I’m still on my regular travels to the South coast, augmented this season by some Premier League tourism such as my trip to Anfield in January, so I’m still getting through my classical CD collection at a rate of knots. In fact, the end is now very much in sight, but the biggest single-composer marathon is now just in its early stages. When I last reported in early November, Winter was just underway and I had reached the end of the P section in my alphabetical trawl through my collection. As we emerged from the darkness, I reached the end of the V section and, as I don’t have any discs by composers whose names begin with Q (does anybody?), I will be considering the R to V guys (yes, they are all guys) in this blog.

After the turn of the century (19^th to 20^th, that is) delights of Rachmaninov and Ravel – two very different styles, despite them being almost exact contemporaries – my R section is dominated by still-living composers. Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians must be amongst the most important works of the second half of the 20^thCentury – I remember seeing it performed by Reich himself and his ensemble at a late-night Prom a few years back and it was mesmerising, as it is every time I play the CD. Probably more than any of the composers who emerged from the “minimalist” movement and rescued “serious” music from the blind alley it was heading down, restoring it to something you can listen to and enjoy while managing at the same time to move it in new and interesting directions, he has remained true to its original principles. Even his most experimental pieces, like the early and seminal It’s Gonna Rain, have an addictive quality. 

I first encountered the music of Max Richter through his soundtrack to my favourite American TV drama series of the current century – The Leftovers. I think my favourite of his albums (and he does, unusually, seem to compose “albums” rather than “pieces”) is The Blue Notebooks, but the highlight of my listening on this occasion was to go through the full 8 hours of Sleep, a relaxing and soporific work designed to be played through the night while the audience nods off. It’s possibly not the best thing to listen to while driving, but I thankfully managed to stay awake and enjoyed it all. The box set of CDs also includes a blu-ray recording with the entire work, so one night I intend to listen to it in my bedroom, as intended.

I noted in my first blog about my musical journeys (A-B CDs, July 2020) that there are often single definitive recordings of works by contemporary composers such as Adams, Glass and Reich, though that was beginning to change. However, in the case of Terry Riley, who may well have been the original minimalist, there are a number of recordings of his seminal work, In C, and they are all very different, even in terms of the instruments featured and the duration of the performance. I have two versions, including the wonderful 25^th anniversary concert featuring Riley himself. 

So, after back-to-back variations on minimalism from Reich, Richter and Riley, I turned to the behemoth which is the letter S (a cornucopia comparable to B and M). Starting with the gallic whimsy of Saint-Saens and Satie, it then proceeds via the high German romanticism of Schubert and Schumann to a gallery of the most important composers of the 20^th century, reflecting both the musical and political upheavals of that era.

Before getting on to that, though, I need to say a few words about Schubert: one of my personal favourites (in my top three or four, for sure) and another of my largest collections. In musical terms he is the very embodiment of the phrase “less is more”. All his is best stuff is written for five performers or fewer but is so subtle and affecting that it works so much better that way. I would struggle to think of a more perfect musical work than the string quartet D804, the piano sonata D960 or the string trio D929. The other late quartets and, of course, the string quintet contain movements and sections which freeze me in my tracks (again, not great for driving). Then there are the songs: a whole universe of emotion conveyed by just one voice and a piano. The song-cycles are the summit of his achievement and Winterreise has to be my favourite. I was listening to Schubert at the end of November/beginning of December, so not in the depth of winter, but it certainly takes you there. I very much enjoyed revisiting the cycle again on TV at the end of February, when John Bridcut’s much awaited film Winter Journey was finally transmitted on BBC4. Following Schubert with Schumann was an alphabetical imperative, but very much an anticlimax. His quartets are fine, but he is very much a Schubert wannabe.

And so on to the 20^th century gang. Schoenberg, of course, preceded Schubert alphabetically, but the rest of them formed a formidable and exhilarating grouping which accompanied my travels through the depths of winter. I can’t really comment too much on the significance of Schoenberg because most of his works in my collection are from his early, late-romantic period, such as Gurrelieder or Transfigured Night, rather than his later, massively influential atonal pieces. I understand the significance of atonal music and the experiment of serialism, but I don’t get either pleasure or interest out of listening to it and this, for me, is the crux of the issue as regards the music of the middle years of the 20^th Century – who is it for? Much of the most avant garde work seems to have been written for the music expert rather than a general audience and thus becomes an academic exercise rather than living art. 

