AS YOU WERE (TV IN 2021)
Sometimes, even TV dreams come true.
2021 was the year that 'Star Trek' fan Jeff Bezos took Captain Kirk - well, William Shatner - into space.
After another year when fact seemed as strange as fiction, 2021 began like an action packed sequel to Charlie Brooker's withering, star studded Netflix retrospective 'Death to 2020'
Brexit properly kicked into action on New Year's Day and within weeks shoppers noticed missing products on supermarket shelves and delays to the delivery of parcels.
The Northern Ireland Protocol had all manners of teething problems, with alleged threats to sea border staff at the Port of Larne, the European Union at one stage openly considering triggering a clause that would have resulted in a land border to stop quantities of the Covid-19 vaccine crossing into the UK via the Irish Republic, riots in loyalist areas of Belfast and Lord Frost unilaterally extending the grace period for certain goods.
With a more virulent strain of Coronavirus also emerging, the UK Government returned in the first full week of January to the more stringent lockdown measures of the previous January, with the BBC reviving its bitesize educational programming as exams were cancelled and schools went back to online learning.
The devolved governments took a similar path - with Northern Ireland's Executive moving before the New Year to lockdown hard.
With the world pinning its hopes for a return to something like normality on the rollout of various vaccines, its distribution in the UK was much quicker than in the EU, US and other parts of the world, with the exception of Israel.
Vaccine hesitancy around the world and the refusal of some sports stars to get jabs was hotly debated, with public health officials fearing conspiracy theory scare stories fuelled on social media would only prolong the prevalence of COVID.
The emergence of the Kent, Liverpool, Bristol, South African, Delta and Brazilian variants of the Covid also tempered any premature assumptions that science had got the Coronavirus beaten.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Government was accused by former adviser Dominic Cummings of having a cavalier attitude to the virus and wanting to pursue a policy of herd immunity.
The blurring of showbiz with news took a surprise turn with 'Downton Abbey' star Hugh Bonneville signing up as a volunteer to help people get their vaccine in Midhurst, west Sussex.
And by the Spring, hopes of a new normal seemed to rise as the vaccines kicked in and restrictions were relaxed in England by Boris Johnson and more cautiously by the leaders of the three devolved administrations.
While news channels debated the merits of lockdown and the foolishness of those who refused to get the vaccine, there was a real sense in 2021 that society was tentatively emerging from the pandemic.
Live music returned and football stadia started to fill up.
Chat shows hosts on both sides of the Atlantic also had live studio audiences to perform in front of again.
The first shocking scenes of 2021 came early in the year and had little to do with Covid.
As the world prepared for the departure of Donald Trump on January 20, the President and his supporters continued to deny the reality that he lost the 2020 election.
But it got so out of hand that some of them disgracefully ransacked the Capitol building as the US Senate and House of Representatives certified the Electoral College results giving Joe Biden the Presidency.
The storming of Capitol Hill resulted in the deaths of four people but unsurprisingly, Donald Trump denied all culpability.
ITV News correspondent Robert Moore and his cameraman Mark Davey scooped rival journalists by gaining access to the Capitol as Trump supporters ran amok and he produced a powerful documentary on the events of January 6.
US talk show host Stephen Colbert revived his original 'Don and the Giant Impeach' strand as Congress moved quickly to impeach Trump for inciting the march on Capitol Hill and he had a particularly angry monologue on the night of the attack.
However after a six day impeachment trial that unearthed disturbing video footage of the storming of Congress, 43 of the 50 Republican Senators still closed ranks and voted to save Trump - meaning the vote to convict fell 10 votes short of the required two thirds majority.
There was a palpable sense of relief in the US and around the world when Trump finally left the White House in January for Mar-a-Lago to the strains of Frank Sinatra's 'My Way'.
Later that day, the young poet Angela Gorman and Lady GaGa wowed viewers at President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris' inauguration.
The return to relatively normal debate may have bored some observers of US politics but it has been a welcome respite from the hysterical, highly dysfunctional and constantly combative politics that some Fox News commentators and some Republican Senators and Congressmen have worked hard to continue.
With no Trump madness, news networks in the US started to tire of White House media briefings, although Press Secretary Jen Psaki's regular swipes at Fox News' tendency to distort reality provided some amusement.
There was also relief in April when a jury in Minneapolis found Officer Derek Chauvin guilty on three counts of murdering George Floyd in 2020.
While concerns about the police harassment and shooting of African Americans remained high, the verdict defused the potential for riots in cities across the US.
April and May saw a lot of political drama in the UK and particularly Northern Ireland, with Arlene Foster being ousted from office, only to be replaced by Edwin Poots as DUP leader and by Paul Givan as Northern Ireland's First Minister.
It was a far from bloodless coup, though, with inter-party strife on jaw dropping display at a party executive meeting in May.
Viewers of the BBC1 Northern Ireland politics show 'The View' watched on in amazement as different factions of the party laid bare their divisions on live TV.
Mr Poots, however, lasted just three weeks as DUP leader after a spectacular series of events that saw him nominate a new Ministerial team, including Paul Givan as First Minister, despite objections from colleagues at a stormy meeting of the Assembly party about him striking a power sharing deal which allowed for Irish language legislation in Westminster.
Summoned to DUP party headquarters to meet colleagues, he quit and within days, the colleague he defeated in the original leadership contest, former Ulster Unionist Sir Jeffrey Donaldson was elected unopposed.
