Pollard, understandably but also not understandably at all, assumed she was talking about fellow contestant David Gest – who no one noticed was asleep nearby.

CBB’s 17th series saw Angie Bowie being told of the death of her ex-husband David and stumbling out of the diary room in a daze, where she encountered reality TV stalwart Tiffany Pollard. But there are times in which cosmic coincidences collide in such farcical fashion that the result is funnier than anything pre-planned. Reality TV remains the bastard stepchild of scripted television, and often for good reason. Celebrity Big Brother – Series 17, Episode 8: ‘Day Seven’ Of course the BBC cancelled Frankie Boyle’s New World OrderĤ9.The plot Dickens: Why TV needs to get over its Great Expectations obsession.If it’s really offending people – why not?’ Chris O’Dowd on the axed IT Crowd episode, midlife crises and The Big Door Prize Whether that’s an hour of prestige drama or a 20-minute sitcom, these are the moments when television transcends its format and becomes an art form. This list contains lots of excellent shows and a few mediocre ones, but what matters here is how they tell a story over one single broadcast. Succession has also returned to screens, with a run of spectacular episodes spawning endless think pieces and memes. It is an episode that any show would be proud of. In it, two supporting characters tell us the story of humanity’s endurance at the end of the world. The start of 2023 has been dominated by discussions about The Last of Us, a perfectly good series including one stunning episode. At its most potent, a perfect episode is like mainlining all the myriad ingredients of prestige television in a single sitting.īut great TV shows do not necessarily beget great episodes and, conversely, great episodes are not always the sign of a great show. It can refine the essence of the best shows into a single, self-contained moment. A truly brilliant episode can bridge the gap between cinema and TV. It is the smallest of these sub-divisions, the episode, that is most intriguing.

But, within that narrative, there are small parts: the series, and the episode. On the surface, there’s the great, overarching story that begins with the first shot and ends with the last. Television shows are, inevitably, made up of parts.

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