A comedian with an impossible task. A comedian with a secret agenda. And a final episode where no one could believe that he got away with lying in plain sight for episode after episode. No, I’m not talking about Alan Carr in The Celebrity Traitors final, which was one of the funniest things I watched all year, I’m talking about Nathan Fielder in the Rehersal, my favourite TV programme this year.

The first season was, in the end, almost incredibly moving as it tightroped between a reality TV show about a reality TV show and what might actually be something incredibly real and raw.

The second season was better because it had a purpose, even if it was one that was not as obvious as it may first have appeared. To say more would be to spoil the surprises but, in its own, the final episode was like watching the documentary Free Solo and, despite knowing that climber Alex Honnold didn’t fall off, you still worried that he might fail. The last episode of The Rehearsal had that same feeling of knowing everything was okay, while fully expecting the worst.

For another spectacular ending, Nathan Fielder faced the challenge of… Nathan Fielder in ‘The Curse’. A programme that was very cold and kept the characters at arms length until 20 minutes from the end when, well, a million monkeys with a million typewriters would never have written that ending.

For utter rubbish, I give you ‘Paradise’, with a twist so stupid I watched all of it anyway. And while I can’t say it was worth it in the end, in episode 7, set in the White House, they managed to create the tensest hour of TV I’ve watched in a long time.

For comfort TV, nothing beats Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman driving round on motorbikes in Long Way Home where the greatest peril is wondering if Ewan and Charley will find a nice bed & breakfast in Denmark.

And if you want comfort and utter rubbish then Department Q did a great job of making Scotland look like another country because, well, despite being set and filmed in Edinburgh it used a fictional island for a murder investigation. An island that appeared to be on the west coast of Scotland, because that’s where all the islands which are not Shetland or Orkney are! An island with a shinty team, so likely on the west coast of the Highland, perhaps near Skye. But was also once part of the north east oil boom in the 1970s! The only way the makers of Department Q can solve this mystery is by having an island here: