It’s down to me to kick off the Top 50 this year (no pressure then!), and throughout this first countdown – from 50 to 41 – you’ll find some documentary, some comedy, some serious stuff and some lifestyley stuff. In short, everything we love on telly; the kind of mixture that makes our internal cathode ray tubes flicker with joy.

So here we go. Over the jump, you’ll find some of the best shows we’ve seen this years feted and celebrated. Why not let us know what you think? After all, TV is subjective and fun and brilliant. Disagree with our choices? Let us know straight away!

50. 30 Rock (five)
When it comes to imported US comedy, five has had a strange time of it. Its signing up of Joey turned out to be disastrous and the high-profile Dirt (starring another Friends alumni, Courtney Cox) was slated. But 30 Rock – unheralded, low-key – was just the job. An American comedy that was sharp and funny, it’s written by Saturday Night Live talent Tina Fey (who also stars) and co-stars Alec Baldwin. Our much-missed reviewer, Katie, said it was a proper, old-fashioned 30-minute sitcom and, with Jerry Seinfeld set to join the cast for series two, the only way its up for 30 Rock.
See a review here.

49. Jekyll (BBC One)
Updating a classic story from yesteryear and placing it in a 21st century setting is always fraught with danger (see Robin Hood for how not to do it), but TV Scoop fave Steven Moffat (Doctor Who etc) did a terrific job in making Jekyll sexy, funny and scary Saturday night entertainment. James Nesbitt was in fine, menacing form as the man with the split personality, and John, our reviewer, said: “Consistently dark and scary, the six parts of this series have not been a total success for me, but they’ve certainly brightened up an otherwise lacklustre Saturday night schedule.” So by no means perfect, but big, ballsy mainstream drama that provided plenty of thrills and spills nonetheless.
See a review here.

48. The Secret Millionaire (Channel 4)
Take one millionaire, ask them to go and live in a run-down and dilapidated area of Britain undercover as a ‘normal’ person and ask them to give some cash to the most deserving person they come across. That’s the simple concept for this sometimes moving, sometimes shocking series. The millionaires integrate themselves into a poor local community and – because most of them have risen from similar childhood scenarios – have to choke back the tears as they meet people who have fallen on hard times, live in terrible conditions or feel they have no hope for the future. Mof said in his review: “Brilliant. TV to keep my big mouth shut.” ‘Nuff said!
See a review here.

47. The Tower (BBC One)
One of those documentaries that slipped under the radar, The Tower was engrossing stuff. Thanks to dreadful, late-night scheduling no-one watched it, but it still provided a powerful insight into modern-day Britain. The backdrop to the whole thing was a 24-storey, council-owned tower block in Deptford (the type you see growing out of most inner city landscapes all over the country), that had recently been bought and turned into posh, private apartments. Suddenly the local community (of all races and beliefs) had to adjust to new people coming into the area. The series focused on real people – people on both sides of the economic divide. And, in an area where the inexorable march of regeneration was beginning to flatten everything and everyone in its path, it was the residents who had lived in the area all their lives who were taking the full brunt of change. Moving, sad and a microcosm of modern, urban Britain today.

46. Charlie Brooker’s Screenwipe (BBC Four/BBC Two)
We say that Charlie Brooker is the finest man working in the media today. Creator of TV Go Home, sometime collaborator of Chris Morris and now TV reviewer extraordinaire, to Brooker no show is sacred. TV’s relationship with the mass media today is one of sick-inducing back-patting – too much mass media uses TV to sell its product at the expense of real opinion. That’s where Brooker steps in, like an old-fashioned gunslinger. The bile he directed at the shows he disliked was entertainingly toxic, yet when he liked something, he really liked something.
See a review here.

45. Street Wars (Sky Three)
This programme had our reviewer, Mof, hiding behind his sofa. As concepts go, Street Wars is simple – it’s minute after minute after minute of footage showing boozed-up youths getting hammered and beating the monkeys out of one another. All captured on CCTV, this strange series seemed to feature a barbaric, ape-like world on another planet, far, far away, where men punch each other for no reason, questionable meat products are eaten on street corners and where girls with hardly any clothes on cry and scream at the drop of a hat. It’d be funny if it wasn’t happening in our towns and cities every weekend night of the year. Chastening, car-crash telly at its best/worst (delete according to taste).
See a review here.

44. An Island Parish (BBC Two)
“Why on earth would I watch a show about a tiny parish on an island unless it was Father Ted?” That was the question asked by Mof in his review of An Island Parish – an inspirational ob-doc that mixed Castaway and, curiously, Pop Idol. We followed the journey of the Bishop of Truro as he tried to find a new priest to live and work on the Isles Of Scilly, which sounded like an easy task but proved harder than he (or us) could imagine. Like some of the best documentary series this year, this almost slipped under the net, but we liked An Island Parish because it showed real people in real communities, all living very real lives. Reality TV as it should be.
See a review here.

43. Saturday Kitchen (BBC One)
We’ve all been there. We’ve woken up on a Saturday morning suffering with either a monstrous hangover and or quickly come to that realisation that housework is just not an option. Saturday Kitchen (better than Saturday Cooks on ITV1) provided the perfect Saturday morning escape to any weekend malaise – top TV chef James Martin, in a studio, with his cheffie chums cooking nice food. That’s it. Clips from the BBC cooking TV archive (Rick Stein, Jamie Oliver etc) interspersed the in-studio cooking bits were always welcome. What was not to like? Before you knew it, Saturday had just turned into the best day of the week.

42. Housewife 49 (ITV1)
Written by and starring Victoria Wood, Housewife 49 was a moving and powerful drama one-off, detailing how housewife Nella’s life took an unexpected turn during Word War II. After Nella sent her beloved son off to war, she joined the local Womens’ Volunteer Service, where she found support and companionship in the hardest of times. Woods’ trademark homely humour was present all the way through, as well as previously unheralded deeper, emotional acting skills. The ever-brilliant David Threlfall was good too.

41. Oz & James’s Big Wine Adventure (BBC Two)
Take one bloke from Top Gear (the one that gets everything wrong) who’s a self-confessed wine philistine and a poncy wine taster from Food and Drink, and what do you a get? One enjoyable series that took a trawl through wine country, some entertaining odd couple moments and a crash course in wine tasting and education. There’s nothing too revolutionary about this series, but Oz and James’s chemistry made you keep on watching. Oz’s love of wine was constant, even in the face of James May’s ever-present grumbling, and this part-travelogue, part-lifestyle series was half an hour of fun every week. Our Mof said the second series was at least the equal of the first series, and he wasn’t wrong.
See a review here.