2023 was the International Year of the Wrong’Un.
Andrew Tate, Mason Greenwood, and Russell Brand shared the headlines with Luis Rubiales , the then Spanish football president. No-one knows how many Tory MPs are currently on bail for sexual offences, and after the scandals with Dan Wooton and Andrew Pierce it must be easier for the Met to take all of GBNews in for questioning.
This was the starting point for some of the best TV of the year.
The BBC finally came to terms with the Jimmy Savile horror story with The Reckoning, a dramatisation of Savile’s crimes, based on the book Hide in Plain Sight by Dan Davies. I had the good luck to spend a night in the pub with Dan shortly after the book was published, and he captures Savile in awful perfection. The hours spent in Savile’s flat in Roundhey Park, as the truth caught up with him are chilling.
Steve Coogan’s performance as Savile is incredible – at first it feels like an impression, with Coogan keeping a gap between himself and the monster. But as the series goes on Coogan comes to totally inhabit the role to the extent that it is hard to believe this isn’t Savile you are watching.
The BBC outsourced the production of the series to ITV to ensure that there were no attempts to protect BBC executives from the 60s and 70s. A great judgement.
The BBC also broadcast 2 documentaries by Matt Shea on Andrew Tate: The Dangerous Rise of…, and The Man Who Groomed the World. Two fantastic bits of reporting as Shea goes deep into Tate’s club of neurotic men paying money in the belief it would turn them into Alphas.
Equally compulsive viewing was Channel 4’s dispatches programme on Russel Brand, it is hard to believe that there was a time when anyone didn’t think he wasn’t a total wrong’un.
ITV’s contribution was The Long Shadow, set during the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. Toby Jones and David Morrissey are both brilliant, but I can’t help feeling that David Morrissey has caught the Ripper before.
Lots of attention rightly went to the final season of Happy Valley, which over shadowed The Gold, a brilliant BBC drama based on the Brink Matt robbery. You could watch The Gold, followed by Steve Coogan’s dramatisation of the Stephen Lawrence inquiry as one long investigation into Met Police corruption. Even better was Blue Lights – a traditional police drama set in Northern Ireland that was the best of its kind we have seen in a very long time. This is the BBCs replacement for Line of Duty, and it may in time be even better. The trailer and the marketing didn’t do it justice, and Sneaky Beaky will be my new insult of choice.
The 6th Commandment, also on the BBC, dramatised the murders of Peter Farquhar and Ann Moore-Martin, with Timothy Spall and Anne Reid both of whom are incredible. Compare that to Netflix’s very poor Maxine about the Soham murders.
Dr Who’s 60th anniversary episodes were the first in collaboration with Disney, and the big budget special effects were very noticeable. Each episode was great, but not sure that they added up to the brilliance of the 50th anniversary with John Hurt as the War Doctor. Much better was Ncuti Gatwa’s introduction as the 16th Doctor, and I have high hopes that he will get the long running series back on track. I am always suspicious of good looking Dr Who actors; the whole point of the Doctor is that he is alien, and the best Dr Who actors reflect that – Tom Baker was all hair and teeth, Peter Capaldi’s eyebrows, Matt Smith’s chin, Christopher Ecclestone’s ears. David Tennant was the closest we got to a handsome Dr Who, but he made it work through strange emotions and unnatural energy. By contrast Jodie Whittaker didn’t work for me – she was too human, too empathetic. Having watched the Christmas Special I hope that Gatwa can bring some alien weirdness to his matinee idol good looks.
Greg Wallace’s Great British Meat was one of the most jaw dropping shows of the year, exploring our food chain and food poverty in unforgettable fashion.
A desperate Government continues to wage a culture wars against the BBC, so much that news presenters reporting on a dysfunctional Tory Government resemble participants in hostage video. Despite this it continues to make essential history shows. David Harewood’s history of blackface was brilliant viewing, so much better than Netflix’s utterly half arsed attempt to televise Ibram X Kendi’s Stamped From the Beginning; so dumbed down it lost all meaning.
Laura Kuessenberg gets lots of stick for her closeness to some Government figures but her BBC series State of Chaos exposed exactly how much of a mess the country was under Johnson and Truss. Even better was Partygate – Channel 4’s dramatisation of the events leading up to the Sue Grey report.
I was shocked when I read the report and discovered exactly how many parties had taken place in Downing Street – the dramatisation is even more shocking in revealing how much privilege and a lack of ability to emphasis or understand the lives of ordinary people shaped Johnson’s decision making.
Dispatches produced 2 unmissable real life stories about Boris; Spies, Strippers, and Russian Money, and Boris, the Lord, and the Russian Spy.
The best comedy of the year was also on the BBC – the return of Gus Khan in Man Like Mobeen. If you missed the previous series watch them now — it works as a comedy, but as Mobeen tries to leave a life of crime behind he finds that the easy way out is the way back in. The latest series borrows shamelessly from Porridge, with Khan in the place of Fletcher. This shouldn’t work, but is brilliant. As always with Mobeem the laughs soon give way to something darker as the plot takes a twist – in this case a incredible scene with an inmate on suidice watch.
