Adolescence grips the world
One of the most critically acclaimed and most watched shows of the year was Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham’s staggering Adolescence. At the heart of the plot: why did an innocent-looking kid called Jamie (Owen Cooper) commit such a brutal murder? The third episode lifted the lid. As Jamie is interviewed by psychologist Briony (Erin Doherty), we see him slowly reveal that he’s not an innocent kid, but warped by misogyny and a twisted sense of entitlement. The episode was captivating in its acting, but it stayed with you: from Jamie’s sudden switch from vulnerability to manipulation, to the moment the camera zooms in on Briony’s face as she registers who Jamie really is. Horrifying.
Celia farts
Not only did The Celebrity Traitors have the best reality show casting of all time, but there were also so many scenes of hilarity and joy that it resulted in some of the best television of the year. It peaked with something no one could have anticipated: Celia Imrie farting in a tense moment at the start of a challenge. “It’s nerves, but I always own up,” admitted Imrie, as everyone else corpsed around her. Bafta has a TV moment of the year award, so I look forward to May 2026, when an acclaimed actor with a five-decade career wins a Bafta for … passing wind.
‘You Ain’t My Mother’ 2.0
EastEnders has had a belter of a year, from its faultless 40th anniversary live episode to an opening scene of Phil Mitchell (Steve McFadden) yelling at a chicken. The soap also had a homage to one of its greatest and most quoted scenes, when Zoe Slater (Michelle Ryan) yelled “you ain’t my mother!” to Kat Slater (Jessie Wallace), who responded … “YES I AM!” Zoe’s high-profile return took place on the same street, in the rain, with the characters spaced just as they were when the exchange took place. Goosebumps.
The Doctor regenerates into … Who?!
When the BBC teamed up with Disney to help fund and distribute Doctor Who, it was anticipated that this supercharged “Whoniverse” would herald an exciting new era for the long-running sci-fi show. Yet despite some ambitious Russell T Davies storytelling, ratings sagged, Ncuti Gatwa quit and Disney decided not to renew the deal.
Yet this wasn’t the most surprising part. It was the ending to the series finale The Reality War, where The Doctor regenerated into … 2005 companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper). Although we don’t know yet if she is actually The Doctor, or this is Rose again and The Doctor is somewhere else. Such a baffling cliffhanger makes you wonder … do they even know?!
Tess and Claudia call it a day
The most talked about moment on Strictly this year wasn’t actually on Strictly, but rather an Instagram Reel posted by Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly on a random Thursday morning letting us know that they were both calling it quits. News of their departure not only blindsided viewers, but also the show’s judges, dancers and contestants. The timing was weird, too. Was it to get ahead of a tabloid paper? And why didn’t the BBC press office announce their departure at the same time? Strange.
Bob Mortimer bosses it
Prime Video shows are usually a hodge podge of random ideas drawn out of a hat (Lord of the Rings and the short-lived reboot of Neighbours, for instance). This year they had a bona fide hit with a super simple premise: put a bunch of comedians in a room and make them compete to get each other to laugh – without laughing themselves.
It resulted in some truly unhinged television: Joe Wilkinson’s surreal speech on the RNLI, Daisy May Cooper imitating a rollercoaster ride with a leaf blower and the fridge being opened to find a cackling Alison Hammond. The format was a playground for Bob Mortimer, who made Judi Love laugh simply by sitting on a chair. His steely resistance to humour made him the outright winner, even beating strong competitor Richard Ayoade. The fact that Mortimer has already been confirmed to return in the second series almost makes up for him not being in The Celebrity Traitors.
Bake Off #bingate is back
In 2014, Bake Off contestant Iain thought his baked alaska was doomed after fellow contestant Diana temporarily took it out of the freezer. It resulted in him dumping his mixture in the bin, which he later presented to judges Paul and Mary.
I know. A simpler time, but I digress. Almost 10 years on, Iain, a different contestant with the same name, decided to make a tribute to the moment in his showstopper. Not by baking a baked alaska. No. He baked us the bin.
