is probably the front runner at the moment. This decades iTunes.

And, dare I say it, Red Riding?

I think, on the whole, the Noughties won't be remembered necessarily for music/film/tv in the same way previous decades might do.

Our entertainment options are so spread out now that those so called water cooler moments have been dominated by reality tv, mostly because that's all we seem to get on the main channels.

And as for something like The Wire - because of it not being widespread across the media it'll probably not be remembered like a Hill Street Blues. 24, on the other hand, might be.

I think the real cultural impact this decade has seen is the spread of the online world with the help of broadband and mobile phones. I know one person - one! - who isn't hooked up at home or at work. People socialise online - look at us here and now. I don't know who any of you are, or where you are, but I interact with you here, I do similar on various blogs and for years I've done that in my online gaming alter-ego (much much cheaper than owning consoles, which is why I missed out on most of those the past decade). We do our shopping here, listen to music, read the news, watch last night's TV. When I look back ten years and see how much that has developed I'm stunned sometimes.

I genuinely remember feeling a bit like that about the 80s. At the height of mullethood and ra-ra skirts, I thought that everyone dressed and looked OK and the 80s would have no defining look or feel.

I think think this decade may be defined by credit crunch and its resultant consequences and the rampant advance of the internet supermotorway.

and even if it was I can't fix it.

was a load of nonsense except for Z cars and softly softly.

by a gradual ebb in the tide towards more "natural" musics: accousticity rather than electricity, tunes more than volume, bluegrass and folk influences softening the rock. Some artists refuse to go gently, of course, battering their and our ears and axes ever on into submission, which is fine, but the production values of, mentioning 3 producers, T-Bone Burnett, Joe Henry and Rick Rubin seem to be valued more and more this decade. As an old fella with damaged (ear) drums, what is there not to like in that?

Mad Men
Six Feet Under
Dead Man's Shoes
Radcliffe on Radio 2
Guitar Hero

And via the magic that is Spotify, I'm currently listening to The Decemberists rather excellent new record.

When-ever there is a review of a decade, it seems there is always a tendancy to perceive things as happenning earlier than they actually did. therefore, people forgot that, Public Enemy did some of their absolute best work in the 90s (Fear of a Black Planet is 1990), and get classed as an 80s act. Likewise, Handsome P. Wonderful says that Spotify is "this decade's iTunes", when iTunes was released in 2001.

I find it helps, when discussing this kind of thing, to actually ask yourself, which decade DID this thing Im referencing happen in? Because it's not always the one you think.

... The WORD?

when anyone says "hurry up it's on in a minute" or " If we rush we can be home for Corrie" or similar appointment-with-TV type statements.

Quite a shift after 70 years of gathering around hardware in the living room.

although i think the drought started in about 1995 (pursuant to the posting i made on the "last of the classics"). great, durable cultural artefacts of the noughties (in my opinion):

- six feet under
- spotify
- ipods
- broadband
- the office
- (possibly) curb your enthusiasm
- (possibly) 24

- The internet is clearly a massive cultural shift - although it's been around longer, it's effectively a child of this decade.
- The current slew of time-shift dramas, a la Lost, Memento, The Wire - a real development in story-telling that will define TV and film for a long time to come.
- The Office will still be revered in 40 years - if only for the Brent dance
- Although it began in the 90s, The West Wing's true cultural home is the noughties
- CSI: the series that spawned a raft of spin-offs and even affected how courts work and changed the face of crime
- Death of the single: surely that's a cultural phenomenon?
- Again, although the first couple were published in the 90s, Harry Potter is a true 00s' phenomenon
- Reforming bands - hasn't nearly everyone done it this decade? Can there be anyone left?

Is it possible to consider Spotify as being culturally important when it's only been around a few minutes?

The Thick Of It

there's been a lot for me that I rate - Roisin Murphy, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Doves, Radiohead, Goldfrapp. Though I think what I consider quintessentially noughties has been disappointing after promising start - as in The Strokes step back to late seventies style then we got Franz Ferdinand, The Killers and the like, who didn't really develop well beyond their debuts. Much else has been less clearly of this decade, but more combining elements from all sorts of periods, and somehow has not seemed identifiable of these times, in way music from previous decades seems of it's time. Maybe it will though, with more perspective. Maybe too much fucking perspective, as was once memorably said.

