2005: The verdict

Television

Kick yourself if you missed: Make Me Normal, Channel 4's superb documentary about kids with Asperger's syndrome was, to my mind, doc of the year. It was revealing without - as is so often the case in patient-centred docs - being mawkish. Adapted drama of the year - beating Bleak House into a cocked hat - was The Rotters' Club on BBC2. The one-off drama award goes to The Government Inspector, Peter Kosminsky's film for Channel 4 about the last days of Dr David Kelly.

It was a disaster: ITV's 50th birthday celebrations cannot have been helped by a catalogue of stinkers: Political reality show Vote For Me ended in catastrophe as the anti-immigrant candidate swept the board. In the summer we had the awfulness of Celebrity Love Island and, most recently, the car-crash which is OFI Sunday, Chris Evans' new vehicle.

RIP: Not a real death, but a TV one. Christopher Eccleston made Saturday evenings on BBC1 a must-see again by breathing new life into an old character, Doctor Who. He fought off invasion by half a million Daleks - and then promptly walked away. If he doesn't regret it, I certainly do. He was, quite probably, the best doctor yet - writer Russell T Davies and Eccleston's replacement, David Tennant, will have a hard act to follow.

Charlie Courtauld

Theatre

Kick yourself if you missed: The electrifying staging of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones, at London's Gate Theatre, had Paterson Joseph as the hunted dictator, fearsomely thrashing around in a sunken, sand-strewn pit. At the Royal Court, Richard Bean's pig-farming family saga, Harvest, was wonderfully funny, quirky and tender, while Simon Russell Beale was pricelessly droll and poignant as the compulsively agreeable don in The Philanthropist by Christopher Hampton, revived at the Donmar. Also, excellent fringe fare: Schnitzler's forgotten gem, Professor Bernhardi, at the Arcola.

It was a disaster: The short-lived West End musical, Behind The Iron Mask, was après Dumas and beyond dire, with its lumpen hero warbling (unfortunately audibly) in a giant wart-like helmet. The RSC's stunningly awful Hecuba, starring Vanessa Redgrave, made Euripides sound like a naff musical too, with much cod-ethnic chorusing. Then the Criterion's Pre-Raphaelite bio-drama, The Countess - ironically including a lecture by Nick Moran's John Ruskin on artistic perfection - was eye-wateringly fifth-rate with a plot that rolled along like a square wheel.

RIP: A fond adieu to Arthur Miller (inset), one of America's greatest playwrights whose superb tragedy, The Crucible, served as a damning allegory for McCarthyism. Christopher Fry also died, at the grand old age of 97, famed for The Lady's Not For Burning and for reviving - along with T S Eliot - the art of penning English plays in verse. Meantime, actor-manager Mark Rylance, though still very much alive and kicking, bade farewell to Shakespeare's Globe, aptly signing off as Prospero.

Kate Bassett

Classical music

Kick yourself if you missed: For brilliant direction, black humour and beautiful designs, Richard Jones's ENO production of The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant. For all of that and musical excellence too, the same director's Wozzeck for WNO. For emotional detail on a vast canvas, Keith Warner's Die Walküre at Covent Garden. For intimacy and immediacy, Graham Vick's Ulysses Comes Home with Birmingham Opera Group. For stamina and ambition, Peter Sellars' Tristan und Isolde for Opéra Bastille, Mark Elder's Bruckner 7 with the Hallé Orchestra, Marin Alsop's Resurrection Symphony with the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, and Poul Ruders' exquisite serenade for accordion and string quartet, On the Shores of the Cosmic Ocean. For poetry, Ann Murray's Berg and Mahler lieder at the Wigmore Hall. For promise, young mezzo-soprano Martina Welschenbach. For pizzazz, baroque violinists Stefano Barneschi and Riccardo Minasi. For being the best written, directed, acted and sung new opera of the year, Richard Ayres' Aldeburgh/Almeida adaptation of Toon Tellegem's The Cricket Recovers.

It was a disaster: Phyllida Lloyd's suicide-bombing finale to Twilight of the Gods. Valery Gergiev's Barbarella-meets-Monty Python production of Boris Godunov. Lorin Maazel's bone-headed vanity project, 1984. Brian Ferneyhough's obscurantist "thought opera" Shadowtime. John Lunn's lame youth opera Tangier Tattoo. WNO's un-merry Merry Widow.

RIP: The Tippett Centenary. Opera without surtitles at The Coliseum.

Anna Picard

Jazz

Kick yourself if you missed: the Tomasz Stanko Quartet at the London Jazz Festival, or on their subsequent UK tour. The great veteran Polish trumpeter Stanko is being pushed to the very limit by his amazing young rhythm section of pianist Marcin Wasilewski, double bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz, and drummer Michal Miskiewicz. No longer greyhounds straining at the leash, they're out of the stalls and almost at the leader's throat. And at the Cheltenham International Jazz Festival in May, the legendary free jazz alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman put on a performance of such undimmed power - and such irreducible Ornette Coleman-ness - that one felt truly fortunate to have been there (especially as we were half-expecting a disaster).

