Did You Fun My Wife?

What with the BrokenTV team being a great big bunch of foulmouthed ne’er-do-wells, one thing that has always fascinated us is the history of swearing on various mediums. In the UK, as every schoolboy knows, Kenneth Tynan was the first person to say ‘fuck’ on British television, in 1965, and a Frost-baiting Felix Dennis was the first to say ‘cunt’ on-air, in 1970. The latter of these can be seen here, in the brilliant Without Walls documentary ‘The Greatest F***ing Show On Television”, put together by Britain’s Minister Of Swearing, Jerry Sadowitz. Both uses were broadcast live and very much against the wishes of the respective programme makers.

The first scripted use of the word ‘cunt’ came in 1979 ITV Playhouse one-off drama ‘No Mama No’, which we remember seeing in a clip show once (the programme on swearing preceding that Sadowitz prog, if our sketchy memory is correct). POP FACT: That episode of ITV Playhouse was directed by Roland Joffe, whose most recent directorial work was the terrible, awful t.A.T.u-based movie “You & I”.

Strange thing is, we’ve never been able to find out a few other sweary ‘firsts’ that you’d expect to be just as well known. We’ve heard from a few sources that John Cleese was the first person to say the word “shit” on television (not least from Cleese himself, when delivering his famous eulogy to Graham Chapman), but never where it was actually used. If it had been vetoed from use in episodes of Python, we can’t really see him having used it when appearing in other, tamer shows of that era, like At Last The 1948 Show, The Frost Report or the made for US television How To Irritate People. We’d guess that the only possible place it could be from would be a broadcast of a Secret Policeman’s Ball, or maybe a clip of it shown in an arts programme. Anyone know any different?

Similarly, we can’t seem to find any record of the first scripted use of the word ‘fuck’ on British television. We expect it would certainly have to pre-date 1979’s ‘No Mama No’, and if so, given the first time the words ‘fuck’ and ‘cunt’ were used on the BBC was in a 1980 dramatisation of the ‘Penguin Books/Lady Chatterley’s Lover’ trial, it would have to be from an ITV programme. Anyone? Maybe Charlie Drake really did whisper it to Henry McGee during that Sunday Night At The London Palladium sketch shown in ‘The Greatest F***ing Show On Television”, of course.

When it comes to cinematic fuckery, it’s generally accepted that two films from 1967, a US/UK adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, and I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘isname (the latter being one of the examples proving that yes, surprisingly, Michael Winner did once have a point for existing), were probably the first motion pictures where the word ‘fuck’ was used. It also seems to be the consensus view that the first major Hollywood picture to use the word was in Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H, from 1970, with actor John Schuck ad-libbing the line “All right, Bud, your fucking head is coming right off!" during the football scene, and director Altman deciding to keep it in. So, that’s that settled, then.

OR IS IT? There may well be a use of the F-bomb that predates those. By quite a margin, and from quite a surprising source.

Bosko was an early Looney Tunes character, created by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising. Created in 1927 while Harman and Ising were working at Walt Disney Studios, you might expect the case to be that Bosko is some kind of wacky talking animal. A mole, or something. Erm, you’d be wrong. When Harman registered the drawings of his new character with the copyright office in January 1928, it was under the description of ‘Negro boy’. Which might explain why there aren’t any Bosko stuffed toys, lunchboxes or theme park rides around these days.

Anyhoo, after moving studios a few times, Harman and Ising ended up at Warner Brothers, taking Bosko with them, and ‘the Talk-Ink Kid’ (as he was dubbed) starred in 39 early Looney Tunes shorts, the last of which was released in 1933, and was called ‘Bosko’s Picture Show’.

This seemed to be pretty much a thrown together collection of odd ideas (and re-used sequences from earlier cartoons) presumably getting them out of the way before the character was retired, with Harman and Ising about to move to MGM. The plot – such as it was – saw Bosko hosting a movie show at his own fleapit cinema. After some tatty curtains are drawn, we cut to Bosko, sitting at his ‘Furtaliser’ organ, imploring everyone join him in a singalong of “We’re In The Money’.  

