Top 50 TV Shows of All Time

What do Doctor Who fans watch when they’re not watching Doctor Who? With so much time on our hands at the minute, it seems an opportune moment to assess the very best of the box throughout the ages. What have the greatest writers, producers, designers and performers given us and what is the absolute best? All Doctor Who fans love a list and here’s mine: My Top 50 TV shows of all time. Perhaps you can settle down and enjoy something from the list you’ve never seen before or re-visit old televisual flames once again? This list comes from the heart though honourable mentions that missed out on a place here must go to: The Honourable Woman, McMafia, Toast of London, Father Ted and Garth Marhengi’s Darkplace. Sorry, lads. You didn’t quite cut it but you’d definitely be in my Top 100! Here goes:

50.   SOME MOTHERS DO ‘AVE ‘EM

Many of the episodes of this long-running sitcom have dated badly. Much of the scripting is sparse and repetitive, the jokes obvious. But amongst much of the standard fare, there are episodes of real, joyous splendour. I entreat anyone to watch The Baby Arrives. It opens in typical Frank Spencer fashion with some low brow jokes about his poor driving. By its conclusion, however, there has been a very funny birth scene and when Jessica has arrived, Frank’s last line, stood by the hospital entrance, is everything. Here is a man who is best described as inadequate. He is an abject failure in every walk of life. At the birth of his daughter, however, he looks triumphantly at Betty and without a hint of arrogance, stated as bald fact, he utters, “I’m a success.” Amongst all the great comedy characters, this makes Frank Spencer one of the most real.

49.   CALL THE MIDWIFE

Admittedly, whenever my wife or girls suggest watching Call the Midwife, I inwardly groan a little. Dreary Sunday night fare. And yet… within ten minutes of any given episode I’m hooked and usually by its conclusion, I’m wiping my eyes. In Call the Midwife, creator Heidi Thomas (after Jennifer Worth’s memoirs) hit up on the perfect formula for a dramatic long-running series. In every episode, a person is born. And no two births are the same. Each week we meet a different expectant couple and watch as the complications around the births are examined. Each week, there we are presented with a new angle on the most extraordinary of human experiences. Most striking of all is the second Christmas special, in which Nurse Lee offers closure to a neglected homeless woman whose children were taken from her and buried in a churchyard. It’s a deeply sad story which wrenches the heart from even the most cynical of viewers.

48.   BLACK MIRROR

Charlie Brooker expounds on the cynicism of the modern age, taking technology as his most oppressive theme. Every episode features a movie-sized idea. What if you could put people on Ignore? What if you could build a walking talking replica of a dead spouse? What if you could remember and rewatch every moment of your life? They are fascinating questions and explored in Brooker’s sadistic, nightmarish, particular idiom. White Christmas is the Christmas Special nobody asked for, but which Brooker delivered anyway. Starring John Hamm, Rafe Spall and Oona Chaplin, it’s essential festive viewing for the mean-spirited Scrooges amongst us. Maybe teenagers should watch it as a warning of what is to come.

47.   SHAMELESS

Namely Series 1 and 2, in which creator Paul Abbott paints the remarkable picture of Chatsworth Estate, peopled by the vividly rich and real Gallagher family. David Threlfall’s Frank is a modern Greek Oracle, parading his close truths through a stench of inebriation. It’s easy to think of the feel-good, anything-goes atmosphere of Chatsworth as something to aspire to but Abbott is sure to illustrate the great sadnesses of poverty alongside the do-it-yourself laughs. There is a feeling that these funny, beautiful people all suffer from a desperately disguised lack of self-esteem, each of them damaged by life in the underclass. However, each episode finishes with a rousing narration which points out that within the misery, there is always great hope and people will always come together. It’s an optimistic, uplifting message and leaves one happily bouncing alongside Murray Gold's jaunty theme music.

46.   ACCUSED

Jimmy McGovern’s anthology show chronicles the decisions made by a series of accused victims, each in their own way guilty and each utterly sympathetic. Whilst all the episodes resonate, there are several stand-out instalments. Frankie’s Story details the results of the despicable bullying in an army battalion and features a frightening turn from Mackenzie Crook. Helen’s Story sees a coruscating Peter Capaldi, dressed as a clown memorably interrupt court proceedings. Unremarked upon, but perhaps best of all, is Liam’s Story, in which Andy Serkis turns stalker, becoming infatuated with one of his taxi customers. It’s the stuff of very earthly nightmares.

45.   WALLANDER

Kenneth Branagh’s interpretation of this difficult-to-like drunken policeman is not for the fainthearted. Wallander resolutely wallows in its own misery. The pain he feels throughout the whole depressing saga, (for that is what it is: excitingly depressing) is the key component of this agonising serial. Subsidiary characters don’t really get a look in. His colleagues (played by Sarah Smart and Tom Hiddleston no less) are unmemorable and functional. It is Kurt Wallander we are following and we don’t get to know anyone else. In Peter Harness’s The Dogs of Riga, the show finds the perfect balance between the isolation of Wallander and the spy thriller. As he runs desperately across Latvia, no one to turn to, the establishment against him, this show becomes one of true greatness.

