From worst actor to dumbest quiz show and why Celeb Traitors blew me away

IT says something about the 3,000-plus hours of television I’ve watched ­during this past year that one of 2025’s biggest ­talking points was actress Celia Imrie farting on The Celebrity Traitors.

It wasn’t even a proper guff, either. Just an apologetic little butt squeak that would’ve gone entirely unnoticed if host Claudia Winkleman hadn’t stopped ­talking at the exact moment of release.

But it had huge reverberations for other shows, particularly I’m A Celebrity and Strictly Come Dancing, which seemed to shrink in the ­presence of The Celebrity Traitors and its wind-assisted line-up of ­luvvie titans, like Celia, Stephen Fry, Clare Balding, Alan Carr and ­Charlotte Church.

Believe it or not though, there was TV life before and after Celia pumped.

Some of it, including Blue Lights, The White Lotus and Clarkson’s Farm, definitely lived up to expectations.

While Netflix’s $100million signing, With Love, Meghan, most certainly lived down to them.

My versions of the best and worst TV of 2025 are all included here.

And a reader discretion ­warning certainly applies, as I shall be mentioning Scotland 4, Denmark 2. Again.

BEST SHOW: Two stood out from the rest.

The Celebrity Traitors put every other reality show to shame with its line-up, provided gripping entertainment and hopefully not only taught Paloma Faith she’s entirely dispensable but also alerted everyone else to the fact Stephen Fry isn’t nearly as smart as Joe Marler.

For me though, it was just edged by the much- imitated Clarkson’s Farm, which constantly reinvents itself but never stops championing Britain and its farmers or making me laugh.

It also featured my favourite pep talk of the year. Jeremy to a bunch of startled millennial employees at his pub: “One thing I cannot stand is gormlessness.

And I don’t want slovenly oiks leaning on things. This is designed to back ­British farming. If anyone wants a Coca-Cola, they can f*** off.”

WORST SHOW: BBC1’s Stranded On Honeymoon Island and Netflix’s Celebrity Bear Hunt were the only serious rivals to With Love, Meghan.

A woman you don’t like invites “friends” she doesn’t know to cook recipes you’re never going to make, before crafting things you don’t need, at a house she doesn’t even own.

“What do you do with carrot tops outside of sharing with the chickens?”

You hold their hand at the Invictus Games and try to stop him catching the javelins.

BEST COMEDY: Withheld as the only things that even deserved the description are Would I Lie To You?, Michael McIntyre’s Big Show and Bradley Walsh’s introductions on The Chase: “Is it The Governess? The one time you’d believe Shaggy when he said ‘It wasn’t me’.”

WORST COMEDY: ITV2’s Transaction, a toxically bad sitcom about castration, written by and starring Friday Night Live flasher Jordan Gray, who demonstrated what we already knew.

The harder TV tries to be diverse and inclusive, the less funny it becomes.

SCHEDULE CLASH OF THE YEAR: The Bonnie Blue Story/Can You Keep It Up For A Week.

BADLY TIMED ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE YEAR: Monday, April 21, 9:03am, live from the Blackpool Tower Circus: “This is Mooky and Mr Boo, the new BBC presenters, handing back to the clowns in the studio.”

Pause.

Sally Nugent: “The Vatican has just announced the death of Pope Francis.”

BEST NAMED MASTERCHEF CONTESTANT: All hail the bookers who, just days after Gregg Wallace and John Torode were both axed from the show, came up with this bloke from Thailand — Gon.

GASLIGHTERS OF THE YEAR: All those BBC presenters, executives and media apologists who kept assuring us the corporation didn’t have a problem with antisemitism, and Good Morning Britain’s Kate Garraway who, a day after the Manchester synagogue attack, claimed: “We still don’t know the motivation and the religion of the person named in the attack.”

Jihad Al-Shamie? You think it’s the ­Buddhists, Kate?

BEST WOMEN’S EUROS UPDATE: Sam Matterface: “It’s an interesting partnership between Minge and Knaak.” But please contact a GP if symptoms persist.

BEST SUBTITLE: A Children In Need mash-up at Question Time, where, apparently, Fiona Bruce said of ­Donald Trump: “Do you mean where he talked about grabbing women by the Pudsey?”

BEST DRAMA: Honourable mentions for The White Lotus, A Cruel Love: The Ruth Ellis Story, Red Alert, Landman, The Bear, Dept Q, Rogue Heroes and I Fought The Law.

But the one that topped them all, I thought, was BBC1’s funny, tender, brutal and brilliant Blue Lights.

A reminder of just how good drama can be if you lose the woke shackles.

WORST DRAMA: Take your pick from Trigger Point, In Flight, The War Between The Land And The Sea, Riot Women, Doctor Who, Out There, with Martin Clunes going “the full Ivor the Engine” with his Welsh accent, and the rebooted and thoroughly emasculated Bergerac, featuring a female Charlie Hungerford.

But all that is woke, wrong, deranged, immoral, obsessive and twisted about television was contained within BBC1’s Waterloo Road, which reached an all-time low with an episode about trans pupil Lois, who cuts off all contact with a close-to-death grandmother, who suffers from ­Alzheimer’s, for the crime of misgendering and dead-naming.

