New Year’s Eve 2009 held high expectations for me. Working under the assumption that, as the last night of the year, December 31 would produce television that was on a level far superior to any other day of 2009, I decided to forfeit my party plans in favour of a night at home. My belief was that by surrendering my evening to the whims of Sky+ I would escape the novelty glasses, the party poppers and the customary awkward hugs at midnight which dogged my usual New Year’s Eve celebrations. Instead, I would be treated to hours upon hours of great television celebrating the shows that defined the Noughties, those which had made it one of the most innovative and forward thinking decades of television in memory. So, as I settled down with a glass of wine in one hand and the remote in the other, I was quite optimistic, and sure in my deduction that with over eight hundred channels at my disposal I would easily find a wealth of programmes that would epitomise the magic of the Noughties. I was wrong. So terribly wrong…
Firstly, I should tell you that having Sky+ does not guarantee good television. It may be hard for those without the magic service to believe this, but trust me; nobody wants to be subjected to Derek Acorah by choice. However, what shocked me most about the majority of Sky channels was that they had made no alterations to their regular scheduling in an effort to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Living TV for example, continued with the same re-runs of CSI and Criminal Minds as every other night of the year. Don’t get me wrong. Both of these are very good shows, but hardly classics in the noughties canon. Whether this was a poor attempt at ignoring the holiday altogether, or a serious lack of imagination on the producer’s part we will never know. What soon became obvious though was that this was a sentiment shared by many of the channels on offer. So it was with a slightly less naïve outlook that I decided to shun Digital TV for the night and turn my gaze to the stalwarts of terrestrial television: RTÉ, BBC and Channel 4.
BBC proved probably the most entertaining broadcaster of the night, with Jools Holland’s Hootenanny providing an evening of excellent music, drunken celebrities and a polar bear. Showcasing a wealth of talent, it was worth catching purely for the atrociously off key version of Auld Lang Syne that echoed throughout the sound stages at midnight, which was surprising given the amount of number ones the revellers had between them. BBC 1 meanwhile, saw Graham Norton review the year in his own unique way with the help of a very witty Sarah Jessica Parker, Trinity alumni Dominic West and the eternally hilarious Joan Rivers. Throw in an appearance from the Jedward lads and it ran away with the award for best show of the night. What set it apart from the other programmes on offer though, was its interest in evaluating and celebrating the past ten years in a humorous way. Rivers’ comment that Susan Boyle is a perfect example that “sometimes makeovers don’t work” had me laughing for a good ten minutes after. Followed by a twenty minute programme designed around the fireworks display over the Thames in London, BBC 1 became the only channel to designate an individual show to the countdown to the New Year; others had simply slotted the celebrations into their other scheduled programming. However, while vastly enjoyable and certainly entertaining, BBC failed to produce a show which epitomised the trends of the Noughties.
RTÉ on the other hand, embraced the revival of the talent show, a format which had come to dominate television during the decade. With The All Ireland Talent Show occupying the all important midnight slot, RTÉ followed in the footsteps of Popstars, The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent in an effort to highlight the home-grown talent the country has to offer. However, like the ill-fated You’re a Star before it, The All Ireland Talent Show fails to capture the magic or the excitement of its Anglo counterparts and the show was something I felt I had to endure, rather than enjoy.
Channel 4 meanwhile took a more straightforward approach in its review of the decade by doing just that: reviewing the Noughties under a plethora of different headings. The show that caught my eye when browsing the TV listings was The Greatest TV Shows of the Noughties. The primary reason for this was because I thought it might write this article for me. What I got instead was a bemusing and very strange list of English TV shows most of which I had heard of, but never watched. What was most interesting about the review though, was not the shows it included but rather its exclusions. I have to break the news to you right now: The Wire wasn’t even mentioned and Top Gear took first place. In fact, only two American shows made the top twenty, both of which started their run well before the turn of the 21st century: Friends (which finished a ten year run in 2004) and The Simpsons (which many of its celebrity fans agreed had experienced a serious decline in quality). Where were Lost and The Sopranos? Where was Grey’s Anatomy? Instead of such US heavyweights, slots on the all important list had gone to Dragons Den and I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
I sat there in shock as events unravelled, and was struck by a scary thought. If John Cusack and Roland Emmerich(and the Ancient Mayan civilization) were to be believed, the world will end in 2012. And if we believe that these twenty shows (which, I forgot to mention, include Grand Designs) epitomise the best of televised output in the last ten years, then we are definitely in trouble. On the plus side, if there are indeed only two more years left on this earth, I won’t have to sit my finals and I’ll only have to endure another two New Year’s Eves. There’s always a silver lining.
