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A new festive tradition is emerging in our little About the Ö÷²¥´óÐã team: the . My counterpart and you’ll get Editor Jon’s tomorrow, so here, without further ado, is my (in-exhaustive, post-Christmas, turkey addled brain’s) remembrance of the year gone by, or at least my highlights.

I feel like I’ve watched a lot of great telly this year. In particular, great drama. And amongst all of this great drama one programme stands out, (I realise . Even Jen talks about it in her blog). I clearly remember watching the first episode by accident, it just happened to be on when I was channel flicking, and the , with views of beautiful English countryside juxtaposed with depressing urban scapes scored by Jake Bugg’s Trouble Town drew me in. Sarah Lancashire’s brilliant performance and Sally Wainwright’s taught, unforgiving writing kept me hooked for the series. I’m so pleased a .

In July, I had the privilege of being in the same space as a host of incredible TV writers and commissioners when I attended Ö÷²¥´óÐã Writersroom’s TV Drama Writers Festival.  The annual event organised by  aims to create a safe environment for writers – who all too often are working in isolation - to talk to their peers about what’s going on in the industry. You can read all about it in my but my memories are of a day full of information, geeky excitement (on my part) and fascinating insight about the process of getting a drama from the writer’s head, to page and to screen. 

Early autumn provided another masterclass in brilliant TV drama in the form of – the true story of how one man came back from war to set up the country’s first zoo without bars. Watching one family work to realise their dream with the help of a few penguins, bears and a monkey, it was impossible to miss as I fell in love with the lot of them.

After the summer my team moved from W12 to Broadcasting House, and it’s exciting to now be based in the same building as some of Ö÷²¥´óÐã in-house drama and Ö÷²¥´óÐã Films as well as Ö÷²¥´óÐã News – when you walk in the building the newsroom’s there stretched about before you (). It’s very inspiring. Sometimes you even spot Alan Yentob making a cuppa in the kitchen.

Of course a big focus of the autumn months was the wealth of Remembrance programming and events across the Ö÷²¥´óÐã (nobody brings the nation together like the Ö÷²¥´óÐã). There are too many to mention them all – although there’s a special . But there were a few dramas in particular that resonated for me. The first was which told the story of two teenage boys - one German and one British – who defy their parents to sign up and go to fight in the Great War. Shown every night of the week in the run up to Remembrance Sunday it acted as a timely and poignant reminder of the cost of war. Having heard the writer of the series, Tony Jordan, speak at the TV Writers Festival earlier in the year I had the opportunity to interview him to tie in with the programmes. It was a lively chat and produced .  

Another piece of Remembrance programming that has had a massive impact on my year is Radio 4’s . Billed as a “drama serial tracking the fortunes of a group of characters on the home front as they try to maintain normality while Britain is involved in the First World War” it’s been compelling from the start. Every episode uses real events from 100 years ago on the day of broadcast and a cast of hugely listenable characters, so you get a real sense of what life was actually like. It’s also made me realise how relevant everything that happened then is to my life today, and how much I can relate to – for example the reaction of the Folkestone locals to refugees from Belgium made me think about the way we receive asylum seekers in Britain today.

Ö÷²¥´óÐã Front is on every weekday at noon, but I download the podcast at the end of the week and enjoy it on my commute – although it has made me sob several times on the tube. I was quite bereft when season one finished in October but season two has now started and the best part is, it’ll continue for four years until 2018 (covering the full period of the First World War 1914-1918). So you can expect more talk of it in next year’s round up if the tradition continues.

Here’s to a 2015 full of dramas – the right kind of course, on telly and radio.

Hannah Khalil is Digital Content Producer, About the Ö÷²¥´óÐã website and blog.

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