‘TIS the season to watch telly.

You always knew it was officially okay to start getting excited about Christmas when the bumper edition of the Radio Times arrived. In this digital age of downloading and on-demand TV, it's hard to imagine families circling their festive viewing choices with red pen in the telly magazines. But in our house it was as much a festive ritual as stirring the Christmas cake mix or using the pinking shears to cut last year's cards into gift tags.

That was back when Christmas meant gathering around the telly to watch the Only Fools and Horses special. It was a collective experience, something to look forward to, and there was a comfort in knowing that everyone else was watching it too.

During daylight hours on December 25 the television would be turned off - my mother could've happily lived without a TV and wouldn't allow it on Christmas Day. We had new toys to occupy us and, after Christmas dinner, we stayed at the table to play daft games. Consequently, I have never watched the Queen's Speech in my life.

After practically begging, I was finally allowed to watch Christmas Top of the Pops, but generally the TV wasn't switched on until Christmas evening, when the sitcom 'specials' were unleashed. Christmas To The Manor Born, Vicar of Dibley, Porridge, The Good Life - I loved them all.

To a certain extent, the shared experience of Christmas Day viewing remains - evident in festive ratings figures - but TV watching is so fragmented now, with so much choice, that the days of 28 million of us watching the same show (as in 1977, when Morecambe and Wise topped the Christmas schedule) are long gone.

As we do the 2016 equivalent of circling viewing choices with red pen - pressing R on our digital planners - it's time to reflect on the TV this year has offered. From the return of Cold Feet to the end of The Great British Bake Off as we know it, it’s been an eventful year on the small screen.

It all went a bit post-apocalyptic in September when it was revealed that Bake Off was moving to Channel 4. Fans were inconsolable and Paul Hollywood was hissed like a panto villain for staying with the show. I struggled to care. It's just cake, people.

With the loss of such big TV names as Victoria Wood, Sir Terry Wogan, Ronnie Corbett, Paul Daniels and Caroline Aherne, it's been a sad year for telly. And I think it's been a bland year too. ITV filled the Downtown Abbey-shaped hole on Sunday nights with the style-over-substance Victoria, which I gave up on three episodes in, and Kay Mellor's limp drama In the Club returned, inexplicably, for another series. Other turkeys included Brief Encounters, the self-consciously Eighties-set drama about early Ann Summers parties.

Sport had its highlights, although the Olympics lacked the buzz of London 2012, and reality TV kind of ate itself, with Celebrity Big Brother and I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here won by people from other reality shows. And X Factor got what it deserved with a ridiculous middle-aged woman in a baseball cap.

Thank goodness for Strictly winner Ore Oduba, a class act whose exuberance - and dancing - was joyful. My other TV highlights included Happy Valley, The Night Manager, The A Word and Cold Feet. I've ended the year hooked on This is Us, an intelligent American drama that I look forward to each week, like we did in the days before box sets made us greedy.

Happy viewing!

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