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ALLY ROSS
Gordon Ramsay cooked up the worst show of 2023 with Next Level Chef… but he had some truly atrocious competition
And why Holly Willoughby is the year's worst actress
2023, a very strange 12 months that began with two of ITV’s biggest stars, Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, co-hosting This Morning and ended with temporary presenter The Duchess of York ordering viewers to buy “saucy underwear” for naughty weekends away in Snowdonia.
How the hell we reached that sorry pass, I still don’t fully understand.
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Nor can I tell you exactly why it was the year TV brought back everything from Big Brother, Survivor and Doctor Who to Challenge Anneka, The Full Monty and Cindy Beale, who rose from the dead to run a pie and mash shop on EastEnders.
Simple wear and tear, though, seemed to be the reason why old favourites such as BGT, The Apprentice, Bake Off, Strictly, Love Island and even I’m A Celeb, with Nigel Farage, left me feeling underwhelmed.
There was good news in 2023 as well, however.
Clarkson’s Farm returned, Steph’s Packed Lunch was axed and the Coronation passed without major incident beyond Lionel Richie’s singing and Clare Balding announcing: “You saw her leaving by a side door, but in a matter of minutes, the Princess Royal is mounted.”
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Here, I celebrate the good, the bad and the simply baffling with my annual review of the television year.
BEST SHOW: Two stood out from all the others, for me.
The first was Clarkson’s Farm, on Amazon, Jeremy’s funny, beautiful and unrequited love letter to the Cotswolds which has now been copied (but never equalled) by everyone from Kelvin Fletcher to Vinnie Jones.
The winner, though, has to be The Sixth Commandment, which could so easily have mocked the Christianity that was at the heart of the case but chose not to and was all the more brilliant for avoiding that trap.
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WORST SHOW: Good cases to be made here for World On Fire, Henpocalypse, C4 spoof Gregg Wallace: The British Meat Miracle and Naked Education, where adults paraded naked in front of school- children to help them conquer their body image fears (What the f*** were they thinking?). But none of them were quite as bad as Gordon Ramsay’s Next Level Chef, on ITV, which was in fact three s**t shows in one.
A visual atrocity with an unnerving use of innuendo — “Cauliflower puree in the basement? I love that” — and Gordon’s first “triumph” in this category since Bank Balance in 2021. Stay useless, champ.
BEST DRAMA: I’ll hear counter- arguments on behalf of the brilliant Blue Lights, The Bear, Succession, Slow Horses, Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty and Happy Valley, even if Sally Wainwright can’t write decent male characters.
But, for me, in a year when a lot of inferior dramas like The Hunt For Raoul Moat and The Long Shadow claimed they were restoring dignity to the victims, only one truly did and that was BBC One’s brilliant series The Sixth Commandment, which could not have paid a more moving or powerful tribute to Peter Farquhar and Ann Moore-Martin.
WORST DRAMA: Steven Knight’s adaptation of Great Expectations, which featured S&M sex and the return of slavery, even though Britain had outlawed it 30 years earlier, was bad.
But it wasn’t quite as obnoxiously woke and self-loathing as BBC One’s World On Fire, which correctly identified the fact a racist, anti-Semitic, expansionist super-power was on the rise in the 1930s, but then decided the racist, anti-Semitic, expansionist super-power in question was Britain. The BBC is ill.
BEST ACTORS/ACTRESS: Special mentions for Matthew Macfadyen (Stonehouse), Richard Dormer (Blue Lights), Elizabeth Debicki as Diana (The Crown), Jason Clarke (Winning Time), Sarah Lancashire (Happy Valley), Molly Gordon (The Bear), Bella Ramsey (Time).
But once again it was Timothy Spall and Eanna Hardwicke, from The Sixth Commandment, whose performances were more hauntingly brilliant than anything else I watched this year.
WORST ACTRESS: Turns out that was actually Holly Willoughby on This Morning’s famous coming-out episode, when she told Phillip Schofield: “Whatever happens in the future, I’ll be sat by your side. I will be by your side for ever and ever and ever,” back in 2020.
