Welcome once more to Uncle Kev's TV Review of the Year. You'll find links to previous years’ lists below. And this year my list begins, not with TV, but with podcasts. Because I have done a phenomenal amount of driving this year, and drew my longest graphic novel yet (Romeo and Juliet, out this week), I listened to a lot of audio. But what was the best? Let’s find out…
Part 1: The Podcasts
12 - Bristol Cult Film Society Cult Film Podcast Podcast - Steve Noble hosts an in-depth look at mostly obscure films that are coming out on Blu Ray. With a fab sense of humour, and quite obscure and well chosen guests. One of which, this year, was me.
11 - The Daily Show Ears Edition - the TV show itself, but on audio. Why don’t more TV shows do this?
10 - Screenshot - Mark Kermode and Ellen E Jones’ authoritative and exhaustive movie analysis show. They seem to be given an awful lot of episodes, making them close to but not quite an ‘always on’ podcast. Far better done than the rambling and indulgent (but no doubt better paid) podcast Kermode does with Simon Mayo. How long will Radio 4 manage to keep this show? (The same must be asked of its stablemate Curious Cases, whose Professor Hannah Fry is just starting a show on Goalhanger, no doubt for another small fortune. Wherever did all this money come from?)
9 - Cautionary Tales + More Or Less - Tim Harford remains the best explainer of things I don’t quite grasp, eg economics, and one of the best storytellers on radio.
8 - Radio 2 & Radio 6. The latter has Radcliffe and Maconie, the last vestige of the type of pop radio show I grew up on. Across the board it is the most intelligent and least moronic music radio station there has ever been, no argument. The former brings me the music from my childhood, to which I listen to a disproportionate amount, via Pick Of The Pops, and Sounds Of The 60s, 70s, and 80s.
7 - No Such Thing As A Fish - This may be the podcast I’ve been listening to for longest. Its charms still have me in their thrall, and it regularly makes me laugh out loud.
6 - Uncanny - Bloody Hell Danny! Could this be the best and most original non-comedy show Radio 4 has commissioned this century? I’d say so.
5 - The Rest Is Entertainment - If I ever tell you a fact about TV with any authority, it’ll be because I’ve just been told it by Osman and Hyde. I never miss an episode of this and swear by it. Their position as unquestionable founts of wisdom has survived Hyde’s involvement in The Franchise, and the poor movie adaptation of Osman’s Thursday Murder Club this year, which is quite the achievement.
4 - Radio 4 Comedy - inc Mark Steel’s In Town, Paul Sinha’s Pub Quiz, Unbelievable Truth, It’s A Fair Cop, Just A Minute, News Quiz, Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics et al. Now I think it, I don’t think I’ve heard a new comedy show in recent years. All the shows mentioned here are on their umpteenth series (ranging from their fifth to their fifty-plus-ith!) Friday night’s attempts to replace the cancelled Now Show haven’t, to my ears, worked. How long Radio 4 can carry on making original comedy remains to be seen. I wonder whether the podcast environment is helping or hindering them.
3 - Various - This is a massive category, indicative of what the podcast environment entails. I have dialled up and started listening to, I would say, literally hundreds of different podcasts this year. Often, in the case of ones discussing comics, TV, and movies, I’ve given up quickly because they’re two guys in a shed, usually American, talking inanely with no great point or direction and not in the detail I was hoping for. Sometimes they’re not bad, but I’m not addicted enough to listen to more. I’ll dip into the odd edition of the shows by Kermode and Mayo, Mark Ellen & David Hepworth, Alistair Campbell and Rory Stewart, The Lonely Island, Mulville and Fincham, Miranda Sawyer, Margaret Cabourn Smith, Carvey & Spade, and more that people suggest. But there are too many and, though not bad, they’re quickly moved on from. I’ve listened to some marvellously written and produced true crime shows, and I mustn’t forget the excellent history shows by Charlie Higson, Adam Roche and Paul Kerensa. And stuff on Radio 4 still, for however long that lasts. Has there ever been so much stuff?
2 - What Went Wrong - my new joint favourite takes second place, because it’s American. Lizzie Bassett and Chris Winterbauer tell the behind the scene stories of the making of Hollywood movies, in excellently researched detail. My only concern is that, having discovered the show this year, I’ve been listening through their back catalogue, which goes right back to 2020, and will soon have heard them all. Will just one episode a week be enough to keep me hooked? Probably.
1 - Shooby Dooby Doo Wop - my other new joint favourite is the British one. The Birmingham one, to be precise. James Cook and Andy Robinson talk through a randomly chosen Top Ten from the pop charts of the past, from 1952 to the present day. And I love it. While Radio 2 can actually play the records, it mostly gives you fluff and inanity in-between songs. James and Andy, by contrast, can’t play the music. Instead they have what I most seek: trivial detail, facts that fall squarely in the “well I never knew that” category, and lots of laughs. If Spotify (or Apple or whoever) were able to enable a podcast that could let presenters like this combine their talkie bits with the music itself, we’d have a terrific vein of listenable stuff. Oh god, here I am complaining that there’s too much content, envisaging ways of expanding that content exponentially. I ought to be careful what I wish for.
So, those were the podcasts. But what was my actual TV Of The Year? Find out in…
Part 3: The Sequel Zone, and Jury’s Out
Part 4: 25 to 11
Part 5: My Top Ten TV of 2025
*****
My Top TV of... 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014 • 2013 • 2011 • 2009
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Richard The Third (Colour) | Doctors Who? Colouring | Socks Do Shakespeare | Kids Comics Annual 2026 |
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Richard The Third (bw) | Findlay Macbeth | Prince of Denmark Street | Midsummer Night's Dream Team |
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Shakespeare Omnibus | Comic Tales From The Bible | Joseph, Ruth & Other Stories | Space Elain |
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