Then there's been The Wire and Lost, significant in their field.

I suspect we're probably mostly too old around Word Heights to know what the landmarks of the decade are ; or maybe we're looking in the wrong places.

For instance there have been console/gaming events that have reached more people than any band in the last ten years.

Imagine being 40 something in 1968. I suspect we'd have missed some of the things going on...

as a consumer item really really cannot be over-estimated in the noughties. If you told someone in 1999 that 1 billion vidoes would be watched every day, or that, with Google Street Maps, you could see a picture of anywhere on earth at the click of a button, I think they'd be flabbergasted.

While, clearly, as a tehcnological and business development the internet really coming into play late 8os/early 90s, as a "way-of-life" accessory that we all rely on, it must be akin to the Industrial Revolution, mustn't it? And seeing as a big chunk of that happenned in the last ten years, and its affected culture from top to bottom, I don't think the noughties can be called a technological dustbin.

Unless you hate the internet, I suppose.

also, this has been a great decade for the re-issue. Things which we never thought would come out, have come to light in the last ten years and been brilliant. Brian Wilson's SMILE anyone? Or a complete version of Dexys' "Don't Stand Me Down"?

It's the increasingly retrospective focus of the noughties that has allowed this stuff to come into being. And though there are downsides (the fact that a forum of culture-lovers can only think of a limited number of 00s cultural works that aren't rubbish, for example), without this trend we wouldn't have had these records. Good I'd say?

And something like, for exmaple, Leoord Cohen's recent tour, may have had its roots in the late 60s, but it was most definitely a noughties proposition. So, even if you're not thrilled by dubstep or Lady GaGa, there's still good stuff from this epoch, even if it's roots were planted long ago.

The Sopranos. NEXT!

Multi-channels have been slowly killing British TV since the mid-90s. The new channels have produced little of any lasting worth and the older channels have sold themselves down the river in a panic to compete. BBC TV seems to spend as much money advertising itself nowadays as it does on programmes.

This is also the decade where we've had the word "accessible" thrown around like confetti by TV people. A dishonest word that's just a cover excuse for dumbing down everything, with the added insinuation that this is somehow democratic rather than insulting. Whereas words like "theatrical" (you know, what we're actually good at in this country) have been demonised. Cause apparently Spooks Code 9 can teach Abigails Party a thing or two.

You only get any feeling of what the organisation is meant to be about nowadays by listening to Radio 4. BBC4 started out with good intentions, but it seems more interested recently in Val Doonican and Nana Mouskouri nights than being a safe ghetto for high culture.

Good on HBO incidentally, but I'd like some great television to reflect my own culture too.

Russell T Davies being treated like a writing god is another sign of the creative armageddon. He comes out with the odd nice line, but is obsessed with pop culture trivia, soap operas and can't construct a plot. Sorry critics, "the next Dennis Potter" he aint.

And have you seen the people they hand out Bafta's to this decade? Ross Kemp, I'm A Celebrity, Casualty, The X Factor. If there aren't enough good shows for an award ceremony, don't hand any out.

It seems to me tht he's treated as a Producer God as much as a writing God. Nowadays, it seems to me, his reputation is for running a fabulous show, rather than nessecarily writing it. Assessing his legacy, it's important to recognise the wonderous epsidoes that were made under his administration, even if he didn;t get a writing credit.

However, I'd direct you towards the Doctor Who episode "Midnight", one he wrote himself, as an example of him crafting a tightly constructed plot.

There Will Be Blood

The Lives of Others

Pan's Labryinth

No Country For Old Men

City Of Good

The works of Pixar

& The Decemberists

Band of Horses
Arbouretum
Okkervil River
Arctic Monkeys

As for general culture

Glitter and Doom tour
BBC4
Early Doors
Mad Men
Kill Your Friends
GTA IV

etc.

Miserable old sod!