44.   STATE OF PLAY

Paul Abbott’s one-series mystery of the murder of MP Stephen Collins’s researcher is a taut, satisfying and gripping thriller. Starring David Morrissey, John Simm, Bill Nighy, Kelly MacDonald, Philip Glenister and James McAvoy, it represents the very pinnacle of the BBC’s talents circa 2003.  If one were to point to what television was doing so brilliantly in the 00s, this show would exemplify exactly that. It’s not just a thriller; typically of Paul Abbott, he has things to say. The job of the press is called into question as well as the motivations of our leaders. Its very title tells us everything. This is a story of the state of play in Britain encapsulated forever across three tightly scripted, fascinating hours.

43.   JEKYLL

Steven Moffat successfully delivered global mega-hit Sherlock before adapting Bram Stoker’s Dracula in his 2020 hit. Before that, however, he was doctoring Robert Louis Stevenson in this forgotten re-imagining of the 19t century classic. This is the first of three occasions we’ll find the towering Jimmy Nesbitt in this poll and here Moffat gives him the part of a lifetime, or should that be two parts? As Henry Jekyll, Nesbitt is sympathetic and warm. As Hyde, he is out and out terrifying. The first appearance of Hyde is one of the 00s best television moments. He opens the scene inhaling a cigarette with glorifying reckless abandon and finishes by jumping on a man’s chest with both feet. The show is full of Moffat’s trademark twists and structural intricacies. The episode which opens with Jekyll falling from a tree covered in blood is Moffat to a tee.

42.   THE DAY TODAY

Chris Morris and Armando Ianucci’s prescient satire of news programming is as relevant now as it was in the 90s and just as funny. The pace and incessant quick-fire hit-rate of the gags means it can be watched time and time again, with more to discover with each re-watch. There’s always a quick gag that’s been missed and its entrapment of members of the public in interview situations is bettered nowhere other than Brasseye, although in that case it’s celebrities who are savagely denigrated. “We’re talking today about the letter of the law. What letter is it?” asks Morris to an unsuspecting interviewee. In confusion, the poor blighter puts forth his apologetic answer: “… J?” Gold.

41.   BORGEN

A masterfully crafted Danish political thriller following the trials and tribulations of Prime Minister Birgitte Nyborg. Each episode essentially operates as a perfect “fix of the week” one-act play, in which Brigitte must tackle a range of political problems. Every episode sees her backed into a corner from which there is seemingly no safe escape route but which she navigates delicately and cleverly with aplomb. Whilst the politicking of Brigitte and the toll it takes on her family make for riveting viewing, it is the childhood story of her damaged spin doctor Kaspar which resounds most loudly from Episode 8 of Series One.

40.   HAPPY VALLEY

Watch any scene with Sarah Lancashire in Sally Wainwright’s torturous Halifax-set drama and you’ll see an actor who is so perfectly at one with her character, it brings tears to the eyes. Lancashire internalises all the sorrow, rage and complication of Catherine Cawood and it lives and breathes in her every blink, her every facial tic. This is one of those pieces of casting that may seem obvious after the fact but character and actor combine completely to forge one of the true great heroines of television. Episode 4 ends in a visceral, edge-of-the-seat fashion as villain Tommy Lee Royce approaches. It doesn’t get much grimmer up north.

39.   THE HITCH-HIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY

Although the vast breadth of what Douglas Adams imagined cannot possibly be represented by the BBC TV series of 1981, it’s here (rather than the books, rather than the radio series, rather than the 00s film) that Hitchhikers finds what feels its truest representation. Douglas Adams is as ubiquitous with Hitchhikers as he is with Doctor Who, as he is with the television of the late 70s and early 80s. And so in this Simon Jones starring six-parter, it feels like the natural home of the pangalactic gargleblaster. Paddy Kingsland’s beautiful score, alongside those Quantel graphics and Peter Jones’s precise Book combine to make some of the funniest, most deeply thoughtful and iconoclastic images of 20^th century television.

38.   THE MIGHTY BOOSH

Julian Barratt and Noel Fielding are utterly charming as the off-beat zookeepers Howard and Vince. For all the bizarre plots and characters they meet, it is in their scatty riffing dialogue that the show feels most like itself and comes back to its radio roots. Having said that, nowhere else on television could one find Old Greg, Tony Harrison, Monkey Hell or The Hitcher. Stand out instalments include The Priest and the Beast, an ode to psychedelic rock, The Strange Tale of the Crack Fox, with its vile putrescent guest star and Jungle, in which we first meet Rudi Van DiSarzio. There’s a sense of variety about the Boosh. It is as much about the guest stars (Roger Daltry and Razorlight!) as it is about the songs as it is about the recurring regulars and team spirit. Colourful, bold and idiosyncratic, The Mighty Boosh is its own optimistic, funny and zany world.

37.   SHERLOCK

It might seem like schlock, like genre telly, but like the great detective himself, there is a supreme cleverness about the vast majority of Sherlock. Three writers – Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss and Stephen Thompson – embark on a mission to make this the cleverest edition of Sherlock Holmes to hit the screens. There are stand-out episodes which in themselves would make for celebrated movies. Opener A Study in Pink sets out the stall for what will be a gripping series. A Scandal in Belgravia is a ridiculously intelligent script and includes the obvious distraction of a naked woman. (Sherlock, sociopath that he is, naturally deduces her dress size.) Best of all though is The Lying Detective, directed with supreme style by Nick Hurran, which for an hour is presented as a drug-fuelled series of hallucinatory episodes from Holmes’s perspective. There are few other shows that look quite as peculiar as this. And there’s a killer twist two thirds of the way in which leaves one gawping.