Sir Jeffrey's old party underwent change too, replacing their leader Steve Aiken with Doug Beattie more amicably over Zoom on the same day that Edwin Poots was chosen to succeed Arlene Foster.
A day before that in Westminster, former 10 Downing Street advisor Dominic Cummings let fly during an appearance before a House of Commons committee on his former boss's handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, arguing Boris Johnson was unfit to be Prime Minister and Health Secretary Matt Hancock had misled the public.
Hancock lost his job in June and was replaced by Savid Javid after trying to ride out a scandal triggered by a leaked video of him in a passionate clinch with his ministerial adviser in his office, at a time when the public were being told to adhere to Covid restrictions.
Cummings continued to sporadically attack the Government, giving an extraordinary interview to the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg in July in which he claimed Boris Johnson had to be talked out of risking giving the Queen Covid, wasn't up to the job, had been the focus of a Tory plot to oust him that started to bubble just days after winning the 2019 General Election and where he floated Brexit may have been a mistake.
Conservative attempts to close ranks and thwart the suspension from Parliament of former minister Owen Patterson for lobbying backfired badly on the party and for the first time since taking office in 2019, Boris Johnson seemed vulnerable to criticism.
This culminated in a spectacular meltdown during a speech to CBI members in South Shields in November where he lost his way and then bizarrely rambled on about Peppa Pig.
And just when he thought things couldn't get any worse, his adviser Allegra Stratton was forced to quit in December following public outrage over a leaked video of Downing Street staff joking about a Christmas party in 2020 when the country had been ordered to go into lockdown.
When Ant and Dec start mocking the Prime Minister, as they did on 'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!', you know the court of public opinion is turning on Boris Johnson.
After surviving a Scottish Parliament grilling over her Government's handling of allegations of sexual harassment against her predecessor Alex Salmond, SNP leader and First Minister Nicola Sturgeon came close to securing an overall majority in the devolved election - increasing the clamour for a second independence referendum.
Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford's Labour Party also comfortably held onto power in Cardiff Bay - although in November he forged a broad agreement with the centre left Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru on 46 policy areas.
Prior to his November CBI meltdown, Prime Minister Boris Johnson's grip on former Labour Party strongholds in the north of England strengthened in the council elections and laid bare the scale of the challenge facing Keir Starmer and his colleagues if they are to ever win back Downing Street.
In June, a new news channel was born in the UK with the Andrew Neill led GB News promising to be less Westminster focussed, more regional in its news coverage, more tolerant of all views across the political spectrum (particularly on the right) and a mix of lively opinion and news, including a platform for good news.
However the launch was beset with problems with dodgy lighting, caption errors, presenters falling victim to rude prank names and the suspension of presenter Guro Harri for taking the knee on his show in solidarity with anti racism protests by the England football team.
Despite protestations that it was not a conservative echo chamber a la Fox News, GB News persisted with mostly right wing, outraged commentary from the likes of Dan Wootton and Michelle Dewsbury and capped it all by turning to former UKIP and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage to front his own show in July in a bid to boost ratings.
Ousted DUP leader Arlene Foster was given a regular role on the news channel to provide regular analysis on news from Northern Ireland to a mainstream British audience and made her debut on Farage's show.
By October, Neill left the station - expressing alarm at GB News' lurch to the right and its Fox News style outrage.
In August, the US's decision to pull its final troops out of Afghanistan produced the year's most heartbreaking images of Afghani families desperately trying to flee their country from the Taliban advance.
Forced to withdraw after a deal struck by his predecessor with the Taliban, President Joe Biden had promised an orderly departure but it was extremely messy and it was clear the priority of his administration was simply to get US soldiers out of the country by the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
The anniversary inspired some stunning documentaries - the most impressive of which was Brian Knappenberger's epic 'Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror' which not only examined the attacks but their legacy in terms of Afghanistan and the fear that gripped the United States
Filming of the final series of Netflix's 'Better Call Saul' came to an abrupt halt in July when its star Bob Odenkirk collapsed on set after suffering a heart attack but thankfully survived.
Cinematographer Halyna Hutchins also shockingly died on a film set in October when a prop gun malfunctioned - although in a December ABC News interview the Western's star Alec Baldwin denied he was responsible
RTE1's 'The Late Late Show' picked up in January where it left off before Christmas 2020, with Ryan Tubridy conducting the programme without a studio audience and featuring a jaw dropping interview with the former World Champion boxer Barry McGuigan in which he displayed raw grief for his daughter Danika, an actress who was building a promising screen career but passed away in July 2019 at the age of 33 from cancer.
Tubridy's programme continued to shine a light on the less fortunate, with shows raising funds for charities like Pieta helping those struggling with their mental health.
Eventually Tubridy, like his US and UK counterparts got his live audience back in the autumn and delivered the pre-Christmas 'Late Late Toy Show' with the usual gusto and the help of Irish kids and guests like Ed Sheeran.
On the same channel, comedian Tommy Tiernan's chat show also seemed to come into its own without an audience and by ditching its sketches, earning an extended run thanks to some revealing interviews with the actors Stephen Rea and Brenda Fricker.
Across the pond, Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross continued to experiment with socially distanced studio versions of their BBC1 and ITV shows, while Channel 4's satirical show 'The Last Leg' did something similar.
In the US, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, Seth Meyers, James Corden, Trevor Noah and Ellen DeGeneres gamely ploughed on with studio versions of their programmes, minus audiences with some more successful at handling the format than others.
