It’s always incredibly realistic in soapsville, with characters suffering incredibly similar fates to us television watching plebs. Think about it. On your street, there’s been thousands of murderous affairs and trams crashing into factories. They should be called documentaries really.

And over at Eastenders, it’s wedding time for love’s young (and depressingly damp) dream Tamwar and Afia this week! Yes, the wedding which has dragged on for at least 17 years, is finally going ahead but not before that Yusef  fella  has one last attempt at being sneaky and dastardly in order to win back the love of Zainab.

Tamwar decides to grow a pair and tells Zainab that he wants Masood at the wedding and Zainab agrees saying it would raise questions if he wasn’t there.  Questions like ‘Where’s Masood?’ we’re guessing. Yusef invites Christian and Syed to the wedding but then he goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid like; ‘Shut up about being gay and having children’ making perpetually tormented Syed take the huff….BUT THEN Zainab invites them both giving the nation hope that they might see Syed backflip one more time.

Afia is persuaded by her father to tell Tamwar she’s scared of Jane Beale groping postman Masood, so Tamwar gives his dad a Father’s Day card then promptly bans him from the wedding. The ungrateful shit.

Tired of telling everyone what a big bastard Yusef is,  Masood decides to ruin everything by showing up anyway, telling Tamwar he forbids him to marry Afia just as Yusef has tried to woo Zainab again with his pointy face. Tamwar reveals they’re already married, making everyone have a big Eastenders fight which includes face punching but more importantly NO BACKFLIPPING.

Curses.

Meanwhile the rest of Albert Square are still alcoholics, Max Branning and Tanya are still thinking about doing it all day long and David Essex is still a handsome looking man.

Up North meanwhile at Coronation Street, sturgeon faced Becky is determined to move on from Steve and decides to flirt with Stella’s man Karl before being told by Stella to bugger off.  She then tells Steve she’s seeing other men so Steve throws her out and after getting shit-faced she decides she still loves Steve making every viewer throw their hands in the air and wish she’d just fuck off.

Steve then then tells Becky he wants a divorce and conveniently goes to visit his brother leaving Becky to take over the pub, get shit-faced again and makes Ken Barlow threaten to call the police. THE POLICE NO LESS.

How exciting.

Carla also gets smashed when her mother dies and she gets all pissy with a new client, making Frank furious. Will she tell him what’s going on or will she just call Peter and ask him to help her, thus making his wife jealous as she catches them embracing?  FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!! WHAT WILL SHE DO????  (She called Peter).

Stella (Michelle Collins) also wrestles a baseball wielding maniac to the ground in the bookies before hiring a hitman to kill Ian Beale again. One of those facts may not be true. Over at silly, but ultimately adorable Hollyoaks, characters with stupid names like Mercedes and Mitzeee do stuff and no one really cares as they’re too busy cry wanking with the sound down.

That was good wasn’t it? Oh stop it. We love you more.

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That’s almost it, then – just over a day and 2009 will be filed away forever, possibly under ‘quite wet’.

We’re not writing this now, of course. We’re ensconced in the bosom of our families. But this hastily thrown-together list of TV shows that the hecklerspray writers quite liked is probably enough to fool you into thinking that we’re still around, right? Right? Of course it is.

Anyway, TV shows that we liked and you probably didn’t. Don’t forget to tell us how spectacularly misinformed we are, either. Let’s go!

Stuart Heritage

Lost, hands down. This year Lost managed to take an already confusing show, make it 4,000 times more confusing and still manage to create the year’s most compelling TV out of it. Between Lost itself, Jeff Jensen’s columns on Lost in Entertainment Weekly and the recurring dreams I had about the poxy thing, I’m starting to consider myself a slight obsessive. There may even be a brief period of mourning after the last episode next year. Let’s hope there isn’t, because that’d make me a right wanker, wouldn’t it?

Shawn Lindseth

My DVR is jam packed to the point that I can’t record every show I want to because too many others are already in line. The most notable of these would be 30 Rock, LOST and Community – the latest fantastic show to light up our nights. The best television in 2009, however, is Survivor: Samoa because of the way Russell found those immunity idols so effortlessly (without a single clue) and used them to turn the whole game on its head.

Television, reality-based or otherwise, rarely gets more exciting.

Matthew Laidlow

I’m sure I’ve been using the same show for the last few years, but I’m going to do it again. And seeing it’s finished forever, I can’t do it next year. I bloody love The Shield and still think it’s better than The Wire. Just because it’s not talked about in The Guardian every day means its not good. For all it was worth, the show did need to finish as the tight friendship the main characters had was an all time low. Each episode was still leaving you wanting more and the ending was done in a way that severed justice but not necessarily in the correct way. Basically, it was a better ending than The Sopranos.

Watching our holy lord editor Stuart Heritage doing stuff on Sky News was also amusing. He said ‘bumholes’ pre-watershed and put a grim expression on the presenter’s face.