We then cut to a newsreel (from ‘Out-Of-Tone News’), including stories from a peace conference between World leaders in Geneva (i.e. a pleasingly old-school punch-up), and a visit to “Epson Salts, England”, which basically turns out to be an excuse to throw in a crowd pleasing spoof of the Zeppo-era Marx Brothers. There is also one of the first ever instances of Adolf Hitler being satirised, in a scene where “Famous Screen Lover” Jimmy Durante goes on European Vacation:

Now that’s that’s pretty cutting-edge satire (er, no pun intended), considering it would be another five years before Charlie Chaplin even started planning The Great Dictator, and most other animated swipes at Hitler merely portrayed him as a hapless dummkopf. So, a cartoon ‘Negro boy’, and an animated Hitler chasing a (fairly offensive stereotype of a) Jewish entertainer with an axe. Have we got to the offensive bit yet? No.

After a fairly tame spoof of Laurel and Hardy (named ‘Haurel and Lardy’), it’s on to the main ‘feature’, a ‘TNT Pictures’ presentation of “He Done Her Dirt… And How!”, where devious villain Dirty Dalton plots to kidnap Bosko’s girlfriend Honey. The cur!

No idea if legendary Mad Magazine artist Don Martin ever cited Harman-Ising as an inspiration for his style, but Dirty Dalton does look very Don-Martin-y there. Anyway, at this point in the cartoon we cut to a furious Bosko, standing on his stool and shaking his fist in anger, shouting an exclamation of… well. It’s here things get a little muddy.

According to the subtitles on the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 6 box set, what he utters is “The dirty fox!”. Upon actually watching the cartoon, it’s quite clear this isn’t what Bosko is actually saying. Listen for yourselves, here’s the cartoon in full, and the interesting bit comes at 5 minutes and 51 seconds.

 

So, did you arrive at the same conclusion as us? As far as we’re aware, the word ‘fox’ has never, ever actually ended with a hard ‘K’ sound like that. While it’s true Bosko doesn’t clearly say the F-bomb itself (the sound is a bit scratchy even in this remastered version, meaning the middle vowel of the offending word sounds a bit distorted), what he says is closer to that than pretty much any other word in the dictionary. And hey, ‘fock’ is how people from Northern Ireland say ‘fuck’. Maybe he was from Northern Ireland, and had simply lost his Norn Iron accent for every word in the English language apart from that one.

Animation fans over the years have suggested this was placed deliberately by Harman and Ising as a swipe at Warners’ animation head Leon Schlesinger, who the pair had quarrelled with numerous times throughout their spell at Warner Brothers. Though, equally, Schlesinger and Warners did see fit for the cartoon to be distributed, which does dilute this theory somewhat.

It’s all a bit curious, to be honest. Nickelodeon re-edited the cartoon after it’s first screening on the network, copying Bosko’s later use of the word “cur” and pasting it over the word “fock”, though this is no guarantee that there was a great big swear, just that it sounded like one. The Bosko shorts were designed for adult audiences (hence the whole ‘Hitler chases Jewish entertainer with axe’ bit), but even so, using the word ‘fuck’ would still have been taboo. Hmm, eh?

Here’s our crackpot theory. Harman-Ising deliberately put that word in there, claimed “no, it doesn’t say that, he’s saying ‘fox’, clearly. Anyway, we’re off now, bye!”, and no-one really bothered to question it. This kind of undercover filth can slip past The Man from time to time, such as the Monty Python team getting the name “Mrs. B.J. Smegma of 13, The Crescent, Belmont” past naive BBC producers, or Ben Elton’s ‘Happy Families’ originally airing uncut in a pre-watershed slot on BBC One in 1985, despite containing a scene where Hollywood executives snort cocaine. Now, why isn’t Happy Families available on DVD, eh? It was brilliant.

 

POSTSCRIPT.

Yes, we know that wasn’t a very satisfying ending to this piece. Shut up. To try and make up for that, while trying to fill some of the swearing-related gaps in our TV knowledge, we stumbled over what might just be the most fascinating document on the entire Ofcom website. Dating from 1998, a 74 page PDF all about swearing on telly. Get in!

Highlights include:

The results of a survey on which kinds of programming could acceptably contain swearing:

The results of a survey where swearwords are ‘scored’ by offensiveness:

A similar table, but for the regional reactions to swear words. People in Scotland find the word ‘bastard’ more offensive than than southerners, for example:

But our favourite, by a long way, is a list of individual broadcasts containing swearing, from which clips were used for the qualitative research. It includes the time of broadcast, the programme, and the individual words used. This is marvellous, and something we could spend an entire update deconstructing. It’s on page 68, if you want to see it in full:

Yep, that show at the top of the list is correct, a kids show, going out at 3.55pm, containing the phrase “dirty slut”. It was a reading of a Roald Dahl book, if you’re curious. Even more interesting was an episode of Noel’s House Party where the phrase “sack of shit” was uttered. Man, we pity whoever was in the gunge tank for that episode.