Following a barrage of claims about a toxic working environment on her show, Ellen DeGeneres announced it would end in 2022.
While comedy shows like BBC1's 'Have I Got News For You' and 'The Last Leg' struggled without a live audience, relying on streamed audiences instead, the channel's 'Would I Lie To You?' created screened off pods for its participants and had a live, bubbled up studio audience which all felt a bit stiff.
The theatrical format of ITV's long running flagship quiz show 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' adapted easily to not having a studio audience, as did the channel's 'The Chase'.
The most talked about interview of 2021 was undoubtedly Oprah Winfrey's explosive CBS interview with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle which rocked the British Royal Family with its focus on racism, mental health and the tabloid press.
The interview proved too much for Piers Morgan whose ranting and raging about the couple led to him storming off the set of ITV's 'Good Morning Britain' after he clashed with weather presenter Alex Beresford while dismissing the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's claims that a racially insensitive remark was made about the impending birth of their son Archie by a member of the Royal Family.
Morgan quit the show within hours while Ofcom was inundated by record numbers of viewers complaints about his behaviour.
In April, the Royal Family mourned the loss of HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh with the BBC and ITV clearing their channels' schedules to provide wall to wall coverage of reaction to his death.
Viewers tuned in to watch a funeral conducted in the middle of another Covid-19 lockdown.
Coverage of the Duke of Edinburgh's death irritated some people in the UK, however, sparking over 100,000 complaints to Ofcom about regular programming being disrupted.
It was a year when journalism in Ireland and elsewhere very much saw a changing of the guard.
In Northern Ireland, fresh from the departure of the BBC's former political editor Mark Devenport, UTV's Ken Reid followed suit with RTE's Northern Editor Tommie Gorman also calling it a day to return to his beloved Sligo.
Channel 4 News host Jon Snow said goodbye in December, earning a standing ovation from newsroom colleagues after 32 years at the helm.
With live music again impacted by the pandemic, Glastonbury's long planned and postponed 50th birthday festival was again called off to with Haim, Damon Albarn and Coldplay among the artists who performed on a special 'Live at Worthy Farm' instead.
BBC2's 'Later with Jools Holland' did not return to performances before a live studio audience, although RTE2's 'Other Voices' tentatively returned to them.
For classical music buffs, The Proms did return to live shows in front of an audience, direct from London's Albert Hall.
BBC1's long running religious programme 'Songs of Praise' was drawn into a row in February when the Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party MP Gregory Campbell complained on Facebook that an episode he was watching featuring the Gospel Singer of the Year with the "BBC at its BLM (Black Lives Matter) worst".
And while ITV finally axed Simon Cowell's 'The X Factor,' 'The Masked Singer UK' was as big a hit on the channel as it was in the US.
With a clear run at the Saturday night schedules, BBC1 continued to command high ratings with 'Strictly Come Dancing,' while its international incarnation 'Dancing with the Stars' thrived in other territories.
Reality TV faltered during the pandemic, with ITV suffering from raher underwhelming COVID adapted versions of its hits 'Love Island' and 'I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here'.
The latter returned to a Welsh castle but was beset with production problems caused by winter storms that damaged the set and also forced it off air for a few days and Richard Madley's withdrawal after being taken to hospital following a trial.
True crime documentaries continued to fascinate the public.
Netflix began the year with Joe rlinger's excellent four part 'Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel'.
A documentary about the disappearance of Canadian student Elisa Lam from an infamous LA hotel, it shone a harsh light on social media users who interfere with real police investigations.
BBC3 got in on the act with 'High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule' about the Co Tyrone woman Michaela McCollum's arrest in Peru for drug smuggling for Ibiza criminal gangs but the decision to make her deliver a 'Trainspotting' style narrative undermined the telling of her story.
A second season of 2020's true crime lockdown phenomenon 'Tiger King' returned on Netflix in November but was a thundering disappointment, lacking focus and becoming tiresome as it jumped from one set of narcissists to another.
In June and July, the mysterious murder in 1996 of French woman Sophie Toscan du Plantier in a remote rural community in Co Cork along Ireland's Atlantic coast inspired two documentaries.
The first 'Murder At The Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie,' a five-part series by the celebrated Irish film director Jim Sheridan on Sky Documentaries, centred on the case against the eccentric English journalist Ian Bailey who is the chief suspect in the murder.
Presented by Sheridan, it cast doubt on the belief that Bailey was responsible for the murder and angered the victim's family.
John Dower's three part 'Sophie: A Murder in West Cork' benefitted from having the co-operation of Madame du Plantier's relatives and was a lot more focused on indications in Bailey's life that he might be responsible.
In February, the New York Times, FX and Hulu ushered in a raft of documentaries about Britney Spears' conservatorship and her mistreatment by the media.
'Framing Britney Spears,' which aired on Sky Documentaries, was the pick of the bunch and helped build the case that would ultimately see the pop singer overturn the conservatorship, giving her father total control over her finances and what she did.
July saw BBC2 deliver a documentary on another troubled and less fortunate pop princess Amy Winehouse that challenged the narrative in Asif Kapadia's 2015 Oscar winning documentary 'Amy' about her decline and eventual death.
Marina Parker's 'Reclaiming Amy' told the story from the perspective of Winehouse's parents.
One of the year's finest documentaries was about the rise and fall of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and New Labour.
