Had 2020 been a normal year, I might have been writing about Donald Trump's defeat in the US Presidential Election or his brush with impeachment.
I might have led on the UK finally leaving the European Union - one of the most constitutionally significant events to occur in the country since the devolution settlements for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
I could have nosed off on the emergence of streaming services like Apple+, Britbox and Disney+ to challenge Netflix and Amazon Prime.
I would almost certainly have raved about the quality of TV drama on both sides of the Atlantic.
However 2020 was not a normal year.
Everything was simply turned upside down by the Coronavirus.
At the start of 2020, as the UK and EU prepared to formally leave the European Union on January 31, there were rumblings about a deadly virus in Wuhan in China that originated in bats and transferred to humans via a wet market.
By March, it had become a full blown public health crisis, with hospitals in Italy, Spain and France quickly being overwhelmed by cases and the inevitability that every country was going to be impacted.
How countries handled the first and subsequent waves of Covid-19 said an awful lot about the quality of their leaders.
When she wasn't smiling in a live TV interview through an earthquake, New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern earned much praise for her decisive handling of the Coronavirus.
South Korea and its President Moon Jae-In also earned kudos for letting his scientific advisers take the lead.
However macho leaders like Donald Trump and Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro were ill equipped to handle the crisis and received brickbats for initially downplaying the scale of the health emergency and acting too slowly because they didn't want to project an image of powerlessess.
As Covid raged, politicians found themselves under more scrutiny and the crisis quickly became a litmus test for their leadership.
Most held regular press briefings which were carried live on national TV.
Two months after a bruising General Election result and while his party was in the middle of negotiations about becoming a partner in a new coalition government with Micheal Martin's Fianna Fail, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar drew praise for the clarity of his messaging when lockdown occurred.
In a stark message to the nstion on RTE1, Varadkar memorably described how the country was experiencing "a St Patrick's Day like no other."
Across the Irish Sea, people were rocked by the news in April that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to hospital just days after revealing he had contracted Covid.
Later in the year, Bolonsaro and Trump also came down with Covid - the latter's diagnosis coming in October in the last few weeks of the Presidential election campaign, as he desperately tried to prove his strongman credentials.
As the US administration bungled the handling of the Covid crisis from the start, Trump told a rally in South Carolina in late February that Coronavirus was the Democrats' "new hoax" and later denied that he ever said it.
He also held some spectacularly dumb media briefings in which he contradicted his medical experts and seemed only interested in imposing his will on a virus which had little regard for his bluster.
In April, Trump was derided for suggesting during one briefing that disinfectant could be injected into people as a treatment.
Amid fears of UK hospitals being overwhelmd by Covid-19 cases and PPE and ventilator shortages, broadcasters were quick to latch onto the public's admiration for doctors, nurses, care workers and other emergency services staff who bravely catered for patients on the frontline - sometimes at a cost to their own lives.
Telethons were held to raise funds for equipment.
Lady Gaga staged the 'One World: Together Alone' concert in April where performers like Billie Eilish, Elton John, Eddie Vedder, Hozier, The Killers and Paul McCartney performed songs from their living rooms or studios but it was The Rolling Stones who stole the show.
That same month, Comic Relief in the UK staged 'The Big Night In' which saw comedians trade jokes on Zoom and Prince William take part in a sketch with Stephen Fry.
RTE viewers were also treated to the first ever Irish Comic Relief in June, which revived Zig and Zag's 'The Den' and also caused a viral sensation when the stars of 'Normal People' teamed up with the Hot Priest from 'Fleabag'.
Every Thursday, BBC News, Channel 4 News and Sky News broadcast live scenes of citizens across the UK taking to their doorsteps, streets and workplaces to clap their hands or bang pots in a show of appreciation for the National Health Service.
The 'Clap for Carers' initiative lasted 10 weeks, ending in early June as the threat from Covid-19 appeared to recede.
But that's when the real struggle began, as members of the public started to crave a return to normality and adherence to the public health message started to fray.
Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon found herself having to let go of her Chief Medical Officer Catherine Calderwood in April, after it was revealed she had flouted travel restrictions twice, travelling to a second home.
In May, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's adviser Dominic Cummings also came under fire for driving 264 miles to a family home in Durham from London with his sick wife and child.
Cummings and his boss brazened out the scandal, though, with the adviser giving a spectacularly tin earred press conference in the Downing Street garden, during which he revealed he had driven a 60 mile round trip to Barnard Castle to test his eyesight and see if he was fit to take his family home to London again.
Cummings insisted he had done nothing wrong and while he clung on to his influential job, he eventually did go in November after a power struggle in Number 10.
The satirical puppet show 'Spitting Image,' which returned to our screens on Britbox, had much fun at his expense, though while also savaging figures like Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Prince Harry, Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, Dominic Raab, Michael Gove and Matt Hancock.