However, the works of four other composers whose names also all begin with S tell a very different story about 20^th century music. Shostakovich is, for me, the greatest composer of the mid-20^th century and, indeed, his creative period stretches from 1925 (he wrote his first symphony when he was 19), to his death in 1975, so he literally spans the middle years of the century. His symphonies, concertos and string quartets are of consistent (high) quality, though you can certainly discern development in the symphonies and quartets. Some tend towards the experimental, while others, like the 12^th symphony, are clearly written for a wider audience and this balance exists throughout his career. Sometimes you even get that balance within a single work and Shostakovich was capable of making sudden and wonderful shifts of mood and approach (the mad oompah march in the middle of the 8^th symphony is a particular favourite of mine, especially on the Solti recording). If it hadn’t been such a dangerous and tragic situation, it would be tempting to speculate that the baleful censorious influence of the Soviet system and of Stalin in particular had the effect of steering Shostakovich in a direction which actually made him a better composer. Finding his way through the minefield certainly made him a more subtle one.

Jean Sibelius, by contrast, was in such total harmony with the Finnish nation and its aspirations that he became, and remains, its musical voice, much as Chopin was for Poland. Before this revisiting of my CD collection, I would probably have told you that he wrote two really good symphonies (the 2^nd and 5^th) and a few other reasonably good ones. Hearing them all in order, I now realise that all seven of them fall into the “really good” category, though the 5^th does still stand out for me. There are many recordings of the complete symphonies, but the cycle by the Scottish National Orchestra conducted by Alexander Gibson (on the budget Chandos label), is my favourite.

Continuing the theme of how shifting national fortunes in the turbulent early and mid-20^th century affected composers whose names begin with the letter S, we come to the case of Richard Strauss. The vast bulk of his considerable body of work was composed before his association with the Nazi regime and the compromises that involved, but his style was not particularly affected by that association in the same way that Shostakovich’s was by his position in Soviet Russia – but then, Shostakovich spent the whole of his career in that position while Strauss could afford an easy semi-retirement with his artistic reputation already secure. Most Strauss is conceived on a grand scale, whether the orchestral works or the operas, though one smaller-scale late work I particularly enjoyed, and which I recognised as a gap in my collection as part of this exercise and acquired accordingly, is Cappriccio – an opera about the staging of an opera.

The one Strauss work I come back to time and again, though, and which means so much to me that it would certainly be on my fantasy Desert Island Discs list, is the Four Last Songs. It is staggering that this highly romantic piece was written in the ruined Germany of 1948 and it stands both as a lament for a lost culture and a defiant gesture against the prevailing musical direction of the time – the most beautiful of anomalies. Schwarzkopf’s version is rightly marketed as one of the “recordings of the century”, but Gundula Janowicz with Karajan and the Berlin Phil is the best of the three recordings I have.

The last of the four 20^th century giants I am considering together was also affected by the upheavals of the century, but, unlike the other three, was not tied to one country, but was, at various times of his life, a Russian, French and American citizen. Stravinsky was certainly an innovator, though it is his early ballets which were mostly responsible for this reputation. The Rite of Spring is my favourite and the Bernard Haitink recording I have is exhilarating. I also enjoyed the Symphony in C and The Rakes Progress (Gardiner’s excellent version) from his middle, so-called “neoclassical” period, after which he turned to Schoenbergian serialism about half a century after it was first introduced at the time when he himself was actually making some worthwhile innovations. I can’t comment on any of it because I have no recordings – anyway, the minimalists were soon to appear to rescue the world of music…..er….haven’t I already said that? Looks like this is where we came in.

It also looks like I’ve spent far too long on the letter S, so I’ll skip quickly through the Ts and Vs (no Us, like Qs). I spent a few very pleasant hours in the company of each of Tallis, Telemann and Vaughan Williams and considerably more in that of Vivaldi (lots of concerto sets), but there are two big names that I just cannot take seriously any more, if I ever did, and, of course, part of this whole exercise was to weed out the stuff I won’t be bothering with from here on in. Tchaikovsky is now just pure mush and bombast to me – only the 6^thSymphony is ever likely to impinge on my consciousness again. Verdi, I will admit, can at times be a great tunesmith – unfortunately, he seems incapable of embedding those tunes into anything with a semblance of musical coherence as a whole. He should have stuck to the “greatest hits” approach. The two of them will be joining Brahms, Bruckner and Grieg in my junk folder.

