I tried to make a list of the greatest British TV shows a while back, with some motivation to doing what most such lists fail to do - covering and giving credit to the full range of genres and formats, not just scripted drama and comedy.
But I gave up, as even my large ego had to accept that, in the scheme of things, I don't know anything about TV. In truth, I hardly watch any TV.
Well, I watch a lot of sport. That's what I mainly watch. Since I got Sky Sports in 2007, I've mainly watched sport, to the exclusion of most else. It didn't happen immediately, but sport, having a child, and deciding in 2018 i really needed to read books again, has meant that my watching of mainstream TV is spare at best. I certainly hardly ever just browse TV (unless it's sport). I still make time for a few series a year. This year, I can remember watching Mr Bates vs the Post Office, One Day, Sherwood, Colin from Accounts, Rings of Power, Wolf Hall, Boybands Forever, The Bear, Inside Number 9, and maybe there were a handful of others, certainly a few sports and music documentaries, but it's not much, really. Oh yes, and old Top of the Pops on a Friday night. Lots of that.
But I'm usually not watching what everyone's watching. What people tweet about and talk about - Doctor Who, Strictly, Line of Duty, The Chase, The Traitors, Ludwig, I'm a Celebrity, Slow Horses, Baby Reindeer, The 1% Club, University Challenge. I don't even watch hit show Only Connect.
I'm not snobby about TV - I used to watch any old shit - all the soaps, all the reality shows, all the talent shows, all the dodgy sitcoms, all the daytime quizzes. But now, I'm mainly out of the loop. Whereas, because I, in some sense, "work in TV", most of the people I encounter professionally know a lot, care a lot, think a lot about TV, and I, perhaps to my professional detriment, do not.
In actual fact, working on OC has been a factor in that. After a few series, I realised it was far healthier for me to shut it out completely, as far as possible, when i wasn't working in it, in terms of online and real-world responses. I do still like to know the ratings, but that's all ...
And I also think it has meant I don't watch other TV within the same - rough - genre (daytime/quiz/game etc). I don't want to think about formats of TV shows, and whether these are good quiz questions etc, if I don't have to ...
Anyway, all this is to say, I don't see myself as a TV guy, and when folk online are tweeting about this and that, I tend to think "why aren't you watching Everton-Wolves?" "why aren't you watching Sri Lanka-West Indies?", "why aren't you watching Baltimore Ravens-Houston Texans?" ... which is what I intended to watch a bit of on Christmas Day evening, to relax with a little bit of magical Lamar Jackson and his Baltimore Ravens. But then it wasn't on Sky Sports NFL and I wasn't sharp enough to remember it was the first venture into NFL by Netflix, and I was a bit bereft.
And Juliette said, "Do you want to watch Gavin and Stacey?" And I said ok, remembering that actually I'd watched all the other episodes of Gavin and Stacey, and this used to be the kind of thing I watched .... and I'm glad I did, because I really enjoyed it, which in a way is hardly the point, but in a way is. Perhaps I had become a TV snob and thought I was too good for Gavin and Stacey and should only watch certain anointed shows and not heartwarming Christmas specials, but Gavin and Stacey was actually always a good show, and it is a weird little blip that a small BBC3 sitcom from 2007 became the biggest show on TV in 2024, and they can't change the characters' surnames, even though they're West, Shipman and Sutcliffe.
I guess the point is it's nice to watch what everyone else is watching every now and then, and ... what else ... people should stop hating James Corden. It's a bit weird.
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