’Cos that’s what really matters when a loved one’s dying, isn’t it? Your fecking pronouns.

BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT: Series five of Slow Horses, with Gary ­Oldman. It’s gone too political and lost it.

THE SO-BAD-IT’S-GOOD AWARD: Channel 5’s new Anglo/Greek ­daytime drama The Sunshine ­Murders, which had me with this simple announcement: “Stars Peter Andre as criminal pathologist George Constantinou.”

CORRECTION OF THE YEAR: Soccer Saturday, Michael Dawson: “I always remember Tim Cahill ­scoring goals and punching the slag . . . flag.”

TV NAME OF THE YEAR: Naked And Afraid’s executive producer, David Hard Story, and Stranded On Honeymoon Island’s post production co-ordinator, Krupa Kuntawala, were, of course, narrowly edged out by a consultant urologist on BBC Breakfast, Nick Burns-Cox.

EXCUSE OF THE YEAR: The reason Ade Adepitan was so reluctant to get in the water on ITV’s Shark! Celebrity Infested Waters? Slavery, obviously.

“When black people were taken as slaves from Africa to the Caribbean they were taken on boats, and they saw people die on those boats. They saw people thrown into the ocean and they saw the ocean as a bridge taking them to hell. This trauma goes on through generations from family after family after family.”

And for similar reasons, I shall not be reviewing episode four, series 22 of Escape To The Country (Perth and Kinross).

It just brings back too many painful images of the 1750 to 1860 Highland Clearances.

HYPOCRITE OF THE YEAR: Former comedian Frank Skinner chasing applause on The Last Leg, in October, where he denounced Spitting Image for portraying Paddington Bear as a coke-snorting South American gangster because “I think Paddington is a very positive image of a migrant.”

A move somewhat at odds with the boundary-pushing version of Frank who, in 2009, said: “I like proper jokes. I don’t like people who get applause ’cos the audience agrees with them.”

BEST DOCUMENTARY: The one thing that TV still does consistently well, and there were superb ­examples this year from: Tribe, with Bruce Parry, The Last ­Musician Of Auschwitz, 24 Hours In Police Custody, Surviving Syria’s Prisons, The ­Srebrenica Tape, Live Aid At 40, Freddie Flintoff’s Field Of Dreams and Death Of A Showjumper.

But I still think the best was BBC4’s Storyville masterpiece Mr Nobody Against Putin.

A life-affirming tribute to the courage and humour of Pavel Talankin, a hero of our times.

WORST DOCUMENTARY: BBC2’s pro-Palestinian propaganda film Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone, which somehow neglected to mention it was narrated by the son of an official from Hamas, who are the provisional wing of BBC News.

THE ALAN WHICKER AWARD: Goes to ITVX’s Getting Filthy Rich presenter Olivia Attwood for asking a bloke called Muffy, who was wearing a dress and cat mask while being ordered to eat cat food by a dominatrix: “Do you have a dating life outside of this relationship?” “Not really, no.”

BIGGEST STROP: Macy Gray, who waddled indignantly off stage, wearing her Toad In The Hole costume, after being eliminated from The Masked Singer.

Some time later she was coaxed out for a terse ­interview with Joel ­Dommett but remained so livid she made BBC1’s Sarah Smith’s fizzing rage at Donald Trump’s second inauguration look dignified by comparison.

LOWEST POINT OF 2025: ITV2, Love Island, June 13, Megan: “I need to shave my minge.”

HIGHEST POINT OF 2025: I didn’t watch it live, because I was at Hampden Park on November 18, at 21:48, but I’ve seen it a thousand times since then. Stevie Thompson: “Shoot! SHOOT!”

Liam McLeod: “He’s going to shoot. Is that going in? OHHHHHHHHHH!

“That’s unbelievable. I have never seen anything quite as incredible and dramatic as Kenny McLean.”

We’re the famous Tartan Army and we’re going to Mi-ami, Mi-ami, Mi-ami.

•  Column returns January 9

Best actor

STELLAR performances from Stephen Graham and Owen Cooper (Adolescence), Sam Rockwell and Walton Goggins (The White Lotus) and Jeremy Allen White (The Bear), but the stand-out for me was the ­sensational Matthew Goode as DCI Carl Morck, in Netflix’s Dept Q.

Worst actor

PURELY to spare the blushes of Russell Tovey and Colin McFarlane from The War Between The Land And The Sea, who I coated last week, I’m going for Jordan Gray who was as convincingly feminine, in Transaction, as the next All Blacks haka.

Best actress

THERE were brilliant performances from Sheridan Smith (I Fought The Law) and ­Victoria Hamilton (Unforgotten), but I thought the pick of the year’s bunch was Harriet Walter, who, unlike co-star Steve ­Coogan, managed to bury her own political prejudices brilliantly as ­Margaret Thatcher in Channel 4’s Brian And Maggie.

Worst actress

IT’S either Katherine Kelly going through all her usual facial contortions during C4’s In Flight, or the ­darting eyes of ITV’s Laura Woods at the women’s Euros, when she said: “We’re very excited by this one. Finland versus Iceland.”

Lookalikes of the year