New faces to watch: bandleaders Dave Stapleton and Sid Peacock; vocalist/songwriter Julia Biel.

RIP: the incomparably sensitive US vocalist/pianist Shirley Horn; Danish double bass master Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen; Hammond organ showman Jimmy Smith; nonagenarian British bass saxophonist, Harry Gold.

Phil Johnson

Visual Art

Kick yourself if you missed: The Eurostar, this year's best shows having both been a tunnel-ride away. In Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum's Van Gogh: Draughtsman brought together the greatest of Vincent's works on paper for what, on account of their frailty, will probably be the last time. You can still catch this show in New York if you hurry, and you should. Over in Paris, the Musée Picasso's Bacon: Picasso exhibition brilliantly spelt out Francis Bacon's debt to his Spanish tormentor and in the process changed the way we think about them both.

It was a disaster: Tate Britain's Degas, Sickert & Toulouse-Lautrec (above), although gracing anything so pallid with the word "disaster" may be doing it an undeserved favour. So let's just call it a flop. At the end of this formless little piece of entente cordiale, you were left with the novel view that Paris had been a great centre of artistic production in the late 19th century, London rather less so. Surprise!

RIP: Patrick Caulfield, who died much too young, of cancer, at the age of 69. The deepest, the most painterly of the British Pop artists, Caulfield's canvases married the soulfulness of Juan Gris with the melancholy detachment of Tintin. Long afternoons in wine bars will never be the same again.

Charles Darwent

Radio

Kick yourself if you missed: Radio 3's Beethoven Week. Do I need to explain this? They played everything Beethoven ever wrote - and nothing else. Luckily, your ankles will remain unkicked, because unless you very unwisely scheduled your holiday for the beginning of June, you'll have heard some of it. And lots of people - far more than normally listen to that great station - did. At another end of the musical spectrum, but remaining with Radio 3, you may kick yourself if you missed the Gang of Four's session on Andy Kershaw. And Radio 4's adaptation of A la recherche du temps perdu.

It was a disaster: In a year where much quality radio was broadcast, it is strangely reassuring that The Moral Maze remains as glib and irritating as ever. Quote Unquote tries to be as bad, but it doesn't have Melanie Phillips, so has some way to go. The Reith Lectures, delivered by Lord Broers, were the most boring since the invention of the lecture. I read T S Eliot's essays for fun, so they must have been damned boring.

RIP: Mary Wimbush, who played Julia Pargetter in The Archers. An old trouper who, happily enough, played an old trouper. (She also played an interfering old bat but I doubt that she was one in real life.) RIP Dave Allen, too. He didn't do much on radio - he was too handsome for the medium - but let's not forget him anyway. And he died two months after an appraisal of his career on Radio 4.

Nicholas Lezard

Dance

Kick yourself if you missed: Any or all of the Royal Ballet's Ashton season - a generous reminder of mid-20th-century British genius, not just in full-evening ballets like Cinderella and Sylvia, but in the concentrated one-acters that are harder to programme. In contemporary dance the much-anticipated pairing of Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant triumphantly lived up to its hype, but the more surprising success was that of Zero Degrees, the first joint project of Akram Khan and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, one working from a basis of kathak, the other from hip hop and tanztheater. Contributions from sculptor Antony Gormley and composer Nitin Sawhney added to the high profile, yet the piece managed to deliver the most intimate and moving experience of the year. The narrative recounted a train journey Khan once made in India, in the course of which he witnessed the death of a fellow passenger. The result was a startlingly original treatise on personal identity, action and inertia. The good news is that Zero Degrees returns to Sadler's Wells, and a tour, in the spring.

It was a disaster: American company Momix's Opus Cactus, which eked out a painful three-week run at London's Peacock theatre. Supposedly inspired by the flora and fauna of the Arizona desert, it more resembled a cut-price Vegas floor show. Ra-ra girls wrestling rubber serpents, anyone?

RIP: The idea that classical dance is in crisis. The Royal Ballet, now in the capable hands of Monica Mason, hasn't danced so consistently well in decades.

Jenny Gilbert

Film

Kick yourself if you missed: Innocence (Lucile Hadzihalilovic), La Niña Santa (Lucretia Martel), The Consequences of Love (Paolo Sorrentino); Edgar Reitz's mammoth Heimat 3; Annie Griffin's Edinburgh Fringe comedy Festival; Stephen Chow's knockabout Kung Fu Hustle - hoo! hah! (inset).

It was a disaster: The Exorcism of Emily Rose - a Bush-era Exorcist, a flagrant piece of fundamentalist propaganda masquerading as a tawdry scarer (no place for rationalism in this courtroom, eh?). Guy Ritchie's Revolver, the Brown Bunny of crime cinema. Is he 'avin' a larf or wot?

RIP: Richard Pryor - despite questionable movie choices (Superman III? Wholly Moses!?), he'll be remembered as a peerless taboo-buster, shit-stirrer and world-class pottymouth. Gavin Lambert - critic, screenwriter and author, the quintessential literary Brit in Tinseltown, and underrated creator of some of the most acidic and melancholy LA fiction, including Inside Daisy Clover and The Slide Area. Guy Ritchie's career.

