Don’t Blame Us, We Voted For Arrested Development

There’s currently a poll running on MediaGuardian’s website, asking readers to vote for what they feel is the best TV show of the current decade.

There’s a shortlist of forty shows to choose from, and as the date in the screenshot above shows, it has been running for over three days. Let’s have a look at a few of the current ‘scores’:

Ha.

Ha. We’re sure the above two are down to “the British public not liking someone once they become successful”, rather than “being fleetingly popular is more down to luck than brilliance, whereas long-term popularity needs genuine talent”. After all, Bo Selecta didn’t even make the shortlist.

Ha.

Hurrah. Back when Series A was being previewed, we’d thought something along the lines of “well, the involvement of John Lloyd and Stephen Fry is promising, but it’s just another BBC Two panel show. It won’t last”. Proof, as if it were ever needed, that no-one should ever listen to us about anything. And proof why they don’t, come to think of it.

Crikey. While we do watch and enjoy Top Gear, is it really 588 times better than Life On Mars, The Daily Show, The Thick Of It or House (each currently on 0.1%)? Clearly not. We can’t help but feel there’s some sort of Facebook Group chicanery going on. Ah well, it’s all academic, and once the actual Channel Four series that inspired this poll is broadcast it’s only going to be won by Max & Paddy’s Road To Nowhere, anyway.

The main thing to take away from this poll is that if The Guardian’s website is going to have a poll with forty options to choose from, they’re much better off letting people choose three options, not one.

[update]

A-ha. The figures for Top Gear might just have a little something to do with a thread called “Vote rig: Guardian best TV show of the noughties” on a Top Gear forum, and subsequent spin-off campaigns by Top Gear fans. We’d denounce this behaviour as reprehensible, except it has given us an idea as to how we might just be able to nab a 2010 Webby Award. All it’ll take is for someone to create a messageboard saying how great we are, and then have thousands of people using it. Our fingers are interlocking wickedly right now*.

(*We typed that using our thumbs.)

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