’s South Bank, overshadowed by all around it) to the unstructured game play elements (some episodes Peter Jones would close down a business, some episodes he wouldn’t). True, you could say phone calls and unprepossessing folk scurrying into numerous meetings is a fair reflection of business, but on camera it made for a whole load of nothing. ITV1 quickly lost their nerve, dumping the show into a late night slot and shearing 50 percent of the runtime. The final episode saw Kate Thornton failing to gee up a shivering crowd as “the next tycoon” was revealed in perhaps the most muted finale the one-time X-Factor presenter has ever been involved with.

The Underdog Show was reality television somehow destined to be forgotten by all who watched and even participated. Here was an oddity, a celeb-encrusted series with all the trappings thereof – viewers’ votes, judges, eliminations – but was nonetheless played quite flatly. Instead, the public service remit (and there was one, honest!) came to the fore, turning the venture into a rather effective piece about the plight of rescue dogs. Nonetheless, Jeremy Paxman still took a swipe in his 2007 MacTaggart Memorial Lecture, moaning Newsnight had been “obliged to follow an hour [sic] of celebrity dog walking”.

Far better, was Masterchef Goes Large, which had a profound effect on BBC2 teatimes. With the show shifting into a primetime slot for 2008, the channel hoped to repeat its success withKitchen Criminals. Moderate fun, although hugely repetitive (a good 30 percent of each episode seemed to involve recaps) the programme was handicapped by the fact there’s nothing all that fulfilling about watching recipe after recipe being screwed up. The onscreen talent was also unappetising. In John Burton Race we had a TV chef attempting to appear both avuncular and egotistical. He succeeded only in the latter. Competing against him was Angela Hartnett, clearly a gifted cook, but in no way a natural TV talent. Her performance was edgy and smelt – just faintly – of desperation.

Desperation, of course being the watch word during those early rounds of The X Factor. It was generally agreed this year’s run was the least successful. New host Dermot O’Leary was too busy with Big Brother’s Little Brother to make much of an impression in the first weeks, meaning he only had the live shows on which to create an impact – and in that arena this likeable star appeared thoroughly dwarfed. Far better was Britain’s Got Talent. Far worse was some yet more dreadful copycatting by ITV1, including the ultra-cynical talent show greatest hits Grease is the Word which even Cowell disowned, and Baby Ballroom - what happens when you try to think of the one variation on a hit format nobody’s done before, without thinking why nobody’s done it. Still, even DanceX flopped, which surely means we’ve now bled the dancing cash cow dry … save for Strictly, of course, which still works gloriously.

It’s been a dreadful year for children’s TV, with five now aiming only at pre-school audiences and ITV1 having given up completely, shoving almost all output off to a channel full of repeats which keeps on closing down earlier so ITV4 can show football, darts or even an old film. Meanwhile the BBC aimed all their kids’ shows at under 12s, pointing everyone else in the direction of an hour-long strand on Saturday afternoon BBC2. That said, the programmes that got made were generally still of high quality, with the likes of Chute, Trapped and, of course, The Sarah Jane Adventures proving richly entertaining.

Blue Peter suffered from probably the biggest crisis in its entire history, as well as a rather ill-advised revamp which, in its first few weeks at least, turned out to be an utterly horrifying sight – namely Konnie and Zoe screaming their links at 100 miles an hour while reassuring us what we were watching was “cool”. Thankfully it’s calmed down since then, although jettisoning its traditional Christmas episode did manage to irk many.

What frustrated most about the Blue Peter scandals of 2007 was the production team’s lack of imagination. As Mark Curry explained during a particularly heated discussion on the BBC Breakfast couch the morning after the phone-in subterfuge broke, in days gone by instead of simply wheeling in a child to pretend to be a competition winner, they would have spun it into an item, explaining how and why the phones went down.

Continuing in a similar vein, then, how have the big channels fared this year? Well it has to come down once again to how they dealt with their various contributions to the great TV witch hunt. It was sad to see Peter Fincham get the boot, especially as BBC1 improved greatly under his guidance. Scheduling Strictly on Sunday was a masterstroke, The One Show, although still not a must-watch by any means, has at least finally brought back some consistency and order to early evening BBC1. And while people are moaning about Panorama dumbing down, it’s now there slap bang in the middle of the evening 50 weeks of the year.