Jonathan Romney

Pop

Kick yourself if you missed: The imperious Franz Ferdinand, the heartwarming Magic Numbers, the heartbreaking Antony and The Johnsons and the glamorous Goldfrapp were the outstanding bands of 2005, delivering immaculate albums and unforgettable live performances. On the small screen, the documentary Stalking Pete Doherty, featuring the alternately terrifying and pitiful film-maker Max Carlish, was essential car-crash viewing.

It was a disaster: Live 8. All those white wristbands, all that fuss about Pink Floyd reforming, but - in the chaos following the London bombings - the G8 leaders got away with making pitifully meagre concessions to Geldof's agenda, and, since Live 8 was a revenue-neutral event (a disastrous gamble on the part of the organisers), poverty remains very much part of the present. More trivially, the Babyshambles album, any Babyshambles gig, and any album or any gig by any band who wanted to be Babyshambles.

RIP: Laurel Aitken, ska star. Obie Benson of The Four Tops. Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, blues veteran. Jim Capaldi of Traffic. Chris Curtis of The Searchers. Ibrahim Ferrer of Buena Vista Social Club fame. Mike Gibbins of Badfinger. Jimmy Griffin of Bread. Paul Hester, Crowded House drummer. Simon Hobart, London nightclub pioneer. Tony Meehan of The Shadows. Robert Moog, synthesizer boffin. Danny Sugerman, Doors biographer and manager. Tommy Vance, rock DJ. Luther Vandross, soul singer. Chris Whitley, singer-songwriter. Link Wray, inventor of the power chord.

Simon Price

This year I loved...

Alain de Botton, writer

David Greig's Pyrenees was the cultural highlight of my year. It's a play that reminded me why theatre isn't just an old-fashioned version of the movies, but is an art form with its own particular strengths, chiefly the ability to create abstract worlds close to those of poetry. Greig pulls off the rare feat of being at once extremely witty and serious. Though a celebrity in his native Scotland, Greig, 35, is still too little known in England, but he's well on his way to becoming a figure of the stature of Tom Stoppard.

Tacita Dean, artist

The exhibition of the year for me was Rodney Graham's A glass of beer and other works at the Lisson Gallery. Immediately I was transfixed by Torqued Chandelier Release - a 35mm film projection of a chandelier unwinding, which was so supremely beautiful. Filmed in portrait format, something rarely attempted as turning a film projector on its side is no easy feat, and at 48 frames per second instead of the normal 24, every bulb shone in sparkling focus and with a dizzying intensity.

Alan Yentob, Creative Director, BBC

Lots to choose from including Diane Arbus at the V&A, Martin Scorsese on Bob Dylan, Bleak House and Live 8 on the BBC. But for me it was the resonant reminder of Arthur Miller's extraordinary legacy which left the most indelible mark in Robert Fall's brilliant production of Death of a Salesman. It had my 14-year-old son transfixed.

Roisin Murphy, musician

Caravaggio at the National Gallery was a revelation! Caravaggio is like a film director (long before there was such a thing), organising the actors in order to create believable and intriguing narratives. This freeze- framing of completely natural gestures seems to the modern eye more like cinematography; to Caravaggio's contemporaries, it must have seemed a divine gift.

Alice Rawsthorn, director, Design Museum

It's so great, and sadly rather rare, to see a show that shakes your preconceptions of a familiar subject, but Open Systems, Tate Modern's survey of turn of the Seventies conceptual art, did just that for me. For pure gorgeousness nothing could beat Fra Angelico at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. On the telly I was probably the only person who enjoyed Celebrity Love Island.

Andy McNab, novelist

I bought James Blunt's album Back to Bedlam a few months ago at a motorway service station. He's an ex-squaddie come good, so it had to be done. I'm not so sure about his comment in the press that soldiers can be artists and poets. I don't know about the cavalry, but I don't remember that many poets in my infantry regiment!

Julie Burchill, writer

I was predictably delighted by Franz Ferdinand at the Brighton Centre - they made the Pistols and the Clash look like Pinky and Perky. My favourite TV show was Sugar Rush. My favourite book was What Good Are The Arts? by John Carey.

Tim Marlow, director, White Cube

I have to declare an interest, but I'd still nominate Anselm Kiefer's show Fur Chlebnikov at White Cube last summer which included a vast temporary pavilion in Hoxton Square with 30 sublime sea-scapes-with-a-twist. The Caravaggio exhibition at the National Gallery was immense. Those downstairs galleries in the Sainsbury Wing aren't the best space for great exhibitions but they were used beautifully for this sparsely hung, theatrically lit, intelligently selected show.

Mylo, musician

The Fuji Rock festival in Japan was my favourite cultural thing. More for the overall weirdness of the event - but I enjoyed Röyksopp and the Coral, who were on before us. It was raining heavily, so there were thousands of people in ponchos huddled around fires - it was like being in a Kurosawa film!