 

Finally, a table on the strength of swearwords from a 1994 study on “Radio and Audience Attitudes”:

So, 3% of people still considered ‘damn’ to be a strong swearword in 1994, and 6% still thought ‘bloody’ was shocking. 11% of people didn’t know what a tosser was (and, having just typed it, neither does the inline spell check on Windows Live Writer), while one person in 20 didn’t know what a wanker was. [Clears throat, smiles wryly.] After all, Piers Morgan didn’t have his own television series until fifteen years later. [Crowd boos, throws rotten vegetables.] Ah, please yourselves.

The full Broadcasting Standards Commission report on “Bad Language – What Are The Limits” can be downloaded here.

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BrokenTV’s Telly Board Game Bacchanal: Part One

Ah, summer’s approaching. You know what this means? That’s right, a week stuck in a caravan park on the north Wales coastline, drinking warm Kestrel Lager with only the sound of the tinny iPod speaker you picked up from a pound shop and the relentless paradiddle of the never ending rain on the tin roof for company. Oh, and the repeated whining noise of your life partner reminding you how you pissed the holiday money away on a 3D-ready television set, and that this is all you now can afford.

The only one way for two people confined to an ‘intimate’ metal box in bad weather to keep themselves ‘entertained’, if you know what we mean. Eh? Eh?

Yep, BOARDGAMES!

Now, as a telly blog, we’ve decided to round up a few of the best and brightest board games related to programmes on the gogglebox. As one might expect, the majority of these tie in with existing gameshows. After all, it makes sense to try and encapsulate the glitz and glamour of a pre-watershed ITV non-soap within the confines of a box. What could be easier to adapt than ‘Play Your Cards Right’? All you really need is a pack of cards and Wikipedia mobile really (“the estimated 2009 GDP of Lesotho is USD1.6bn – higher or lower?”), but you can also buy it as a proper boardgame.

BUT… we don’t want to give you that! (See there, a clever reference to that thing that man says on that quiz programme?) Instead we’re going to take a glance as some of the more curious choices of programme for the dice-and-counter treatment. We’re going keep a running score on each aspect of every game we rate, so that you can tell which is the best, and we’re starting with…

BREAD (BBC TV/Paul Lamond Games, 1989)

 

(See how we’ve taken these photos on a rug, so as to better encapsulate the ‘family sitting on the floor huddled around a thrilling board game’ effect, but mainly because we’ve got a new rug.)

Yes, with a huge amount of gratitude to Derek Williams of the Erant Splendens blog, Iconochromatic podcast and ResonanceFM’s One Life Left for sending this in, what better way to while away a seemingly never ending caravan holiday than by playing a “family board game” “Based on the No. 1 Comedy Soap”?

See? Whether the antics of the Boswells could really be classified as a “comedy soap”, we’re not sure. And even if it could, surely the number one spot would go to Soap, the marvellous ABC sitcom which ran from 1977 to 1981? Or, if the chart only permits UK comedy soaps, Acorn Antiques? Maybe we’re overthinking it. Either way, the cover of the board game uses the “porcelain hen stuffed with money” motif as seen in the title sequence of the show, which works pretty well. Admittedly, this could be down to Paul Lamond Games not having the rights to any photos of the cast, but in any event we do hope there is a little special plastic hen inside the box, which operates as ‘the bank’. +5 POINTS

In any case, what we’ve really got here is something we’re going to call Jobseekers’ Allowance Monopoly. How many people can play? And at what ages must they be? Will the game be geared more towards the first series of Bread, which aired in a post-watershed slot allowing for Grandad to mutter “piss off!” to whichever unlucky Boswell was delivering his dinner? Or the later primetime series’, where everything was toned down a bit?

Hmm, probably the late-period of the series, then. This means there won’t be a special “Grandad tells you to piss off” card. –2 POINTS

So, shall we take a look inside the box? Yes, let’s!

First up, the many, many rules. It’s all really quite complicated. This isn’t a good thing, as no-one likes having to sit a frigging exam before even rolling the dice for the first time. –5 POINTS

So, what’s the object of the game? Leave home. That’s basically it, fly away from the red terraced nest of Elswick Street, Liverpool. However, in order to do this, you need to fulfil a number of criteria:

Interesting that Jean Boht’s character is referred to throughout the game as “Mrs. Boswell”, which seems awfully formal. Surely “Ma Boswell” would make more sense, but we’re not going to deduct points for that.