So, I am now on to a composer I am extremely familiar with and have been throughout my life, but whose works I am already really enjoying becoming immersed in once again. I have multiple copies of his lengthy pieces, too. He comes alphabetically right near the end of my collection, so I can now start blogging some musical lists based on my listening journeys of the last three years, as well as re-considering what his works mean to me. As the man said, it ain’t over until……

In the meantime, I haven’t been finding that much on TV to enthuse myself, but will be back to it in my next blog anyway.

Happy New Year!

A few weeks back, I left my shortlist of the year’s best needing just one addition to bring it up to the magic number 10.  I noted that Landscapers (Sky Atlantic) had “started promisingly” and that I had a couple of things I wanted to see over Christmas. As it happened, the thing I was most looking forward to, John Bridcut’s film of Schubert’s Winterreise, was postponed for next year, so I am left with just two candidates to consider, both of them based on notorious court cases, though taking very different approaches.

Landscapers had indeed started well and it just got better. It was a wonderful mixture of fantasy and reality, with the mechanics of film-making used to emphasise the former and archive news coverage of the real events in the end credits for the latter. In the end, the fantasy won out, with cinematic end titles for the final episode and no more news. It was brilliantly conceived and directed by Will Sharpe and contained outstanding central performances from Olivia Colman and David Thewlis – indeed Colman joins the others on my Bafta roster. I don’t buy the criticism that it was too sympathetic towards murderers – it was a speculative psychological study which was also a very unusual love story and the alienation effects served to undercut our identification with the characters anyway. It is another excellent addition to the shortlist.

A Very British Scandal (BBC1) also had two excellent central performances, from Claire Foy and Paul Bettany, but took a more literal approach to its subject – the scandalous 1963 divorce case involving the Duke and Duchess of Argyll.  If it didn’t reach the heights of its predecessor, A Very English Scandal (which made my top ten three years ago) it was because it lacked the wicked humour which Russell T Davies brought to that script and it desperately needed it. Well worth watching, but not shortlist-worthy.

So, my shortlist IS my top 10 this year and is:

Can’t Get You Out of My Head (BBC i-Player)

Adam Curtis’ best since Pandora’s box.

Together (BBC2)

Lockdown according to Dennis Kelly and Sharon Horgan

Help (Channel 4)

Jack Thorne and Marc Munden’s shattering story of the victims of covid.

It’s a Sin (Channel 4)

Top of so many end-of-year lists and with justification

Time (BBC1)

Jimmy McGovern’s riveting prison drama

The Underground Railroad (Amazon)

Barry Jenkins’ fantastic journey through the horrors of slavery

Listening Through the Lens (BBC4)

Great documentary about a great documentarist, Christopher Nupen

The Outlaws (BBC1)

The best thing Stephen Merchant has done without his mate Ricky

Curb Your Enthusiasm (Sky Comedy)

In it’s eleventh season, but better and funnier than ever

Landscapers (Sky Atlantic)

See above – and see you next year.

Fifteen months ago, at the end of July last year, I wrote a blog about how I had been working my way through my classical CD collection on my regular drives to the Sussex coast to look after my elderly parents following my father’s fall, hospitalisation and rehabilitation. Not too long after he got home in the late summer, my father fell again and the cycle repeated itself, though at greater length this time. He was back home by late Autumn and in time for a restricted celebration of their 75^th wedding anniversary in December. But in early February his third fall put him back in hospital and there would be no coming home this time. A care home was the only option and he was there until he passed away in August at the grand age of 96. All of this necessitated constant visits from myself, both to organise my father’s care and to look after my mother and to run their house and finances. I got to know the route intimately and observing the gradual seasonal changes to the countryside over the course of more than a year was a great solace. So of course, was the music. In my previous blog I described how I got through the composers beginning with A and B while travelling from A to B. Since then I have reached the end of the P section and further driving to the west country to take our daughter to her new college has offered added listening time, as has the return of football. So, here are some thoughts on composers and recordings in my collection from C to P.

Late summer 2020 brought the first changes to my drive since I began the regular route. Lockdown had eased, so there was more traffic about, plus the increase in agricultural vehicles on the country roads which that time of year brings. This gave me even more time to realise, as I had not fully done before, what a wonderful composer Chopin is: his second set of etudes (Op. 25), played by Pollini, are a delight and I prefer them to the more famous ones in the earlier dozen. The season also brought the renaissance glories of Desprez (or Josquin, though I have filed him under D) and Dufay – both composers of the first rank. I recently bought a bargain set of 34 CDs on Warner Classics called Josquin and the Franco-Flemish School, so I was able to revisit their world and that of a large number of their contemporaries, many new to me, this summer as well as last. It was good to have their tranquil company around the time of my father’s death.