Chris Laverty

I had never seen The Wire before BBC2 screened it earlier this year with such self-satisfied ballyhoo. Thing is, nobody warned me about the greatness. People said stuff like ‘best TV show ever’ or ‘better than The Sopranos’, but nobody actually encapsulated what it was that made The Wire so damn perfect. For the uninitiated I will not even attempt to put this right. My best advice is to just watch the show yourself. Watch three episodes at a time and don’t ever go near any stupid forums. The Wire is better ingested than discussed.

Josh Burt

It’s been a vintage year for television programmes, so, here are some of the best in list form: Eastbound and Down, In Treatment, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, 30 Rock, Big Brother (genuinely brilliant for the first time in about five years), and Masterchef The Professionals. Much better than normal Masterchef.

Amy Grindhouse

I’m going to have to be obvious here and say my favourite show is True Blood. I’m addicted, which is weird because broadly speaking I watch almost no TV. But this show has me hooked in a way only Chocolate Buttons had managed before. It is a show about a bunch of vampires and country folk with Texas accents, living in Louisiana. It contains more sex scenes than one should ever feel entirely comfortable with in one show. Other than that, it’s smashing.

Paul Gibson

Tempted to go with my perennial favourite, Cops. But that sort of goes without saying, so props this year to Family Guy (the shark was circling last season, but this show refused to jump) and Glee (I am male and heterosexual, but this was fun and the musical treatments worked). Also, despite pouring hundreds of rude words about her onto the internet, I have to give a large, manly shout out to Susan Boyle on Britain’s Got Talent. Truth be told, it was a very touching ‘moment’ when she first stood there, like a badly gift-wrapped potato, and let loose with that voice.

Keith Emmerson

The Thick of It

Despite the dumbing down of the latest series with most episodes constructed  around Peter Capaldi‘s creative swearing ala In The Loop, The Thick Of It remains my favourite TV show. The subtle glances, nods and inflections are what make this programme great, and dare I say it, identifiably British. It is difficult to mention TTOI without Chris Langham‘s elephant appearing in the room, let’s just say that it hasn’t been quite the same without his great character present.

Louise Scodie

If TV is the opium of the masses, then talent shows are its crack cocaine. You start with a little bit of Britain’s Got Talent, and then before you know it you’re cancelling arrangements to watch the live final (“What do you mean you can’t get another bridesmaid at this short notice?”) and snorting Strictly Come Dancing through a fiver. Like all addicts, I don’t care as long as I get my fix. My fave this year was X Factor. Le Cowell is TV’s fittest panto baddie and I am going to marry him.

David Scarborough

How I Met Your Mother

Overlooking my usual choice of Lost, How I Met Your Mother slipped under the radar on E4 and proved to be the most delightful, hilarious treat this year. Instead of letting Flashforward give you a nosebleed (because it is so bafflingly ill-conceived), let this show put your faith back into quality US entertainment.

Robyn Wilder

Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse, I’m afraid. Yes, it’s flawed; yes, it’s inconsistent; and yes – it has been cancelled. But no other TV show this year had dialogue like this:

Topher: Brown Sauce. What’s it made of? Science doesn’t know!
DeWitt: It’s made of brown.
Topher: Brown…mined from the earth by the hard scrabble brown miners of north Brownderton!
DeWitt: Oh my god, I find lentils completely incomprehensible.

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Oprah Winfrey rules all mediums; television, radio, magazines and – thanks to Screaming Round Lady Go-Go 100% – Japanese anime.

But there’s one medium that Oprah Winfrey hasn’t dabbled in for a while – movies. Sure, she was nominated for an Oscar for The Color Purple, but that was over 20 years ago.

So it’s great to hear that Oprah Winfrey has just signed a deal to make mini-series, movies, documentaries and series. Best of all, she’s making them all for HBO, so she can either be like The Sopranos and be intelligent and groundbreaking or be like Entourage and be annoyingly smug. You know, for a change.

There’s so much more to Oprah Winfrey than the mistaken belief that we all care about how fat she is as much as she does. Wherever you look, Oprah Winfrey has it nailed down. She’s got a TV show, she’s got magazines, you can listen to her on the radio and she’ll soon have an entire network devoted to nothing but a close-up of her face with fire reflected in eyes that’s accompanied by the sound of distant crying babies.

But that’s not enough for Oprah Winfrey. Oprah isn’t going to stop this inexorable march towards global domination until every child born on this planet is named Oprah and learns how to screech about free cars from a pointlessly young age. Or at least until she gets to make some low-grade movies and TV shows for HBO.

Which, hey, happen to be now. Although as far as drama goes, Oprah Winfrey is probably best-known for her Oscar-nominated performance in The Color Purple, but she’s also pretty handy behind the scenes, too – producing films and TV shows like Their Eyes Were Watching God, Before Women Had Wings and The Great Debaters.

