It’s day three of Spray Picks 06 – where we half-heartedly make up for not giving you any real news by lazily cobbling together a retrospective on the year gone by in the vague hope that you won’t really notice. Yay!
Today, to make up for the fact that we’re all off riding diamond-studded jetskis across a man-made lake of melted rubies, all the hecklerspray writers have put their heads together and had a long think about the TV shows that we all liked the best from 2006. Now, there’s every chance that this is the nine billionth ‘Best Of’ list you’ve read this week alone, but this is one you should really pay attention to. Why? Because when it comes to bumming around watching hour upon hour of bad television simply because the remote control is slightly out of reach and it’s too much effort to get up, hecklerspray is world class.
Find out the TV shows that rocked our world after the jump…
Stuart Heritage
Heroes
OK, so I obtained a DVD of the first few episodes of Heroes in a vaguely nefarious manner, and I’m clearly pulling the same “I’ve seen it and you haven’t” elitist schtick that I did when I watched all of the first season of Lost before you too. But am I ever pleased that I did – Heroes isn’t just the best TV show I’ve seen this year, it’s one of the best TV shows I can remember, and I promise to poo my pants if BBC2 hides it away at midnight like it’s done with everything from Arrested Development to The Apprentice USA. Heroes – a series about a disparate bunch of chancers from all walks of life who slowly figure out they have various super powers and then try to get it together enough to save New York from a nuclear explosion that one of them sees in a premonition – has all of the punch that Lost did before it started to settle in for the long-haul, and it’s far more instant and direct. And in Hiro, Heroes has created one of the enduring TV characters of all time – a cuddly Japanese geek who, when he realises he can time-travel and teleport, spends week after week running around yelling “Yatta!” at the top of his lungs. Your money back if you’re not hooked by the end of episode two.
Shawn Lindseth
It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia
If memory serves correctly, Arrested Development aired its last four episodes on Jan 10th of this year. As a few of you might remember, this sad topic strikes quite a chord with hecklerspray, but we won’t count it in this running, as ’06 only saw its dying breath.
As far as brilliant TV shows that aired a full and successful season this year – there is only one choice for best of the year – FX’s It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. In this, its second season, we saw Danny Devito added to the cast, as well as a whole bunch of mother-banging, an accidental terror attack on a Jewish guy’s restaurant, and a season-ending father switch-up. If you haven’t watched it, you’ve nobody else to blame.
C J Davies
The Root of All Evil
The warhorses are still stampeding, aren't they? The Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, 24, Family Guy, The Wire? all the best shows of last year (and the year before) remain the best ones of this.
Standard choices aside, my personal highlight of the year was Richard Dawkin?s magnificent The Root Of All Evil, a two-episode companion piece to The God Delusion (read it now ? perfect material for this time of year, kids) that took the archaic and outdated notion of organised religion and ? not to be too subtle about this ? tore it a new arsehole. A DVD release would be nice, Channel Four.
Chris Laverty
Scrubs
New TV has been a bit a shite this year. Movies have got better; decent TV is taking a well-earned breather. Never mind however, as this is the year I got into Scrubs.
Scrubs is so funny I randomly kick myself throughout the day for not getting into it sooner. Everyone told me to watch, but I knew best. I'd seen The Young Doctors. I'd had my fill of anything more medical than CSI: New York.
We all make mistakes though. I'm now ready to ably support Scrubs? hospital japery right to its bitter jump-the-shark end.
Even with Zach Braff reputedly upping sticks for movie pastures new, this show will survive. Just so long as they give The Janitor his own spin-off series. Who doesn't want to grow up to see the world sparkle?
Matthew Laidlow
The Shield
OK, we all know that Channel Five isn't exactly the world's best TV station. In fact, if it was pulled tomorrow not many tears would be shed by myself or other people with TV sense. But there is one show, the crown jewel of TV, which we have imported from the good old US of A. Yes that's right! America has more to offer than fast food and destroying countries. But it's not CSI, in fact it's something much better: The Shield.
The fifth season just finished but I want more! It's a cop show, but it breaks all the boundaries of all other cop shows. For starters, these cops are both good cops and bad cops. Yeah, they clean up the ghettos of LA – but they often take little cuts of cash, monitor drug rings and run them themselves for their own use to solve other crimes and pick off other naughty gangsters. Pisses all over The Bill, don't you think? Go buy the old seasons on box-set with your gift vouchers you got for Christmas. It'll be worth it.
Over to you. Agree? Disagree? Disagree strongly? Disagree so strongly that a vein in your temple just popped? Leave a comment why don’t you.
And tomorrow – our favourite things of the year.
Gilbert Wham says
Wot, no fuckin’ Deadwood?
jules says
Battlestar season 2…..