2005
Compiled by Ian Jones and Steve Williams
First published November 2007
Debuts
January …
Desperate Housewives was the latest hit US series … the story of Cocaine and the people it affected was told … Yasmin was a challenging drama about being Muslim in Britain … Dr Gunther von Hagens explored Anatomy for Beginners … and archive footage examined Sex In The Seventies.
February …
The English Civil War was the subject of Blood On Our Hands … Nathan Barley was Chris Morris’ latest underwhelming project … and famous faces underwent Extreme Celebrity Detox.
March …
Supersize Kids tried to change the lives of obese children … and Janet Ellis oversaw The Great Garden Challenge.
April …
Another reality show challenged girls to work out which of the boys they were chasing were Playing It Straight.
May …
Dr Tatiana’s Sex Guide to All Creation examined the reproductory habits of the entire animal kingdom … experts tried to help out parents suffering from their kids’ Bad Behaviour … comedians swapped lame gags in the annoying FAQ U … Black Monday, Heysel and the storm of 1987 were among the subjects of The Explosive Eighties … American punters lived in The Pioneer House … while Johnny Vegas: 18 Stone of Idiot was a (successful) attempt by the comedian to create a show that could not be recommissioned.
June …
8 Out of 10 Cats was the latest comedy quiz … Jonathan Edwards offered religion as the answer in Spirituality Shopper … and Julie Burchill’s lesbian drama Sugar Rush began.
July …
Sarah Beeny looked at entire neighbourhoods in Streets Ahead, while “neighbours from hell” were featured in The Nightmares Next Door … Hitler’s Children told the stories of members of the Hitler Youth … and some of the most notorious figures in history were profiled in Warlords.
August …
OCD sufferers were brought together in The House of Obsessive Compulsives … disabled children featured in Born to be Different … Lost arrived … Scottish-Asian sitcom Meet the Magoons was the latest addition to Friday nights … nasty hidden camera show Balls of Steel was a depressing throwback to the worst of The Word … Bromwell High was an animated sitcom … C4 revealed The Truth About Female Desire … the public re-enacted 1950s holidays in Wakey Wakey Campers … and It’s Me Or The Dog trained problem pets.
September …
Bed and Bardsleys was the world’s worst reality show … the history of The SS was told … educational experts tried to get the best out of The Unteachables … The Closer arrived on British screens … Helen Mirren was Elizabeth I … Gene Simmons opened up his Rock School … while comedy sketches featured in Spoons.
October …
New magicians turned heads and stomachs in Dirty Tricks … The F Word was a new way of showcasing the talents of Gordon Ramsay … and Noel Edmonds picked up the phone for the first time in Deal or No Deal?.
November …
Entrepreneurs starred in Make Me a Million … the search began for the Priest Idol … those who experienced The Somme told their stories … The Ghost Squad was the channel’s latest attempt to find a hit drama … Ian Hislop looked at the stories behind war memorials in Not Forgotten … while The Queen’s Sister looked at the life of Princess Margaret.
December …
Cherie Blair opened the door to 10 Downing Street in Married to the Prime Minister … and reality show Space Cadets didn’t really set the tabloids on fire.
Finales
Cricket
The result of a spending spree sanctioned by erstwhile Chief Executive Michael Jackson, Channel 4′s tenure as the home of terrestrial TV cricket had won it several years of bumper daytime ratings and critical plaudits. When it came time to renew the contract, however, the station’s coffers were in a far more parlous state. The attitude of its management had also changed. No longer was it deemed appropriate, let alone practical, for the channel to fight to the death for the right to show hour after hour of test matches. As such, and – ironically – in the wake of England’s Ashes victory over Australia, live cricket promptly disappeared from terrestrial screens entirely. A desultory highlights service would now be available on five. This was not quite the result many, including more than a few blustering MPs, expected.
Misc …
E4 became available on Freeview in May, while More4 launched in October … Richard Whiteley died in June and was ultimately replaced on Countdown by Des Lynam in October … Derren Brown’s next show was Messiah … Channel 4s season on censorship examined the items that had been Banned In The UK since the 1980s … stars chose classic moments of TV in the Favouritism strand … Bo Selecta span off into A Bear’s Tail … for the first time, the Location Location Location team revealed The Best and Worst Places to Live in the UK … as a response to BBC2′s series Restoration, viewers were asked to nominate buildings for Demolition … in the first of a series of nostalgia documentaries, Justin Lee Collins attempted to Bring Back the Christmas Number One … and The Comic Strip Presents Sex Actually saw a few of the familiar team reassemble.