Each player must adopt the identity of one member of the Boswell family, which they must play for the duration of the game. Each of these has a number of characteristics, which has an impact on the things they can ‘do’ ‘in-game’. Let’s go through them:

First up, it’s Joey, seen here in his classic Peter Howitt guise +5 POINTS, as opposed to that other bloke who never looked right with his hair like that. Joey hates manual work (much like us), and will NOT visit That Irish Tart Lilo Lil.

Adrian, represented here by a slightly wonky portrait of Jonathon Morris, is the resident sensitive poetic type (much like us), and also refuses to do any manual labouring. Also, he will not defraud the social, again like us, no matter what anyone says or has photographic evidence of.

Aveline, who is a model, never does anything dodgy (much like us), and cannot drive. Here she is in classic ‘Gilly Coman’ mode, which is good, as Melanie Hill never seemed right for the part once she left. +2 POINTS

Youngest brother Billy, who here looks just like actor Nick Conway who played him in the series, save for his portrait here having a really unsettling mouth that grows more terrifying the longer you look at it (much like us), will not benefit from his partner, and never gets free telephone calls.

Jack, played in the series by Victor “Goodnight Sweetheart, Sean’s Show” McGuire, only does manual work, and never gets free petrol. Much like us.

Finally, there’s estranged patriarch, council sanitation operative and right scruffy old get (much like us) Freddie Boswell. Not only can’t he drive a car and be unable to do manual work on account of his dodgy ticker, his name was also used as a derogatory nickname for similarly unkempt former chairman of Liverpool FC, David Moores, which was quite funny. +2 POINTS

 

So, with such a wide range of characters to choose from, hopefully the actual ‘in play’ counters will look splendid, maybe being little action cut-out figures of the characters, or maybe even little Monopoly-type figures representing each Boswell? A little plastic dust-cart for Dad, or a little van with a rainbow painted on the side for Jack?

Oh. –6 POINTS

Anyway, what of the board?

Yes, it’s all quite involved, with the splendid addition of the family dinner table in the middle of the board. Sadly though, NO plastic hen to put the money into. –5 POINTS. As you can tell from the layout the bulk of the action hinges on the use of DHSS cards, and Mrs. Boswell cards. These take a similar form to ‘Chance’ and ‘Community Chest’ cards in Monopoly, and help of hinder each player accordingly.

They seem nicely professionally made from the backs of the cards, which is a nice touch. +5 POINTS.

But the instructions on the cards themselves aren’t very professionally printed. We don’t even get little comic illustrations of someone getting kicked up the arse, like Mr Moneybags does in Monopoly. Boo. –3 POINTS

The cards themselves are where the character of the show comes into play, albeit in the same way as a ZX Spectrum text adventure based on the show might have done. The Mrs Boswell cards look at your relationship, family and personal life, and include finds like “you buy a Turbo Charged Reliant Robin (Cost £240, Resale value £120)”, or the punctuationally inelegant “Your partner walks out on you! (can’t compete with mum), taking half of your money. Return half of all your ready cash and return your partner card”. They also contain some fairly nonsensical comments, such as “TELEPHONE – A CILLA SPECIAL LORA LORA MONEY. Cost £120, Resale value £80”, or “SHOULD-A DROVE MORE CAREFUL LIKE – Car written off in crash”, that second one presumably being delivered by an Italian-Scouser. –5 POINTS

The DHSS cards offer you benefits, jobs and accommodation, many of which are dipped a faux-humorous sauce, meaning you might find your character becoming a “Ducks Trotter Chicken Packer”, or “Cuta Da Finga Kitchen Gadgets Sales Demonstrator”. Hoo, our sides. –2 POINTS Luckily, the other cards don’t try to tweak our comedy nipples, meaning the choices of accommodation are along the lines of ‘terraced house’ or ‘high rise’, and the furniture cards merely say “Furniture”. Fair enough. +2 POINTS

All in all, it’s a bit of a longwinded affair, and we’re not quite sure how many families opened this box on Christmas evening only to baulk at just how complicated it all is. A good board game should only need about two minutes of instruction, such as Trivial Pursuit or Hungry Hippos. With Bread, you pretty much need to be passing around the rules along with the dice –6 POINTS

Sorry Carla Lane. Sorry Boswells.