BBC2's 'Blair and Brown: The New Labour Revolution' benefitted from the first hand accounts of the two former Prime Ministers but the Ministers and key aides around them and was a treat for Westminster buffs.
The same channel also gave us the Open University's 'Fever Pitch: The Rise of the Premier League' which scratched the surface of how television money transformed English football but didn't go deep enough.
Celebrated film director Steve McQueen delivered a powerful three part BBC1 documentary series 'Uprising' which served as a companion piece to his excellent 2020 drama anthology 'Small Axe' for the BBC and Amazon Prime'.
'Uprising' told three seminal stories for Britain's Caribbean community in 1981 that inspired 'Small Axe' and featured powerful interviews with survivors and relatives of the victims of the New Cross fire, participants on the Black Day of Action and individuals caught up in the events of the Brixton riots.
November saw another celebrated director Peter Jackson's 'Get Back' on Disney+ - a fascinating and epic three part documentary re-editing footage shot by Michael Lindsay Hogg of the Beatles rehearsing 14 songs for a live show to mark the release of 'Let It Be' in 1970, prior to their break-up.
In January, Martin Scorsese delivered the conversational 'Pretend It's A City' on Netflix in which the New York humourist Fran Leibowitz gave her unique take on her home city.
But who would have thought Scorsese's 1990 gangster classic 'Good Fellas' would end up being brilliantly spoofed by Jeremy Clarkson on Amazon Prime?
The presenter's 'Clarkson's Farm' was one of the most enjoyable series of the year, as he tried to make a living from the land in spite of harsh weather, the arrval of COVID to England's shores and post Brexit red tape.
Sport continued to unfold at the start of the year in front of empty or barely filled stadia, arenas, racing tracks and empty golf courses.
The European Championships in soccer went ahead in June in various venues across the continent, as was planned in 2020, but not in Dublin and with limits on the number of soccer fans in the host cities' stadia.
On the second day of the tournament, there was shock as Denmark's star player Christian Eriksen collapsed on the pitch in his side's opening game against Finland.
As his emotional teammates formed a circle around him to protect his dignity while paramedics saved his life, the Inter Milan player was successfully revived with CPR and the use of a defibrillator after suffering a cardiac arrest.
While the game resumed after word reached the Danish players that he was not only conscious but wanted them to take to the pitch, the emotion got to them as they lost 1-0 to their Nordic neighbours.
However they would make it all the way to the semi-finals in a tournament which saw the holders Portugal and other favourites like France and Belgium fall by the way side.
Scotland were knocked out in Hampden Park by Croatia despite securing a goalless draw against England at Wembley, while Wales made it to the last 16 by defeating Turkey, only to be defeated by Denmark.
After comprehensively beating Germany and then the Ukraine, English fans began to believe that this was their year.
A semi-final win over Denmark was marred by controversy, with former Liverpool and Germany player Didi Hamann outraged by the penalty decision that secured their place in the final.
A gripping final, however, saw Italy win the Euros at Wembley in a penalty shootout which subsequently saw Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Sako and Jadon Sancho subjected to racial abuse on social media for missing their penalties.
The boorish actions of some England fans, though, undermined the joy the team brought to the vast majority of English supporters.
Their relentless, disrespectful booing of opposition teams' national anthems throughout the tournament, the shining of a laser at Danish keeper Kasper Schmeichel during a crucial penalty in the semi-final and a shocking breach of security at the final by those without tickets also didn't endear them to international audiences - although manager Gareth Southgate's general handling of the team and their determined stand against racism was a major plus.
While the men's team failed to make the Euros, Northern Ireland's senior women's squad qualified for their first ever tournament, with two superb victories over Ukraine in play-offs for the European Championships.
Football, however, was thrown into turmoil in April when 12 of the continent's biggest clubs - six of them English - threatened to join a European Super League.
In the face of a fan revolt backed by former players, Manchester City and Chelsea quickly backed away from the idea with Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Spurs following them.
Chelsea and Manchester City would end up facing each other in the Champions League final, with the London team emerging victorious.
Pep Guardiola's Manchester City, however, notched up another Premier League title and a Cariboo Cup while Brendan Rodgers' Leicester City won their first ever FA Cup with a 1-0 upset over Chelsea.
In Scotland, Glasgow Celtic's nine years of dominance spectacularly disintegrated as Steven Gerrard's Glasgow Rangers went a season unbeaten and won the Scottish Premier League.
Neil Lennon's resigned as Celtic manager in February after his side's meek surrender of their ten in a row title dream.
Gerrard was lured away south of the border to the Aston Villa job in November, with fan favourite Giovanni Van Bronkhurst replacing him to deal with the threat from Australian Ange Postecoglu's revitalised Celtic who captured his first trophy, the Scottish League Cup in December against Hibernian.
The Olympics and Paralympic Games went ahead in Tokyo and while it was disappointing that the events took place in front of empty venues because of Covid fears, the Japanese put on two excellent games.
While Covid undoubtedly impacted the Opening and Closing ceremonies, there were many memorable moments including Qatar's Mutaz Essah Barshim asking in the Olympics if he and Italy's Gianmarco Tambieri could share the gold medal in the high jump?
Another staggering story was Dutch athlete Sifan Hassan winning her 1500 metres heat after a fall and then a bronze in the final and golds in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres finals.
14-year-old Chinese diver Quan Hong Chan's perfect ten scores to secure gold in her debut competition, Tunisian swimmer Ahmed Hafanoui's shock win in the 400 metres freestyle final and Japan's Yuto Horigome's gold winning run in the skateboarding were other memorable Olympics highlights.
