I've watched and reviewed 80,000 hours of TV and here's the 10 best British shows ever

Over the last five decades, I have reviewed more television shows than the cast of Googlebox. The hours I've spent watching TV professionally in my square-eyed life add up collectively to more than nine years - a staggering figure. My love for the medium began much earlier. As a small child in the 1950s, I was enthralled by The Adventures Of Twizzle, Torchy The Battery Boy, and the Watch With Mother staples. My still vivid black and white memories include the 1966 World Cup, Quatermass & The Pit, Ena Sharples and Elsie Tanner rowing on the Corrie cobbles, Opportunity Knocks and Doctor Who.

An early favourite was Adam Adamant Lives!, the story of a swordstick-wielding Edwardian adventurer (the recently deceased Gerald Harper) reborn in the swinging sixties. Adamant had no time for bureaucracy. "No wonder we lost the Empire,"; he thundered. Or for fear - "Death has no terrors for me, madam". Classic Boys Own escapades.

I never dreamt back then that one day I would make shows of my own, or that our old two channel system would evolve into the multi-channel mix of treasure and tedium we have today. The triumphs of streamers and the proliferation of broadcasters has made one perennial question even harder to answer - what was the greatest television show ever made?

We all have favourites and the memory can play tricks. Was Monty Python's Flying Circus really as consistently funny as I thought it was when I was 14? Would my other teenage favourites - Star Trek, Top Of The Pops, Bewitched etc - still make the cut? After much deliberation, here is the first of TWO TV Top Tens. This one celebrates the best of British telly; the next rates the greatest American gems. Feel free to disagree in the comments section...

Created by director Franc "Quadrophenia" Roddam, the series was mostly written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (Porridge, The Likely Lads), the series showed these hard-working blokes bonding, pining for home, drowning their sorrows and misbehaving (mostly Oz). At heart it was about male friendship, underpinned by natural humour - good-hearted banter - bravado and camaraderie.

"Pelicans, penguins and the Inland Revenue have all got one thing in common," said plain-speaking Oz. "They can all shove their bills up their arse."

The show's authentic feel proved an instant hit, quickly building a weekly audience of 14million.

While modern TV prefers to paint masculinity as "toxic" and heterosexual men as losers or dimwits, Auf Wiedersehen, Pet celebrated the strengths of brotherhood.

In a golden age of down-to-earth male-oriented drama that included Alan Bleasdale's Boys From The Black Stuff (BBC2) and Prospects (Euston Films for Channel 4), this show set a benchmark that was never equalled. Decades later, in 2015, it was voted the best ITV show of all time and even now, its fan club has more than 100,000 members.

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Created by Ian Kennedy Martin, it ran for four series between 1975 and 1978, and two film spinoffs, and the guest list was spectacular. Diana Dors, Alfred Marks, Maureen Lipman, Brian Blessed, Prunella Gee, Ian Hendry, Geraldine James, George Sewell, a young Ray Winstone and many more. Even Morecambe and Wise had a cameo. Despite that it always felt real. Utterly authentic, beautifully plotted, and the leads were uncompromising. Thaw made audiences believe in Jack Regan totally, even when he bent the rules more than Gregory House. And we felt his pain when he raged: It's a bloody holiday camp for thieves and weirdos - all the rubbish. You age prematurely trying to sort some of them out. Try and protect the public, and all they do is call you fascist. You nail a villain and some ponced-up, pinstripe Hampstead barrister screws it up like an old fag packet on a point of procedure, then pops off for a game of squash and a glass of Madeira. He's taking home 30 grand a year, and we can just about afford 10 days in Eastbourne and a second-hand car. It's all bloody wrong, my son."

You always knew anyone driving a Mark 2 Jag was a villain. They smashed up more of them than a Bermondsey breakers yard. which is probably why you can't buy a decent Mark 2 Jag now for under £30grand. The cops drove Granadas and Cortinas. They kept whisky bottles in their desk drawers. They had women on the side. And the writers brought in the corruption that tainted the real 1970s Flying Squad. Carter was no yes-man. He often disagreed with Regan but he also took a beating for him. The Sweeney didn't always win and didn't have it easy. George's wife was murdered. Jack's daughter was kidnapped. For authenticity The Sweeney has rarely been bettered. Nor has Harry South's funky brass-driven theme tune. The series was also a love letter to a lost London, still pockmarked with World War 2 bomb sites, a thoroughly arresting drama, and a reminder of a time when British cops weren't just uniformed social workers.