Over at ITV1, Michael Grade’s sensible decision to do away with the appalling late-night money-making quiz shows that had bunged up the channel for the past couple of years has been a real cause for celebration. Indeed that man Grade has been quick to make his mark at the network, in the autumn announcing the return of News at Ten, with Trevor McDonald at the helm. The decision to move the nightly broadcast from the time slot a few years back was understandable, but the resultant mess achieved nothing but making ITV1 look incompetent. Grade was right to ask if anybody could remember one memorable show the they’d screened in the 10pm position.

In general though, ITV1 was all over the place in 2007. The failure of Tycoon and Fortune proves that if you rip off BBC2 programmes you get BBC2-sized audiences, if that. Nobody, especially ITV1 viewers, wants to see programmes that are a bit like The Apprentice only worse. In addition, the channel continued to suffer from the appearances of numerous shows that belonged on ITV2 - 24 Hours With (dropped mid-run), Tough Gig (dropped mid-run), Hollywood Lives (dropped mid-run), Holly and Fearne Go Dating (which managed to finish its run). It still baffles why ITV1 are so enthusiastic to axe drama, the one genre that hardly any other channel can do, in favour of pointless reality shows which you can see on any channel. Tiswas Reunited was entertaining, though.

Channel 4 has been hugely ropey for several years now, and come its 25th anniversary, it was sad to see the showpiece celebration was a comedy panel game – exactly the same way fivemarked their birthday six months previously. Celebrity Big Brother was a massive own-goal and the channel’s abysmal PR effort to try and sweep it under the carpet left a nasty stain.

Undoubtedly channel of the year was BBC4. The season on British sci-fi was televisual bliss with well-made retrospectives and excellent archive programming. Children’s TV on Trial, 1997 Week, David Renwick Night and Radio Week were all superb, while the Andrew Marr-fronted debate on the greatest 20th century prime minister was two hours of passionate, amusing comment from a learned group of experts. Simple and wonderful, and a superb lesson for other programme makers on how to make first-rate TV on next to no budget.

2008 will doubtless bring us lots of TV made on next to no budget, and some television made for an absolute fortune. Will any of it be as good as Derek Jacobi malevolently intoning, “I … am … the … Master”, or as terrible as Peter Jones telling a business person she needs to come up with a better name for her product than Frukka? Whatever television brings us in the next 12 months, one hopes it can – at least – move out from under the ridiculous cloud of controversy that has needlessly dogged it during 2007. Plus, here’s praying ITV can finally stop looking at other people’s work and start concentrating on their own answers to that fearsome question – how do you fill up a television schedule for another 52 weeks?

“I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.”
– Stephen Hawking

BBC Drama today announces that Outcasts – a brand new high concept series from Kudos Film and Television and Ben Richards (Spooks, Party Animals) – is in development by BBC Wales for BBC One.

Set in space with the future of earth looking increasingly precarious, the race is on in Outcasts to find an alternative home in the universe.

In return for their “liberty”, a group of social misfits and criminals are sent to be the pioneers of a large new settlement on a near planet.

They contain a variety of different types – from the brilliant deviant to the petty thief. They are the “outcasts”, fascinating but ultimately dispensable who must build the conditions for a new life.

Outcasts is a tense and fast-paced series about co-operation and conflict, idealism and power, sexual competition and love. Most of all it is about our life’s big imperatives – cheating death, seeking suitable mates and surviving as a species.

Jane Tranter, Controller, BBC Fiction, says: “Following the unique success of time travel in Life On Mars, I’m naturally extremely excited about the dynamic duo of Kudos and Ben Richards joining forces to create a further dimension in BBC Drama.”

Jane Featherstone, Joint MD, Kudos Film and Television, says: “The colonisation of space by humans is only a matter of time, and we think that Ben Richards’ brilliant vision of what life will be like when that happens will offer audiences a dramatic, original and entertaining new drama arena.”