Aerial Telly Awards 2007
Because you want it
In a year that saw him further consolidate his grip on the worlds of gambling, writing and poon hounding Aerial Telly is proud to roll out his awards ceremony for the year of 2007. Stars from the world of showbiz throw themselves out of limousines in the hope of gaining validation from the world’s premiere authority on the vision that is telly. Most will never receive it – he is notoriously hard to please. But for those lucky chosen few their lives are changed forever – you really can’t buy this kind of career tonic. So let’s get things underway and talk about what you should have been watching when you were going through your girl’s mobile for evidence of infidelity.
Best show: 30 Rock, NBC
You thought the show within a show had been done to death and 30 Rock showed you you were dead wrong. An object lesson in how sitcom should be conceptualised, scripted and performed, Tina Fey‘s brilliant creation showcased a previously unexplored comic talent in daughter baiting Alec Baldwin as deranged studio boss Jack Donaghy.
Worst show: The Peter Serafinowicz Show, BBC2
He had talent and BBC threw money at it like it was a Vegas lap dancer – so why did it suck so very hard? Well Watson, it must always come down to the writing. Ideas so old they needed carbon dating, feeble running gags and, yes, Cillit Bang parodies meant that the show was on to a loser from the start. Even the glorious pie of Belinda Stewart-Wilson couldn’t mask the fact that the BBC were wasting more energy than Freddie Ljungberg‘s girlfriend.
Best performance by a male: Michael K. Williams as Omar Little – The Wire
The Wire achieved what many thought impossible this year and made the fourth season the best yet and at the heart of it was Michael K. Williams‘s turn as Omar Little, the gay stick-up kid who never swears, shoots citizens or gets caught slipping. In a jail full of guys who want him dead, Omar stabs the first guy who tries to kill him in the rectum for everyone to see. As statements of intent go, that’s as pointed as they come and Williams’s understated presence and charisma give an already strong character mythic status.
Best performance by a female: Tina Fey as Liz Lemon, 30 Rock
Not only did she create the year’s best show, Tina Fey also put in the best performance by a dame as socially inept comic writer Liz Lemon. Fey bases Liz largely on herself and her unflinching portrayal of the "New York third-wave feminist, college-educated, single-and-pretending-to-be-happy-about-it, overscheduled, undersexed, you buy any magazine that says ‘healthy body image’ on the cover and every two years you take up knitting for…a week." Lemon is brave, engaging and most of all very funny.
TV pie of the year: Katrina Bowden, 30 Rock
Always the category Aerial Telly agonises over hardest, TV pie of the year was once again fiercely competitive. Pielinda Stewart-Wilson set an almost impossible pace as the thinking man’s Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Pieter Serafinowicz Show, smouldering quietly through one duff sketch after another and the return to our screens of diminutive but curvy Scottish pie Laura Fraser in Talk To Me was hugely appreciated and the sight of the lovely Mary Louise Parker from Weeds getting fucked doggy style over a desk like the bad little milfpie she is resonated with sane viewers everywhere. But it was Katrina Bowden as Cerie, 30 Rock’s effervescently vacant intern slutting it up round the NBC offices that got the nod for 2007. This award instantly raises her modeling rate by $10,000 a day. No problem Katrina – you can "thank" me later.
Tv Event Of The Year: Lost Season Three Finale (SPOILERS, bitches)
It will always have its critics but man does this show know how to pull the big episodes out of its ass? In season three’s stunning denouement they killed Charlie, reintroduced Walt and got off the fricking island. For all its dips in form and annoyances, Lost continues to be a triumph of the imagination and walking proof that populist television needn’t be brainless or condescending.
"What the fuck was that?" award – John From Cincinnati, HBO
We make allowances for geniuses and that’s presumably how John From Cincinnati got past the drawing board stages. The wilfully impenetrable religious allegory had Deadwood fans scratching their heads and casual viewers scratching their nuts. The decision not to order a second series was one of the less surprising commissioning decisions of the past 12 months. Fundamentally, I don’t think even Milch knew what this was about.
Empty gesture of the year:
Preston’s Walk Out on Never Mind The Buzzcocks
In this show of adolescent rage as futile as his laughable condescending project to save his "wife" Chantelle Houghton from her chav dreams, the media whore’s attention seeking defence of his "wife" was shown up for what it was a couple of months later when she ditched him, dyed her hair blonde again and had a load of toxic shit stuck in her tits to make her look like the exact same identikit China Whites Nuts magazine cocksucker that he was so desperate to stop her becoming in the first place. Well done fucknut.
And goodnight.