FINAL SCORE: MINUS 11 POINTS

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Ten People Who Would Make Better Hosts Of Match Of The Day 2 Than Tim Lovejoy

Given this entertaining blog post, the Guardian certainly seem worried enough about the prospect of Tim Lovejoy taking over the soon-to-be-vacant presenter’s chair on Match Of The Day 2. And yet, we really can imagine it happening. “Well, he does test well with the under-24s”, we can envision a clueless BBC commissioning editor uttering in Meeting Room C, “and he really does encapsulate the fun element that we’re trying to convey with our Sunday night highlights show.” A bit far-fetched? Don’t forget, we’re only in this situation because BBC1 controller Jay Hunt had a bright idea along the lines of “well, The One Show is doing very well in the ratings, but we need Chris Evans on Fridays to try and bring in some of the magic that made ITV1’s OFI Sunday such a huge success back in 2005. Er, it was a success, wasn’t it?”

So, would bringing in Tim Lovejoy be a good idea? A man that someone who’d been in a coma since 1994 might fleetingly think is ‘pretty cool’, right until the point where he starts talking? A man who prides himself on his achingly cutting-edge taste in hip new music stretching all the way from Kasabian, to The Cribs, to anyone else willing to pretend they’re mates with him on a televised sofa? The person who presented an edition of Sky One’s “Tim Lovejoy And The Allstars” whilst wearing a Ramones T-shirt, but when challenged by guest Martin Freeman to name two albums by the band, could only meekly murmur “er… the Best of The Ramones?”

No, then. So here, just in case anyone from BBC Sport is passing by, we present our list of TEN PEOPLE BETTER SUITED TO HOSTING MATCH OF THE DAY 2 THAN TIM LOVEJOY.

1, Bob Wilson, anchorman.

2. Re-edited archive footage of David Coleman.

3. Mark “Lawro” Lawrenson in a sparkly jacket and spinning bow tie, having just been handed a copy of that forwarded email containing a load of old Tim Vine jokes incorrectly attributed to the late Tommy Cooper, even though one of the jokes is about a film that wasn’t even made until about eleven years after Cooper died.

4. North Korean dictator, Chairman of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea’s National Defense Commission, General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, the and the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, Kim Jong-il, who we’re guessing knows slightly more about British football pre-1992 than Tim Lovejoy does.

5. A big threatening wasp that hovers no further than six inches away from the perturbed faces of Lee Dixon and Martin Keown each and every time they try to dissect a controversial offside decision.

6. The cartoon pig from the covers of Now That’s What I Call Music volumes Three, Four and Five. Despite not having been seen in public since 1985, retains a greater amount of credibility than the man who left Sky Sports to host Channel Five’s David Beckham’s Soccer USA.

7. A sixty-seven-year-old belligerent, drunk rugby union fan from Llanelli, who openly detests football with every last fibre of his very being, who insists on referring to the sport as ‘kick-ball’, the footballers as ‘them overpaid ponces’, and who insists on restricting any post-match analysis to the slow motion replays of tricky midfielders ‘going to ground easily’ that he deems the most overtly homosexual.

8. A spider.

9. The terrifying, slobbering, rasping shrieks of a man who, due to an ill-advised day trip to World O’ Rollercoasters by his eight-months pregnant mother in 1967, was born with an inside out face. Simulcast on BBC HD.

10. George Lamb.

 

Okay, okay, that last one was a comically unrealistic choice thrown in for shock value, designed to underline what a hugely unsuitable choice Lovejoy would be for the gig. In any event, the BBC should think carefully about who replaces the affable tobyjug face of Adrian Chiles on the Sunday night highlights show  we always manage to miss the first twenty sodding minutes of. The intelligent choice would be clearly be James Richardson, best known from Channel Four’s Football Italia, Setanta and the Guardian’s Football Weekly. The ooh-wouldn’t-it-be-good, pity-it-won’t-happen choice would be Sir Jeff Stelling.

Both of those would be great, perfect, even, and that’s why they probably won’t happen. You never get what you want in life, that’s why each new episode of Doctor Who will be between 20% and 50% more disappointing than you hope it’ll be, and why each haircut we get never quite makes us look as attractive in the mirror as we are in our heads.

That’s why we’d be happy to see the gig go to former Sky Sports News presenter, occasional Guardian Football Weekly stand-in and former host of 1990s BBC daytime game show Turnabout, Rob Curling. Why? Why not. He’s affable enough, he has the ability to be gently self-effacing when required, won’t make the mistake of assuming his opinion on events is why the viewers have tuned in – though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s why BBC Sport employs pundits, and hey, he’d certainly be as good as anyone else. Just as long as it’s not Tim Lovejoy.

