Smallscreen

My colleagues sometimes point out, rather wistfully, that it would be nice if I could now and again be more positive in this column. Asking a television critic to be cheerful these days is a bit like telling Marius to lighten up as he surveys the ruins of Carthage. However, let's give it a go. Here, in the spirit of Christmas, are ten highlights from 2005.

1) Richie Benaud's farewell. It was the end of an era. Not just of Benaud's cricket commentary over here (he continues in Australia) but of the great age of television sports commentators: John Arlott, Bill McLaren, Eddie Waring, Kenneth Wolstenholme, Brian Moore, Brian "Johnners" Johnston, Harry Carpenter. They don't make them like that any more except for John McEnroe, Eddie Butler and the Channel 4 cricket team (RIP).

2) The return of the Daleks. It was a great year for comebacks: Hugh Laurie in House, the two Ronnies (all too briefly), Bob Dylan… Nothing, though, could match the Daleks. This is partly about nostalgia. But even new viewers respond to the strange mix of pure evil ("Exterminate!") and absurdity (creatures with silly voices who want to take over the universe but have only just learned to climb stairs and always lose). They are a sci-fi version of Hitler, which perhaps explains their popularity in the 1960s when British culture was still trying to make sense of Nazism while keeping it at a distance.



3) David Edgar's article, "What are we telling the nation?" (London Review of Books, 7th July). Having promised fewer jeremiads about the state of public service broadcasting, I cannot rehearse Edgar's argument here but it is, by far, the most serious and passionate piece written on British television, not just this year, but for many years.

4) The new Channel 4 idents—the "now you see 'em, now you don't" inner city blocks/pylons/bowls and flying hedge images. Next year is the 30th anniversary of Lambie-Nairn, creators of the original Channel 4 idents and the smart 1990s BBC2 idents. These heralded the birth, or in the case of BBC2 the rebirth, of a smart channel. On 31st December 2004 Channel 4 introduced its new idents—but on this occasion, the idents were cleverer than the channel.

5) Schadenfreude is one of the great pleasures of watching television. 2005 provided plenty. There was Jon Snow trying to cope without autocue in New Orleans (he couldn't). Then, for politics fans, there was Andrew Neil's demolition job on Tessa Jowell. But the best of all was this quote by Nick Elliott, ITV's controller of drama, on The People's Channel (ITV): "If I can get 11 million viewers with Rosemary and Thyme, I know I am doing my job better than if I put on shows for poncy middle-class critics." Speaking as a poncy middle-class critic, it gives me no pleasure to report that since then Coronation Street has been the only ITV programme to have reached 11m viewers and that, by contrast, Elliott's new dramas, including the new Taggart, Rose and Maloney, Vincent and Jericho, have hovered at just over half that figure.

6) The deaths of Ronnie Barker, George Best and Harry Thompson were well reported. The death of Michael Gill, however, was not. Gill made over 150 films for cinema and television but is best known for Civilisation, Alistair Cooke's America and The Buried Mirror, a series for Channel 4 on Latin America. He was a kind man and an extremely talented artist.

7) US imports as usual provided some of the highlights of the year: House, Monk (buried on Saturday afternoons on BBC2), Desperate Housewives, American Dad and Family Guy. Typically, none of them have received the coverage of the ridiculous Rome. Meanwhile, who will be showing Boston Legal, David E Kelley's smart new series with William Shatner, James Spader and Candice Bergen on terrestrial television?

8) Ken Livingstone's reaction to news of the 7th July bombings caught the mood of Londoners superbly. Anyone interested in the relations between television and politics should watch that and Tony Blair's response to Diana's death. Together, both moments tell us a great deal about television, emotion and the manufacture of consensus in late 20th-century Britain.

9) The Nick Elliott award for best arts programmes of 2005 goes to BBC4 for showing Heimat and for its Bob Dylan season, to BBC2 for No Direction Home (Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan documentary) and to The South Bank Show for continuing to make programmes about subjects ranging from Argentine cinema and Adam Phillips to Eric Sykes and Margot Fonteyn.

10) Fond farewells to Mark Lawson as presenter of Newsnight Review (originally Late Review), leaving Later with Jools Holland as the last of the children of The Late Show; also to Peter Snow, who has presented his final television election; and to cricket on terrestrial television, which isn't just about sport but about class, Englishness and culture. Future historians of television might wonder that at the very moment Rupert Murdoch finally seized exclusive rights to cricket, his football monopoly was taken away by the anti-monopoly wonks of the EU. Brussels succeeded where Ofcom and successive Labour ministers have characteristically failed.