36.   JAKE’S PROGRESS

Two performative tours de force from Robert Lindsay and Julie Walters complement Alan Bleasdale’s Greek tragedy about a boy whose parents are tired of. Poor Jake resonates in the memory, the bleak ending unpredictable yet inevitable. There are stagey scenes which wouldn’t get past a script editor today but which have a boldness, a power, a sense of a specific authorly voice. Robert Lindsay’s Jamie sits in his living room and monologues in the first episode. There is a beautifully ambitious tracking shot through a party in Episode 4 and Jake’s celebrating of his birthday by himself in his bedroom is devastating. The theme music is sad and lingering from Elvis Costello and embodies musically the spiral down which the Diadoni family is about to slowly fall.

35.   COLD FEET

Nine series of Manchester-based comedy-drama, Cold Feet, and still it speaks to us. The dramas faced by Adam & Rachel, Pete & Jenny and Karen & David are the dramas faced by us all. This is the story of normal people growing up. During the long break off-air, the characters matured and so did their problems. These are people we feel we have lived with. The greatness of Cold Feet is not in its charming, gentle comedy or in its perfectly cast leads but in the way its emotional moments come like gut-punches. Mike Bullen’s writing is almost invisibly powerful in its depiction of ordinariness, so much so that when our characters come up against torment or hardship, it feels like we as they have stumbled upon it unknowingly. It’s easy viewing for the most part but has a delicate way of bringing us up sharp.

34.   TOP OF THE LAKE / TOP OF THE LAKE: CHINA GIRL

It is incredibly difficult to describe this Australian drama without giving very much away. On the surface, it looks like a regular “lost girl” story but it is so much stranger and more profound than all that. Dream sequences, particularly in the second series, offer disorientating and uncanny material. Elisabeth Moss’s Robin Griffin has a nightmare in which she attempts to put her shirt on whilst balancing unborn foetuses in her hands. Every episode, the show offers up a weirdness you’re unlikely to see elsewhere. The sinister story of David Dencik’s “Puss” feels dangerous, unsettling and all too believable. I’m not even sure to which genre this series belongs. It’s a crime thriller for sure but it’s also commenting on women, on childhood, on abuse. This is a deeply fascinating work of art.

33.   THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN

The first two series with their laugh tracks now seem rather dated despite the clearly outrageous and magnificent character work from Pemberton, Shearsmith, Gatiss and Dyson. Series 3, however, unsung at the time, is a work of ecstatic comedy. Turn Again Geoff Tips follows the titular would-be comedian to London for his fledgling performance on the stage of the The Salmon of Knowledge. It is a masterful examination of Northern hubris and lack of self-awareness. The One-Armed Man is King follows a joke-shop owner amputee who is a gifted a nun’s arm in an illicit back-door operating theatre. Throughout the series, the drifting plastic bag ties characters together and we realise we’re a long way from the sketch show we started out with. Far more Inside No 9 than Little Britain. My favourite is the Christmas Special, three stories forming a deliciously dark portmanteau episode which reveals the true face of Santa.

32.   DAMAGES

Glenn Close stars as NY attorney Patty Hughes in this five-series thriller. Each focuses on a different court case that the hot spot lawyer takes an interest in, cases of injustices at the hands of huge, global companies. Hughes intends to take down The Man, but she will do anything in her power to win. We are never sure whether to trust Hughes and Close plays her like a lizard, ready to flick her tongue and smote her victims with her sharp words or even sharper, more insidious deeds. Even more frightening, however, is her toxic relationship with new girl Ellen, played by Rose Byrne. We are never quite sure of Patty’s role in the attempted murder of her employee and the tension between them drives through all five series like a hot skewer. Perhaps the most alarming series is four which follows a private security firm in Afghanistan, although the ending of Series 3 is merciless.

31.   THE TRIP / THE TRIP TO ITALY / THE TRIP TO SPAIN

Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon play off-kilter versions of themselves in these surprisingly moving road trips from Michael Winterbottom. The two men come to terms with themselves as they frequent a variety of restaurants, but it is in their loneliness after closing time that we get under their skin. The show has a deft way of making us both like and hate them more as we travel onwards; they become more complicated, more conflicted and more pathetic in their gentle journey. Above all else, however, the range of incredible impressions on display is magnificent and Steve Coogan’s attempt to sing three octaves in the last episode of Series 1 is worth the entry fee alone. Best line of dialogue in the voice of Terry Wogan: “Now Rob, did you eat Mo Farah’s fucking legs?”

30.   PEEP SHOW

At the centre of this comedy is a very simple but inspired idea – that we can hear our leads’ internal monologue. This gives writers Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain carte blanche to be as tactless, rancid and truthful as they can possibly own up to being. Much has been written about the obvious rapport between David Mitchell and Robert Webb, but other memorable characters abound too. Paterson Joseph’s Johnson is as bright and shiny a comic hero to the modern TV viewer as Basil Fawlty or Frank Spencer. Sophie (Olivia Colman no less) and Dobby make for terrifically funny foils to the two pathetic boys. Perhaps the greatest episode is Mark’s wedding at the end of the fifth series, which charts a calamitous wedding day like no other, including some hilarious avenues on the way to the venue alone. The truth of these characters, as heard by us all, is what propels Peep Show from your run of the mill sitcom to a work of genuine inspiration.

