TV review of 2009: A year of making the best of things

Published on Thursday 31 December 2009 19:59

IN THE spirit of goodwill that supposedly characterises this time of year, I've decided to whip off my negativity bobble-hat and celebrate some of the choice TV highlights of this year just departed. So let us draw a veil over the acres of ordure which stank up the over-populated multi-channel paddock in 2009, and concentrate instead on the great, the good and the somewhere in between.

A few notable gems aside, it hasn't been a great decade for British comedy. And yet 2009, as though in some last ditch effort to save the Noughties from complete disaster, threw us a lifeline in the shape of two Armando Iannucci-produced winners, Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle and an exemplary third series of The Thick of It. Watching Lee – undoubtedly one of the greatest stand-up comedians in the country – refusing to compromise his unique artistic vision for TV was genuinely exciting at times, as was The Thick of It's relentlessly funny depiction of a government in freefall. As unravelling spin doctor Malcolm Tucker, Peter Capaldi delivered the most fearless and compelling performance of the year.

The sixth series of Channel 4's Peep Show showed no signs of flagging, while the deservedly award-winning Outnumbered continued its solitary campaign to revive the reputation of the family sitcom. And Larry David's peerless Curb Your Enthusiasm – replete with ersatz Seinfeld reunion – continued to kick most of its contemporaries into the shade.

In drama, BBC2 provided a belated terrestrial showing of The Wire, the epic American crime drama deserving of every plaudit pinned to its heavily garlanded chest. The BBC also treated us to a few heavyweight standalone dramas, in particular the Julie Walters euthanasia tear-fest A Short Stay in Switzerland, and the gripping IRA chess game Five Minutes of Heaven, starring James Nesbitt and Liam Neeson.

The third series of Jimmy McGovern's superb The Street revived welcome memories of BBC plays of yore, although apparently for the last time, sadly: cutbacks at the ITV studios in Manchester made sure of that. Remaining up north, Channel 4's grotesquely over-hyped Red Riding was an inevitable disappointment, although it was certainly atmospheric and commendably ambitious: despite its faults, just the sort of thing that Channel 4 should be making more of. Following the demise of the money-vacuuming Big Brother franchise, should we expect an increase in their drama budget? Probably not.

It was also a year of surprises: the woeful BBC3 almost justified its existence with the comedy-drama Being Human, while the hitherto patchy Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood presented proper event television with the unexpectedly challenging mini-series Children of Earth.

Finally, ITV become almost solely reliant on ratings behemoths The X Factor and Britain's Got Talent, in which some warbling woman apparently captured the hearts of squillions. Passed me by, I must say.

Given that ITV is now little more than a promotional missile for Darth Cowell, and the BBC will probably be dismantled within hours of a Tory election, this time next year we'll more than likely look back at the Noughties and weep with nostalgia. And for a decade that gave us F*** Off I'm a Hairy Woman, that's a bleak prognosis indeed.