Or Colin Murray.

 

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Our Favourite Bit Of New Doctor Who So Far

In the latest episode, where Amy is in the retro-future Britain starship’s information room, a display in the background of Starship UK’s informational terror video looks kind of familiar. Look to the left of beardy-Mc-Info’s shoulder here.

Compare that to an old BBCtv on-screen ident, in use from 1962 until (we think) 1964 (when BBCtv would have become BBC-1 due to the launch of BBC-2, and would have needed a new ident). 
(image taken from the splendid 625.uk.com):

An ident which would still have been in use in 1963, when Doctor Who first took to the air. A lovely little touch on the part of the set designers, there.

As for the remainder of New Who, we’re enjoying it a lot. Never mind fretting over any plot inconsistencies, clumsy exposition or The Doctor hacking every computer in the world using a mobile phone, and just enjoy the ride. It’s back!

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The Top 100 Television Programmes of the 00s: An Important Statistical Review

It’s the running theme that just won’t die. To round off the coverage of the 00s, just before we put the finishing touches to the book version of the Top 100*, here’s a bit of analysis. We know how all of our readers love pointless bar charts. Also, a poll of polls, which should be really exciting for people who love polls.

(* Three new entries! More pointless meandering! Fewer YouTube links, because really, what would be the point! The 25 worst TV programmes of the decade! Other things!)

TV CHANNEL OF THE DECADE

Which network was home to the most shows on our list? We’ve taken the channels that each programme started on – no point in giving BBC Two the credit for The Thick Of It when BBC Four took the risk of commissioning it, for example – and come up with the following:

So, BBC Two tops that particular chart, with 21 of the hundred best programmes of the decade originating on the channel. Channel Four comes second, proving that it wasn’t all complete shit like Balls Of Steel, Bo Selecta and Fonejacker on there in the 00s. The fact that three of the top four on there are BBC channels does kind of prove how good the BBC actually bloody is, while the number of shows from Sky One, blushing poster boy of the free market system, is zero. No, James Murdoch, just throwing all your money at American imports, even if they’re really good American imports (that were popular on other British channels first anyway) doesn’t really cut it.

It’s not all bad news for the Murdoch family (“Phew! I was concerned there for a moment.” – R. Murdoch), as Fox proves to be the winner from the other side of the pond, taking up five positions on the list, including of course that all-important number one programme. Close behind, possibly the greatest source of genuinely exciting and groundbreaking new comedy over the course of the entire decade, is newcomer Adult Swim, and really, we could easily have included more Adult Swim shows here. A lot more. ITV1 fare better than might have been expected for a network that continues to employ Piers Morgan, sharing fifth place on the list with Fox.

But, of course, this system of working out which was the best channel of the decade is as unfair as the General Election vote of someone who’d pored over party policies, MP voting records and Hansard for the last two decades counting the same as someone who’ll vote for whichever political party leader has the most pregnant wife. This is a meritocracy, and as such, here is a list where each channel has been scored by the position of each show. The channel with the show at number one gets 100 points for that show, the channel with the show at number 100 gets just one point. And this is the result of that thing we just said.

So, BBC Two remains top, though with less of a lead over second placed Channel Four. Fox leapfrog BBC One, BBC Four and ITV1 into third, thanks to their brilliant drama and comedy output, especially Arrested Development, being placed so highly in the rundown. The quality of programming from Adult Swim shines through here too, with it enjoying a higher position on our ‘leaderboard’ than NBC, HBO and ITV1. And BBC Three, but then that’s not really a surprise.

 

BEST TELEVISUAL YEAR OF THE DECADE

So with BBC Two walking away with the entirely notional prize of “Best Channel Of The Last Decade”, which year will prove to be responsible for the largest proportion of the Top 100? Or, to put it another way, as this is a listing of our favourite programmes of the decade, this will reveal which year of television we enjoyed the most, which could become a handy reference guide in case passing BBC Two researchers are looking for talking head gobshites to take part in the almost inevitable “I Love 200x” series. (Note to said researchers: we’ll do almost anything for money, apart from take part in a montage of clip show idiots singing along to a theme tune. But apart from that, yes, literally anything. If you know what we mean.)

