2006: The Best of TV
Ridiculous as it may seem for someone without a TV (yes, still) to be pronouncing on the best television he saw in 2006, the fact is that nowadays DVD boxed sets mean you never have to go without. So here’s what I enjoyed in 2006, even if most of it wasn’t first broadcast in 2006.
10. Doctor Who, The Second New Series
Christopher Ecclestone made one of the best Doctors ever, as those of us who caught A Revenger’s Tragedy suspected he might. David Tennant was an effective successor, and some episodes of this series, like “The Girl in the Fireplace”, were as memorable as anything in the last. But the series overall lacked the sense of momentum of its predecessor, which keeps it lower on my list than it might have been.
9. The Office (USA), Season One
This was far more enjoyable than a remake of the best British sitcom of the decade had any right to be, and it was all down to Steve Carell. The supporting actors were fine, but in these first six episodes didn’t have the impact of their UK counterparts; but Carell turned the annoyingness of David Brent into a completely different but equally annoying kind of annoyingness in Michael Scott. Related goodness: series two of Extras, streamed online (although I missed a few).
8. Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace
I’d been wanting to catch this since it was broadcast in 2004, so it was great to finally see how well the stage-show had transferred to the screen. The attention to detail in the DVD release helps explain why the series was so good—Marenghi seems so real that people will be accusing Clive Barker of plagiarising his soul. I hope they don’t take as long to release the DVD of the follow-up, Man to Man With Dean Learner. Related goodness (if you start playing Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon with cast lists): Nathan Barley, which would have been well up this list if there’d been just a bit more character development, but was nonetheless much better than the love-it-or-hate-it Amazon reviews would have you think; series two of Look Around You, not quite the concentrated brilliance of the first series but still with many fine moments; and That Mitchell and Webb Look, which I only saw bits of as part of a studio audience, so will have to pass judgement on properly when the DVD comes out.
7. Seven Periods with Mr. Gormsby, Series One
Having spent some of the happiest months of my life there in 1997, I love seeing New Zealand on the screen. Easy enough when the cinemas are knee-deep in hobbits, but not so easy since, which made this satire of political correctness in the New Zealand school system particularly welcome. Of course, the unreconstructed Gormsby turns out to be far less odious than his right-on counterparts. Related Australasian goodness: All Aussie Adventures, with Glenn Robbins sending up every outback TV adventurer since Mike and Mal Leyland; and being able to complete my Frontline and Micallef DVD collections at last.
6. Six Feet Under, Season One
There’s been a lot of great American TV in the past decade, with most of it coming, it seems, from HBO. But if you don’t get in on the ground floor the accumulated backlog of past episodes is just too daunting. We’ve missed the boat with Buffy, The Sopranos, West Wing, 24, and until a friend lent us this box set we figured Six Feet Under was sailing over the horizon too. But we watched it, all dozen or so hours of it, and it was every bit as good as people have said. Having said that, I’ve made no effort to start in on seasons two, three, four, and five. The thought of watching another fifty hours of any series, no matter how good, just isn’t as appealing as it once was. Related reluctance to watch past the first season: Scrubs (episodes half as long, but twice as many).
5. Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares Revisited
Relatively few documentary series make it to DVD, let alone reality-TV cookery-star business-makeover documentaries, which is why these four episodes of Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares with follow-up postscripts were so welcome for telly-celibate cookery fans. Some people complain about Ramsay’s swearing, but given what he was facing in this series I thought he was the picture of restraint. These scenes of ghastly kitchens and pig-headed owners were enough to put anyone off opening a restaurant, which is probably no bad thing, because if the only ones left are those that follow Ramsay’s advice we’ll all be better off.
4. The Documentaries of Adam Curtis
I watched all of these online this year: The Power of Nightmares (2004), The Mayfair Set (1999), and The Century of the Self [2] [3] [4] (2002). The picture quality was crap, but Curtis’s voice is so strong, careful, and thought-provoking that it was worth every blurry pixel. The stories he tells of political and social trends spanning decades are exactly what television audiences need, even if they don’t know it.
3. Dragons’ Den (UK), Series Three
Streamed online by the BBC, this is the only series I’ve watched more-or-less as it’s gone to air in the past five years. It’s a great format, pitting business hopefuls against rich investors in a cross between lottery draw and job interview. I can’t explain the appeal any better than Adam and Joe did in their podcast pisstake, but I was sold on it the first time a nervous inventor said “Hello, Draggins” with a desperate fixed smile.
2. Boston Legal, Season One
With William Shatner in a leading role there was no way our household was going to miss this show. And while the Shat was great, and while Denny Crane threatens to eclipse memories of Captain Kirk (or at least T.J. Hooker), the real revelation was James Spader. What a character, and what a performance. Fantastic television on the strength of their double-act alone.
1. Curb Your Enthusiasm
We discovered it last year but watched seasons two through five during this one, so it’s fair to say that 2006 was our year of Larry. And while it’s been great to re-watch all of Seinfeld as it comes out on DVD, I suspect that Curb may end up eclipsing it—it’s certainly giving it a damn good run for its money. The quality stayed amazingly high throughout, given that we saw it all in such close succession. If you too want to start salivating like Pavlov’s dog at the sound of Italian carnival music, start watching Curb.
Honorary Mention: The X-Factor
We saw only two episodes of this: one that our friends had recorded while we were all out to dinner when visiting them in Nottingham, and the other, the semi-final, when we were on Islay a couple of weeks ago. The first left me thinking that Leona and Ben were the only serious contenders for the final, that Ray and the Macdonald Brothers were ghastly, and that the other two were okay. The semifinal left me wanting to throw things at the Great British public—sharp things, with lots of spikes—not only for voting Ray into the semifinal, but for keeping him there at the end of it. Thank God Leona won, or I’d have been looking for a safe house. Still, you can’t deny its effectiveness as television when only two episodes can leave you feeling like a sociopath.