My Desprez and Dufay collections are separated by just one disc of Dohnanyi’s lovely string quartets and then it was on to Dvorak. The DG Kubelik set I mentioned in my earlier blog gave me the opportunity to hear a full cycle of his symphonies for the first time (conducted by his best interpreter) and I was struck by how you can discern a definite progression by listening to them in order. Most composers of nine or more symphonies have their most outstanding works scattered amongst the set (think of Beethoven’s 3^rd, 5^th and 9^th), but Dvorak’s just get steadily better. The earliest ones are very much influenced by Beethoven, but his own voice begins to emerge around the 6^th and is fully formed by the 8^th. But the best of Dvorak are his string quartets, particularly the “American”, which contains four equally striking and memorable movements. This got me thinking about the string quartet as a musical form, as it has become one of my very favourites and has proved a versatile platform for a good many composers from the 18^th century to the present day. I had already enjoyed all of Beethoven’s remarkable quartets and Debussy’s single, but wonderful, attempt at the form and had Cesar Franck’s even better one about to come along a little further down the road. String quartets may prove a good subject for a separate blog one day and I’ll certainly be coming back to them several times before this one is out.

By the time Autumn arrived, I had moved through E and F and was on to one of my largest composer collections (and certainly my largest by a living composer): Philip Glass. I have to admit, I was a bit daunted by the prospect of listening to so much of his music at one time, but I was amazed at how much I appreciated the variety of his output. The standard criticism of Glass is that his stuff “all sounds the same”, but I guess that is true of many great composers who establish their own distinctive sound (Mozart comes to mind). It’s just that with Glass, the variations are very subtle, but they are there and each piece has its own character. And there is such a wide range of forms – symphonies, concertos, quartets (brilliant ones!), operas, ballets, electronica, song cycles, solo piano, tone poems and, of course, all those wonderful film scores: the “qatsi” ones stand out because the music was an equal partner with the visuals in those films, but I think his score for Paul Schrader’s Mishima: a Life in Four Chapters is arguably the greatest film score of all in terms of its expressiveness and flexibility (I can feel another separate blog coming on) and it also supplied the themes for his finest string quartet. I have already blogged, a couple of years back, about his masterpiece Einstein on the Beach, and, thanks to ENO, had seen Akhnaten and Orphee on stage in the last few years. I’d not been to an opera since the first lockdown, but with Satyagraha re-opening the Coliseum recently, I couldn’t wait to get back and it was fantastic (both production and performance). One last thing about Philip Glass – it is wonderful music for driving to but is maybe just too good. Many times, I found myself going way too fast without realising I was doing it. The momentum of his music takes over and not just in the obvious pieces like The Grid from Koyaanisqasi, but throughout his oevre. Beware!

Before winter 2020/1 set in and as the leaves fell on my journeys, I reached the end of G and, as with my previous negative re-assessments of most of Brahms and Bruckner (as described in last year’s blog), I determined that the works of Edvard Grieg are unlikely to be bothering me again. But winter brought Handel and Haydn to lighten the darker drives.

It struck me that Handel is probably the composer to whom one could most readily compare Glass, both in terms of the range of their respective outputs and, indeed, the musical construction of the pieces themselves. Handel’s music is littered with what I would (crudely) call “diddle-daddle, diddle-daddle” moments (think of the Arrival of the Queen of Sheba from Solomon), while Glass’ favourite equivalent would be “diddly-daddly, diddly-daddly” (I think real music experts refer to these as arpeggios, but I know what I‘m talking about, even if you don’t). Handel is also a key composer in the original instruments debate. I have two versions of The Messiah. I love and would not be without the Charles Mackerras recording on EMI, but that may be mainly for the presence of Janet Baker and I ultimately prefer Paul McCreesh’s version with the Gabrieli Consort on DG Archiv. And both Gardiner and Pinnock present marvellous recordings of the Fireworks and Water Music suites.

Haydn’s symphonies are really boring, I now realise. Only number 104 (104!) is any good and that is his last one. Part of the problem is that he rather overdoes it with the minuets, possibly the most tedious and predictable musical form of all and one which only really found its true level with The Wombles in the 1970s and their assertion that forgetting to be minuetting was letting the other minuetters down. His string quartets, on the other hand, are outstanding. There are lots of them and they are pretty much all excellent. Even minuets have a certain charm when played by a string quartet. I should also mention that, having used the term “Four Seasons” in my blog title and having not reached R or V yet, the only work called The (Four) Seasons I have listened to these past four seasons is the oratorio by Haydn.

