f, like me, you were wondering how many more times we can remember Grand Designs, Brookside and early episodes of Big Brother, then does Channel 4 have a treat for you? Back to the 80s With Lenny Henry, Back to the 90s With Vic Reeves, Back to the 00s With Davina McCall and Back to the 10s With Jimmy Carr (Sunday to Wednesday, 9pm, Channel 4) is a series that tracks Britain through the various struggles we have been through (Thatcher, Iraq war, Britpop), as told through Channel 4’s often groundbreaking TV. On the one hand, yes: this first episode is talking heads remembering the 80s, again. But in among comedians still being baffled by the existence of Max Headroom 33 years on – Come on! It’s a man wearing makeup! – there’s something more interesting at play. It is possible I’ve fallen into the trap of watching six hours of pro-Channel 4 propaganda (made by Channel 4, then broadcast on Channel 4) and decided that Channel 4 is excellent. But watch along with Sir Lenny Henry and you’ll agree: since the channel’s inception, it has been pumping out transgressive drama, countercultural documentary and joyfully chaotic live events, plus all the Frasier repeats your body can handle. So here’s Gyles Brandreth in an erratic knitted jumper to tell you how good A Very British Coup was, while Vanessa Feltz almost, but not quite, recalls the name of the actor in A Woman of Substance. It’s classic clip show countdown stuff. Still, Back to the … has the edge over most clip shows, in that instead of just comedians in ill-advised jackets very loudly remembering things, it has various producers, actors and directors of the aforementioned shows in ill-advised jackets very loudly remembering things. Stephen Frears recalls the gala shortlist of actors gunning for Daniel Day-Lewis’s role in My Beautiful Laundrette. Robert Llewellyn revists a trebuchet collapsing on Scrapheap Challenge. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall wears a zip-up hoodie over a woollen shirt, inexplicably, while looking back at those years he spent growing blackberries on television. It’s like having the IMDb Trivia section read aloud to you, which for me is quite close to TV heaven. It is also perfect Christmas Limbo entertainment, ideal for the slumped sofa position you find yourself in after drinking hot wine in a paper hat. In this lull, a generation-spanning remember-a-thon is the exact right thing for a family to watch together. Parents can vividly recount the 80s, adult kids can hazily recall the outline of The Big Breakfast era of the 90s, and distracted teens can be baffled by the fact that mobile phones used to be really big. When you have nothing left to say to your family, sometimes all it takes is the juddering realisation that Chris Evans was really good at doing TFI Friday, and suddenly the TV is on mute again and you’re squabbling over which was the best holiday you took between 1994 and 1997. Of course, it has been a weird year for TV, and one that’s hit in the middle of an even stranger era for legacy channels: another blockbuster streaming platform launched, another Netflix series we’re legally required to binge in a single day. How does something like Channel 4 keep up? Well, it does what it’s been good at for 38 years: creating high-quality water-cooler TV, and the occasional show where someone gets their genitals out in front of a medical professional. In a way, it makes you strangely hopeful: if they could make all this great TV in the 80s, when they didn’t even have broadband, then imagine what a rejuvenated industry will do once its producers are all vaccinated. I am sure I’ll tell you about it – from the inside of an ill-advised jacket – in whatever the equivalent of this is they make in 2040.