29.   GIDEON’S DAUGHTER

To my mind, this is Stephen Poliakoff’s finest work. Usually, he languishes for too long in beautiful architecture, includes tales of a Jewish history which sometimes feel latched on and fixates upon photographs or films of yesteryear. Here, Poliakoff explores the simple idea of a daughter growing up and away from her father and the great lengths a father will do to rekindle his daughter’s love for him. I don’t know why this isn’t celebrated any more than it is. Bill Nighy is astonishingly good as Gideon and Miranda Richardson puts in a characteristically off-the-wall but grounded performance as Stella, Gideon’s new-found confidante. Give it a try. 90 minutes of bliss which can’t fail to move even the most stubbornly unemotional of parents.

28.   BOTTOM

Lots of people sneer at Bottom. It’s very title, however, tells us that Rik Mayall and Ade Edmonson are aiming no higher than low brow. Both men are incredibly funny and the most natural of comic partners. Give me these two tugging at each other’s noses with pliers and headbutting banisters over Laurel and Hardy any day. If you can overcome your own snobbery, it’s easier to laugh at chilli-sprout-fuelled fiery farts. There’s a cavalier attitude to logic: at the end of Series 3 Episode 1 (Hole) the leads die, just as they do in Episode 6 (Carnival). The violence on display is so overblown as to be ludicrously comic. Perhaps the finest episode is Gas which features Richie climbing into bed with Brian Glover and his girlfriend whilst trying not to be seen. There is an amazing explosion here too, which looks like it probably breached BBC Studio guidelines thanks to an overenthusiastic FX team. Don’t be a snob. IF you want more of the great outdoors, look no further than ‘S Out which features a tremendous park-based fight with tent pole as blow dart.

27.   THE MISSING / BAPTISTE

Brothers Harry and Jack Williams are taking over television. They have written many modern big-hitters: Liar, The Widow, Rellik and One of Us. All are excellent but none quite match the atmosphere of The Missing. It has a despair about it. In it lingering establishing shots, there is a sense that the devil lurks just out of shot. The poignant, realistic story of the lost Oliver Hughes lingers long in the memory after the closing credits of each episode, with Episode 3’s ending posing terrifying, blurry video footage of the boy’s last moments. James Nesbitt’s harrowing performance as Tony Hughes is surely the sort that BAFTAs were designed to celebrate. The second series is similarly memorable, with events taking on a more grandiose turn in its final few instalments. Baptiste, the spin-off featuring Tcheky Karyo as the eponymous French detective, digs even deeper into the dark underworld of humanity (and is filmed in much the same style, even down to the opening theme music) and I so hope the promising second series sees the light of day in these uncertain times. The show delivers the same of grizzly frights in which we find catharsis.

26.   MONTY PYTHON’S FLYING CIRCUS

The first modern sketch show, there is an air of incredibly lucky undergraduates being allowed to mess about in Monty Python. Of course. Some sketches are indulgent and some drag, but any series with so many oft-quoted, well-known gags is doing something right. The frenetic cutting between video and filmed sequences lends the show an unpredictability that The Fast Show aimed for before it became Catchphrase Central. Cleverly, the Pythons use sets across episodes, meaning that there appear to be far more set-ups and elaborations than in other half hour shows of a similar vintage. It’s not always terribly funny, but it’s always surreal, anarchic and bedazzling and the six regulars deliver committed, high-octane, brilliantly funny performances. I can never decide who my favourite Python is. Sometimes it’s Cleese, sometimes it’s Chapman, sometimes it’s Palin. Each of them chime with one another like a punk band. There’s no sense of one-upmanship. They’re in this crazed world together and inhabit it with belief, pride and infectious gall.

25.   THE X FILES

Yes, it went on too long and the revival wasn’t quite the comeback anyone had hoped. But during its 90s zenith, The X Files was the talk of the town. Everybody watched it. It sat alongside The Simpsons, Friends and E.R. as the best that America had to offer. Two of the execs went on to write Breaking Bad. Another two went on to write Homeland. These guys weren’t messing about when they wrote The X Files. I can’t think of another series which offers up anything quite so frightening as Squeeze, Hell Money, 2Shy, The Walk, Irresistible, Fresh Bones or Aubrey. As the mythology progressed, Chris Carter and his gang of geeks produced finales of dynamite tension, cliff-hangering seasons on epic moments and leaving our favourite FBI agents in mortal jeopardy. As convoluted as it became, the opening of Season 5, as we finally gain access to the Pentagon files and the Cancer Man is shot clutching the photo of Mulder and Samanta, as a breath-taking, original thriller, the show is unbeatable.

24.   TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

An anthology series of the highest order, Roald Dahl’s show is indicative of his mischievous sense of humour and glee in the macabre. In such a show, quite often the greatest casts are found. It’s only a few days filming for a star to fulfil and so it often fits into their otherwise packed schedules. Here we have John Gielgud, Derek Jacobi, Brian Blessed, Michael Gambon, Timothy West, Sian Philips, Denholm Elliott and John Mills among many, many others doing a turn for the boys. Notable highlights include Lamb to the Slaughter, Skin, Royal Jelly and The Man from the South. In a series of such length, there are bound to be poorer episodes, but there is always a performance to revel in or a novel twist to enjoy and apart from anything else, there is Ron Grainer’s mesmeric theme tune which says, “Settle down. You’re in for a treat.”