THE SO BAD IT’S GOOD AWARD: I’d love to give this to Channel 5’s drama The Good Ship Murder, with Shayne Ward as the murder detective turned cruise ship singer Jack Grayling.
But even this epically dreadful show wasn’t in the same league as ITV whodunnit The Reunion, starring Ioan Gruffudd, 50, and Dervla Kirwan, 52, as his mum, which was sublimely appalling in every conceivable way, including the name of one character which led to my favourite line of the series/year: “Ahmed’s been smothered by Fanny.”
And yes, there were holes in the case.
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BEST INTERROGATION: No contest. Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins. Dilksy and Debs, who began by asking Matt Hancock: “What kind of arrogant c**k-sucking answer is that, you weasel-faced c***?” Then it got really rude.
BEST LIVE TV MOMENT: Sod it, I paid £330 for a ticket and it’s my column, so I’m going for June 17 in Norway, when Kenny Mclean had Viaplay’s Rory Hamilton yelling: “Oh what a turnaround in Oslo.
Scotland have picked their moment to strike. Unbelievable scenes in The Ullevaal.”
Six months later, I’m still smiling and going to Germany.
BEST COMEDY: Almost eradicated completely by the cult of woke.
Honourable mentions, though, for Would I Lie To You, Michael McIntyre’s Big Show and The Wheel, Hapless, Colin From Accounts, Two Doors Down, Mortimer And Whitehouse: Gone Fishing and Lionel Richie’s set at the Coronation Concert.
But what a sad state of affairs when it’s left to America’s South Park, with its brilliant “Worldwide privacy tour” episode, to satirise Harry and Meghan, because British shows like Have I Got News For You and The Last Leg are just too cowardly, biased and rubbish to do the job themselves. “We want privacy, we want privacy.”
WORST COMEDY: To HIGNFY and The Last Leg you can also add Late Night Lycett, The John Bishop Show, Black Ops, Queen Of Oz, ITV disaster The Family Pile and C4’s Everyone Else Burns, but none of them were quite as bad as BBC Two sitcom Henpocalypse, which imagined a world overrun by women with vibrators and could best be summed up by another compound. Dildollocks.
HYPOCRITE OF THE YEAR: Tired as I am of BBC reporters like Justin Rowlatt and Richard Bilton flying round the world to admonish the rest of us for the environmental damage we do flying round the world, it’s going to Loose Women’s Janet Street-Porter, who in 2006 said: “I hate everything to do with the World Cup. I hate the sight of middle-aged men in tight white T-shirts with ‘England’ running across their man breasts, I hate flags fluttering off every van in the country.”
Yet in August 2023 said: “This is an amazing achievement. I think we should have a Bank Holiday for the Lionesses where we can all wear our England shirts and celebrate together.”
BEST DOCUMENTARY: If there is one thing TV still does brilliantly, it’s documentaries, with special mentions for all of the following: Putin Vs The West, Parole, Stasi FC, 24 Hours In Police Custody, Once Upon A Time In Northern Ireland, BBC Scotland’s Murder Trial, Evacuation, Channel 4’s brilliant The Price Of Truth, about heroic Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, and Clarkson’s Farm, on Amazon.
WORST DOCUMENTARY: The repellent hypocrisy of Channel 4’s Farewell To The Monarchy, where the Royal Family was castigated for its “unshakeable misogyny,” by Frankie Boyle who, nine years earlier, was “joking” about raping Victoria Pendleton and punching Dame Jessica Ennis-Hill in the stomach to abort a baby.
THE GOLDEN SHAG TROPHY FOR OUTSTANDING WILDLIFE INNUENDO: Winterwatch, Iolo Williams tells Michaela Strachan: “I’ve been mesmerised by your beaver, down there in Norfolk, performing tricks.”
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SADDEST EXIT: A dead heat between Winning Time: The Rise Of The Lakers Dynasty, which was killed off by HBO after just two series, and A Question Of Sport, which was killed off after 50 years by woke stupidity and the desperation for youthful approval of the BBC.