Team GB and NI's incredible run of success since London 2012 continued, with swimmers Adam Peaty and Duncan Scott dominating in the pool, Tom Daley and Matty Lee's diving gold, 13 year old Sky Brown's sensational skateboarding bronze, Charlotte Worthington's groundbreaking BMX gold Welsh boxer Lauren Price's middleweight gold victory, track cyclist Jason Kenny's seventh Olympic gold and Charlotte Dujardin's bronze medal win to become the country's most successful female Olympian among the highlights.
Ireland also had plenty to celebrate with golds for Fintan McCarthy and Paul O'Donovan in the rowing and lightweight boxer Kellie Harrington and bronzes for Belfast welterweight Aidan Walsh and Eimear Lambe, Aifric Keogh, Fiona Murtagh and Emily Hegarty's in the women's four rowing final.
There were near misses too for Ireland in the hunt for a medal with the gymnast Rhys McClenaghan, modern pentathlon competitor Natalya Coyle and Rory McIlroy all coming close - the four times Major champion missing out on a bronze in a play-off in the men's golf.
McIlroy's Irish Olympics teammate Shane Lowry put up a stout defence at Royal St George's of his 2019 Open Golf Championship title but it was won by American golf prodigy Colin Morikawa.
In April, Japan's Hideki Matsuyama also became his country's first ever major golf championship winner, earning a green jacket at a US Masters in Augusta played in front of a limited number of spectators.
While in April, Tiger Woods sustained leg injuries in a car crash and admitted in December it was unlikely he would ever return to the heights of the sport again.
Europe's women golfers comfortably retained the Solheim Cup in the United States, with Irish golfer Leona Maguire turning in a stunning debut performance..
However Padraig Harrington's European men's team suffered a rout at the hands of Steve Striker's far superior US side at a Ryder Cup in Whistling Straits - finding it more difficult than the women to perform in front of a crowd that was around 99% American due to Covid travel restrictions.
At the age of 18 and fresh from sitting her A'Level exams, British tennis player Emma Raducanu won international hearts by capturing the US Open Championship in September - her first tournament win and the first by a British woman since Virginia Wade.
It was all the more spectacular after she was forced to quit Wimbledon two months earlier due to stress induced breathing difficulties which saw her face scathing criticism from John McEnroe and self appointed expert on everything, Piers Morgan.
Radacanu would also scoop the BBC Sports Personality of the Year for her sensational achievement.
There was a spectacular crash at the start of the Tour de France in June caused by a spectator taking a selfie.
Slovenia's Tadej Podacar would go on to capture the yellow jersey with impressive stage displays.
In the world of GAA, Dublin's grip on the All Ireland Football Championship finally gave way, with Tyrone emerging victorious over Mayo whose curse continued in the final.
In hurling, Limerick cemented their dominance of the sport by routing a resurgent Cork in the final.
In AmeriFootball, Tom Brady won a seventh Super Bowl title as the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs, while in baseball the Atlanta Braves thumped the Houston Astros to capture the World Series.
Australia triumphed over New Zealand to win its first T20 Cricket World Cup - although the sport was mired in scandal in November after Azeem Rafiq detailed the racist abuse he was subjected to from other players while representing Yorkshir.
In April, Rachael Blackmore pulled off one of the most significant sporting achievements of the year by becoming the first woman jockey to win the Grand National on her horse Minella Times.n Abu Dhabi. of the yeing
Formula One motor racing witnessed a thrilling climax to the World Championship as Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen's battle for the title came down to the final race of the year in December in Abu Dhabi.
In a fitting finale, the Dutchman dramatically took the championship from Hamilton in the final lap of the deciding race.
While sport was a welcome distraction from Covid, the Coronavirus continued to claim the lives of thousands across the globe.
Inevitably it also claimed the lives of celebrities.
The year began with the disease killing the talk show host Larry King, circus legend Gerry Cottle, and in February Second World War veteran Captain Sir Tom Moore who became internationally famous for his fundraising efforts during the first Covid lockdown.
Gerry and the Pacemakers lead singer Gerry Marsden, former 'Charlie's Angels' star Tanya Roberts, British horror actress Barbara Shelley, Sigfried Fischbacker of the magic act Sigfried and Roy, 'ER' cast member Dearon 'Deezer D' Thompson, 'Freaks and Geeks' star Jessica Campbell, 'Lou Grant' and 'Family Ties' cinematographer Robert F Lou, celebrated chef Albert Roux. documentary and TV drama director Michael Apted of '7 Up' fame.
Actor Peter Mark Richman who appeared regularly on 'Three's Company'' and Beverly Hills 90210,' Mira Furlan who starred in 'Babylon 5' and 'Lost,' Mick Norcross who featured on the ITV show 'The Only Way Is Essex,' 'Mary Tyler Moore star Chloris Leachman, 'Roots' star Cicely Tyson, Animals guitarist Hilton Valentine and Scottish Grammy nominated producer and pop musician Sophie died in January.
Christopher Plummer whose credits included 'The Thorn Birds,' 'Mark Twain Tonight' and 'North and South,' actor Hal Holbrook, 'Saved By The Bell' star Dustin Diamond, Rynagh O'Grady who played Mary in 'Fr Ted,' Mary Wilson who co-founded The Supremes, 'Crossroads' actress Jean Bayless, jazz artist Chick Corea, Welsh snooker ace Doug Mountjoy, the controversial US right wing broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, the Jamaican reggae artist U-Roy, 'Fortunes of War' and 'The Crown' star Ronald Pickup and 'Coronation Street' legend Johnny Briggs who played Mike Baldwin died the following month.