23.   THE KILLING

It’s fashionable to laud Scandi-noir as the best that TV has to offer. The Killing makes it difficult to go against the grain. The first series spends a mammoth twenty episodes on the hunt for the killer of Nanna Birk Larsen. Although headed by Sofie Grabol’s enigmatically distant Sarah Lund, at the forefront of this show is structure. Each episode strictly follows the events of one day of the investigation. Its very length means that by 18, 19 episodes, the police force are understandably at breaking point and the pressure is piled on Lund to solve the case. The following two series, although shorter, are no less tense. Despite the culprits in Series 2 and 3 feeling a little more obvious, the twists and turns the narratives make before we reach our harrowing conclusions are like all the best thrillers, frustrating, irritating, unexpected and electrifying.

22.   CATTERICK

Vic and Bob’s best work. Described as “a seven-mile comedy road movie” on the DVD sleeve, this six-episode sitcom experiment of BBC Three’s infancy was the sort of thing the channel was once celebrated for. Other uncelebrated shows like Dogtown and Funland were birthed there, alongside other big hitters like Little Britain, Gavin and Stacey and even Torchwood which later became hits for their parent channels. For my money though, Catterick is the best, the weirdest and the most original. We start in what looks like a regular Fawlty Towers hotel-based set-up (although in the first five minutes, we see a man putting a bagful of ravens in a train station bin which suggest things might get weird). By Episode 5, we’re in a garden centre experiencing a shoot-out, a behanding and a would-be bomb building. Episode 6 chiefly revolves around repeatedly thwarted attempts to blow up a caravan. There is a monologue on the governmental protection of otters and a scene in which Bob (playing Carl Palmer) is forced to swallow cassette tape. (“Eat it, yer bastard!”) There is also a subplot involving a lost penis in a jar and love is found on a zebra crossing between two cross-eyed strangers. Bliss.

21.   THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA

The BBC’s adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair is as magical, ethereal and haunting as it was on transmission, helped by the gorgeous musical score (Geoffrey Burgon at his best) and the inventive design work of a BBC crew at the height of their powers, just before produced choice came in and in-house went out. There are elements which seem extremely dated in the light of the more recent cinema outings, namely the green screen, the cartoon-like animation and some of the puppetry but give me Ronald Pickup’s animatronic Aslan over a modern CG rendering any day. The Silver Chair has stood the test of time perhaps best of all. As Jill Pole stands with Aslan by the waterfall reciting the signs over the waxing music, we know we’re in the realm of awe. When Tom Baker arrives as Puddleglum and the gang set off to Ettinsmoor, there is a sense of epic adventure which matches any Lord of the Rings film. Because here, we are embarking on a quest with children in tow, making all the wonderment that bit more naïve, that bit richer, that bit closer, more real. And the scripts never, ever speak down to us. Of his siblings, Edmund remarks, “a bunch of self-satisfied prigs,” as if speaking the language of children everywhere. This is television for children which doesn’t feel the need to patronise them.

20.   THIS IS ENGLAND

Based on a film which didn’t quite land despite its hard-hitting conclusion, this TV show co-written by Shane Meadows and Jack Thorne, with a healthy dose of improv from its talented young cast, enjoys its longer form to better explore the world of working class 80s Midlands. There are great swathes of the show which are hysterically funny in their close observation. There are elements which illustrate the evil human beings are capable of. The most realistic and disturbing rape scene in all of television happens in the first series and it is one of the most uncomfortable viewing experiences put to camera. The series reaches its pinnacle, however, at the close of ’88, when it becomes obvious that this wasn’t a story of society after all; it was a story of unfulfilled love, finally allowing itself to blossom. As Joe Gilgun and Vicky McClure reconnect, there shouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.  

19.   BREAKING BAD

It feels like a cliché to talk about the greatness of Breaking Bad but it can never be stated enough times. Bryan Cranston’s troubled Walter White has become a television icon. Perhaps what separates this from other TV shows is that the hero is resolutely unheroic. Underconfident, underachieving, bitter and aggressive, White’s cancer-scare fuels him to lash out at a world he feels has done him wrong. He cannot see that it is his own fear of reaching for something else that has meant he lives a life of no-frills and ordinariness. The show is so good it ends conclusively four times, once at the end of the fourth series in which Gus Fring comes to an apposite, stylish and deserved end, and the last three episodes of the fifth essentially offer a pick-your-own denouement. It can’t quite make the final reel quite as unexpected or freewheeling as the rest of the series, too concerned is it with putting its toys back in the box, but it’s a tiny quibble in a show that is meandering, gripping, horrific, funny and gruelling. Secretly, there’s a bit of Walter White in all of us. Most of us see Friends as wish-fulfilment TV but Breaking Bad is the renegade’s real deal.

18.   GHOST STORIES FOR CHRISTMAS

The BBC’s occasional ghost story series is much vaunted in television, deservedly so. Usually based on the unquiet tales of M R James, the atmosphere of these desolate, lonely tales is pervasive and threatening. Recently, there have been a few more excursions into Ghost Stories for Christmas, with a John Hurt starring re-telling of Whistle and I’ll Come to You, as well as Mark Gatiss’s adaptations of The Tractate Middoth and Martin’s Close as well as his own The Dead Room with Simon Callow. These tales don’t go in for jump scares or gore. They play in the shadows, exercise tension and dread, and slowly, almost unnoticeably creep under the skin. For my money, best of all is The Treasure of Abbot Thomas, in which one academic’s curiosity leads him to a horrific encounter in a tunnel. The world of these stories is one of wood panelled walls and candlelight, where intellectual aspiration comes face to face with an unknowable world unresting somewhere beyond the veil.