In Northern Ireland, Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster and deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill's well received press briefings came to an abrupt end after the DUP was infuriated by Sinn Fein's participation in a heavily attended funeral for the IRA leader Bobby Storey which appeared to flout social distancing restrictions.
South of the border, Ireland's EU Commissioner Phil Hogan also resigned in August for his participation in a dinner after an Oireachtas Golf Society outing in Clifden, Co Galway also breached Covid regulations.
Journalists were also not immune.
RTE presenters Bryan Dobson, David McCullagh and Miriam O'Callaghan were forced to issue fulsome apologies in November after posing for photographs at a retirement party in Montrose, while in December Sky News' presenter Kay Burley was suspended for six months and political correspondent Beth Rigby and her colleague Inzamam Rashid were suspended for three for breaching Covid regulations at Burley's 60th birthday party.
Covid, of course, claimed the lives of over 1.6 million across the globe and while 90-year-old Margaret Keenan became the first person in the world to receive the vaccine in Coventry in December, the grim reality of the pandemic meant many families spent Eid, Hanukkah, Christmas and other celebrations without loved ones.
Celebrities also lost their lives as the Coronavirus cruelly exploited some of its victims' underlying health conditions
Covid took the lives of 'Goodies' star Tim Brooke Taylor, singer songwriter John Prine, country star Charlie Pride, the actor who gave us Darth Vader and Green Cross Code Man David Prowse, Tony nominated star Nick Cordero, musician and doo wop singer Tommy de Vito, former Temptations lead singer Bruce Williamson, rockabilly musician Trini Lopez, New York Mets baseball legend Tom Seaver and former Republican Presidential candidate and businessman Herman Cain.
Fountains of Wayne founder Adam Schlesinger, German magician Roy Horn, Dream Street singer Chris Trousdale, Emmy nominated hairstylist Charles Gregory, Gospel singer Troy Sneed, actress Lee Fiero, minor league baseball legend Steve Dalkowski, rapper Fred the Godson, country singer Joe Diffie, jazz legend Ellis Marsalis Jr and 'Succession' and 'Mozart in the Jungle' cast member Mark Blum also died after becoming infected.
Coronavirus robbed us of the acclaimed playwright Terrence McNally, saxophonists Lee Konitz and Manu Dibango, jazz trumpeter Wallace Roney, jazz guitarist John 'Bucky' Pizzarelli, Thompson Twins member Matthew Seligman, Italian actress Lucia Bose, Japanese comedian Ken Shimura, singer songwriter Allan Merill, actors Jay Benedict, Forrest Compton and Allen Garfield and British comedians Eddie Large and Bobby Ball.
It also brutally exposed inequalitied, with many victims initially coming from poorer communities and BAME backgrounds.
Livelihoods were also impacted, with governments forced to intervene and furlough workers as societies went into lockdown.
When some restrictions on the hospitality sector, shops and some places of entertainment were lifted, some citizens lost the run of themselves and social distancing went out the window - leading to second and third waves in the autumn and winter.
With the public confined mostly to their homes - especially in the Spring and early summer - TV became a hugely important means of escape to many.
As live sport was initially shut down, many broadcasters reverted to showing re-runs of classic sporting moments like World Cup or Euro Championship matches, Wimbledon triumphs, Open championships or highlights of the London 2012 Olympic Games.
BBC1's 'Match of the Day' saw Gary Lineker, Ian Wright and Alan Shearer massaging each other's egos, as they pontificated about who they believed were the greatest Premiership teams or Premiership goalscorers.
While Rangers fans fumed at the Scottish Premier League's decision to award the title to Celtic, fans south of the border were relieved to see Lineker and co's musings cast to the side and Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool finally get to the win the league in June after a 30 year wait.
As society emerged slowly out of lockdown, the sight of footballers, basketball stars, rugby teams, hurlers, cricket players and Gaelic Footballers playing to alnost empty stadiums was a sad one but at least gave fans their fix of live sport.
Some sports like Formula One, where the action has always focused on the track, easily adapted.
Other sports like golf seemed to really miss spectators as tournaments like the Open Championship were cancelled and Bryson De Chambeau and Dustin Johnson eerily won the US Open and US Masters with only the cameras observing.
Sporting schedules were also turned upside down, with rugby's Six Nations title being decided in October and England emerging victorious, the All Ireland Hurling and Gaelic Football finals held in December with Limerick and Dublin dominating and soccer's European Championships being pushed back a year, with the remaining qualifiers decided in November.
While there was heartache for Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, Steve Clarke's Scotland dramatically qualified in a penalty shootout with Serbia for their first tournament in 23 years and will join England and Wales next summer.
The Olympic Games in Tokyo were also pushed back a year to 2021.
