The best and worst TV shows I’ve reviewed this year, from Rob and Rylan to The Hardacres, and Taskmaster to The Teacher

The Best

Taskmaster/Junior Taskmaster (Channel 4): You'd think Alex Horne and his team would be running out of silly things to make their competitors to do for the cameras, but this brand is showing no signs of flagging. In fact, this year it expanded into a junior version, which showed all the invention, intelligence and lunacy of its grown-up counterpart. Guaranteed laughs.

Rob and Rylan's Grand Tour (BBC2): This mix of the sacred and profane proved one of the surprises of the year – a celebrity travelogue which opened the eyes of both the celebrities involved, and the viewers – and proved to be a surprisingly emotional and affecting series on art, culture and the impact it can have an all of us.

The Tourist (BBC1): One of the first shows of the year, the second series of the amnesia thriller saw Jamie Dornan once again assailed by all and sundry for reasons his memory finds easier to forget. Moving the action from outback to Australia to rural Ireland, the laughs increased and the plot turned pitch-black.

Colin From Accounts (BBC2): This Australian comedy series returned for a second series, mining more laughs from the embarrassments uncovered by Ashley and Gordon – newly in love but entirely in the dark about their new partner's family, friends, and past traumas. Darren Gilshenan steals every scene he's in as Ashley's mum's weird partner Professor Lee, but every so often there's a scene that completely blindsides you.

The Responder (BBC1): Martin Freeman and his impeccable Scouse accent returned and this time he was even more in need of a good night's sleep than before. This tale of a frazzled copper who finds himself having to bend the rules just to keep everyone around him safe piled stress upon stress on Freeman's Chris Carson, and both he and the plot somehow managed to stand up under the strain.

And the worst...

The Teacher (Channel 5): This drama series about a – you got it – teacher who discovered a pupil murdered while she was having unauthorised nookie with a colleague started out stupid and got worse. With plot holes you could drive a double decker school bus through and not one character acting in a believeable way. When Will Mellor's backside can out act most of the people on the screen, you know you're on to a loser.

Suspect II (Channel 4): A high-concept drama series which fell over its own feet, Suspect II featured the normally excellent Anne-Marie Duff as a psychologist whose latest patient confesses to murder while under hypnosis. Duff's Dr Susannah Newman then heads off to trace witnesses and suspects – one or two per episode. It's all very overwrought and stagey, a hostage to its format, and features a scenery-chewing turn from Tamsin Greig.

The Apprentice (BBC1): This hoary old chestnut turned out again, but that's enough about Lord Sugar. This show really does prove the law of diminishing returns as it sticks to a familiar formula. Meanwhile, the candidates repeat the same old mistakes and say the old things about always giving 110 per cent. It's time to show it the boardroom door.

The Hardacres (Channel 5): Another Channel 5 drama, another dud, this one being unusual in that it's a period drama dud. Full of plain-speaking, working class Yorkshire folk who say what they like and like what they bloody well say, it featured the cleanest slums in TV history and the least likely way of striking rich.

Cooking With The Stars (ITV): A cooking competition with very little cookery or competition, calling it light-hearted, schedule-filler fluff would be an insult to real light-hearted, schedule-filler fluff. Apparently only useful as a sponsorship vehicle for Marks and Spencer, it's a waste of everybody's time.