17.   RED DWARF

Rarely does the sci-fi comedy reach its potential, but when it does, there is no better way to spend a half hour than in the company of Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat. Series 5 and 6 are particularly impressive, with 5 marking the apex of this show in terms of its belly laughs and oddball ideas. Look at Demons and Angels, Quarantine or Back to Reality. They’re clearly high concept. Steven Moffat would be praised and win awards for his Doctor Who stories of a timey-wimey persuasion but Red Dwarf was doing this stuff decades before, The Inquisitor and Future Echoes the most obvious examples. At its best, Red Dwarf manages to bring its comedy out of its concept of the week. Occasionally, it tends to put plot and concept first (notably after Rob Grant left the show) but when the laughs work in symbiosis, the result is spectacularly clever, rewarding and original. Gunmen of the Apocalypse (Emmy award winning, no less), Psirens and Legion exemplify this. The new Dave iteration of the show is a worthy successor to the BBC days and occasionally does something magnificent: Lemons, Twentica and Give & Take see the Dwarfers at their middle-aged best, and in the final minutes of Back to Earth, Craig Charles what an understated actor he can be. Best of all though, is Series 2’s Thanks for the Memory, an episode which not only pieces its perfect plot together like the jigsaw puzzle of its closing shot, but also bases it on the cripplingly sad confession of a drunken Rimmer, showing that Grant and Naylor can not only plot a sci-fi show and earn a few brilliant gags, but tug on the heartstrings too.

16.   NATHAN BARLEY

If a sitcom written by Chris Morris and Charlie Brooker were commissioned today, it would be publicised to death. Nathan Barley flew under the radar. It’s such a shame because everything from the colour palette to the dialogue is as idiosyncratic, original and bizarre as you’d expect from these dark comedy masters. “Alright fucksticks,” says Nicholas Burns’s Nathan as he rides his too-small bike onto a bus in his introductory scene. The dialogue never stops being funny or outlandish. “Fill these,” says a media exec pointing at his ears. “I’ve had an ape hour ever since I saw a programme about them on Discovery. It was about apes,” says oddball TV honcho from his high rock. “It’s good because it looks it’s good because it’s rude,” says Richard Ayoade. Even Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Whishaw get in on this crazy world where none of the characters is sympathetic. Claire Keelan’s lead, with whom in any other sitcom we’d engage, is irritating and out for herself. Her brother, Julian Barratt’s Dan Ashcroft is a sad waster. Barley himself is a total twat. Morris and Brooker present a world inhabited by morons in a statement about the media, society and our desperate want for the latest polished turd.

15.   UTOPIA

Off the wall playwright Dennis Kelly’s Channel 4 comic strip thriller is a colourful ferocity of imagination, to the dirty, explosive drum and bass soundtrack from Christobal Tapia de Veer. Characters are larger than life and function on just the right side of reality. The plot is extreme, thrilling and excessively violent, garnering viewer complaints on transmission. This is understandable: the first episode includes a de-eyeballing after sand, chillies and bleach have been applied to the victim’s sockets; the third includes a completely avoidable mass shooting at a school. Children are seen to carry and shoot firearms and many deaths are warranted for the sheer, devilish thrill of witnessing yet another operatic killing. In the first scene alone, it is implied that a child is killed by inhaling poison. That none of this feels sensationalist speaks volumes of the dark world Kelly creates. Utopia is its own vibrant beast and goes by its own twisted rules. Best moment of dialogue? “You, Sir, are drunk.” “Yes, and in the morning, we’ll both still be cunts.”

14.   LINE OF DUTY

The longer the show goes on, the more overcomplicated and melodramatic it becomes. But what melodrama! Scenes in interview rooms last extraordinary amounts of time, like those from stageplays excitingly using the language of formal police procedure as high drama. The balance of power shifts in those scenes in riveting, unexpected and dangerous ways, often threatening to derail the plot entirely. As well as these blistering dialogue exchanges, the violence on show is visceral. The defenestration in Series 2 makes one sick to the stomach. The almost-removal of fingers in Series 1 is an edge of the seat cliff-hanger and the cutthroat nature of the scene at the close of Episode 2 cements this as a series of shocking pivots and spectacle. The first episode of Series 3 is a work of dramatic art in itself.

13.   BRIDESHEAD REVISITED

Once cited as the greatest television programme ever made, even now it’s difficult to find fault in this beauteous, languorous roving around an England of yesteryear. Even the privileged Brideshead family themselves have one foot in the past and struggle to cope in an accelerating world. The poor Sebastian takes himself out of it, his sister Julia agonises in her attempts to reconcile the conservativism of her faith against the tugging of her heartstrings, Bridey remains an English eccentric (unhappily married) and Cordelia becomes a “plain, unattractive” woman after showing such vitality of character in her youth. Through it all, our narrator and confidante Charles Ryder – played with understated precision by Jeremy Irons – rails against the impositions forced on the family by their Catholicism before finally making his peace with religion in an ending which is both deeply saddening and hugely fulfilling, transcendental even. And Geoffrey Burgon’s score is ubiquitous, incidental perfection.