Durham won University Challenge, despite not knowing anything about Lee Scratch Perry
If this list feels very biased towards terrestrial TV it is because this is the year in which streaming finally got tired. My kids have all left home so I have less and less reason to have multiple streaming subscriptions, and there was less and less that I wanted to watch. I realise that some of you will be saying I told you so, but this feels like a moment in an industry which has too many companies chasing too litttle creative content. Streaming disrupted how TV was made, and because it demanded so much more content, it allowed all kinds of new genres and talents to flourish
But that age is well and truly over.
The screen writers guild strike in the US undoubtedly was a problem, but most of the show broadcast this year were written a long time ago. The full impact of the strike will be felt next year.
Streaming companies relied on subscribers not advertisers which meant they could be more controversial, and target programming at minority groups which advertisers would shy away from. But subscribers are falling and the algorithms which predicted hits are becoming less and less accurate; huge budgets were spent poor shows . Instead streaming services are becoming more like advertiser driven TV; targeting particular broad demographics with shows that are increasingly predictable. Investors, who poured zillions into streaming services want a predictable return on their cash – they are likely to be very disappointed. Succession looks like the last moment in the golden age of streaming
The best thing on Netflix was the final season of Top Boy – a show which started on Channel 4, but found it’s feet on Netflix. Britains answer to The Wire with a cast of rappers and hip-hop stars. If you haven’t watched it start now.
In second place was the return of Good Omens – David Tennant and Michael Sheen are brilliant as the unlikely pairing of Demon and Archangel saving us all form the end of the world. So good I watched it twice.
Their Fall of the House of Usher was very watchable, but too long, it would have made a great 2 hour movie, but was padded out to a 6 part series. Their remake of Dead Ringers with Rachel Weisz playing the twin Gynaecologists should have been brilliant but was somehow flat and forgettable.
Silo was supposed to be a tense sci-fi thriller set in a sealed bunker in the aftermath of some apocalypse, but was just boring. In the end I would have been prepared to risk death just to get out of the endless grey and beige.
Invasion on Apple TV was back for a second series, which was weakened by being very similar to the much better Canal+ version of War of the Worlds. It also had a sub plot about a bunch of plucky Americans who just happen to have loads of guns, and who form a resistance when the military fail. This felt like a bodged attempt to widen the shows appeal to draw in right wing Trump lovers, right at the point when most Americans are sick of seeing white men in camo waving around long guns.
Foundation was also back for season 2, but while it looks gorgeous it was slow and lacking in clear direction. For All Mankind, a brilliant sleeper hit chronicling an alternative history of the space race slipped back into a kind of Mars Soap Opera. It did still have some great moments of counter history unfolding in the background, including an England World Cup win.
Even Black Mirror somehow seemed out of ideas, as real life gets closer to it’s dystopian futures it seems less relevant
The good news is that the 3rd series of Slow Horses is still brilliant. Gary Oldman as the sweaty, sweary failed spy boss exiled from MI5 HQ and leading his own team of failed agents is works as a thriller, but also has it’s comic moments.
The Last of Us had massive hype. It is an adaptation of the classic post apocalyptic computer game. Don’t let that put you off, it is an amazing show, and if you do nothing else watch episode 3, a stand alone story of 2 men finding each other, and love, in a ruined world. One of the best TV moments of the year, nothing in the series of the build up to it can explain just how brilliant it is. I have a longer blog discussing the return of the Walking Dead elsewhere.
In non-English language TV the Indian remake of the Night Manager by Disney is exactly as amazing as it should be. The same plot but everythying turned up to 11. And more explosions. Lots more explosions.
Radio
BBC Sounds continues to be a total joy.
Julian Simpson produced the 4th season of the Lovecraft Investigations – a 10 part series updating Lovecraft’s Haunter of the Dark with ambitious Tory Brexiters, and the intersection of far right politics and the occult among it’s eldritch horrors. I managed to miss Simpson’s 4 part espionage thriller Who Is Aldritch Kemp from last year, which features lots of regulars; Phoebe Fox joins Nicola Walker, and Tim McInnerny,
Marrianna Spring continues to annoy conspiracy theorists in her role as BBC disinformation correspondent. Marianna in Conspiracyland explores the intersection of New Age beliefs and violent right wing conspiracy theories in Totnes. The far out meet the far right.
The year in swearing
Standards in public life fell so far so fast that James Cleverly calling Stockton a shithole on the floor of the House of Commons was mild compared to the Covid inquiry
Standards in public life fell so far so fast that James Cleverly calling Stockton a shithole on the floor of the House of Commons was mild compared to the Covid inquiry
I wouldn’t mind but fuckpig is exactly the kind of piss poor swearing you get from Durham School. At Belmont we had a much fruitier array of insults