March saw Liverpool footballer and 'Saint and Greavsie' host Ian St John, Jamaican reggae legend and member of Bob Marley's band Bunny Wailer, British jazz legend Chris Barber, Canadian actor Jahmil French of 'Degrassi: The Next Generation" fame, 'Upstairs Downstairs' and 'A Bit of A Do' star Nicola Pagett, Trevor Peacock from 'The Vicar of Dibley,' legendary Formula One commentator Murray Walker, 'Homicide: Life in the Street' star Yaphet Kotto, racing driver and 'Top Gear' star Sabine Schmitz, 'The Goldbergs' star George Segal, Jessica Walter from 'Arrested Development,' and 'Lonesome Dove' novelist Larry McMurty.
'Friday Night Dinner' and 'Chernobyl' star Paul Ritter, the rapper DMX, Liberal Democrat peer Dame Shirley Williams, 'Sopranos' and 'The People versus OJ Simpson' actor Joseph Siravo, 'Peaky Blinders' star Helen McCrory, Meat Loaf and Bonnie Tyler songwriter Jim Steinman, Bay City Rollers lead singer Les McKeown, 'Get Smart' and 'The Love Boat' writer Bernie Kahn left us in April.
'Tales of the City' star Olympia Dukakis, 'Moone Boy' star Tom Hickey, Levi Jeans model and pop star Nick Kamen, Whitesnake video star Tawney Kitaen, 'St Elsewhere' star Norman Lloyd, the writer Seamus Deane, 'Louie' and 'Madoff' star Charles Grodin, Freddy Marks of 'Rod, Jane and Freddy' fame from the ITV children's show 'Rainbow' and 'Love Boat's star Gavin McLeod passed away in May.
In June we lost Ned Beatty who graced the small screen in 'Roseanne' and 'Homicide Life On The Street,' Clarence Williams III of 'The Mod Squad' fame, 'General Hospital' actor Stuart Damon, Skid Row member Johnny Solinger, the rapper Gift of Gab, while in July 'Rich Man, Poor Man' star William Smith, rapper Biz Markie, former Guardian journalist Dawn Foster, Bollywood actress Surekha Sikri, Liverpudlian stand up comic and actor Tom O'Connor, singer songwriter Joe Cassidy from Butterfly Child, stand up comedy legend Jackie Mason, 'Home and Away' star Dieter Brummer, heavy metal singer Mike Howe from the band Metal Church, Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison, England and Derbyshire cricketer Mike Hendrick, ZZ Top's Dusty Hill and Leeds United left back Terry Cooper passed away.
Kool and the Gang's Dennis Thomas, professional wrestler Bobby Eaton, Markie Post from 'The Fall Guy,' Australian radio and television newsreader Brian Henderson, 'Give Us A Clue' and 'Wurzel Gummidge' star Una Stubbs, country folk singer songwriter Nanci Griffith, Bayern Munich and German football legend Gerd Muller, stand up comic and 'Eight Out of Ten Cats' panelist Sean Lock, former British Labour MP Austin Mitchell, Don Everly of the Everly Brothers, 'Gogglebox' regulars Mary Cook and Andy Michael, UB40 saxophonist Brian David Travers, The Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, English cricketer Ted Dexter, RTE presenter Rodney Rice and reggae legend Lee Scratch Perry and 'Lou Grant' star Ed Asner died in August.
September saw the passing of Nobel laureate and SDLP leader John Hume's wife Pat, Bollywood actor Sidharth Shukla, the Greek composer Mikas Theodorakis, Girls Aloud member Sarah Harding, RTE broadcaster Donncha O Dulaing, French cinema's coolest film star Jean Paul Belmondo, 'The Wire' and 'Boardwalk Empire' star Michael K Williams, 'I Can Boogie' singer Maria Mendiola, Saturday Night Live' dear Norm McDonald, the inventor Sir Clive Sinclair, 'Growing Pains' and 'As The World Turns' cast member Jane Powell, Antrim Gaelic Footballer and Motor Neurone Disease campaigner Anto Finnegan, Spurs, Chelsea, West Ham and England legend and TV presenter Jimmy Greaves, John Challis who played Boycie in the hugely popular BBC1 sitcom 'Only Fools and Horses,' Art Metrano who was Uncle Rico in 'Joanie Loves Chachi,' 'Lady Marmalade' singer Sarah Dash, Cabaret Voltaire member Richard H Kirk, fashion journalist Richard Buckley, 'Jackass' star 'Goddess Patty' Perez, Willie Garson who played Stanford Blatch in HBO's 'Sex and the City,' actor, writer and director Melvin van Peebles, Matthew Strachan who composed the 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire? theme tune, Robert Fyfe from the BBC1 sitcom 'Last of the Summer Wine,' 'Buddha of Suburbia' and 'The Lost Honour of Christopher Jeffries' director Roger Michell, Van Morrison collaborator Pee Wee Ellis, Status Quo bassist Alan Lancaster, the legendary Liverpool and England striker Roger Hunt and En Vogue songwriter Andrea Martin.
The fatal stabbing of Conservative MP Sir David Arness at a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex rocked UK politics in October.