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Arthur's world was full of petty crooks ("tea-leaves"), fences, and underworld characters including Smudger Harris, Oily Wragg, Pongo Harris and Maltese Tony. As the show developed, it moved away from its gritty beginnings to revolve more around Daley's scams and his relationship with McCann. A lot of his language passed into popular usage - 'Er Indoors for his rarely seen wife, VAT (vodka and tonic), nice little earner and the world is my lobster. A supporter of Mrs Thatcher, Arthur even stood for election as the local government councillor (he won, but was disqualified for handing out too many free boxes of chocolates to voters).

Minder stands as both a microcosm of backstreet London life and also a shocking expose of the no-questions-asked black market economy. At its peak, it pulled in more than 16 million. Waterman quit after seven series. It carried on for three more with Arthur's nephew, Gary Webster's Ray Daley, replacing McCann. Along the way it inspired a Top 15 hit, Arthur Daley E's Alright by novelty band The Firm. Let's drink a large VAT in its memory. On the slate, Dave. On the slate.

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Morecambe & Wise were a source of constant happiness for millions of viewers. Even the show's little running jokes were a joy, like the never finished "two old men sitting in deckchairs" joke, the Des O'Connor jibes ("Des, short for Desperate") and of course Ernie's "short, fat, hairy legs" and alleged toupee ("You can't see the join.") Eric and Ernie were the highpoint of TV variety comedy, their Christmas specials and musical extravaganzas were an annual joy and it's no exaggeration to say their humour generated smiles to a grateful nation throughout the 1970s.

Yet in 1969, it looked like Morecambe & Wise were reaching the end of their TV career. Their BBC1 show hadn't gone down well with audiences or critics. It felt dated and out of time, and after recording it, Eric suffered a heart attack. Salvation came in the unlikely shape of Eddie Braben, a former Liverpool fruit-and-veg market man who wrote his jokes on paper bags before selling them to comedians like Charlie Chester and Ken Dodd. Braben's wit, wisdom and vision turned Morecambe and Wise's career around. He changed their stage personas, making Eric smarter and less goonish, and Ernie more pompous and deluded. Remember his inept "plays what I wrote" parodying historical dramas - including Glenda Jackson's Cleopatra proclaiming: "All men are fools. And what makes them so is having beauty like what I have got..."

When an ambulance went with its siren blaring during a rehearsal, Eddie ad-libbed, "They won't sell much ice cream going at that speed" - a line that inevitably ended up in the show. Within two years, they were acknowledged as Britain's greatest-ever comedy double act, rivalled only by The Two Ronnies. Another key factor in their success was Ernest Maxin, who produced and directed their later BBC series and was responsible for much loved song and dance numbers like Singing In The Rain and their 1977 South Pacific spoof with well-known TV newsreaders and presenters singing and performing acrobatics. Maxin used gymnast stand-ins to make it look like Richard Baker, Michael Aspel and co were doing somersaults. A Christmas special was watched by 28 million - more than half the UK population. We can thank Ernest too for the memorable moment newsreader Angela Rippon stepped from behind her desk to break into a high-kicking dance routine. "What do you think of it so far?" they asked. "Rubbish!" we all replied. But it wasn't rubbish. It was TV gold. When Eric died of a heart attack in May 1984, he left a gaping hole in British comedy that has never been filled.

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It was perfect, the Chateauneuf du Pap of sitcom finales. Only a complete wally would mess with that, right? Right. But of course they did. The BBC pressured Sullivan to bring back the Trotters. "We were never supposed to come back," he said in 2008. "Producer Gareth Gwenlan gave an interview saying we were doing another without asking the rest of us, so we were sort of forced into it so as not to let people down." So five years later, they'd blown their millions, thanks to dodgy Central America investments, and were living back in the old council flat. Many fans were devastated. It would have been smarter to create a sequel, like Porridge and Going Straight, set somewhere where their new wealth didn't impress snooty neighbours. To make them broke again, and to carry on without Uncle Albert was a terrible mistake. (And don't get me started on Green Green Grass). Millions still watched them but the magic was dimmed and the legacy of Britain's favourite sitcom diminished. It was a dropped stitch in TV's rich tapestry. The Beeb would have been better off asking Del for a knock-off.

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