2002's best telly: The blacker the better

By RUSSELL BAILLIE, FRANCES GRANT, GREG DIXON and FIONA RAE

1. The Office

Can comedy be this frightening? British comedian Ricky Gervais created the telly monster of the year in the form of his smug, bullying, ingratiating and horribly insecure middle-manager David Brent.

Set in the office of a commercial stationers' in a depressing industrial estate in Slough and filmed in mockumentary style, The Office was absolutely deadpan.

It had no one-liners, no laugh track, the humour was so black you were choking on your laughs.

Gervais' Brent - "a friend first, boss second, entertainer third" - dominated the show, but his Gollum-like assistant Gareth came a close second.

The "Brentmeister general's" announcement of office redundancies and his own promotion - "I've some bad news and some good news" and his performance of one of his self-penned songs ("Love is free and the freeway is long ...") were two of the most excruciatingly hilarious TV moments of the year.

2. Six Feet Under

Is death the new black? Six Feet Under would certainly suggest it is, despite taking only one major Emmy award from 23 nominations. The funeral-home drama delivered, along with The Sopranos, the best theatre on our screens this year. Yes, it's soapy: brain tumour, sex addiction, psycho brother. And, on occasion, an episode has felt like the writers simply don't know what to do next to get their characters from meltdown A to meltdown B, but it never fails to surprise.

The characters are so richly satisfying the dysfunctional Fishers are as a compelling, loving, nasty, jealous, caring, hateful and lusty a bunch of characters to find their way on to television in many a network season, and are matched only by uniformly top-draw performances from a cast of mostly unknowns.

Death may be Six Feet Under's provenance, but a long life is deserved.

3.Kath and Kim

"Look at moi. Look at moi. Look at moi." We loved looking at Kath and Kim which gave us, every week, perfectly formed stories based around suburban nightmares living the suburban dream deep in the'burbs of Australia.The eight weeks were an elaborate, but simply told, set up for Kath's big day out: her fairy tale wedding to Kel, complete with pumpkin coach and the hen's night from Hell.

Kath, with her perm and her "high maintenance" body, and Kim, with her stretch denim and matching pastels were parodies, sure. But oddly and brilliantly you stopped sniggering somewhere along the way and became genuinely fond of the silly, ditzy pair who really just wanted to chase the great Aussie dream of happiness and men.

Every week they mangled the English language to new lows. "Don't get up my goat" and "get it straight from the horse's arse", to name just two, made Kath and Kim the Mrs Malaprops of our time.

4. 24

An awful lot happened on the longest day of secret agent Jack Bauer's life and viewers experienced every moment of it (apart from ad breaks, of course). The drama defied the burden of its real-time premise. Although it flagged at times, especially in the exhausting second half, the action would always pick up the pace again. The real danger facing counter-terrorism expert Bauer - that the drama would get hijacked by its gimmicky format - was avoided successfully.

The show's creators took the standard stuff of any airport thriller - double agents, assassination plots, terrorism and tearaway teenage daughters - and gave it enough twists and turns to make it cutting-edge TV.

Kiefer Sutherland maintained an impressive level of adrenalin throughout and the show's best weapon was the tension which built so dramatically in nearly every episode.

5. Mataku

It seems like such a great idea it's a wonder no one thought of it before but then it took co-creators Bradford Haami and Carey Carter a long time to check the stories with kaumatua. Actually, they had thought of it already - Mataku was 15 years in the making. The series included smell-of-an-oily-rag special effects from the founder of Weta Digital (now running his own CGI company) and a chance for many Maori take a step up (Cliff Curtis' first directing role, Pio Terei doing some straight acting).

Not only has it meant some damn spooky, and specifically New Zealand, stories on screen for once, but Temuera "Jango Fett" Morrison introduced the series.

Many of the tales were warnings: tapu island? Don't go there. Raising a taniwha? Not a good idea.

Fantastic. More please.

6. 9/11

This documentary by French brothers Jules and Gedeon Naudet was an absolute standout among the welter of programmes marking the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre.

It started out as a straight point-and-shoot documentary about the new recruits in a New York firehouse and became an astonishing, on-the-spot record of the terrifying collapse from inside and nearby the two towers.

The Naudets' cameras recorded the bewilderment and terror inside the buildings and on the street as realisation dawned of the magnitude of the disaster. As the fire fighters rallied and headed up the towers, the soundtrack included the horrific crashing of bodies on the pavement outside. As well as documenting unforgettable scenes, this was also a gripping story of the fortunes of the fire fighters from one NYFD firehouse. As raw as it gets.

7. Mercy Peak

Our best drama series had a low-key season, or should that be half-season, as the episodes shown this year split season two in two. Why TVNZ doesn't show the whole lot and really let the writers have their day is a mystery to us, because we'd have been happy to see what happens to Louise and William and Ross' baby, or Alistair and the annoying Angela and especially the lovely Ken. And will Dr Nicky take up with Mr Rochester, er, sorry, Kieran? Mercy Peak is an adult drama without being neurotic and the characters are realistically drawn and beautifully executed. Highlights? Ken avoiding the rabid dog in the wreckers' yard by leaping from car to car, Amanda leaves in a blaze of glory, Dana gets her princess moment ... well, there were lots.

8. The Osbournes

The most loveable fruitcake shuffled across our screens and into reality TV history this year. Not some stupid trapped-on-an-island scenario, not some idiotic challenge show, just a tattooed nutter with an equally loco family living in Goth-mansion heaven in California. While the darker side of Ozzy was revealed recently by Sharon in a Barbara Walters interview, we got to see his hilarious struggle with the plate-sized remote control (and then sitting with his arm around Jack watching the history channel), his and Sharon's little turf war with the neighbours ("Not wood, Ozzy!"), playing with the animals ("I'd like a little cat to eat!") and the much-quoted "Bubbles? Bubbles? I'm the prince of effing darkness, Sharon!"

They may have argued like cats and dogs (often about the cats and dogs) and they may have found new uses for the f-word, but it was evident they are a loving family. And Ozzy's right: he could be worse. He could be Sting.

9. Coronation Street

No one ever claimed it was easy being a Coro fan. This year has been the stuff that expensive therapy sessions are made of. Who can ever forget (if only we could) the sight of whinging Deirdre snuggled up in bed with love rat Dev, a revolting post-coital smile pasted around her chops.

Who can ever forget (please, pass the lobotomy, doctor) the night the screeching Maxine bonked Matt, the doc with the charisma bypass who learned acting from a tree down the allotment.

Aah, but by'eck it's worth hanging on in there. Coro has been truly wonderful lately. It's the little story lines that make it great. The rats in Les Battersby's back yard storyline (how could anyone tell which was the rat?) gave us a Coro moment as good as any scene Shakespeare wrote for any of his fools.

And we've loved watching King Rat Richard work his sinister magic on the ghastly Gail. Who will he top next? Please let it be Gail.

Now Bet Lynch is back, head-to-toe in faux leopard skin.

And Betty, Queen of the Rover's hot pot has gone. As she said as she poured her last pint: "I wouldn't have missed it, any of it."

10. Third Watch


Even without its highly effective special about the aftermath of September 11 on New York's emergency services, the latest season of the series about the lives of a group of Big Apple cops, firefighters and paramedics continued to get better with age.

With strong storylines and performances, its characters grew far beyond their uniformed archetypes. It might basically be a soap with sirens and red flashing lights but it was still affecting and often thrilling, with its combination of life-or-death episode plots played out against the constant of its background domestic dramas, including Faith's cancer scare, Sully's troublesome marriage, Kim and Jimmy's joint custody upheavals while Bosco remains the angriest man on television.