Outside of sport, other live events like Glastonbury were forced to cancel - resulting in the BBC raiding the archives and showing vintage footage of Oasis, Beyonce, The Arctic Monkeys, Coldplay and David Bowie from previous Festivals.
Glen Hansard's annual star studded Christmas Eve busk for the Simon Community on Dublin's Grafton Syreet found itself on the last Late Late Show of 2020 instead, with Bono and The Edge, Shane MacGowan, Imelda May and Hozier among those taking part on the RTE1 show.
Regular music shows like RTE2's 'Other Voices' and BBC2's 'Later with Jools Holland' also had to improvise with social distanced performances either at home or in iconic venues.
The former featured an extraordinary spoken word performance, 'Dual Citizenship' by Limerick hip hop artist Denise Chaila recorded in Ballina, while Dublin indie band Fontaines DC impressed on the latter with their performance of 'A Hero's Death'.
Danny O'Reilly from The Coronas teamed up with Noel Horgan of The Cranberries for a touching cover of 'Linger' from a vacant Olympia Theatre in Dublin as RTE2's 'Songs from an Empty Room' sought to raise funds for roadies and sound engineers impacted by the ban on live concerts.
ITV's 'Britain's Got Talent' sought to overcome the loss of a studio audience by creating their own virtual audience instead but became embroiled in a Black Lives Matter controversy following a dance performance by Diversity.
'Strictly Come Dancing' on BBC1 saw one contestant, gold medal winning boxer Nicola Adams and Katya Jones break new ground as the first same sex dance partners on the show but they had to drop out after the latter tested positive for Covid.
In the end, the stand-up comedian Bill Bailey struck a blow for the fiftysomethings wheh he won the competition the weekend before Christmas.
Unable to go to Australia, ITV's 'I'm A Celebrity' went to Gwyrch Castle in Wales instead, with Giovanna Fletcher being crowned the show's first ever Queen of the Castle.
With the soaps forced to initially ration their episodes and then screen classic editions, audiences sought escapism elsewhere - sometimes on streaming services.
The first big TV sensation of lockdown was undoubtedly 'Tiger King' - a bizarre true life documentary series on Netflix about wild cat reserve owners in the US that wove in lurid stories of corruption, animal and human exploitation, feuding, possible murder and a love of country music.
The show turned Joe Exotic and Carole Baskin into household names - earning the latter a place on the US version of 'Strictly'.
Audiences confined to their homes also raved about two outstanding dramas.
Lenny Abrahamson and Hettie MacDonald's heartbreaking adaptation of Sally Rooney's Irish romance 'Normal People' for BBC3 and Hulu turned two unknown leads Daisy Edgar Jones and Paul Mescal into stars.
A compelling tale of young people from Co Sligo losing their way in love, the sexually explicit miniseries triggered much debate on social media in April and May and an unhealthy obsession about boys wearing neck chains.
Michaela Coel's 'I May Destroy You' was another outstanding drama on BBC3 and HBO, tackling issues such as date rape, sexual consent and young adults' unhealthy interest in social media influencers and dating apps.
The show was also jaw droppingly frank and narratively daring.
A dazzling final episode brilliantly drew various narrative strands together.
And the show not only established Coel as one of British television's most exciting acting and writing talents but helped boost the careers of Weruche Opia and Paapa Essiedu who also made an impression in April as a gangster's son in Gareth Evans and Matt Flannery's visually stunning and very bloody gangland drama 'Gangs of London' on Sky Atlantic alongside Joe Cole, Sope Dirisu, Michelle Fairley, Colm Meaney and Pippa Bennett-Warner.
2020 was a year which saw black screenwriters and acting talent in Britain seizing the opportunity to tell stories about their experiences.
Stephen S Thompson's 'Sitting in Limbo' directly confronted the Windrush scandal when it aired on BBC1 in June to great acclaim, dramatising the real life story of the Jamaican born British citizen Anthony Bryan who, like others, faced deportation following the introduction of a more hostile immigration regime.
The highly respected director Steve McQueen also brought to the small screen five stories about the Windrush generation and their families with the wonderful BBC1 and Amazon Prime anthology 'Small Axe'.
Airing in November and December, 'Small Axe' told stories about institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police, in education and in the care system.
But the best of the five films was unquestionably 'Lovers Rock' which brought its audience into the heart of events at a 1980's underground blues party.
With its pulsating reggae and evocative imagery, it was an amazing sensory experience even on the small screen, thanks to Shabier Kirchner's cinematography.
ITV, meanwhile, seemed to specialise in dramatising real life events - particularly gruesome murders.
First up was the excellent 'White House Farm' with Mark Addy and Stephen Graham about the Bamber murders in Essex in 1985.
Keeley Hawes starred in 'Honour' in September about the disappearance and murder of Banaz Mahmod.