But, before we say goodbye to H and winter, I should mention one particularly serendipitous moment while I was driving along listening to film music by Bernard Herrmann and a particularly severe downpour forced me to turn my wipers to maximum speed just as the Psycho Suite came on. Perfect! 

I, J, K and L take up a mere 3 inches on my CD shelves, though it is only really J and L – I have no Is or Ks (not even Ives). I also really need more than one disc of each of Ligeti and Liszt, though one of Leoncavallo is perfectly adequate and you can guess the work.  My 2-disc DG Archiv set of Orlando di Lassus was also not enough but has since been supplemented by a larger number of his works in the Josquin set I mentioned, allowing me a much greater appreciation of his glorious music.

Early spring brought me to another large collection and the composer who is probably my second favourite of all: Gustav Mahler. It isn’t that there are that many works – nine and a half symphonies, five orchestral song cycles and an early cantata – but they are big works and I have multiple copies of them all. The Kubelik and Haitink symphony cycles which I have are a great contrast, but are both very good, though the symphonic recording I treasure most is Horenstein’s 4^th with the LPO on the budget Classics for Pleasure label. This is not so much because it is an outstanding performance (though it certainly is that) as because it was my introduction to Mahler at a college Music Club gathering 50 years ago this autumn. I borrowed the disc from a good friend for the Christmas holiday and never looked back. Recently I have been attempting to hear all the symphonies again in the concert hall and, before lockdown struck, had managed all but the 7^th. A Proms performance of the 3^rd by the Boston Symphony a few years back, together with one on the Berlin Phil’s digital platform, helped finally convince me that it is my favourite of his works (supplanting the 2^nd). The way the final three movements fit together, from the gravity of “Oh, Mensch”, through the joy of “Bimm, Bamm” to the serenity and climactic affirmation of the gorgeous finale is just transformative. I have four recordings and loved listening to them all, especially on the longer journeys to the west country, which began for me (and my wife, Dejanka) when our daughter, Hanna, began college there at this particular time. Rating Mahler’s symphonies is a fairly futile exercise, though. I have looked at a number of lists online, some of them headed “from best to worst”, as though the term “worst” could possibly be applied to a Mahler symphony. They are all outstanding and my own attempts to put them in an order of preference failed miserably. I mean, how could I possibly put the first symphony last, as I ended up doing on every attempt? At the same time as I listened to his music, I read a biography of Mahler by Michael Kennedy, which had been sitting on my shelves for some years and which really enhanced the experience.

Before continuing with the Ms, which is another of those letters, like B and S, with a large number of major composers, I realised that I would need to buy a set of Mendelssohn string quartets if I was to continue my exploration of that form. And I’m very glad I did, because I had previously thought of him as a composer of bright and joyful music, but the quartets showed me that he also had an introspective side which I had not heard before.

And, as spring moved into summer, I was happily accompanied by two of the all-time greatest: Claudio Monteverdi and Wolfgang “Amadeus” Mozart. My favourite Mozart symphony is undoubtedly the Prague (no.38), mainly because it has three gloriously memorable and perfectly balanced movements, which also means that, unlike all the others, it has NO minuet. Young wombles may have been told that “if you minuetto/allegretto you will live to be old”, but that sadly did not apply to Mr Minuetting Mozart himself. Or, to quote one of my favourite Tom Lehrer lines, “it’s a sobering thought that when Mozart was my age, he’d been dead for five years”. Even so, there is just such a wide variety of wonderful and inspiring stuff in Mozart’s catalogue, the very best of which, for me, are his piano concertos, especially when played on an 18^th century piano by Malcolm Bilson accompanied by the English Baroque Soloists under Gardiner. The set of six string quartets, dedicated to Haydn, aren’t bad either.

By early May, I had reached Mozart’s choral works and enjoyed another of those serendipitous moments when I drove home in a totally euphoric state after Brentford’s win in the play-off final at Wembley. Not only was it one of the first games it had been possible to attend after lockdown, but our victory got us back to the top division for the first time in 74 years. And the piece I put into my car music system was Exsultate, Jubilate. Exult! Rejoice! I listened to it twice. It was a perfect moment.

