ITV, as we’re already sick of being told, is 50 years old this year. And to celebrate, all kinds of nostalgic nonsense is being pumped out of the country’s TV sets.

This weekend, the broadcaster revealed it’s top 50 TV shows of all-time. Predictably, Coronation Street came first. It was a worthy winner – the longest running show on television and usually the highest rated.

But then the list goes all weird. According to viewers, the second best ITV show ever is… Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.

The world scares us sometimes.

Saturday Night Takeaway, for those of you who have never seen it, is nothing more than a generic shiny-floored Saturday teatime programme. The formula is simple – fill a studio with mindlessly
whooping cretins and give away a bunch of big prizes. That’s it. And
it’s the second-best ITV show ever, apparently. It’s weird, like the
BBC calling Noel’s House Party the second-best show ever.

It wasn’t just Saturday Night Takeaway that did well. In fact, every
grown-up ITV show that Ant & Dec have worked on made it into the
top ten. Pop Idol was the ninth rated show, and I’m A Celebrity… Get
Me Out Of Here! came sixth.

Now, we don’t have anything against Ant & Dec as such. SM:TV Live was a good kiddie show, and we quite like that Our Radio Rocks song. They’re not bad at what they do. But will they still be this popular in the future?

Well, probably not. Polls like these always tend to favour the recent. If the same thing
was done 20 years ago, Bullseye would probably have done very well. But
now it’s nowhere to be seen. And that’s what we expect to happen to all
the Ant & Dec shows.

Of course, we might be wrong. In a million year’s time, folk stories
might be told of the two tiny men who would dress up and embarrass
their famous friends and then give away a car to a cross-eyed idiot.

And when that happens, we’ll apologise. But not before. Here’s the full top ten ITV shows ever…

1 – Coronation Street

2 – Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway

3 - A Touch Of Frost

4 - Inspector Morse

5 - Emmerdale

6 - I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here!

7 - The Bill

8 – The Muppet Show

9 – Pop Idol

10 – Spitting Image

Read more:

Corrie tops ITV’s greatest shows poll – Channel 4

[story by Stuart Heritage]