Paul Hollywood later criticised the bin’s flavours (a sentence I never thought I would write). Iain (the 2025 baker) responded: “Those were Iain’s original flavours. I’m not trying to pass the buck!” Hollywood then broke the fourth wall addressing 2014 Iain. “I really didn’t like the bake. I’m so sorry.”
James Acaster punches a polar bear
Saturday Kitchen is usually the home of cooking demonstrations, old Rick Stein clips and if you’re lucky, some spectacular unintended innuendo. However, one episode this year went off the rails. When the public had to vote on whether James Acaster and Ed Gamble’s “food heaven” was to be cooked, loser Acaster did a dramatic overreaction, punching a polar bear then attacking a Christmas tree. Bon appetit.
‘We’re sorry we upset you, Carol’
Pluribus, Vince Gilligan’s Apple TV series which is like Breaking Bad meets Lost, started with protagonist Carol (Rhea Seehorn) watching on in horror as everyone around her convulses without explanation. Carol races home, turns on the television and flicks through the channels, hoping to find some reassuring news. Instead, in an almighty twist, Carol finds a man in the White House press room asking her directly to ring the number on the screen, who breaks the news to her that humanity has been taken over by a happy hive mind. But don’t worry Carol, he reassures her. “Your life is your own.”
Joel’s brutal end
You can tell an OG fan of video game adaptation The Last of Us by whether they knew about the death of Joel (Pedro Pascal) before it actually happened. Joel’s death was particularly brutal. A revenge attack by Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) after Joel killed her father, he was shot and repeatedly beaten with a golf club and then stabbed. Ellie (Bella Ramsey) could only look on in horror, as she saw Joel’s demise.
Louis Theroux gets shoved
One of the standout documentaries of the year was when Louis Theroux saw first hand how Israeli settlements have accelerated in the West Bank. In one encounter, settlers point a laser sight through the window of a Palestinian home he visits. In another scene, he asks a balaclava-wearing armed Israeli soldier not to touch him while visiting a high-security area of Hebron with a Palestinian resident.
Towards the end of the episode, we see a tense exchange between Theroux and Daniella Weiss, a leading figure in the settler movement. After Weiss denies settler violence against Palestinians, Theroux presses back that there’s video evidence. Weiss responds by unexpectedly shoving Theroux, hoping that he responds, as part of her explanation that such video evidence does not show the full picture. “That seems sociopathic,” responds Theroux. Ouch.
Zero star hell
Despite an A-list cast of Kim Kardashian, Glenn Close and Sarah Paulson, Ryan Murphy’s female-fronted legal drama All’s Fair became the 18th zero-star review in the Guardian’s 204-year history.
It might end up being the only accolade the show will ever get. Described by the Guardian’s TV critic Lucy Mangan as “so awful, it feels almost contemptuous,” the plot, pacing, acting and script were all diabolical, resulting in, at one point, a 0% rating on the critic website Rotten Tomatoes (it has since nudged upwards, but it’s still under 10%.)
“I personally think that the first three episodes were the weakest,” Close later admitted in an interview with Variety. “That was a tough way to start. I’ve seen all nine episodes, and I think it actually adds up to something.” What a ringing endorsement!
No longer Serving Kant
Eurovision this year was once again overshadowed by the talk surrounding Israel’s inclusion, but one other story that came out from the contest was Maltese entrant Miriana Conte being told that if she wanted to compete, she would have to change the controversial C-word referencing lyrics of her song Serving Kant.
“It does sound as if you’re trying to use this sort of quite popular millennial phrase,” Newsnight’s Faisal Islam quizzed Conte, carefully skirting around what the popular phrase actually was.
“To me, it means ‘serving singing’,” Conte said. However, as Conte’s performance saw her singing in front of a screen of a giant pair of open legs, I’m pretty sure everyone knew what she was referring to anyway.
Rylan refuses to bareback live
We now turn to This Morning, the daytime show that once broadcast a “vagina facial” and an interview with a couple who orgasm 18 hours a day by hugging.
At one point this year, there was an item about “barebacking,” which is not what you think it is, but rather when young people travel without wearing backpacks or using their mobile phones. Rylan refused to participate in the discussion in case the chat went off the rails, which it inevitably did anyway.