Then it was on to Mozart’s operas. There has been plenty of debate about which of Mozart’s four great operas is the best and I certainly have my own favourite, which is the Magic Flute. The main reason is, of course, the music – it just has great number after great number, from start to finish. Don Giovanni also has its fair share of stunners, but the other two are nowhere near. I have three other reasons for favouring Zauberflote: its mythic setting; the fact that it is in German, which, for me, is the best language for opera; and the fact that it dispenses with recitative (which drives me spare) in favour of spoken dialogue. I was also reminded that I had the wonderful duet “Bei Mannern welche Liebe fuhlen” played at our wedding. I have three DVD/Blu-ray versions of the opera (including Bergman’s film) and two CD sets. Bohm is great, but Gardiner, once again, is best.

I was well into summer by the time I reached the end of M, which brought me to best of all Russian operas – Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. There were two versions (1869 and 1872) and the Gergiev set on Philips has both, so I got to enjoy it twice.

I’ve got a lot of CDs of Michael Nyman’s considerable output and listening to them all together emphasised the range and quality of his work, which basically falls into two categories – that written for the Michael Nyman Band and that written for more traditional ensembles like orchestras and string quartets. The numerous film scores can also be divided like that, though the division tends also to reflect his work with Peter Greenaway and the later soundtracks. Listening to much of it brought back memories of performances I attended in the nineties. Two in particular stand out: a Festival Hall premier of the Upside- Down Violin, during which a young boy in arab dress started dancing on his seat a few rows in front of me – his parents tried to stop him, but everybody said to let him carry on, as it was very much in the spirit of the occasion. Then there was a rainy summer evening in Greenwich Park with my wife, soon after we met. I’m a really big Nyman fan, even though he is a QPR supporter.

O and P included two 20^th century stylists. Firstly Carl Orff, whose Schoolwork provided perfect driving music for many hours and a reminder of one of the most perfect choices of music for a film: Terrence Malick’s use of it in Badlands (1973), exploiting its simultaneously naïve and sinister qualities. I can also never listen to Carmina Burana without remembering a Prom performance I attended in the mid seventies: it was a hot and humid August night and the heavy lighting required for colour video in those days (it was being recorded for broadcast) made the Albert Hall a cauldron – so much so that the bass Thomas Allen fainted during his first solo and knocked over the cello section in falling backwards. Anyway, a replacement walked out soon after and had a quick word with conductor Andre Previn. The next day’s papers revealed he was a music student who had been in the audience and volunteered to sing because he knew the part. Alas, this was not the romantic start of a big career – he had his moment in the spotlight and then was never heard of again. Then, when I reached Arvo Part, I was able to supplement my listening with reading (as I previously had with Mahler), using a book of conversations with the composer which my wife kindly gave me for Christmas last year.

O and P also brought glorious music by two masters from either end of the Renaissance period: Ockeghem (also featured in my Josquin set) and the divine Palestrina. By another quirk of the alphabet, Palestrina was immediately followed by the opera about him by Pfitzner. For me, Palestrina is one of the two greatest Italian composers, together with Monteverdi. Another great Italian, Puccini, was to finish off the listening marathon I am describing here. I would rate him the greatest Italian composer since Vivaldi and my collection of his operas includes a number of performances by the greatest Italian opera singer of all – Luciano Pavarotti.

Anyway, I’m still driving and listening just as much, especially with football back and Premier League grounds to visit, but I will return to that in time and will then blog some music lists. But next time, and after a long absence, it will be back to TV.

This was a very strange TV year. It seemed to start so badly that I had barely any shortlisted programmes until the pandemic struck, at which point it looked as though it would be a total washout with production halted. But there were a number of excellent things already in the can, new forms of production were improvised and the summer easing of restrictions allowed the completion of some productions already underway.

In the end, there were plenty of things to fill the regular top 50 lists from the likes of The Guardian and Radio Times, while the poll I take part in myself, the BFI’s, produced a wide variety of nominations. While I noted and commended in this blog a fair number of the titles which filled these lists, my own shortlist of the things I regarded as the very best only crept above the magic number 10 in the final weeks of the year.

If, as I had expected, I had ended with 10 shortlisted titles, things would have been very easy, but ending with 11 puts me in a dilemma: do I eliminate just one title? ; do I list them all and claim that, while most top tens only go up to 10, mine goes up to 11? ; do I list them in order and have a joint 10^th?  Well, none of these – I am going to add one title which I greatly admired but (unaccountably) omitted to shortlist and give you a top dozen for 2020. This also enables me to add a second factual programme and restore some missing balance.

As always, I’ll list them in (rough) order of appearance through the year:

Star Trek: Picard (Amazon)

A welcome return for an old favourite in a new format, which did justice to all expectations.

