2011's TV highs and lows included head-alternating drama, toxic relations, no-nonsense food appreciation and an audience baying 'OMG!'
End of year Best Of lists seem to evoke more fury than reflective joy these days. Maybe we're all angrier. Just reading a list this week which claimed that Downton Abbey series two ? the one with all the bedpans ? was televisual nectar, while snubbing the unique, flawless Game Of Thrones made my eyes throb. What sort of blinkered arse didn't enjoy Sean Bean enigmatically muttering the phrase "Winter is coming" while staring at a decapitated serf? Regardless, here are more of my 2011 TV joys, typed neatly in a column to ruin your Christmas.
I loved Limmy series two for BBC Scotland, simply the best British comedy made this year: dark, wilfully daft, perfectly hewn. I loved Rev's inter-faith football tournament (BBC2), Mike & Molly (starring Melissa McCarthy from Bridesmaids) and The Office USA (season six), both on Comedy Central, and the little pep talks between Armando Iannucci and Stewart Lee running through Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle. "There's four jokes in this series, that's four more than in the first," said Lee, before talking for 27 minutes about crisps. I wish more people were watching the Friends-esque sitcom Happy Endings on E4; I also loved The Great British Bake Off's pie episode, and Simon Hopkinson's no-nonsense food appreciation show The Good Cook. The toxic closeness between Fred West (Dominic West in a curly wig) and Janet Leach (Emily Watson) on ITV1's Appropriate Adult was just brilliant. Luther series two (BBC1) with Idris Elba was remarkable, gruesome and wholly head-altering. Also fantastic: Jeremy Irons as the shagging pope who believes his own hype in Sky Atlantic's The Borgias; Maxine Peake as Martha Costello on BBC1's Silk; Daisy Haggard as Myra, the American TV exec who can't hide her disgust for our poor comedy in BBC2's Episodes. I enjoyed Educating Essex on Channel 4, an unmissable snoop into how today's British schools work; touching, upsetting but also reassuringly feelgood. The Storyville international documentary slate, featuring Inside Job, Client 9 and Deadline: The New York Times, was simply world-class investigative television; we need to fight tooth and claw to keep BBC4. I'd love to tell you I didn't enjoy Kim Kardashian's wedding on E! in all its opulent soul-churning hideousness, or that I didn't savour the sight of Chinese pandas being delivered to Scotland live on BBC News more than almost all of this year's worthy BBC2 dramas. I can't. Or that Gavin Henson choosing a future girlfriend on Channel 5's The Bachelor didn't keep me occupied on Friday nights while BBC2's The Shadow Line sat ignored on my Sky+.
Low Points? Kelly Rowland's incessant twaddle on The X Factor; Signed With Katie Price on Sky Living, a fruitless, non-specific search for "a new face" which led to teenagers stripping in shopping malls; and OMG! With Peaches Geldof on ITV2 ("I pooed myself on the nightbus once!" squeaks a child in a Top Shop hipster-by-numbers kit. "OMG!" choruses the audience). Worst show of the entire year: Sing If You Can with Keith Lemon and Stacey Solomon on ITV1. Roxanne Pallett being dunked in pools of fish guts and manure while singing All Time Low by the Wanted. Truly bloody awful. Did I watch every single episode? I'm a TV critic, I had to. I make these sacrifices so you don't have to, just like biblical superhero Jesus. And on that note, happy Christmas.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2011/dec/24/grace-dent-tv-od-2011
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