Poll of the Year 2005

Poll of 2005

Something we'll be doing every year now is ask you what your favourite and least favourite UK shows from the last year were and compile them into this: The Hall of Fame and Shame. Obviously many different shows are up for each award and there are always a contentious few which rather divide opinion and end up somewhere on both lists.

Each voter is given three "votes" for each category. They could then vote for three different shows. However, if they wanted, they could weigh the vote by casting multiple votes for the same show.

Overall, 26 different shows were mentioned by our pollsters. And our survey said...

Hall of FAME 2005

5 - 8 Out of 10 Cats

With a whopping 7% of the popular vote, it's the Jimmy Carr vehicle it's OK to like! It's like he's not really an automaton! Although seemingly a lot of the show's positive attention comes from having Sean Lock as a team captain, along with Dave Spikey. May as well have been called Have I Got Family Fortunes For You, it was cunningly sandwiched between Big Brother eviction shows to almost guarantee an audience. It worked, it's coming back this year.

4 - Dragons' Den

With 7.7% of the vote, the game show that swears blind it's not really a game show comes fourth in a list of 2005's best new game shows. It's also a bit of a surprise hit - billed a sort of Business Idol (in fact it's not really anything of a sort), people pitch their different ideas to four successful business people, and one other person who had to get bought out by one of the other Dragons. People come with a certain amount of money in mind and try to sell as little a share in their company as possible.

There are two main points of interest. First, we get to see and hear people's wacky ideas. Secondly, the Dragons interrogate our pitcher and we find out where their business ideas quite frankly haven't been quite thought through nearly enough. With so much money at stake there are proper nerves on show, but it's always terribly exciting when one Dragon says he'll buy, or even two Dragons engaging in some sort of bidding war. Like most of the shows in the top five, it's foreign - this one's originally from Japan.

3 - Cash Cab

9.2%. People answer questions in a taxi cab, show becomes a sleeper hit. It's easily the best quiz ever to be set in a vehicle, yes, even better than Z for Fake.

2 - The Apprentice

10.8% of the vote, this was a highly successful iteration of the US megahit. We're not convinced Alan Sugar is quite the UK cultural equivilent of Donald Trump, but enough people decided they did want Sugar in their T(V) so that's alright then. It's certainly put Sugar in the public eye, and that's why we're donating our fee for this write-up to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

1 - Deal or No Deal

34.6% of the votes cast suggest that this is far and away the best new show of last year. Very few other shows have the abilty to split its audience so much - half the viewers get into it, the other half all feel the need to shout out "BUT IT'S ALL LUCK!" everytime Edmonds asks, nay, demands to see a blue box. It's interesting in that it's become a success mainly through word-of-mouth - it's barely been trailed and advertised on the channel, but there it is pulling four million at a ridiculous hour of the afternoon.

It is, of course, the game that any one from any background can play - simply call out the numbers 1-22 in some sort of order, and occasionally decide whether you're being offered enough money to leave the game or not and take it. And you wouldn't think they could stretch it out to 45 minutes without it dragging, but they've somehow succeeded. If you quite like people and their motivations, you will quite enjoy Deal or No Deal. Bonus points for cunning soap opera element of having all the players live in a hotel together until they get their go.

Bubbling Under

Mock the Week, Gameshow Marathon, Perseverance, Coach Trip, Playing it Straight

The Hall of SHAME 2005

In total, 35 different shows were nominated for this year's wooden spoon. Like Dante's circles of Hell, this list is in increasing order of, er, hell.

5 - The Big Call

5.7% of the vote, apparently this show was two whole years in development. Frankly goodness knows what on earth they were tweaking in those two years because the result was the world's most generic quiz... with celebrities! Perhaps they spent all the two years designing the upside-down pyramid set. Cunning end-game wasn't quite cunning enough, prompting punters all over Britain to exclaim "wow - a £25,000 return on £100,000 worth of lottery tickets? I'm never playing again!"

4 - Celebrity Wrestling

Weighing in with 8.1% of the vote, not even the presence of proper WWF Star Rowdy Roddy Piper could save what wanted to be the new Gladiators, but was really more akin to the new Ice Warriors and Grudge Match (so much so in fact that one of the games was exactly the same). First episode showed a promise of sorts, in particular we got quite excited by having each of our celebrities have their own special effect laden entrance.

Sadly most of the games which probably sound good on paper were actually as dull as anything on screen. Gasp at people trying to push their oppoenent into a goal! Shock as you watch people try and push people of a plinth using a giant swinging ball! Sometimes in a big cage! And there was that game where they had to rip each other's clothes off which again we suspect sounded a lot better on paper than it actually was on screen. Boring.

3 - Millionaire Manor

8.9% for the show that apparently replaced the best Lottery show Winning Lines. Millionaire Manor is essentially Jet Set In a Big Ol' House but instead of being tested on general knowledge, contestants are tested on the Sunday Times Rich List, guessing the value of antiques, and a grand final that may as well involve flipping a coin for what it's worth. With Mark Durden-Smith!

2 - Dick and Dom's Ask the Family

9.8%. This was always going to be quite interesting. Dick and Dom's take on what was originally a fairly serious quiz was never going to be straight-laced, and originally we secretly found it quite amusing. As the immense amount of criticism came in, it completely lost confidence with itself and it seemed to try and become a bit more straight-laced, and in doing so stopped being quite so funny and still didn't quite cut it as a quiz. It entered a punishment loop it couldn't escape from. Possibly a shame.

1 - Celebrity Love Island

With 16.2% of the vote, this is the runaway winner for worst format of 2005. Actually we're a bit disappointed you all went for such an easy target! This show was so bad nobody on the team bothered to watch it. This makes it quite difficult to write about. Um. Still, the tabloids were pretty happy with this one, huh?

Bubbling under

Quizmania, Vote for Me, Hot Tub Ranking, Scream! If You Want to Get Off

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