A\u00a0100th\u00a0anniversary is a milestone in the history of any institution. In the case of the BBC, the centenary of its founding on\u00a018 October\u00a01922 triggers a rush of memories, a landslide of couch-bound nostalgia. But whether it\u2019s Doctor Who\u2019s Dalek battles, David Attenborough striking up a bromance with a family of gorillas, or Line of Duty\u2019s Ted Hastings invoking \u201cJesus, Mary, Joseph and the wee donkey\u201d, the sweep of the corporation\u2019s output across the past century is impossible to condense into a few paragraphs. Still, we\u2019ve tried to pull together some of the most iconic shows of those 10 decades, from drama\u00a0and documentary\u00a0to comedy via arts, music and science fiction. All are iconic in their own right. Together they are a portrait of a time, a country, and a belief in broadcasting as a force for good in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
20. Line of Duty (2012 \u2013 2021)<\/p>\n
Mother of God, what a tangled tale Jed Mercurio wove with his multi-season tale of bent coppers and the few good men and women trying to take them down. Ted Hastings stands tall among the most quotable TV characters of the past decade, while the interrogation scenes \u2013 all those white walls and impressive tables \u2013 have become ripe for parody. In later seasons, the series tended to trip up on its cleverness \u2013 as well as feeling increasingly detached from the real world. But in its early years, LoD was a thriller like no other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
19. Blackadder (1983 \u2013 1989)<\/p>\n
At least 50 per cent of our shared recollection of the First World War is drawn from the final five minutes of Blackadder Goes Forth.\u00a0Rowan Atkinson, Hugh Laurie and companions go over the top \u2013 and the camera cuts to modern-day Flanders and poppies in the breeze. But long before the heartache, Richard Curtis\u2019s historical comedy had mercilessly yanked our funny bones with his hilarious visits to Regency, Elizabethan and Medieval England.\u00a0<\/p>\n
18. The Thick of It (2005 \u2013 2012)<\/p>\n
\u201cAs useful as a marzipan dildo\u201d, \u201comnishambles\u201d, \u201cYou\u2019re like that coffee machine, you know: from bean to cup, you f*** up\u201d \u2013 for its insults alone, Armando Iannucci\u2019s fly-on-the-wall political comedy deserves all the prizes. Plus it gave the world Malcolm Tucker, the avenging angel spin doctor. Alas, British politics is now so ludicrous that The Thick of It has retroactively lost much of its bite.\u00a0What\u2019s the\u00a0point of satire in the age of Partygate?<\/p>\n
17. Strictly Come Dancing (2004 \u2013 present)<\/p>\n
Until Strictly, reality TV was largely cruel and punishing. Would-be stars had their hearts broken, celebrities were humiliated and gaslit. Then Strictly came along with the radical idea of feel-good reality TV, in which A-listers set themselves an interesting new challenge while we at home cheered along. How groundbreaking and how enduring.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Craig Revel Horwood, Motsi Mabuse and Shirley Ballas on \u2018Strictly\u2019 <\/p>\n
(BBC\/Guy Levy)<\/p>\n
16. The Good Life (1975 \u2013 1978)<\/p>\n
This gently downbeat comedy about striving middle-class suburbanites \u2013 played by Richard Briers and Felicity Kendal \u2013 gazed deep into the British soul and smiled sadly at what it saw there. There would be louder, more lurid comedies \u2013 in the 1970s, especially. But few series would so effectively take the temperature of a slightly fed-up nation adrift in a post-imperial malaise.<\/p>\n
15. Blue Peter (1958 \u2013 present)<\/p>\n
Youthful presenters in sensible sweaters. Arts and crafts featuring paper, scissors and enough Sellotape to wrap the Statue of Liberty twice over. Song-and-dance numbers where nobody could sing and no one\u00a0could be bothered to dance. Kids\u2019 TV peaked with Blue Peter and would never rise to such heights again \u2013 with the possible exception of Tom Hardy doing the Bedtime Story on CBeebies.\u00a0<\/p>\n
14. Neverwhere (1996)<\/p>\n
