So without further ado, here are some of those highs and lows in television 2019.
Soap Of The Year: For this year, EastEnders truly managed to bounce back after years of mediocrity. Under the watchful eye of both Kate Oates and Jon Sen, the show rediscovered it's groove and created a new ship for a fan base to obsess over with Ballum while the fallout of the Sheanu affair has been interesting to watch among other returns and character turns.
On the other hand after several years of excellent storytelling Emmerdale probably had it's worst year in quite some time while Coronation Street seemed to be largely hit and miss and Hollyoaks ventured into topical issues such as radicalization and flash forwarded to New Year's Eve 2020 with some interesting developments for next year to have fun expanding on.
Reality TV: Yeah, I watch so little of this nowadays but the likes of Love Island and The Circle have become natural successors for Big Brother while Strictly Come Dancing and Dancing On Ice provided the weekend entertainment for millions yet again. The X Factor took a break, only to give ITV audiences two underwhelming spin-off programmes that saw them abandoning the station in droves, so there's that.
US Television: Again, there were so many shows on the air, so little time to catch up with most of them. As usual, the majority of the most talked about ones were of course belonging to cable and streaming services with Netflix dominating with the likes of Stranger Things, The Politician, Orange Is The New Black, The Crown, Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina, You, a brief return of Breaking Bad in movie form to name a few while HBO also kept people on their toes with the likes of Succession, Big Little Lies and a certain final season of a show that divided a lot of viewers. Also kudos to BBC2 for airing both seasons of Pose, which might be a niche show but damn if it's not watchable at all. Not to mention that in spite of losing both Sarah Paulson and Evan Peters, American Horror Story: 1984 turned out to be one of the show's strongest seasons yet.
Final Hits: Notably the likes of Game Of Thrones and Orange Is The New Black (but also shows such as Gotham and Mr Robot). The latter seemed to have a more satisfying ending to it's seven year run while the former unfortunately rushed through some major plot points, butchered Dany's character and put Bran of all people as ruler of Six Kingdoms. I didn't hate the final season as much as other people did but there's no denying that Benioff and Weiss dropped the ball big time here. As for Targaryen based spin-off, here's hoping the producers of that won't make similar mistakes when it goes into production next year.
UK Television: I should watch more UK dramas but admittedly, very few engage me nowadays and too many of them feel a bit too formulaic at times. The best one for me was clearly RTD's miniseries, Years & Years and I did catch up a bit with Line Of Duty, though I don't love that show anywhere near as much as Twitter seems to do. It's good though. I will give the BBC some praise in lieu of Doctor Who being only one episode this year that they made an attempt with more genre TV with the likes of His Dark Materials and The War Of The Worlds (and Good Omens will get an airing on BBC2 next month) but neither show really gripped me either. On a disappointing note, I hate how underwhelming the second season of Killing Eve turned out to be. Here's hoping the third season will be made of stronger stuff.
Iconic Character Of The Year: I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan out there but for the last eight weeks, it was hard to ignore the existence of The Child or Baby Yoda from Disney+'s The Mandalorian. It was adorable, ate frogs and messed with buttons on the lead character's ship and that's all it needed to do in order to make a positive impression on a fandom that constantly rips itself apart over everything and most recently over the likes of Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams. Long may this Child bring peace to a very, very splintered fandom.
Comedies: I'm not the biggest watcher in this genre as such but the likes of Fleabag and Derry Girls definitely put female led comedies back on the map, especially as Phoebe Waller-Bridge has become quite the powerhouse in such a short space of time. Gavin & Stacey came back after a decade off the air for a special that generated controversy over the use of a certain Christmas song. Personally though, I'm still playing catch up with The Good Place, which only has so many episodes left to go before it ends, once and for all.
Comic Book Shows Dominate: They really, really, did and especially DC. Bitch and moan about them all you want but you couldn't move for DC comic shows this year. The best of the bunch for me was actually Doom Patrol as Swamp Thing turned out to be short lived and Titans still has teething problems it needs to sort out. Gotham ended on a rather nice note while Pennyworth felt like it was scraping the barrel in terms of what should be allowed for a comic book series. Krypton ended after two seasons as did Preacher with four seasons, iZombie with five seasons while Lucifer will end after five seasons next year and Harley Quinn went all animated on us for a rather amusing, Adult Swim inspired cartoon series as Watchmen saw a career defining performance from Regina King.
As for the Arrow universe - let's see: getting rid of Felicity has done wonders for the main show's final season and I'm certainly looking forward to the return of Legends Of Tomorrow and whatever mayhem it can bring. Both The Flash and Supergirl are somewhat floundering, Batwoman is mostly underwhelming and Black Lightning is finally a part of the family, thanks to the events of Crisis On Infinite Earths. Oh and by this time next year, we'll have three new shows in the mix, including Stargirl at this rate.
Away from DC, Marvel's time in the sun has come to an end (at least until 2020 when their Disney+ shows finally get underway). Farewell to the likes of Jessica Jones, The Punisher, Daredevil, Cloak & Dagger and soon enough, Agents Of SHIELD as it's seventh season will see the show end. Also the likes of The Boys and The Umbrella Academy also proves you don't need to be either DC or Marvel to do a compelling comic book series as well.
LGBT Television: From a reality/light entertainment point of view, both Queer Eye and Drag Race continued to expand their franchises while Will & Grace's second time to shine will end next year. The L Word went for a sequel series as did Tales Of The City and you can't move for a Greg Berlanti or Ryan Murphy production that doesn't have a prominent LGBT character in the mix. I think the most important LGBT series was definitely Pose, which really came into it's own in it's second season while the short lived Now Apocalypse was a fun, hedonistic series which might have struggled with making it's apocalyptic alien themes make any sense but certainly had no problem with it's lead character, Ulysses (Avan Jogia) copping off with as many fit blokes as he could per episode. It's a shame though that Starz canned it after one season. Netflix also deserves kudos for prominent LGBT content this year with the likes of Orange Is The New Black, The Politician, Special, EastSiders and Tales Of The City while both the CW and ABC led shows seem to continue to utilise LGBT characters and themes as did the BBC, HBO and Showtime. On a negative side, Dynasty dropped the ball with losing James Mackay's Steven Carrington and American Gods also for dropping both Salim (Omid Abtahi) and the Jinn (Mousa Kraish) for it's upcoming third season but that show has generated a lot of bad PR in the last few weeks.
In terms of LGBT content, we've definitely been spoiled for choice in the last several years and going into a new decade in less than 24 hours, I have a feeling that will only continue to be honest.
Overall 2019 has been a very interesting year for mainstream television and I don't doubt that next year will be too. What were your highlights in the last twelve months?
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