And now, thanks to the deal she’s just signed with HBO, there’s going to be a bunch more where that came from. Reuters reports:

Oprah Winfrey’s production company has signed a deal to make movies, documentaries and series for cable channel HBO, Harpo Films and HBO said on Tuesday. Kate Forte, president of Harpo Films, said HBO offered a unique blend of format and creativity on television, “and the quality and range of their subjects are extraordinary.”

And, what’s more, you can swear and take your clothes off on HBO too, which is why the first three projects we expect Oprah Winfrey to work on with HBO are remakes of her old hits, like Their Tits Were Watching Porn, Before Women Had Fannies and, obviously, The Masturbators.

Since Oprah Winfrey is involved here, we’ve no doubt at all that this HBO deal will be a success. Just don’t expect to see Oprah herself making an appearance in any of the new shows – these days, when people see an old fat black woman on TV they just assume it’s Tyler Perry dressing up again and switch off.

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December 28, and an admission. The reason why we aren't here throwing celebrity news at you like bananas in a monkey factory is because the whole hecklerspray family has gone camping.

It isn't going well. Laidlow, hammered on alcopops, has thrown up in Lindseth's sleeping bag and made him cry. Laverty tripped over the guy rope and dropped all our eggs on a cowpat. C J Davies keeps walking into a tree head-first again and again, convinced he'll be able to move it with the power of his mind and nobody has seen Annette since she went off to film that witch's hut. Only Stuart Heritage has managed to rise above this pathetic scene. Really, he's like some sort of hero or something.

Anyway, want to know what our favourite TV shows of the year were? Good, they're all here…

Stuart Heritage

I was tempted to plump for Tribe here, but didn't for the simple reason that Bruce Parry doesn't break out in whimsical song twice an episode. That isn't a problem with Flight Of The Conchords – the HBO remake of the duo's BBC radio series. Funny, understated and – as proved by the song Leggy Blonde – weirdly touching, Brett and Jermaine from Flight Of The Conchords are smarter, funnier, better-looking and better dressed than I am, and the simple fact that I don't hate them for it speaks volumes.

C J Davies

The Wire Season Three – broadcast a couple of years back, released to the masses on DVD this year – remains one of the best television shows ever made, and word is that the fourth season continues this fine tradition. In terms of new stuff, it admittedly does feel like it's been a year of wavering standards. 24 was notably below par this time around, even for a series that prides itself on far-fetched unreality. Family Guy has been missing the mark with alarming inaccuracy of late, and Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip promised to develop into something interesting but then went and got itself cancelled. Oh, and Heroes is just a big pile of shit, isn't it, really?

Hip-hip-hurrahs then to our two winners, one of which went out with nothing resembling a bang. The Sopranos ended in typically uncompromising style, dividing opinions sharply between pretentious non-ending and work of utter genius (hint: it's the latter). And Lost has made a remarkable recovery from a lacklustre second season, playing out its third year with humour, suspense and intelligence beyond any of its contemporaries.

Meanwhile in Britain, Rosemary And Thyme is set to begin it's six-fucking-millionth series.

Shawn Lindseth

The Best TV show of '08, in my humble opinion – and I have 75% of a GED so my opinion really counts – is 30 Rock. They were on their game during season one, but season two even more so. Anyone catch that Greenzo episode when Al Gore had to run out and save a whale?

Or what about when Kenneth was obligated to seduce Tracy Jordan's wife, and he did so by telling her he was a real good sex person?

Yes, in Shawn Lindseth's humble middle-school educated opinion, 30 Rock takes the '07 sitcom cake. 

Chris Laverty

Not just the best show of the year, but now one of my favourite shows of all time: Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip.

Less hyped than Heroes and with a cast largely over the age of 30, this show never really stood a chance.

Literate and moving, funny and meaningful – this is the kind of programme that nobody you know actually watches; especially not anymore, because it was cancelled with criminal haste after just one series.

Matthew Laidlow

It has to be the Jeremy Kyle show by far. There really is no better way to wake up on a morning in a hangover state to see Britain’s morons being paraded around for my amusement. Such brilliant tales of 'My daughter's a 14-year-old smack head' and 'I’m the village bike' never fail to make me laugh. Where they get them from I don’t know, but it’s like the Jeremy Kyle show is single-handedly picking out and showing us all of God’s hideous mistakes. We all make errors from time to time, I guess. At least ITV has the chance to exploit this for an hour or so every day. All it needs is a ridiculously easy phone-in competition prize of a 20p Pick And Mix at Woolworths and it has the makings of the greatest TV show ever.

Annette Hyde

I can now somewhat confidently admit to my love of Heroes. I was ashamed at first. What was to come next? Two and a Half Men curiosity? A subtle regard for Grey’s Anatomy? But, I can now admit that I am a Heroes supporter. My main reason for choosing Heroes is that if I could heal myself like Hayden Panettiere’s character I wouldn’t have to panic wondering if I contracted a deadly disease after accidentally sticking myself with a needle at work… or needles. Yep. It’s happened more than once.

Next week – our wishes for 2008. But leave your favourite TV shows of 2007 in the comment box below. If that’s what you want to do.