12.   GBH

Alan Bleasdale’s second great television success, produced by the legendary Verity Lambert and chopped to pieces by her. Reportedly, she cut 300 pages and Bleasdale missed only one scene lasting 45 seconds. Whatever she did to it, the result is an almost perfect narrative in terms of its structure, contrasting the lives of two men, one getting over a breakdown, another on his way to one. Both opposed politically and in terms of character, as one rises, the other falls. Typically of Bleasdale, he posits a moral in the last act: read more than one book. This is a call to humanity, an entreaty to attempt to understand one another rather than, as is the want of politics, to go loggerheads, to use conflict as the answer. And throughout the ten hours, mesmeric performances from Michael Palin and Robert Lindsay ensure we are enthralled. The hotel sequence in which Lindsay shines his shoes during a panic attack is as funny as Michael Palin’s hiding in the cupboard is painful. Through these two characters, Bleasdale illustrates that the mental stability of a person is always teetering precariously somewhere between total arrogance and abject fear.

11.   THE SINGING DETECTIVE

Exploring all of Dennis Potter’s recurrent themes, The Singing Detective encapsulates everything he ever seemed to be striving for. In coming to terms with himself, Philip Marlow – in a supreme masterclass of actorly prowess – learns how to walk again. In his pursuit, he must re-live the nightmares of his childhood through a haze of drug-fuelled, hallucinatory songs, which find a place in the narrative in a less jarring way than those of Pennies from Heaven, explained as they are by the series taking place within Marlow’s consciousness. The worlds of film noir detection and speakeasies, sunny West Country woodland and the stark sterility of the hospital make for the perfect bedfellows, each shedding a contrasting light on one another. Sumptuous, funny dialogue abounds throughout. “Little men shouldn’t sit places where their legs don’t touch the ground; makes me think of nursery rhymes.” This is television at its most vivid and rich, pushing at its boundaries and redefining what the medium is actually for.

10.   CRACKER

Robbie Coltrane – the man. As Fitz, he excels. This is a layered, brilliant, complex study of an extremely complex character. Jimmy McGovern’s most famous character has every right to be. Depicting a gambling addict with a self-destructive quality, Cracker explores crime thrillers from a psychological viewpoint. The clues to the crimes do not come from Macguffins or happenstance, and the crimes are not solved as in Jonathan Creek by working out intricate puzzles, but from a deep, rich understanding of character, of motivation and of relationships. Although there are more celebrated episodes such as those featuring Robert Carlisle’s disturbing Albie Kinsella or the brutal exploration of racism in Men Should Weep, it is in the tiny misjudged moment at the end of To Say I Love You which strikes me as the big moment in Cracker: Fitz is parleying with Sean in a house rigged to explode. He promises that if Sean comes with him, he can talk to Tina – his girl with whom he has enjoyed a killing spree - for an hour. But he has forgotten his psychology. Sean has a stutter. “You expect me to say everything I need to say in one lousy, stinking hour?” he asks agonisingly slowly, unable to form the words. And Fitz realises he is defeated. After three hours of getting inside these young people’s heads, at the last second, Fitz gets it wrong. That’s what makes Cracker. Fitz is not the copper who can slay a dragon every week. He is far more complicated, far more hindered by circumstance, far, far more truthful than all that.

9.       FAWLTY TOWERS

The best comedy series ever created? Undoubtably. Look at Communication Problems. In itself, this is a perfectly structured farce. From the very funny conversations in the first scene, the groundwork is being invisibly worked in for the payoffs at the episode’s climax. This and The Psychiatrist are perhaps the apotheosis of the series, where John Cleese and Connie Booth blend structure and character in such a way that laughs expound, one upon another, snowballing their way to an hysterical climax. Only Fools and Horses famously boasts a scene in which Del Boy falls through a bar. In The Psychiatrist, John Cleese falls through an open door and it’s the worst gag in the episode. The best that Only Fools and Horses has to offer couldn’t hold a candle to the magnificence of Fawlty Towers, twelve sweet episodes of despairingly English complication.

8.       BROKEN

The six-episode tale of priest Michael Kerrigan is Jimmy McGovern’s finest work. It deals with themes he returns to, time and again – gambling addiction, abuse and poverty, but never quite so maturely as here. When Kerrigan confronts the elderly priest who abused him as a child, there is a sense of this being a personal victory for Kerrigan, a step towards his healing, despite the abhorrent response from his abuser. The final scene, although it plays out only the smallest of kindnesses, is Kerrigan’s retribution. Here is a good man, beaten by the world, rarely thanked for the good he does, astonishingly well-played by Sean Bean, at last finding a happiness amongst his parish, a parish who value him far more than he would have himself otherwise believe. It is a tale which celebrates the good of a community in spite of its varied and difficult obstacles.

7.       DOCTOR WHO

It had to be there. Whilst the series doesn’t always offer up the very best of television in any given week, it goes to places other TV shows simply cannot. Christopher Eccleston told the press with relish that his first day of filming involved a midget in a pig costume in a spacesuit. What’s more, this was one of the show’s more serious scenes. Where else could the incongruous feel so at home? And in its best episodes, in its most bold and memorable, the show brings people together, from the youngest to the eldest. Gas mask zombies, weeping angels and regeneration are the stuff of water cooler conversation and stories such as Ghost Light, The Deadly Assassin, The Leisure Hive, Revelation of the Daleks, Father's Day, The Time of Angels and The Satan Pit are some of the finest examples of experimental television ever made. In recent years, it may have lost its sheen but there’s always something to delight, to thrill, to laugh at in this naïve show which puts imagination, goodness and intelligence above super powers, might and power.

