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 20th 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 20th 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