‘We’re soft-skinned, soft-skinned’
Acclaimed Northern Ireland police drama Blue Lights has a knack for luring you in with a false sense of security (here are the coppers having a nice snack in their police car!) before an unexpected twist or heart-rending scene that leaves you on the floor.
Episode five was a textbook example, when officers joked and played a song from Westlife followed swiftly by an altercation where Shane (Frank Blake) became unable to use both legs after being attacked in the thigh with a wine glass.
Yet that wasn’t even the most tense moment. It was that episode’s cliffhanger: an active threat against a vehicle being driven by Constable Grace Ellis (Siân Brooke) with the attackers following them in the car behind (“Is your vehicle armoured or soft-skinned?” “We’re soft-skinned, soft-skinned.” “Shit.”) Yikes.
Mummy Pig is pregnant!
Good Morning Britain usually consists of two people with opposing views yelling at each other about a non-essential issue at 7.45am. Yet this year, the breakfast show went in a more surreal direction with Peppa Pig’s Mummy Pig announcing live on the programme that she was pregnant with her third piglet.
Naturally, the country and all news media lost all sense of proportion. When Mummy Pig and Daddy Pig presented new baby Evie outside the Lindo Wing, the same hospital where the Princess of Wales had her baby a decade earlier, the Daily Mail reported concerns about why Mummy and Daddy Pig had both gone private rather than going with the NHS. No, I am not taking any of this out of context.
Cunk does Who Do You Think You Are?
Diane Morgan, the comedian behind the spoof documentary presenter Philomena Cunk, was the subject on the genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are?Inevitably, it resulted in her delightfully taking the mickey out of the show and the genre while appearing on it. At one point, she said “I wonder how much wandering aimlessly I’ll be doing during this” before we got a shot of her doing just that. “My only reservation of doing this was the slow head rotation at the start. It makes me cringe just watching it,” Morgan told Who Do You Think You Are?, as her head started rotating slowly. Classic.
Paul Merton takes on Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
Have I Got News for You has a knack for recording an episode when major news breaks, such as its post-2015 election special when both the then Labour leader Ed Miliband and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg coincidentally stood down mid-recording.
Earlier this year, another such event happened again. When news came that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had lost his royal title, the production team slipped the development to guest host Jason Manford, who revealed it to a shocked audience.
Jason Manford: “Andrew is no longer a prince.”
Paul Merton, as always, came back with a perfect quip.
“The bad news is he’s become king.”
MasterChef was cooked
When Gregg Wallace was sacked, and John Torode’s contract wasn’t renewed, the production company that made MasterChef had the unenviable task of re-editing an upcoming series to seemingly remove any jokes or banter, as well as two contestants who didn’t want to be there any more. The inevitable frantic re-editing led to a bizarre sequence noticed by viewers, when the exact same shot of Wallace appeared three times in less than a minute.
‘How much is a 69 in your area?’
It wouldn’t be a TV moments list without a few British news fails. Howler of the Year went to Sky News, with a guest on their paper review commenting that it was “great” that Pope Francis was feeling better from double pneumonia, only for it to be followed by breaking news that he had in fact died.
Innuendo of the Year was a heated battle between East Midlands BBC Weather presenter Rob Rose who said “and you can probably see Uranus as well” (he was actually talking about the clear night sky) and the Irish breakfast television presenter who asked viewers “how much is a 69 in your area?” when he meant to say 99.
Yet it was Peter Levy on BBC Look North who won overall, after commenting “mine’s only a small one but it did go up this weekend”. He was referring, of course, to a Christmas tree.
The Maryam Moshiri Award went to BBC News presenter Maryam Moshiri, who this year failed to show the middle finger but did do an impression of a peacock.
The most coveted prize, Fail of the Year, went to an event on radio rather than on television, when BBC Radio Derby presenter Ian Skye had severe cramp while introducing a record. Forgetting to put the fader down, listeners heard Skye yell “FUCKING HELL,” followed by a grovelling apology.
