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DEBUTS
JANUARY ...
Desperate Housewives was the latest
hit US series ... the story of Cocaine and the people it affected
was told ... Yasmin was a challenging drama about being Muslim
in Britain ... Dr Gunther von Hagens explored Anatomy for Beginners
... and archive footage examined Sex In The Seventies.
FEBRUARY ...
The English Civil War was the subject of Blood
On Our Hands ... Nathan
Barley was Chris Morris' latest underwhelming project ... and
famous faces underwent Extreme Celebrity Detox.
MARCH ...
Supersize Kids tried to change the lives
of obese children ... and Janet Ellis oversaw The Great Garden Challenge.
APRIL ...
Another reality show challenged girls to work
out which of the boys they were chasing were Playing It Straight.
MAY ...
Dr Tatiana's Sex Guide to All Creation
examined the reproductory habits of the entire animal kingdom ... experts
tried to help out parents suffering from their kids' Bad Behaviour
... comedians swapped lame gags in the annoying FAQ U ... Black
Monday, Heysel and the storm of 1987 were among the subjects of The
Explosive Eighties ... American punters lived in The Pioneer House
... while Johnny Vegas: 18 Stone of Idiot was a (successful) attempt
by the comedian to create a show that could not be recommissioned.
JUNE ...
8
Out of 10 Cats was the latest comedy quiz ... Jonathan Edwards
offered religion as the answer in Spirituality Shopper ... and
Julie Burchill's lesbian drama Sugar Rush began.
JULY ...
Sarah Beeny looked at entire neighbourhoods
in Streets Ahead, while "neighbours from hell" were featured
in The Nightmares Next Door ... Hitler's Children told the
stories of members of the Hitler Youth ... and some of the most notorious
figures in history were profiled in Warlords.
AUGUST ...
OCD sufferers were brought together in The
House of Obsessive Compulsives ... disabled children featured in Born
to be Different ... Lost arrived ... Scottish-Asian sitcom
Meet the Magoons was the latest addition to Friday nights ... nasty
hidden camera show Balls of Steel was a depressing throwback to
the worst of The Word ... Bromwell High was an animated
sitcom ... C4 revealed The Truth About Female Desire ... the public
re-enacted 1950s holidays in Wakey Wakey Campers ... and It's
Me Or The Dog trained problem pets.
SEPTEMBER ...
Bed and Bardsleys was the world's worst
reality show ... the history of The SS was told ... educational
experts tried to get the best out of The Unteachables ... The
Closer arrived on British screens ... Helen Mirren was Elizabeth
I ... Gene Simmons opened up his Rock School ... while comedy
sketches featured in Spoons.
OCTOBER ...
New magicians turned heads and stomachs in
Dirty Tricks ... The F Word was a new way of showcasing
the talents of Gordon Ramsay ... and Noel Edmonds picked up the phone
for the first time in Deal or
No Deal?.
NOVEMBER ...
Entrepreneurs starred in Make Me a Million
... the search began for the Priest Idol ... those who experienced
The Somme told their stories ... The Ghost Squad was the
channel's latest attempt to find a hit drama ... Ian Hislop looked at
the stories behind war memorials in Not Forgotten ... while The
Queen's Sister looked at the life of Princess Margaret.
DECEMBER ...
Cherie Blair opened the door to 10 Downing
Street in Married to the Prime Minister ... and reality show Space
Cadets didn't really set the tabloids on fire.
FINALES
CRICKET
The result of a spending spree sanctioned by
erstwhile Chief Executive Michael Jackson, Channel 4's tenure as the home
of terrestrial TV cricket had won it several years of bumper daytime ratings
and critical plaudits. When it came time to renew the contract, however,
the station's coffers were in a far more parlous state. The attitude of
its management had also changed. No longer was it deemed appropriate,
let alone practical, for the channel to fight to the death for the right
to show hour after hour of test matches. As such, and - ironically - in
the wake of England's Ashes victory over Australia, live cricket promptly
disappeared from terrestrial screens entirely. A desultory highlights
service would now be available on five. This was not quite the result
many, including more than a few blustering MPs, expected.
MISC ...
E4 became available on Freeview in May, while More4
launched in October … Richard Whiteley died in June and was ultimately
replaced on Countdown
by Des Lynam in October … Derren Brown's next show was Messiah
... Channel 4s season on censorship examined the items that had been Banned
In The UK since the 1980s ... stars chose classic moments of TV in
the Favouritism strand … Bo Selecta span off into
A Bear's Tail ... for the first time, the Location Location
Location team revealed The Best and Worst Places to Live in the
UK ... as a response to BBC2's series Restoration, viewers
were asked to nominate buildings for Demolition ... in the first
of a series of nostalgia documentaries, Justin Lee Collins attempted to
Bring Back the Christmas Number One ... and The
Comic Strip Presents Sex Actually saw a few of the familiar team
reassemble.
