My verdict on 2025 telly:
Well, this is glamorous. Following a minor op on my legs, I spent Christmas in a pair of black surgical compression stockings . . . much to my wife’s hilarity.
Now, the elastic has shrivelled and the leggings are crumpled around my knees. I feel like Nora Batty.
You’ll have to be of a certain vintage yourself to get the reference.
Battleaxe Nora, played by the redoubtable Kathy Staff, was a fixture in the BBC’s longest- running sitcom, Last Of The Summer Wine.
It started as a Comedy Playhouse pilot in 1973 and remained a fixture in the schedules till 2010, though Kathy left a couple of years earlier.
Nora Batty was one of those characters who no longer exist on television.
Everyone knew her, because in the 1980s up to 19 million people watched the show.
More than that, she was true to life, with her short temper and her brawny arms, hanging out the washing with her stockings slumped around the pom-poms of her slippers.
Battleaxe Nora (pictured), played by the redoubtable Kathy Staff, was a fixture in the BBC’s longest- running sitcom, Last Of The Summer Wine
Bullseye returned in November and is hosted by Freddie Flintoff
That image sums up everything that has been missing from TV in 2025.
The schedules were packed with reality dating shows and bickering panellists, but we’ve forgotten the art of creating recognisable fiction with characters who make us say, ‘I know someone just like that!’
Del Boy was one, and Hyacinth Bucket. Everyone knew a Bet Lynch and a Hilda Ogden, a Captain Mainwaring and a Victor Meldrew.
We still do: people don’t change. That’s why Gavin And Stacey worked so well — half the characters seemed like our own friends and family.
I can’t think of a single show from the past year that struck the same familiar note.
Half the dramas and comedies appear intent not on reflecting who we are, but telling us who we ought to be — Left-leaning, middle-class, in racially blended relationships, living with proudly ‘non-binary’ teenagers, in homes with gigantic open-plan kitchen-diners and bifold doors, celebrating diversity and denouncing capitalism.
These don’t feel like real people. They’re woke fantasies. Too often, television feels more like re-education than simple entertainment.
TV commissioners know they’ve lost the knack of producing telly that unites us.
‘Blankety Blank’ refers to the classic British TV game show where celebrities fill in missing words on a phrase to help contestants win prizes, and is now hosted by Bradley Walsh
Graham Norton hosts Wheel of Fortune, the show that calls on contestants to compete word puzzles, similar to those used in Hangman, to win cash and prizes
That’s why so many hit game shows of yesteryear have been revived — Bullseye, which returned in November hosted by Freddie Flintoff, as well as Blankety Blank, Wheel Of Fortune, Gladiators and more.
A remake of Cilla Black’s Blind Date is rumoured to be in production for Netflix, with Emily Atack hosting. But reinventing these classic formats won’t solve the lack of believable drama and comedy.
Big budgets certainly aren’t the answer — the BBC’s collaboration with Disney on a Doctor Who reboot proved a disaster from every angle. Even its star, Ncuti Gatwa, couldn’t wait to ditch his pinstripe skirt and flee the show.
We don’t want to be lectured. We just want to laugh at people like ourselves, and perhaps love them. Here’s to a few more Nora Battys in 2026.
