That was the decade we watched

OTT doesn’t have much truck with the idea of a “golden age of television”. Every era has programmes that are exceptionally good and desperately poor. If there has to be a “golden age”, then it began when TV was invented. It hasn’t stopped. Not even in the face of some of the telly from the last decade.

The ratio of small screen triumphs to travesties is the same as it ever was; there are just more of them. The past 10 years weren’t characterised by new lows or highs; just different ones. What we watched didn’t really change; how and when we watched did.

Here’s a commemoration of sorts in the shape of an A-Z of the decade’s television»

OTT fatal error!

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2010 visionaries

As 2009 winds down, like everyone else, OTT is indulging in a spot of house-keeping and tidying up the last decade of television.

So, we’ve assembled our list of the shows we feel have been the most influential in shaping the last 10 years of telly. They’re not necessarily the very best the noughties have had to offer, or the most popular. But, as we hopefully justify, all have left a mark on the TV landscape.

Which, from our selection was “a messy flop, but of a kind with which the BBC flirted shamelessly for the rest of the decade”?

What series ushered in a suite of similarly themed programmes, pretty much most of which ended up being cancelled by C4 as it sought to reinforce its public service remit at the decade’s end?

And can you name the pivotal reality show which featured a crunch sequence from a Travelodge Hotel conference room?

For those answers, Read the feature »

The magic’s back again

The BBC has announced Merlin has been recommissioned for a third series. Read more