On Screen
Jamie Oliver
While Gordon Ramsay spent 2005 hectoring celebrity diners and showing his kids how animals die, fellow Channel 4 culinary face Jamie Oliver was trying to change the eating habits of every child in the land. Jamie’s School Dinners was an astoundingly high-profile campaign that ended up with a trip to Downing Street and a change in the law of Great Britain – a rare instance of a TV programme having a direct impact upon the functioning of the nation. Oliver had always been the first to acknowledge his ubiquity in popular culture was just as much an irritation as a boon, however, and as such later in the year set sail for Italy to make Jamie’s Great Escape.
The Friday Night Project
Every other week during the first few years of the new century an article would turn up in print or online bewailing the decline of Channel 4′s Friday night schedule. Where, writers fumed, were the must-see hits, the stay-at-home favourites, the shows that everyone talked about at work and at school come Monday morning? The Friday Night Project was the end product of a search going back almost 10 years to match the influence and success of The Word and TFI Friday. “It could be Jimmy Nesbitt one night, Glenn Campbell the next,” a press officer gamely enthused of this Jimmy Carr/Justin Lee Collins-fronted shambles. “It’s bringing new people to the channel,” Kevin Lygo desperately insisted. “It’s an antidote to Jonathan Ross. You talk to teenagers and people in their early 20s and Ross is a bit like the Jimmy Tarbuck of his generation.” In truth the show was an admission of defeat: that nothing better could be found than the same kind of celebrity-bashing, scattergun topicality and unsubtle smut once essayed in the 1990s, now rendered stale and unloved by virtue of being so outdated.
Off Screen
• Thanks largely to primetime hits Jamie’s School Dinners and Desperate Housewives, plus coverage of the Ashes, Channel 4 overtook BBC2 in terms of annual ratings share for the first time in over a decade, ending up at 10% compared to its rival’s 9.5%.
• A bout of penny-pinching launched by previous boss Mark Thompson meant the station was able to announce record post-tax profits of £46m for 2004, helped by increased advertising revenue and the redundancies caused by reducing the size of Film Four and E4.
Four-Words
“Sometimes I think it’s like heroin addiction, but it’s only 40 minutes a day for the summer, for a period of 10 weeks or whatever. We do two hours of news a day, but no-one says, ‘Oh, you do too much news’.”
- Kevin Lygo on Big Brother 6
“I would love to have presenters, proper documentary faces. That’s a struggle for us. We never found a response to Louis Theroux. The point is, other people can’t copy a personality, that’s more important than a format. We’ve never found a mode of entertaining and enlightening.”
- Danny Cohen, C4 Head of Documentaries
“He had a total fascination for TV. He was one of those people who just loved every minute of being on TV. And when he wasn’t on he loved thinking about it and talking about it. He had a very sharp intellect, as well as a very relaxed presenting style. On one occasion I recall seeing him being mobbed by fans on Princes Street in Edinburgh, like the Beatles arriving in America or Coldplay today.”
- Former C4 Director of Programmes John Willis on Richard Whiteley
My Favourtie Channel 4 Moment …
The Government Inspector (2005)
During a particular barren time for fiction on Channel 4 – and in particular the one-off drama – this production cast a condemnatory yet invigorating glare for miles around.
I have a very vivid memory of where I was and what I was doing when the news broke that, a day after the disappearance of Dr David Kelly, an as yet unidentified body had been found. The sense that here was a modern tragedy, unfolding in real time in the real world, not compressed into three hours by an Elizabethan playwright or a Hollywood mogul, was profoundly affecting. Back then, during those first few months after the invasion of Iraq, it seemed as if the world was becoming a darker place by the hour. It was impossible not to feel as if historic events were being etched upon your mind for all time.
Something approaching this incredibly bleak, palpably insurmountable mood was caught spectacularly by writer and director Peter Kosminsky in his dramatisation of Kelly’s life and death. The fantastical was mixed with the mundane to point a disparaging finger at all those who let a man of exceptional ability choose to end his life in such a grubby and everyday fashion. Mark Rylance’s performance in the lead role was revelatory. Rarely has a “hero” been portrayed in as understated and humbling a fashion.
The Government Inspector demonstrated profoundly human political drama could still be made for television and could still move as much as inspire. It deserves to be remembered as the boldest, and certainly the timeliest, piece of drama Channel 4 conspired to broadcast for at least 10 years.
- Ian Jones
| <2004 |