As before, we’ve only considered the first year that a show was on air – no point giving 2004 the credit for a programme 2003 took the risk on – and here’s a first chart only taking into account the number of shows on the chart from each year:

 Shut up, looking at this IS an interesting and worthwhile use of your time. So, fifteen of the programmes on our list were born in 2003, and fifteen popped out of a commissioning editor’s schedule-hole in 2007. 2005 and 2006 weren’t far behind, with the worst showing coming from 2009. Could this be because the new shows that made their inaugural appearance in the Radio Times that year have yet to become firm favourites, or that TV companies were too scared of tabloid scorn to take any interesting risks? Time, that fickle old strumpet, will tell.

“But which year is best? We want a list going by chart placing, like before!” scream the imaginary people we like to think are still reading. Well, just for you should you exist, here:

So, 2005 pips 2007 to second place, largely thanks to programmes like My Name Is Earl and The Colbert Report. But, 2003 was the very best year for television over the last decade, helped by it being home to the mighty Arrested Development. And we’ll be handing 2003 the shiny silver “Best Year” trophy, just as soon as time travel is invented.

 

THE BIG POLL OF POLLS

Onto the main, pretty damn huge, and hugely damned pretty part of our stat-fest. We looked at ten other listings of “The Best TV Shows of the 00s”, from the UK, USA and Australia, and scored them all up accordingly. Not all of them were top hundred lists (which is probably why it didn’t take them until sodding April to get to number one, eh readers?), but we’ve accounted for that. Each show in number one position received 110 points – ten points bonus for being So Damn Good, the show in number two position on each chart received 99 points, number three 98, and so on for as long as there’s an entry to score. We’re sure you’re with us here. The other charts we’ve considered are from the following publications:

The Chiaroscuro Coalition
Entertainment Weekly
Hollywood.com
Starpulse.com
news.com.au
The Times
SFGate
Paste Magazine
The Onion AV Club
The Telegraph

…and of course, plucky British upstarts BrokenTV. And just to be extra fair, the programmes that we picked for our chart don’t score double points, even though we’re always right about everything.

Keep in mind that while our list only included programmes which began in the years 2000 to 2009, the others were happy to include anything broadcast in that decade. And so, here’s the rundown, a full Top 200:

Pos	Show	TOTAL
1	The Sopranos	1022
2	The Wire	906
3	The Office (UK)	860
4	Arrested Development	703
5	Mad Men	657
6	Lost	635
7	The West Wing	621
8	Deadwood	472
9	Curb Your Enthusiasm	423
10	The Daily Show	361
11	The Thick of It	360
12	Breaking Bad	348
13	30 Rock	347
14	Doctor Who	328
15	Big Brother	312
16	The Shield	280
17	Freaks and Geeks	278
18	The Power of Nightmares	277
19	24	273
"	Battlestar Galactica	273
21	The Office (US)	271
22	Friday Night Lights	263
23	Dexter	257
24	Buffy the Vampire Slayer	255
25	Peep Show	250
26	Flight Of The Conchords	228
27	QI	215
28	TV Burp	202
29	American Idol	196
30	The Apprentice	186
31	9/11	183
"	Sex and the City	183
33	The Colbert Report	172
34	Tim & Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!	169
"	Veronica Mars	169
36	Six Feet Under	168
"	The Venture Bros	168
38	Bleak House	167
39	Malcolm in the Middle	166
40	How I Met Your Mother	165
41	Chapelle's Show	157
42	A History of Britain	156
43	The X Factor	146
44	Strictly Come Dancing	145
45	Jamie’s School Dinners	141
46	The Chaser’s War On Everything	135
47	House	132
"	The Blue Planet	132
49	Who Do You Think You Are?	127
50	Skins	124
51	Life on Mars	123
52	South Park	122
53	Criminal Justice	104
54	In the Night Garden	102
55	Pop Idol	99
56	Survivor	97
57	Monarchy: the Royal Family at Work	96
58	Jam	95
59	Planet Earth	94
"	Slings and Arrows	94
"	Summer Heights High	94
62	Oz	93
63	Bodies	92
"	Everybody Loves Raymond	92
"	Gilmore Girls	92
66	Newstopia	92
67	The Armando Ianucci Shows	91
"	The Comeback	91
69	Marion & Geoff	90
"	Timeshift	90
71	Frontline Football	89
72	Band of Brothers	87
"	Futurama	87
74	Still Game	86
75	Phoenix Nights	85
"	Weeds	85
77	Family Guy	84
"	Firefly	84
"	Little Britain	84
"	State of Play	84
"	The Showbiz Set	84
82	15 Storeys High	83
"	The Fallen	83
84	Big Love	82
"	My Name Is Earl	82
86	Cranford	81
"	Wit	81
88	The Century of the Self	80
"	The Jeremy Kyle Show	80
90	Brass Eye Special	79
"	Rome	79
"	Tomorrow, La Scala!	79
93	Undeclared	78
94	Charlie Brooker's News Wipe	77
"	Out of Control	77
96	Top Chef	76
"	Top Gear	76
98	Adam and Joe Go Tokyo	74
"	Britain’s Got Talent	74
"	Krapp’s Last Tape	74
101	Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution	73
"	Eastbound & Down	73
"	Not Only, But Always	73
104	American Dad!	72
"	Dispatches: Beslan	72
"	Location, Location, Location	72
"	Wonder Showzen	72
108	Black Books	71
"	The Private Life of a Masterpiece	71
110	Living with Michael Jackson	70
111	CSI	69
"	Forgiven	69
113	Bored To Death	68
"	Da Ali G Show	68
"	Grand Designs	68
116	No Direction Home: Bob Dylan	67
"	The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson	67
"	Weakest Link	67
119	Desperate Housewives	66
"	Richard & Judy	66
"	The Riches	66
122	Never Mind the Buzzcocks	65
"	Stephen Fry in America	65
"	That Mitchell and Webb Look	65
125	Dead Set	64
"	Have I Got News for You	64
127	Early Doors	63
"	Footballers’ Wives	63
"	God on Trial	63
130	Look Around You	62
131	Damages	61
"	The Lie of the Land	61
133	The Unloved	60
134	Britz	59
"	The Lost Prince	59
"	The South Bank Show	59
137	Maxwell	58
138	Michael Palin’s New Europe	57
"	Soccer Saturday	57
140	How We Built Britain	56
"	Pierrepoint	56
"	Red Riding	56
143	MasterChef	55
"	Sealab 2021	55
"	When Louis Met the Hamiltons	55
146	Life on Mars	54
"	Robert Newman's A History of Oil	54
148	I Love…	53
"	Lost in Austen	53
"	The Sarah Silverman Program	53
151	Grass	52
"	Springwatch	52
153	Testees	50
"	Wife Swap	50
155	Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares	49
"	Restoration	49
157	Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain	48
"	Jerry Springer: the Opera	48
159	Outnumbered	47
160	100 Greatest Britons	46
"	Days That Shook the World	46
162	Land Girls	45
163	Who Killed Saturday Night TV?	43
164	The Deal	42
"	The IT Crowd	42
166	The Kumars at No 42	41
"	The Story of ITV: The People's Channel (& ITV50 Regional)	41
168	Tiswas Reunited	40
169	Bremner, Bird & Fortune	39
"	That Was The Week We Watched	39
171	Coast	38
"	The Story of Light Entertainment	38
173	Forty Years of Fuck	37
"	Spooks	37
175	Biffovision	36
"	Extras	36
177	10 O’Clock News	35
"	Comedy Map of Britain	35
179	Death of a President	34
"	Fantabulosa!	34
181	Attention Scum	33
"	Hannah Montana	33
183	Countryfile	32
"	The Punk Years	32
185	Gavin & Stacey	31
186	Deal or No Deal	30
"	The Osbournes	30
"	videoGaiden	30
189	Return of the Goodies	29
"	The Way We Live Now	29
191	Frisky Dingo	28
"	My Family	28
193	The Knights of Prosperity	27
194	Bloody Sunday	26
"	The Two Ronnies Sketchbook	26
196	Malcolm & Barbara: Love’s Farewell/Right to Die?	25
"	World of Pub	25
198	Blue Peter	24
199	SpongeBob SquarePants	23
200	Jekyll	22
"	Party Animals	22

And, there it is. The Sopranos, a programme that began in the late 1990s, is judged to be the best television programme of the decade, shortly followed by The bloody Wire and The bloody Office. Pleasingly, the mighty Arrested Development finishes in fourth place, so there’s some hope yet for those up-and-coming publications. Want to see where each chart placed each show? Here’s a full Excel spreadsheet of the calculations. Enjoy.

And there, for the sake of our own sanity, and very probably yours too, is where we leave the online portion of our Top 100 rundown. Now we can get back to being annoyingly esoteric on here. Get ready for BrokenTV’s TV-Tie In Board Game Jamboree. Yep, really.

(And yes, there is going to be a book of the Top 100. Once we’ve finished it. Blimey, eh?)

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