Home, season 2 (Channel 4)

Moving and hilarious by turns, it walked several tightropes without a false step

Tales from the Loop (Amazon)

My best of the year – simply beautiful

Quiz (ITV)

Another wonderfully entertaining three-parter from Stephen Frears

Normal People (BBC3/1)

The big hit of lockdown, which allowed many more than would otherwise have watched to appreciate the way it slowly drew us in and kept us entranced.

After Life season 2 (Netflix)

Ricky Gervais really hit his stride in this second season and produced ensemble comedy at its best, while remaining true to its more meditative side at the same time.

Isolation Stories (ITV)

The best of the short dramas employing improvised production techniques under lockdown conditions and commenting most effectively on the situation we found ourselves in.

I May Destroy You (BBC1)

The most strikingly original new drama of the year

Once Upon a Time in Iraq (BBC2)

Riveting documentary series in which the testimonies to camera were the highlight

Play for Today: Drama Out of a Crisis (BBC4)

Brilliantly effective visual use of archive, employing every pixel of the HD screen to convey the full importance of the Play for Today strand on its 50^th anniversary

The Crown: The Hereditary Principle (Netflix)

The standout episode of the best season so far

Small Axe (BBC1)

Significant aspects of black British history given immediacy and contemporary relevance by Steve McQueen’s storytelling and directorial skills

A lot of people watched a lot of TV this year and so it came under greater than usual critical scrutiny. The end-of-year lists I mentioned above reflect this, too, and, while there are certain things that recur in many of them, there is also a lot more divergence than usual. I find it strange that I have not been able to find four of my own choices on any other list, even those of 50 titles or more (apart from my own mention of two of them in the BFI poll). I’m particularly disappointed by the absence of my own personal favourite, Tales from the Loop, though I’m even more surprised not to find Picard on any of the lists I’ve seen.

But that’s what making lists is all about – there are plenty of things I have left out which others would champion, some of which would have been there if I was doing a list of as many as 50 or even 20 (Mrs America, Anthony, Des, Lovecraft Country), though my shortlisting system is intended to work as a kind of rigorous excellence filter and I tend to judge the overall quality of the TV year on the number I put on my shortlist. Added to which, even with as much time on our hands as we have had this year, it is still near impossible to have seen everything of interest – I have to admit that I didn’t see The Third Day (I intend to) or The Undoing (I don’t).

How much we will continue to be stuck indoors in the coming year and how much new production there will be is in the balance, but whatever happens, do have a very Happy New Year and, if you are stuck for finding something to watch, I hope my list helps.

This time of the year we would usually be fully engaged with the start of the Autumn season, containing multiple new series as well as returning favourites. Alas, the pandemic has so disrupted production that we are likely to be in makeshift mode for some time. Nevertheless, the summer and early autumn have managed to provide a handful of worthwhile new offerings made before the lockdown struck, some maybe held back, others maybe brought forward to fill the yawning gaps in the schedules.

Any time is good to get something new from Jimmy McGovern, but it was particularly welcome in the middle of this arid summer. Anthony (BBC1) was clearly always intended for transmission in July anyway, as it was made to mark the 15^th anniversary of the racist murder of Anthony Walker in Liverpool. Mc Govern has such a track record of tackling the city’s major traumas that it was a subject perfect for him, yet the BBC rightly emphasised that Anthony’s mother, Gee Walker, had expressly asked McGovern to do it in case it should be remarked in the light of the Black Lives Matter movement and the question of “white saviours” in fictionalised representations, that it should have been dramatized by a black writer.

Also pertinent in the light of the recent heightened debates about racism was Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You (BBC1), though it was considerably more than that as well. I cannot but agree with all the commentators who hailed it as one of the most significant new dramas of the year, though I have to admit that I’m not completely sure why. This is entirely down to my own limited horizons as an ageing straight white man (with age being the most significant of those four descriptors), rather than any problem with the drama itself. I’m not saying it wasn’t aimed at me – like all great drama it was there to be appreciated by everybody – but rather that it was not within the limits of my full understanding in terms of the detail that makes it a masterpiece: the modern social, cultural and musical references and multiple other subtleties that escaped my comprehension. I do, however, have plenty of experience of judging drama as drama, even in those cases where it doesn’t make an immediate personal connection, and, in terms of its narrative drive I could see that this was obviously something outstanding. I particularly liked the fractured timeline approach, allowing some episodes to stand alone, and the way Coel’s character’s growing appreciation of how to create narrative structure in her own work impacted on her understanding and resolution of what had happened to her, even if it did involve presenting a number of possible endings. A definite for the shortlist.

