The Top Shows of 2005

This week's edition of Broadcast, the trade magazine, carries details of the top-performing UK television shows of the past twelve months, saying that "reality shows may have dominated the schedules but the big ratings stories were to be found in drama, with the triumphant return of Doctor Who, and in comedy, as Little Britain took the nation by storm." The paper notes, "To make an impact in primetime, where one in five viewers now watches multichannel TV, terrestrial TV has had to fight harder than ever for its audience. According to Ofcom, almost 70% of UK households have multichannel." In the Drama category, Doctor Who still tops the table for the year with the 10.81m (44.84%) audience for 'Rose' on 26 March, and Broadcast argues that this success "opened the door for more drama in primetime Saturday night". In fact, these end-of-year charts confirm that Doctor Who remained in its prime spot throughout the year, the programmes and figures at the top of the charts remaining essentially unchanged since March. The magazine has also compiled a chart of the Top 100 shows of 2005, the first ten of which (and two other items of interest) are:


Not bad for a television series that the BBC retired in 1989 and took 15 years to bring back to weekly television (in a time slot dominated by the #29 entry on the list.) Full details are available (to registered members) at theBroadcastNowwebsite. (Thanks to Steve Tribe)