OK. 2007 is nearly over, so here are my favourite shows of the year.

Best drama: The Circuit on SBS. Contemporary and very Australian. A real surprise for a network run by a Kiwi with a bunch of unreconstructed Howardites on the board. Runner-up: Seven’s City Homicide . Blokey, but very well written with a great ensemble performance. Shane Bourne is better here than fronting Thank God You’re Here . Honourable mention: East West 101 .

Failed drama of the year : Sea Patrol . Promised much but didn’t deliver, too costly with clunky scripts and cutaway shots of a propeller going through green water. We know it’s at sea, folks.

Most underrated programs: Missing Persons Unit on Nine; RSPCA Animal Rescue on Seven: both did the job without much fanfare.

Best humour/observational comedy: The Librarians . Black with no artificial whitener from commercial TV.

Best mainstream commercial program: Thank God You’re Here on Ten. Making us laugh seems to be a crime on commercial TV these days.

Best revival: The Chaser’s War on Everything . There is life after being on the ABC at some ungodly hour on Friday nights. What can we expect for an encore now that Kevin07 is the man for 08?

Most predictable drama series:  A close competition between Ten’s Law and Orders; Nine’s CSIs , Cold Case and Without A Trace  and Seven’s Criminal Minds , Bones , etc. The winner by a mile, Midsomer Murders , which whipped everything on Sunday nights for the ABC and forced the over 50s viewers to stay up to 10pm or thereabouts.

Best News and Current Affairs program: Newstopia on SBS. The luvvies at Sunday and Four Corners , not to mention the desperates at Lateline should take note. Mr Micallef and his writers sometimes got very close to the way TV news and current affairs happens. Newstopia has the presenters of those more mainstream programs — including SBS’s World News Australia — bang to rights (as they say on The Bill) . Except for isolated successes, TV current affairs was a wasteland this year.

Best TV interview program: Andrew Denton’s Enough Rope . Towards the end of the year Denton proved that ordinary Australians have very good stories. Made up for a slow year at Australian Story which had some peculiar crime-solving agendas in Western Australia. Nothing as good as the 2006 two-parter on Ivan Milat and his family.

Best two hours of viewing: Sunday morning, 9am to 11am on the ABC. Barry Cassidy and the lads proved that political talk and sport can be far more entertaining than people might think.

Most improved program on ABC: Talking Heads at 6.30pm on Monday nights. Host Peter Thompson is finally getting to understand it’s all about the talent, not himself.

Most passionate person on TV: Seven’s Andrew O’Keefe. Mr Beefy, as he is known to his former uni mates, is a true believer in TV and talking. Keep going.

Most overrated person on TV:  A closely fought battle between Ray Martin, Daryl Somers, Tony Jones and Stan Grant.

Most overrated person not on TV: Mary Kostakidis, formerly of SBS. Daryl Somers in 2008?

Biggest Bimbo: A long, long list. Time and space would prevent an exhaustive list, but here’s a taste. Lizzy Lovette on Seven’s Famous on Thursday nights. Clio Creswell on the Einstein Factor . The host of Australia’s unFunniest Home Videos , Toni Pearen. And former Hawthorn forward, Dermott Brereton. He’s OK on Getaway but that commercials clip show could have been a career ender.

Most missed program: West Wing. Not for the overblown liberalism, but for the good writing and the acting. Always a pleasure to watch, even when it was trying to rebalance the Clinton record.

Network arrogance award: SBS for repeating Mythbusters and Inspector Rex ad infinitum just to build audiences (both rate over 300,000-500,000 in repeats and more in new eps) and charge advertisers more. Nine and Ten did sterling work in running well over 180 hours of repeats each during the year. That helped reduce Free To Air viewing this year.

Most promising talent: Jolene Anderson from All Saints , her effort in It Takes Two was pretty good. Ally Langdon, Nine journo and sometimes newsreader. Matt White, Seven’s sports bloke in Sydney. Sam Armytage, fronting TT and Weekend Sunrise. Helen Kapalos on Ten News in Melbourne. Sharyn Ghidella, the one that got away from Nine and started wrecking its weekends in Brisbane by reading Seven News and winning big audiences.

Dud interview/story of the year:  So many. The poor Qantas hostie on 60 Minutes . Money isn’t everything and it was a nasty exploitative report. Many, many reports on TT and ACA .

Greatest comeback since Daryl Somers: Dave Gyngell as Nine CEO.

Best finish for the year: Rove. After a miserable end to 2006, Rove had his best ratings and showed he’s not afraid by taking on Kevin Rudd and Bob Brown.

Most stunning loss of the year: Matt Price. Why don’t we all do something to remember him for the profession’s sake? He showed journalists can be entertaining, intelligent and talk about sport, politics and anything else.