That month also saw the deaths of former British Conservative Government minister James Brokenshire after a battle with cancer, actress Cynthia Harris, well known civil servant Sir John Chilcott, 'Play School' and 'Fingerbobs' presenter Rick Jones, Paddy Moloney of the Irish traditional music group The Chieftains, BBC golf commentator Renton Laidlaw, the composer of the 'Channel 4 News,''Countdown' and 'Dave Allen Show' theme tunes Alan Hawkshaw, the poets Brendan Kennelly and Maire Mac an tSaoi, songwriter Leslie Bricusse, Elvis's drummer Ron Tutt, James Michael Tyler who played Gunther in 'Friends,' Northern Irish jazz musician Gay McIntyre and former Glasgow Rangers and Scotland manager Walter Smith.
British dancer and Una Stubbs' rival captain on ITV's 'Give Us A Clue' Lionel Blair, Brazilian popular singer Mendonca, UB40 member Astro, former BBC and ITV football commentator Gerald Sinstadt, Northern Ireland civil rights campaigner, SDLP founder and Fine Gael junior minister Austin Currie, 'Quantum Leap' star Dean Stockwell, 'Take The High Road' soap actress Gwyneth Guthrie, novelist Wilbur Smith, former Celtic European Cup winner Bertie Auld and Nelson Mandela's partner in dismantling apartheid, FW de Klerk, music photographer Mick Rock, Australian actor Joey Morgan, former South Korean dictator Chun Doo-hwan, former Irish rugby captain Ray McLoughlin, 'Z Cars' actor Bernard Holley, DC sniper investigator Charles Moose, Broadway composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim, Formula 1 team owner Sir Frank Williams, fashion designer Virgil Abloh, double All Ireland Championship winning Down Gaelic Football coach Barney Carr, Liverpool FC legend Ray Kennedy and FA Cup winning Coventry City manager John Sillett passed away in November.
December saw the passing of RSC great Sir Anthony Sher, songwriter John Mills, former New Orleans Saints linesman Glenn Foster Jr, Robbie Shakespeare of the reggae act Sly and Robbie, Danish goalkeeper Lars Hogh, Bronski Beat founder Steve Bronski, the first woman director to be nominated for an Oscar Lina Wertmuller, Michael Nesmith of the Monkees, the rapper Slim, 'Interview with the Vampire' author Anne Rice, English comedian Jethro, Broadway and 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' star Sally Ann Howes, Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and screenwriter Joan Didion, South African cleric and human rights activist Archbishop Desmond Tutu, BBC DJ Janice Long, film director Jean Marc Vallee and 'Golden Girls' star Betty White.
Amid the gloom of COVID and the dying kicks of the Trump Presidency, TV drama and comedy provided some respite.
The year got off to a stunning start with Andrew T Davies' absorbing 1980s AIDS drama 'It's A Sin' on Channel 4, which featured not just a poignant story but blistering performances from a young cast that included Olly Alexander, Lydia West, Omari Douglas, Nathaniel Curtis and Callum Scott Howells.
Brilliantly written, directed and acted, it featured a devastating piece of acting in the final episode by Keeley Hawes who began the year with a hit ITV comedy drama 'Finding Alice' about a widow and her family recovering from the shock death of her partner.
ITV also began the year with another of its gripping true crime dramas 'The Pembrokeshire Murders' which told the story of Keith Allen's smart Welsh serial killer John Cooper and the investigation that caught him spearheaded by Luke Evans' DCI Steve Wilkins.
Crime dramas were the order of the day on the channel with the third series of Anna Friel's 'Marcella' bringing her fragile undercover detective to Belfast to infiltrate a crime family and Daragh Carville's Morecambe set thriller 'The Bay' returning for a second series.
The channel returned in August to the racist murder of Stephen Lawrence with another drama, 'Stephen' written by Frank and Joe Cottrell Boyce about the investigation starring Steve Coogan.
Other dramas like 'Hollington Drive' with Anna Maxwell-Martin and 'Angela Black' with Joanne Froggatt and Michiel Huisman on the channel tackled child abduction and domestic violence.
In October, the channel repeated 'Code Of A Killer' -a by the book two part 2015 drama with David Threlfall, John Simm and Lorcan Cranitch about the first use of DNA fingerprinting anywhere in the world to identify the man responsible for the rape and murder of two women in eicestershire between 1983 and 1986.
(SPOILER ALERT!)
However the cream of ITV's crop was without a doubt the fourth series of the understated 'Unforgotten' which shook up the formula that served it so well by killing of Nicola Walker's beloved DCI Cassie Stuart.
There was evidence in a typically well crafted series to suggest the show could still thrive with Sanjeev Bhaskar's DI Sunny Khan in charge of the cold case team and it'll be interesting to see if writ,er Chris Lang and director Andy Wilson continue to develop the best police drama of the past six years.
BBC1's 'Line of Duty' remained undoubtedly the most popular police thriller with a ratings busting sixth series.
Kelly McDonald guest starred in a tale which left audiences craving more - even if they were underwhelmed about the unmasking of the corrupt cop H.
Around the same time that 'Marcella' was in Belfast, Jed Mercurio helped executive produce a new 'Line of Duty' style Northern Irish set thriller 'Bloodlands' - a frankly ridiculous show with James Nesbitt from the fevered imagination of Chris Brandon.