At the other end of the spectrum, the return of There She Goes (BBC2) for a second season, provided me with something so close to my own personal experience, that I also question my ability to judge it objectively. At the time of the first season, I wrote a blog about this experience (Close to Home, November 14^th, 2018) and the second season simply continued in precisely the same vein. Every episode, and particularly the flashback scenes in which Rosie’s disability becomes apparent, once again provided moments of intimate recognition. And Jessica Hynes and David Tennant were again exceptional. I won’t put it on the shortlist again, but it remains my personal favourite.

Documentaries are on much safer ground than dramas these days. The things that make an excellent documentary series have remained fairly constant of late and were all clearly on display in the outstanding four-part Once Upon a Time in Iraq (BBC2): strong subject matter; a balanced roster of the most interesting and articulate interviewees; a gripping narrative structure; and the most relevant archive footage. There is little more to say – it wasn’t ground-breaking, just extremely good programme-making, and it’s on the shortlist.

And if you were looking for a series which illustrated a historical period by dramatic reconstruction and which also worked as character-driven drama, then along came Mrs America (FX/BBC2), Dahvi Waller’s account of the struggles between feminists and a conservative women’s group over the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment in the US in the 1970s. Its strengths were also traditional ones – a well-constructed script which gave equal weight to historical context as to character development, subtle touches which underscored both aspects, great attention to period detail and, above all, terrific performances, particularly from Cate Blanchett as the leader of the conservative faction. It was also refreshing to encounter such a series which is clearly not angling for a second season.

All the above were transmitted on the BBC, which has managed to balance its resources well in the extraordinary circumstances of the year. ITV’s most impressive drama offering of the period was Des, a dramatisation of the interrogation and trial of the serial killer Dennis Nilsen. It was clearly inspired by the success of a series like Mindhunter (Netflix), which showed that having such a criminal talk openly to investigators across a desk could be just as chilling, if not more so, than reconstructing his crimes. You need a charismatic actor for it to work well and David Tennant (who seems pretty ubiquitous this year) more than rose to the task.

Most of the above appeared during mid to late summer. The most interesting of the early autumn offerings are on subscription and streaming platforms and are ongoing at the time of writing, so I may well have to return to them later. And the most interesting of those is Lovecraft Country (HBO/Sky Atlantic), which counts Jordan Peele and J.J.Abrams amongst its executive producers, and does it ever show. A mixture of social comment on the history of racism and outrageous horror/fantasy with terrific effects, it never fails to startle, though its ultimate destination remains (so far) a mystery. Meanwhile, I Hate Suzie (Sky Atlantic) is superficially similar to I May Destroy You, and I have many of the same problems with it, though without the clear conviction this time that I am watching something of significance, but I will stick with it just in case.

I have, on several occasions, used this blog to sing the praises of Channel 4’s Utopia and to lament the fact that it was cancelled before completion (and, indeed, to hope that it may at some stage be continued). So, I was bound to be attracted to Gillian Flynn’s American re-make (Amazon), if only to check it out for comparison. Unsurprisingly, it is not a patch on the original (how could it possibly be?), but I’m certainly sticking with it for the duration, if only in the hope that the story will be completed.

The pandemic has, of course, thrown greater responsibility onto TV archives to fill the schedules. Most of this has involved straight repeats or compilations, but, in some instances, has inspired developments in the creative use of archival material. Louis Theroux: Life on the Edge (BBC2) was a series of four in which the documentary-maker looked back thematically at his career and reflected thoughtfully on the meaning of the shows he had made, while at the same time, catching up on-line with many of those whose lives he had explored in order to get their take as well. It was a simple idea, but very effectively and movingly executed. Preceding it on BBC2 on Sundays, was Harry Hill’s World of TV, a laugh-out-loud dissection of different TV genes – another simple idea beautifully delivered, thanks to what must have been exhaustive archival research. I particularly liked the sequences in which he played multiple examples of recurring tropes, such as the large number of highly respected crime dramas which have advanced their plots by having somebody enter a room and dramatically announce “so-and-so has regained consciousness”.

But, the most creative use of archive came along just a couple of nights ago with John Wyver’s 50^thanniversary documentary about Play for Today, Drama Out of a Crisis (BBC4). The density of the high definition 16:9 screen was fully employed to cram into its 90-minute span as much material as this legendary strand deserved, all of it presented and framed in its original transmission ratio and selected to illustrate the points being made as effectively as possible. And, of course, the anniversary is also a great excuse for the BBC to transmit the best archival repeats of the lockdown, though they probably would have done so in “normal” circumstances anyway.