6.       INSIDE NO 9

Five series in and I can think of only one episode of the anthology series which doesn’t quite hit the mark. This show is inventive, ambitious and intelligent. The number of number nine possibilities at first seems paltry but with each passing episode, Pemberton and Shearsmith show that the potentialities are endless given the freedom of imagination. Number nines include a hotel floor, a table, a train cabin, various studio spaces (art and magician’s), a dressing room, a police car and perhaps most inventively a shoe. Styles vary between shows: we go from Mike Leigh to Alan Bennett to Tim Burton, from karaoke songs to crossword puzzle to iambic pentameter. Every episode can stand as one of the best examples of the style it emulates; most include clevernesses, sleights of hand, twists and surprises. For half hours of television to be so perfectly and unpredictably captured week after week, episode after episode, with no signs of fatigue, is astonishing. It seems that Pemberton and Shearsmith can turn to their end to anything at all. And The Devil of Christmas is a twisted masterpiece.

5.       THE BOYS FROM THE BLACK STUFF

After the one-act play The Black Stuff, came this five-episode series covering the lives of its five leads during the 80s depression in Merseyside. Alan Bleasdale imbues his show with Liverpudlian humour to contrast against the darkness of his characters’ poor lives. Each episode is memorable in its own way. The death of Snowy, thanks to the negligence of the modern workman, is poetically ironic in an age in which people are literally begging for jobs. Dixie’s ferocity in his secret moonlighting directed at those he loves belies the fact he has all along been saving for his son. Chrissie’s killing of his animals to feed his family as the grace note of a row is harrowing. The tale of Yosser Hughes, all shot on film, is the episode the public remember, and Yosser makes for a totemic figure of 80s recession. Lastly, the death of George acts as the microcosmic death of a bygone age. He is the last of the great dock workers and with his passing goes the hope of Liverpool. Because Bleasdale doesn’t offer an end to this hopelessness. We end with Chrissie, Loggo and a diminished Yosser walking the desperate empty streets, no jobs to go to, futures uncertain.

4.       I, CLAUDIUS

The top spot is devoted to a family drama and here, we have the most powerful, famous and complicated family of them all: from Augustus to Nero, I, Claudius charts the Roman Emperors from their glorious heights to their despotic lows. Yes, it’s stagey, mannered and can’t quite illustrate the gladiatorial games and stadium-sized locations it so wishes to, but it doesn’t matter. It is symptomatic of the TV of its age, theatre on the telly, with character and dialogue the forefront of the viewing experience and there are no richer characters than here and no greater performances. It is quite something to behold John Hurt delivering the unfettered madness of Caligula, Sian Philips the wallowing evil of Livia and the redoubtable Derek Jacobi the shrewdness, clumsiness, humour, rage and sadness of Claudius. This is a true epic and a timeless story transcendent of the millennia it steps back through.

3.       OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH

A chronicle of our country through the 20^th century, from the 60s to the 90s. It’s a love story, a gangster story, a political story, a social story, a family story and a crime story. Most of all, it’s the story of how housing policy has shaped the nation. As dry as that sounds, Peter Flannery tells his story through the hearts of four very different friends: the grammar school boy, the working class lad, the runaway and the girl once blinkered, later educated. Our Friends in the North exposes the corruption of our establishments and the devastating effects that those corrupt decisions have on the commonfolk. Its illustration of the 90s council estate (then the modern age) is frighteningly real and the scene in which the four friends meet again, beautifully and silently unsure as to how to engage, speaks volumes of a country that has forgotten what it once stood for and how to articulate itself. This is devastatingly effective television and, like no other programme ever, captures what it is to be English.

2.            MAD MEN

If there is a theme that pervades Mad Men is that of the loneliness of man. And yes, it really is a story unapologetically about men. Of course, there are terrific narratives and foci on the female characters but at its heart, this is the tale of Don Draper, a man with secrets, a man out of time, a man who cannot function in a relationship if he is not in control, and then, when he is in control, seeks to squander what he has for the sake of excitement, of difference, of what he doesn’t know. Both Don’s - and indeed Roger Stirling’s - lack of self-awareness, lack of self-understanding, fuel the show. They seek almost in desperation a sense of self-worth which nobody can give them, except ironically and to their ignorance, themselves. The strength and weakness of man is here, glorified, explored, apologised for, digested and spat out. For such a beautiful looking show, it fully exposes the utter filth and loathsomeness capable of these arrogant, fragile and almost mad men.

1.       SIX FEET UNDER

The story of the Fishers’ funeral home and its complicated family. The five series deal with every aspect of life, from birth to death, including sex and sexuality, drugs and dreams, mental illness, “coming out,” kidnap, betrayal, murder, rapture, loss, hope and forgiveness. The characters are real and complex, they make “out of character” choices that most dramas would shirk from, they surprise, delight, swell the heart and break it. The plotting is unpredictable, awkward, meandering and a true mirror of the paths the characters take. Some simply vanish from the narrative, as do friends in reality. Some die suddenly. Six Feet Under captures the transience, beauty, joy and difficulty of life like no other series. The moment at the very end of Series 3, when Nate finally accepts his loss, is heart-rending in its understatement and heart-breaking in its truth. Never talked about, Six Feet Under, to my mind is the undisputed masterpiece of television.

JH