Also featuring Lorcan Cranitch, Charlene McKenna, Lisa Dwan and Michael Smiley, it riffed on the Troubles with a convoluted plot about a mysterious assassin within the police called Goliath and racked up cliché after cliché.
Despite dividing audiences and attracting particular ridicule in Northern Ireland, BBC1 recommissioned it for a second series before the end of its run.
In September, the same production company also gave us a BBC1 submarine murder mystery drama 'Vigil', with Suranne Jones in the lead and Martin Compston in a cameo role, that plumbed the depths of ridiculousness.
Those looking for something a bit more classy would have enjoyed Sky Atlantic's classy multilingual, continent hopping drugs trade thriller 'ZeroZeroZero' which featured excellent performances from Gabriel Byrne, Giuseppe De Domenico, Dane DeHaan and particularly Andrea Riseborough and Harold Torres.
A mesmerising tale about a cocaine consignment's journey from Mexico to Italy from Stefano Sollima, Leonardo Fasoli and Mauricio Katz, it deftly mixed high octane action sequences with a fascinating study of betrayal.
Netflix appeared to say goodbye to the similarly themed 'Narcos: Mexico' in November, which bowed out on a high after three excellent seasons on top of three terrific seasons of its Colombian predecessor 'Narcos'.
The streaming service delivered a surprise French language hit in the first half of 2021 with the classy thriller 'Lupin,' starring Omar Sy.
Its status as Netflix's most successful non English language drama didn't last long as the South Korean dystopian thriller 'Squid Game' thrilled subscribers in September and October.
In October, Mark Harmon left CBS' 'NCIS' after 18 years playing Leroy Jethro Gibbs in the procedural.
In Ireland, RTE also dabbled in crime drama with the well received thriller 'Smother' with Dervla Kirwan and Seana Kerslake which was a co-production with BBC Studios for Alibi and the well made 'Hidden Assets' with Angeline Ball and Simone Kirby - a spin-off from the channel's 2017 thriller 'Acceptable Risk' and flitted between Shannon and Antwerp.
However the channel's most impressive drama was the Dublin gangster drama 'Kin' with Aidan Gillen, Ciaran Hinds and Clare Dunne - a co-production with AMC that has real potential to grow into a classic crime series.
Sky also gave its so so political thriller 'COBRA: Cyberwar' with Robert Carlyle and quirky underground medical drama 'Temple' with Mark Strong and Daniel Mays second runs.
Olivia Colman and David Thewlis teamed up for the unconventional true crime HBO and Sky Atlantic co-production 'Landscapers' as a suburban English couple who have bodies buried in their garden.
Two bloody, icy nautical dramas hit our screens, with the BBC airing AMC's gripping 2018 series 'The Terror' with Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies and Ciaran Hinds and then Andrew Haigh's excellent 'The North Water' with Colin Farrell, Jack O'Connell and Stephen Graham.
Graham appeared in two other stunning TV dramas - Jimmy McGovern's tough BBC1 prison tale 'Time' with Sean Bean and as an early onset dementia patient in Jack Thorne's stirring 'Help' on Channel 4 with Jodie Comer and Ian Hart which tackled the way Coronavirus decimated many nursing homes.
One of the most talked about TV dramas was Channel 5's 'Anne Boleyn' whose colourblind casting of Jodie Turner Smith as the beheaded Queen and Paapa Essiedu as her brother George seemed to attract outrage from the usual suspects.
BBC1 began the year with a taut Sunday night drama 'The Serpent' with Tahar Rahim and Jenna Coleman.
The second series of BBC Scotland's 'Guilt' with Mark Bonnar proved a worthy follow-up to the 'Fargo'-esque first series which aired in 2020.
Fans of FX's 'Fargo' got to enjoy the real thing on Channel 4 with Chris Rock, Jessie Buckley, Ben Whishaw and Jason Schwartzman starring in an enjoyable fourth series about African, Irish and Sicilian American gangsters.
Back on BBC1, 'Ridley Road' saw Sean O'Casey's granddaughter Agnes play a Jewish girl from Manchester who infiltrates the British Nazi party in 1960s London in an ultimately disappointing drama.
Niamh Algar also went undercover and turned in a blistering performance as a cop pursuing a taped murder confession from the wrong man in the gritty, yet flawed drama 'Deceit'.
The common thread between both 'Ridley Road' and 'Deceit' was that they both featured Eddie Marsan.
2021 ended as it began, with Netflix producing a star studded satirical take on the year with 'Death to 2021'.
It was another year when traditional TV adjusted to life alongside a swelling number of streaming services.
But there was no doubt TV in either form played a huge part in helping get people through a second year of COVID.
We begin 2022 a bit like 2021, hoping the threat from COVID recedes and television remains as diverse, thought provoking and entertaining.
TEN BEST TV SHOWS OF 2021
It's A Sin (Channel 4)
Unforgotten, Series 4 (ITV)
Mare of Easttown (HBO)
Help (Channel 4)
The White Lotus (HBO)
Squid Game (Netflix)
Kin (RTE and AMC)
Uprising (BBC)
Narcos Mexico, Season 3 (Netflix)
Succession, Season 3 (HBO)
Honourable Mentions: Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror (Netflix), Clarkson's Farm (Amazon), Kevin Can F**k Himself (Amazon), Blair and Brown: The New Labour Revolution (BBC); The North Water (BBC and CBC)
Most Overrated Show: The Flight Attendant (HBO)
Worst Show: Vigil (BBC)
Best Show: Succession, Season 3 (HBO)
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