Shiver me corsets! The biggest TV drama of the year turned out to be the docusoap's bastard offspring, and (only) a game show to boot. But even aside from the Big Brother phenomenon, it was still the numerous incarnations of reality TV featuring real(ish) people - from Taransay's beleaguered castaways to the quaking contestants on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? and The Weakest Link - who consistently provided the tabloid headlines and compelling 'Did you see?' office water-cooler plotlines.

As channels continue to proliferate and viewers' attention spans falter, what used to be known as 'appointment television' - the blockbuster drama series and classy sitcoms baby boomers grew up with (and probably assumed we'd also grow old with) - may not yet be dead in the schedules, but their failure to engage us in 2000 proved they are appointments that are increasingly easy to break.

Perhaps overblown series like Gormenghast and Anna Karenina foundered partly because, as with water divining and healing with herbs, we've all but lost the will, if not the ability, to follow a plot from week to week. Or because the traditional big-budget costume indulgence seems increasingly out of step with the emotional needs of the TV audience.

The success of Elizabeth, Time Team and A History of Britain reveals that we currently prefer our TV history brought bang up to date with a bit of psychological spin. Simon Schama, for example, made the Bayeux Tapestry speak to the twenty-first-century viewer by helping us picture, in our mind's eye, the women who stitched it.

Interestingly, it seems we're no longer looking to TV to provide us with a romantic escapist dramatic landscape, a parallel world in which happy endings are sealed with kisses, confetti and wedding bells, but to provide imaginative takes on issues that affect us. Many of this year's most successful contemporary dramas - Clocking Off, Fat Friends or Cold Feet, for example - have capitalised on this millennial self-absorption while also recognising a collective commitmentphobia- cum-attention-deficit disorder, providing self-contained storylines in each episode. Needless to say, the two-parter running on consecutive nights will increasingly dominate the drama schedules. Cast your mind back and you'll remember when they used to be called mini-series.

The way we watch TV has evolved, of course, and all those daytime hits on the Big Brother website have proved that the boundaries between broadcast TV schedules and casual net browsing will increasingly be blurred. This is TV treating itself as breaking news, even as breaking news is now often trailed like drama. Prime-time TV is no longer a cosily communal activity, topped and tailed by the family supper and A Book At Bedtime, as the modern family home quite often sustains a box in the living-room, one in the kitchen and one in each of the kids' rooms. For some, this prompts a sigh of nostalgia for the days when the whole country could share a first-hand opinion on Angela Rippon's legs and whether or not the moon might in fact be located on a Hollywood backlot.

But, personally, I think the idea that we all share a collective yearning for the good-old-days of fireside TV (if not actually The Good Old Days) is a con. The way we watch TV now is less a manifestation of the breakdown of The Family, as endorsed by some dread, imaginary liberal elite, but merely proof that we now lead much more interesting lives and therefore have far more choice about how we choose to fritter away our leisure time. Indeed, it makes stumbling across a genuine collective 'Did you see...?' TV moment - from Judy's embonpoint to Cheggers's appendage to Nasty Nick's unmasking - all the more enjoyable.

Despite huffy-puffy debates about broadcasting White Papers, the role of the BBC, dumbing down and stripping off, thus far I think that twenty-first-century TV is in pretty good shape: there is still an embarrassment of riches alongside the crass and the cheap, and if we don't like it at least we can switch off and go and do something less boring instead.

And finally...

• The 'They Don't Make Them Like They Used To' Pride and Prejudice Memorial Award for Best Costume Drama: Longitude (Worst: Gormenghast).

• Best Drama Set On a Relentlessly Grim Council Estate: Never Never.

• Best Drama Set On a Relentlessly Grim Council Estate and Masquerading as a Docusoap: Bad Girls (Worst: Cutting Edge's Shooters).

• The 'Laugh? I Nearly Got a Commission from Channel 4' Award for Madcap Comedy: Black Books (Worst: Randall and Hopkirk: Deceased).

• The Silver Hearse Award: Victor Meldrew (Runner up: Morse).

• The 'Angry of Tunbridge Wells' Award for the Best (and Worst) Offensive Surrealist Sketch Show: Jam.

• The Golden Handcuffs Award for an Outstanding Celebrity Vehicle: Sarah Lancashire in Seeing Red (Worst: Robson Green in Blind Ambition).

• Best Series About Hopelessly Self-Absorbed Twentysomethings: Hearts and Bones (Worst: Metropolis).

• The 'Now That's Why We Pay Our Licence Fee' Award: Joint winners: Elizabeth and Simon Schama's A History of Britain.

• The Man-Sized Kleenex Award for a Heart-wrenching Documentary Series: (Joint winners) Love Is Not Enough and Surrogate Babies.

• The Award for Best Use of Lawnmowers and Rotary Clotheslines at an International Sporting Event: The Olympic Games Opening Ceremony.

• The David Coleman Spattered Microphone Award for Outstanding Sports Commentary: John McEnroe.

• Best Category-Defying One-Off Arts Documentary Shot Mostly In Black and White: Arena - Wisconsin Death Trip.

• The 'Gotta Catch 'Em All' Gold Pokémon Award for Catchphrase: Anne Robinson for 'You are the weakest link. Goodbye!'

• The Pringles Addict Award for Best Cheesy-Yet-Compulsive Prime-Time Drama Series: Fat Friends (Worst: Reach For The Moon).

• The 'Urgh! There But for the Grace of God...' Award for A Documentary About Very Strange People: Horizon: Body Dysmorphia (Runner Up: Hidden Love's erotomania episode).

• The 'You're Not Going Out Dressed Like That' Gold-Plated Barbie Award for Helping Over 30s Keep In Touch With The Youth of Today: Ant and Dec for SM:tv Live.

• The Edge of the Sofa Statuette for Deliciously Cheap Voyeurism: (Joint winners) Big Brother and Judy Finnigan.

Top 10 Television shows of the year

Longitude C4

Black Books C4

Never Never C4

Big Brother C4

Olympic Games Opening Ceremony BBC1

The Weakest Link BBC1 and 2

Arena: Wisconsin Death Trip BBC2

Naked Jungle C5

A History of Britain BBC2

Ant and Dec SM:tv Live ITV

Turkey of the year

Keith Chegwin for Naked Jungle C5