Whilst I've enjoyed the year personally, it has to be said that 2004 has been intensely disappointing from virtually every cultural perspective you care to name.
Let's take Movies. Has anything very much come out over the last 12 months? Given that Return of the King was December 2003 and Revenge of the Sith doesn't hit our screens until May 2005, there was always going to be a dearth of blockbusters. True, we had Harry Potter 3, a marked improved on its predecessors, but still I'm afraid some way short of capturing the spirit of the source novel.
Some people did enjoy eco-action fun courtesy of The Day After Tomorrow, but it interests me not a jot. If I ever see that film at all it will be because it was on TV when I happened to be at a loose end. The success of Gladiator has revived the genre for classical cod-epics, hardly a welcome move. To those of you who braved Troy
So what does that leave? Given that Eternal Sunshine is a Jim Carrey film and thus automatically avoided like the plague, good reviews or not; Van Helsing a reasonable swashbuckler let down by the worst last 5 minutes in cinema history; Wimbledon an amiable romcom, pretty badly written, what could possibly be in line for the title Film of the Year?
To my mind, the runner up is Bridget Jones 2, which managed to transcend the iffy Helen Fielding novel thanks to a sterling screenplay and fantastic performances. The winner, though, has to be Shaun of the Dead. Funny with good horror bits, in many another year Shaun would be padding out the Top 10 but for this annus horriblis it comes out winner by a country mile. Shame.
But were things in TV land any better? Well, maybe slightly, although again we see the big boys either premiered at the end of 2003, like The Office conclusion, or alternatively are being held back until 2005 - that'll be Doctor Who then. Peter Kay's disappointed millions with Max and Paddy's (aptly named) Road to Nowhere, a disastrously laugh-free comedy and pale imitation of the sublime Phoenix Nights. Still, Channel 4 did get it right with Green Wing, a sort of comedy-soap that surprised me by being perfectly watchable.
Little Britain returned, still okay but now even more repetitive than ever before. There's a thick line between repeating character catchphrases and endlessly recyclying the same joke, but boy do messers Walliams and Lucas cross it. The former of these also cropped up in the new Miss Marple, an overly-jokey but actually rather enjoyable revival of Agatha Christie's elderly sleuth.
Over the pond, the American telly factories continued to churn out the drama and comedies that have become so widely admired over here. Thankfully, Friends was finally killed off, but tragically so was Angel, just about the best thing US TV had to offer and a cruel end to the Buffyverse that once reigned supreme.
I don't like to write too much about music, largely because I know so little about it - I glance across the Sunday Times album reviews every week desperately looking for artists I've heard of - but I can't see anything particularly seismic happenning there either. Unless you count Band Aid 20, which obviously no one does. It was nice to hear from Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam again though, and Maroon 5 seem like decent chaps.
All in all, an average year, let's hope the next one is better!
Chris Denton.
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