Netflix\u2019s Sandman has everyone in a swoon \u2013 but for Neil Gaiman connoisseurs it was in Neverwhere that he created his lasting work for the small screen. Set in a Narnia-style parallel-universe London, where Puss in Boots is real and Knightsbridge is guarded by actual knights, it found magic in the everyday. Neverwhere also retains a lasting weirdness due to the baffling decision to film on video rather than film. And so, while \u201conly\u201d 26 years old, it feels far more ancient \u2013 like a relic from a creepy analogue era that was ending even as it was broadcast in the Summer of Britpop.\u00a0<\/p>\n
13. The Morecambe and Wise Show (1968 \u2013 1977)<\/p>\n
Eric, Ernie, a female guest star whose job was to stand there and smile. And groaners you could see coming a mile off. Welcome to the 1970s. But though products of their age, there was a sweetness to Morecambe and Wise that will never go out of fashion. And that affection made for surprisingly ribald comedy. Which is why they are remembered when many of the duos of that era have fallen away \u2013 or simply aged terribly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
12. Peaky Blinders (2013 \u2013 2022)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an elevator pitch that might have you reaching for the emergency stop. Cillian Murphy in a 1920s flat cap, on a horse, while Nick Cave strikes up \u201cRed Right Hand\u201d. Yet from these obscure ingredients, Steven Knight wrought a Birmingham gangster saga that crackled with Tarantino-esque energy (even if the finale was rather pants).<\/p>\n
Cillian Murphy in \u2018Peaky Blinders\u2019 <\/p>\n
(BBC\/Caryn Mandabach Productions Ltd.\/Robert Viglasky)<\/p>\n
11. The Office (2001 \u2013 2003)<\/p>\n
Ricky Gervais has become a divisive and even offensive figure. But The Office was the high-water mark for cringe comedy, and in David Brent, Gervais (along with Stephen Merchant) created one of the greatest TV characters of all time \u2013 a figure so ridiculous and yet sympathetic that it was hard not to think of him as a real person. Plus there was the Tim\/Dawn romance, which revealed that, under the cruel guffaws, Gervais was a great big softie.\u00a0<\/p>\n
10. Grange Hill (1978 \u2013 2008)<\/p>\n
Decades before Skins and The Inbetweeners, Grange Hill was bringing viewers the harsh reality of teenage life. From glue-sniffing to scraps behind the bike shed, the trauma of growing up in the 1970s was laid out with an almost documentary-like eye for detail. Until then, British telly had depicted adolescence as a time of halcyon innocence and feel-good japes. Grange Hill gave us the truth \u2013 zits and all.\u00a0<\/p>\n
9. Killing Eve (2018 \u2013 2022)<\/p>\n
The international espionage genre was rebuilt from the ground up with this cat-and-mouse thriller that, in its early years, threatened to leave James Bond shaken, stirred and thoroughly outmoded. Jodie Comer burned a hole in the screen as killer-with-a-thousand-accents Villanelle. And rather than try to match her energy, Sandra Oh smartly lowed the temperature as deadpan Eve. It all fizzled out in the end \u2013\u00a0but Killing Eve season one was a short, sharp shock of TV perfection.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Jodie Comer and Sandra Oh in \u2018Killing Eve\u2019 <\/p>\n
(BBC America)<\/p>\n
8. The Great British Bake Off (2010 \u2013 present)<\/p>\n
In an era when television has become increasingly deafening and overbearing, the genius of Bake Off has been to go small. This is TV as a sweet treat \u2013 a moment of light escapism. There are no real stakes (and no steaks, come to think of it) and everyone seems happy just to be there as they attend to their buns and battenbergs. Sometimes you simply want to nibble on something tasty and inconsequential \u2013 and that is the function Bake Off serves (even if it did migrate to Channel 4 in 2017).\u00a0<\/p>\n
7. Monty Python\u2019s Flying Circus (1969 \u2013 1974)<\/p>\n
Comedy was turned head over heels and twisted inside out by Monty Python, whose surrealist, madcap humour felt like the equivalent of an early Pink Floyd record or Sgt Pepper outtake. From the dead parrot sketch to the philosophers\u2019 football match, it took British whimsy and supersized it into something strange and hilarious.\u00a0<\/p>\n
6. Sherlock (2010 \u2013 2017)<\/p>\n
Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss lost the plot \u2013 figuratively but sometimes literally \u2013 in the final few seasons of their Baker Street blockbuster. But series one and two were pure sleuthing magic, and Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman had the sort of grumpy chemistry you just can\u2019t manufacture. The best Beeb thriller of all time? Elementary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Benedict Cumberbatch in \u2018Sherlock\u2019 <\/p>\n
