Television isn’t about the networks. Television isn’t even about the shows. Television is about the moments. The shared experiences. Good, bad or jaw-dropping. So here are ten of the biggest moments from Australian television this year.

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Mark Holden on Dancing With The Stars

The moment when Australia decided to rework Stephen Sondheim’s classic lyrics and sing as one “never ever send in the clowns again”.

For reasons best explained by mental health experts charging exorbitant hourly rates, Mark Holden chose to shift his status on Seven’s now low-rating celebrity dance affair from “questionable celebrity” to “questionable sanity”.

His dancing dressed as a clown was bizarre. His offer of balloons to host Daniel McPherson soon after was nothing short of disturbing.

The Block finale finds no bidders

The Block: Glasshouse was a great series.

It kicked off with Scott Cam’s surprise Gold Logie victory, the personalities were great, the scale of the task was insurmountable and the discovery of a diesel tank out the front added all the scandal fuel the producers could ask for.

Then they went to auction and, well, no one came. At least no one who wanted to buy an apartment. Not one, not two, but three out of five couples were left with paltry returns on months of hard work.

Schappelle moved, so no one watches

At the beginning of February, Nine and Seven both planned to kick off the ratings year with big Australian dramas.

Seven had scheduled INXS: Never Tear Us Apart for the Sunday night, Nine had Schapelle listed for Monday night.

Then the real Schapelle Corby muddied the waters as her release was scheduled for the Monday morning. With only hours remaining before the year began, Nine decided to use their big ratings club to whack Seven.

Unfortunately to paraphrase the old cliché, it turned out they were treading softly and carrying a large turkey. Nearly two million (1.97m) viewers watched Seven across the five metro cities, while the sure-fire-success Schapelle scraped past a million viewers to finish in seventh. Nine faced criticism from the media, the audience and the advertisers. An unholy trinity of failure.

The Bachelor scandal rates higher than The Bachelor

Ask the Ten bigwigs and they will proudly proclaim the success of 2014’s The Bachelor. So much so they have commissioned a third series and a series of The Bachelorette for 2015. The thing is, the show itself was only a moderate success as far as ratings go. On Nine or Seven it would have been classed a failure.

It was the scandal that rated. And it did so for every network as Blake and Sam became panel-fodder. The Bachelor finale rated 1.07 million capital city viewers, with the artificially separated announcement watched by 1.37 million.

When The Project team interviewed Blake Garvey and his jilted fiancé and show winner Sam Frost a week later they drew 1.19 million – a jump of half a million on their ratings the week before. A figure that matched the 600,000 and extra change viewers who watched the ‘normal’ episodes of The Bachelor.

In total The Project had three separate exclusive interviews with Blake and various contestants from the show.

Australia’s President of the United States

New comedy news series Last Week Tonight with John Oliver dedicated one of its early segments to Australia’s “suppository of wisdom”, Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The show went on to viral fame with segments dissecting news ranging from the Ferguson riots to the Scottish Independence debate.

The unceremonious roasting of Mr Abbott, for the most part using his own words (except for the voter who called him a “dickhead”) will hold a special place in the hearts of many viewers.

Pretty much everything that happened on Game of Thrones

A special mention has to go to tween sociopath Lizzie who took season four of The Walking Dead to deeply uncomfortable places, but it was the fourth season of Game of Thrones that delivered far more than continuing evidence of Australia’s proclivity for piracy.

From the skull crushing shock of the Red Viper’s death to Tyrion Lannister’s brilliant testimony to the kangaroo court deciding his fate it was a season full of extraordinary moments. We celebrated with far too much relish the death of King Joffrey and we were shocked and affronted at the incestuous rape that then took place next to his coffin.

By the time Tyrion killed his father Tywin on the privy with a crossbow, it was hard to imagine where the show could possibly go. Thankfully there are books on the shelves to tell us.

Mental As – Friday Night Crack Up

We live in a world where Hey, Hey It’s Saturday is going to be an internet channel. While people may ask many, many questions about that turn of events, Daryl Somers will have taken heart from the success of the one-off variety show Friday Night Crack up, hosted by Eddie Perfect, that capped off the ABC’s week of event television dedicated to the issue of mental illness – Mental As Week.

Though the ABC has had its budget slashed since, many would be ecstatic to see a show as fresh as this aired every week: edgy, musical, funny and fresh. It was brilliance on the box.

The How I Met Your Mother finale

While Seven did their best to kill the show with sporadic scheduling and promotion, fans around the world were shocked at the final episode which capped off a refreshing season nine with a finale quickly dubbed ‘How I Killed Your Mother’.

Outraged fans took to social media to chastise the show’s creators, and whether you loved it or loathed it, it will certainly rank as one of the more memorable farewells to a much-loved show.

Sherlock survives

Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes had last been seen very, very dead on a London street – then very much alive soon afterwards.

That was two years ago and the internet and dinner parties became saturated with theories on how he survived ever since.

At the beginning of the year the answer was revealed, and it was done with a glorious and warm-hearted mocking of the theories that had surfaced. Even Cumberbatch had fun in the lead up with the spoiler-safe explanation below which aired at Comic-Con.

Today Show – Karl Stefanovic v2.0

Last year Sunrise shuffled the host chairs and while ,if we’re honest, no one is quite clear what the difference is between Sam Armytage and Melissa Doyle it was enough to help the ratings tilt back in Seven’s favour. On rival breakfast show Today, Nine seems to have gone one step further, replacing Karl Stefanovic with … Karl Stefanovic.

In the last month, Karl revealed he had been wearing the same suit for a year to make a point regarding the disparate treatment of men and women. Then he pulled a new political scalpel from his suit jacked and in successive days told the Prime Minister he was “feral” then suggested Christopher Pyne needed to “man up”.

Ten more moments for good measure

• Peter Capaldi kicked off a bigger than ever Doctor Who with a world tour and a cinema showing for the first episode.

• The Voice: Kids harpooned the ratings of singing reality shows so badly that The Voice and The X Factor also struggled to keep audiences, with The Voice suffering the ignominy of its result rating lower than the rest of its finale.

• New series True Detective gave us a wealth of moments from Matthew McConaughey’s first explanation of his twisted world view to the single take infiltration of the bar. Brilliant.

• Martin Freeman proved he is the best Minnesotan Hobbit ever to work in a Slough Office with Sherlock Holmes, when he led the extraordinary reworking of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo as a TV series.

• Vocal mother of five Sandy disappears off the scene from Ray Martin’s indigenous factual series First Contact on SBS.

• Chris Lilley ruffled some feathers with accusations of “brown face” thrown at his spin-off series Jonah from Tonga.

• Anchors and reporters from every network converge in a vacant warehouse to do battle with Lee Lin Chin in a news battle royale staged by excellent news show The Feed on SBS2.

• The Big Adventure proves to be anything but, as Australia shows no interest in watching people dig for treasure.

• Netflix still hasn’t arrived in Australia but it was a year of premeditated attacks and defences. Nine joined with Fairfax to make Stan. Seven joined Foxtel to form Presto. Seven had already axed A Place to Call Home for being too old-friendly before Foxtel picked it up. Foxtel flinched and restructured their pricing, while Quickflix CEO Stephen Langsford called Netflix out for a real fight. It’s on Australia, it’s on.

• Julia Gillard was lit in a ghost-like white light with Ray Martin that suggested the next question was always likely to be “where were you on the night of the 5^th?”