Football Focus to follow soon.
ODDEST EXIT: June 5, a “shaken and troubled” Holly Willoughby announces Phillip Schofield’s complicated This Morning exit with the immortal words: “Right, deep breath. Firstly, are you OK?”
Err, yeah, you? Apparently not and Holly was gone for good in October.
BOMBSHELL OF THE YEAR: The Yorkshire Vet, Christopher Timothy: “In Huddersfield, Matt’s in uncharted waters trying to fix Kermit the frog’s anal prolapse.”
SCHEDULE CLASH OF THE YEAR: Secrets Of The Female Orgasm/Faking It UK.
QUIZ SHOW SHOCK OF THE YEAR: The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “At what kind of ceremony would lovers rest their rings on a cushion?”
Marc: “A wedding.” “Correct.”
’Cos I was convinced it was Eurovision.
ARITHMETICIAN OF THE YEAR: Women’s World Cup, Alex Scott: “The possession stats – 57 per cent to France, 46 per cent to Brazil – show you just how tight this game is.”
TV name of the year
Third place, the Hothead Operator on C4’s The Great Sex Experiment, Holly Squelch. Second place, a pianist on The Proms called Yuja Wang.
But the winner was Hugh Bonneville’s great aunt on ITV’s DNA Journey, Fanny Beater.
Cowards of the year
All those noisy anti- fascist TV presenters and celebrity social justice warriors who vanished on October 7 and, above all, the BBC News, which called Hamas monsters who murdered babies and raped women “militants” instead of terrorists.
Never forget their cowardice.
Worst reboot
THE Full Monty, on Disney+. An act of cultural vandalism that’s up there with the felling of the Sycamore Gap tree.
Let us never speak of this woke horror again.
Longest Career Suicide
TEMPTING as it is to acknowledge Grace Dent for her nine-day I’m A Celeb whinge, it belongs to the 193 minutes Robbie Williams, spent on Netflix, revealing himself to be the most selfish, pampered, self-pitying narcissist on the planet.
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Happiest Exit
STEPH’S Packed Lunch is just edged by the official axing of New World Order with Frankie Boyle in March.
The woke stranglehold may make a revival impossible, but at least the BBC is finally addressing the rancid political bias of comedy.
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HIGNFY next, please.
Best reality show
Channel 4’s prison-based celebrity masterpiece Banged Up, with Peter Hitchens and Johnny Mercer MP.
The Sure Stank Redemption.
Worst reality show
A tie between Channel 4’s Rise And Fall (Big Brother with a lift) and Scared Of The Dark (Big Brother with the lights off).
Worst Celeb Travelogue
BBC One’s A Wright Family Holiday, which also claimed The Alan Whicker Award 2023 for this killer observation from Mark Wright: “This is going to sound stupid, but I never even thought about Cornish pasties coming from Cornwall.”
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Best Celeb Travelogue
BBC One’s Celebrity Race Across The World, even if it was won by weatherman Alex Beresford.
Dumbest quiz show answers
THE Chase, Bradley Walsh: “In which indoor sport do players compete for The Jocky Wilson Memorial Cup?”
Lesley: “Badminton.”
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The Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “The 2000 Ang Lee film that was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar is called Crouching Tiger, Hidden what?”
Dr Punam Krishnan: “Cupboard.”
Bradley Walsh: “A blue plaque dedicated to which member of Queen is in Feltham, London?” Colin: “Prince Philip.”
The Chase: Celebrity Special, Bradley Walsh: “Launched in 2021, the Roger Pro is a tennis shoe named after which player?”
The Vivienne: “Roger Moore.”
Tipping Point, Ben Shephard: “In his epic poems, Homer often refers to nectar as the drink of the gods and which other substance as their food?”
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Dom: “I know he likes doughnuts, Ben. I’m going with doughnuts.”
“Ambrosia. Wrong Homer.”
Lookalikes of the year
WITH thanks to picture researchers Janet Davenport, Jim Taylor, Keith Noble and Amy Reading.
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