ON SCREEN
JAMIE OLIVER
While Gordon Ramsay spent 2005 hectoring celebrity
diners and showing his kids how animals die, fellow Channel 4 culinary
face Jamie Oliver was trying to change the eating habits of every child
in the land. Jamie's School Dinners was an astoundingly high-profile
campaign that ended up with a trip to Downing Street and a change in the
law of Great Britain - a rare instance of a TV programme having a direct
impact upon the functioning of the nation. Oliver had always been the
first to acknowledge his ubiquity in popular culture was just as much
an irritation as a boon, however, and as such later in the year set sail
for Italy to make Jamie's Great Escape.
THE FRIDAY NIGHT PROJECT
Every other week during the first few years
of the new century an article would turn up in print or online bewailing
the decline of Channel 4's Friday night schedule. Where, writers fumed,
were the must-see hits, the stay-at-home favourites, the shows that everyone
talked about at work and at school come Monday morning? The Friday
Night Project was the end product of a search going back almost 10
years to match the influence and success of The Word and TFI
Friday. "It could be Jimmy Nesbitt one night, Glenn Campbell
the next," a press officer gamely enthused of this Jimmy Carr/Justin
Lee Collins-fronted shambles. "It's bringing new people to the channel,"
Kevin Lygo desperately insisted. "It's an antidote to Jonathan Ross.
You talk to teenagers and people in their early 20s and Ross is a bit
like the Jimmy Tarbuck of his generation." In truth the show was
an admission of defeat: that nothing better could be found than the same
kind of celebrity-bashing, scattergun topicality and unsubtle smut once
essayed in the 1990s, now rendered stale and unloved by virtue of being
so outdated.
OFF SCREEN
• Thanks largely to primetime hits Jamie's
School Dinners and Desperate Housewives, plus coverage of the
Ashes, Channel 4 overtook BBC2 in terms of annual ratings share for the
first time in over a decade, ending up at 10% compared to its rival's
9.5%.
• A bout of penny-pinching launched by previous boss Mark Thompson
meant the station was able to announce record post-tax profits of £46m
for 2004, helped by increased advertising revenue and the redundancies
caused by reducing the size of Film Four and E4.
FOUR-WORDS
"Sometimes I think it's like heroin addiction,
but it's only 40 minutes a day for the summer, for a period of 10 weeks
or whatever. We do two hours of news a day, but no-one says, 'Oh, you
do too much news'."
- Kevin Lygo on Big Brother 6
"I would love to have presenters, proper
documentary faces. That's a struggle for us. We never found a response
to Louis Theroux. The point is, other people can't copy a personality,
that's more important than a format. We've never found a mode of entertaining
and enlightening."
- Danny Cohen, C4 Head of Documentaries
"He had a total fascination for TV. He
was one of those people who just loved every minute of being on TV. And
when he wasn't on he loved thinking about it and talking about it. He
had a very sharp intellect, as well as a very relaxed presenting style.
On one occasion I recall seeing him being mobbed by fans on Princes Street
in Edinburgh, like the Beatles arriving in America or Coldplay today."
- Former C4 Director of Programmes
John Willis on Richard Whiteley
MY FAVOURITE CHANNEL 4 MOMENT ...
THE GOVERNMENT INSPECTOR
(2005)
During a particular barren time for fiction
on Channel 4 - and in particular the one-off drama - this production cast
a condemnatory yet invigorating glare for miles around.
I have a very vivid memory of where I was
and what I was doing when the news broke that, a day after the disappearance
of Dr David Kelly, an as yet unidentified body had been found. The sense
that here was a modern tragedy, unfolding in real time in the real world,
not compressed into three hours by an Elizabethan playwright or a Hollywood
mogul, was profoundly affecting. Back then, during those first few months
after the invasion of Iraq, it seemed as if the world was becoming a darker
place by the hour. It was impossible not to feel as if historic events
were being etched upon your mind for all time.
Something approaching this incredibly bleak,
palpably insurmountable mood was caught spectacularly by writer and director
Peter Kosminsky in his dramatisation of Kelly's life and death. The fantastical
was mixed with the mundane to point a disparaging finger at all those
who let a man of exceptional ability choose to end his life in such a
grubby and everyday fashion. Mark Rylance's performance in the lead role
was revelatory. Rarely has a "hero" been portrayed in as understated and
humbling a fashion.
The Government Inspector demonstrated
profoundly human political drama could still be made for television and
could still move as much as inspire. It deserves to be remembered as the
boldest, and certainly the timeliest, piece of drama Channel 4 conspired
to broadcast for at least 10 years.
- Ian Jones
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