(PA Media)<\/p>\n
5. Fawlty Towers (1975 \u2013 1979)<\/p>\n
With his tiresome rants against \u201csnowflakes\u201d, John Cleese has become a polarising presence in his later years. And let\u2019s be honest, from \u201chilarious\u201d Catalan waiter Manuel to the dodgy Irish builders, much of Fawlty Towers is \u201cof its time\u201d \u2013 ie, a bit racist. But in full flight, Cleese\u2019s portrait of an inept hotel manager on the English Riviera was lean-burning comedic jet fuel. In Fawlty, Cleese created one of the most singular characters in comedy \u2013 an everyman striver who just couldn\u2019t catch a break. And when his Austin Countryman refused to start and he attacked it with a tree branch, he was speaking to the frustrations of a country mired in its greyest, grimmest decade.<\/p>\n
4. Top of the Pops (1964 \u2013 2006)<\/p>\n
Bowie bashing out \u201cStarman\u201d, Kate Bush gazing at the camera as she sings \u201cWuthering Heights\u201d, Blur romping through \u201cCountry House\u201d with Alex James wearing an Oasis T-shirt. There are too many highlights to list\u00a0when it\u00a0comes to Top of the Pops, the crucible in which British music was forged, the green sward on which the Britpop wars unfolded. But let\u2019s mention just one more anyway \u2013 Kurt Cobain doing \u201cSmells Like Teen Spirit\u201d in that funny voice. You don\u2019t get more punk than that.<\/p>\n
3. Only Fools and Horses (1981\u00a0\u2013\u00a02003)<\/p>\n
Del Boy, Rodders and a get-rich-quick scheme always on the go. Only Fools and Horses didn\u2019t sound like a particularly promising idea for a sitcom when writer John Sullivan brought it to the airwaves in 1981. And yet Sullivan\u2019s story of two siblings on the make was a\u00a0perfectly spun\u00a0portrait of love, family, and the underdog desire to live a bigger life. The humour hasn\u2019t necessarily aged well; this was a world where men were men and women were \u201cbirds\u201d or \u201cher indoors\u201d. But the jokes were ultimately beside the point: the warmth between Rodney, Del Boy, Grandad and later Uncle Albert was the reason we were watching anyway.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The cast of \u2018Only Fools and Horses\u2019 <\/p>\n
(PA Media)<\/p>\n
2. Life on Earth (1979)<\/p>\n
So iconic has David Attenborough\u2019s natural history narration become, it is impossible to watch footage of a wildebeest fleeing lions or monkeys grooming each other without conjuring your own Attenborough-style voiceover in your head (see: you\u2019re doing it right now). From Planet Earth to Blue Planet, he\u2019s been clocking up zoological zingers for decades. And though he had started as a wildlife broadcaster with Zoo Quest in the 1950s, it was in 1979 with Life on Earth that Attenborough and the BBC Natural History Unit conjured, out of thin air, the wholly new genre of blockbuster wildlife telly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
1. Doctor Who (1963 \u2013 present)<\/p>\n
An eccentric in an interesting coat emerging from a police box to save the Earth once again. Is there a more iconic image in science fiction? One of the oldest series on this list, it is a mark of the Doctor\u2019s mastery of space, time and mass-market TV that the Gallifreyan gadabout has remained consistently popular. That has been so whether the character was played by William Hartnell in that original 1963-1966 incarnation, by the soon-to-depart Jodie Whitaker today, or\u00a0(I suspect)\u00a0by her successor, Ncuti Gatwa. Bonus points for Delia Derbyshire\u2019s iconic theme tune, which invented synth-pop a decade before Kraftwerk.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A\u00a0100th\u00a0anniversary is a milestone in the history of any institution. In the case of the BBC, the centenary of its founding on\u00a018 October\u00a01922 triggers a rush of memories, a landslide of couch-bound nostalgia. But whether it\u2019s Doctor Who\u2019s Dalek battles, David Attenborough striking up a bromance with a family of gorillas, or Line of Duty\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1306,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n