David Tennant was chilling as the serial killer Dennis Nilsen in 'Des' which also aired in September and saw him casually describe the death of his victims to Daniel Mays, Ron Cook and Barry Ward's incredulous police officers.
A crime of a different sort was covered on the channel's three episode drama 'Quiz' which tackled the conviction of Major Charles Ingram, his wife Diana and fellow contestant Tecwen Whittock for defrauding 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?' with a £1 million jackpot win.
Directed by Stephen Frears and featuring excellent performances by Matthew MacFadyean, Sian Clifford and Mark Bonnar, it was Michael Sheen's typically bang on impersonation of the show's original host Chris Tarrant that attracted the most comment.
ITV did not have the monopoly on drama inspired by real events.
BBC1 aired in June journalists' Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson's gripping three part dramatisation of 'The Salisbury Poisonings' about a 2018 Novichok attack on Russian dissidents on British soil which featured barnstorming performances from Ann Marie Duff, Rafe Spall, Darren Boyd, MyAnna Buring and Johnny Harris.
Jimmy McGovern's one off drama 'Anthony' took a more novel approach to true crime drama in July, imagining the life Anthony Walker might have had had he not been viciously murdered with an ice axe in an unprovoked, racially motivated attack in Merseyside in 2005.
Some of the most innovative drama was to be found on Sky Atlantic which not only gave us 'Gangs of London' but the creepy three part horror series 'The Third Day' with HBO featuring Jude Law, Naomie Harris, Katharine Waterston, Emily Watson and Paddy Considine.
This drama about a violent Celtic cult on an island in Essex also featured a bold 12 hour broadcast on Sky Arts in which the viewer observed the inhabitants of the island as they prepared for and then delivered a weird ritual which riffed on and then contorted Christian imagery.
Writer Lucy Prebble and actor Billie Piper teamed up again for the amusing 'I Hate Suzie' in which an actress not to dissimilar to its star saw her life fall apart when compromising photographs of her are leaked on social media.
Just before lockdown in March, Michael Patrick and Oisin Kearney's autobiographical acclaimed one man comedy play 'My Left Nut', about a Belfast teenager who discovers he has an enlarged testicle, tried to tap into 'Derry Girls' vibes as it was turned into a three part miniseries for BBC3 but didn't quite hit the same heights.
Lennie James returned with his haunting teenage girl abduction drama 'Save Me Too', a grim follow-up to the 2018 series 'Save Me' with Suranne Jones, Susan Lynch, Jason Flemyng, Barry Ward and Stephen Graham.
With the excellent Lesley Manville added to the cast, the show saw James' character Nelly swim in some very uncomfortable waters as he tried to track down his missing daughter.
As the 2020 race for the White House raged in the US, Sky Atlantic broadcast Showtime's timely September drama 'The Comey Rule' with Jeff Daniels as the FBI chief James Comey and Brendan Gleeson as Donald Trump as it delved into the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 contest.
Some old favourites returned to Netflix and did not disappoint.
In February, Scoot McNairy and Diego Luna were in sparkling form in a typically savage second series of 'Narcos: Mexico' which saw the DEA start to use 'Untouchables' style tactics against the drug barons.
February and March also saw the return of the ducking and weaving lawyer Jimmy McGill or Saul Goodman in the penultimate series of 'Better Call Saul' which also aired on AMC.
The 'Breaking Bad' series not only featured great performances from regulars Bob Odenkirk, Rhea Seehorn, Jonathan Banks and Giancarlo Esposito but also a classic episode in which Jimmy and the hard as nails Mike Ehrmantraut end up wandering in the New Mexican dessert, trying not to be captured by gangsters.
In the absence of live football in the Spring, Netflix gave us 'The English Game', a competent period drama about the origins of the sport, professionalism and class politics.
The streaming giant turned everyone into chess fanatics by October with the wonderful 'The Queen's Gambit' which was built around a star making central performance by Anna Taylor Joy as a pill popping prodigy learning how to take on the Russian grand masters.
Ryan Murphy's 'Ratched' with Sarah Paulson, Judy Davis and Sharon Stone gamely gave us a camp, violent and very melodramatic take on the early life of a 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest' villain, following hard on his other series 'Hollywood' and 'The Politician'.
Tom Hollander and Saskia Reeves were a pleasure to watch in BBC1's David Nicholls' Sunday night drama 'Us' about a family falling apart who undertake an epic holiday across Europe that shines a light on their frailties.
'Star Wars' fans got a series of their own to rave about 'The Mandalorian' on Disney+,boasting Werner Herzog among the cast and Baby Yoda.
Not every drama was golden, however.
January and February saw the ridiculous Sky 1 national emergency drama 'Cobra' in which the normally reliable Robert Carlyle struggled to convince as a Conservative Prime Minister, with David Haig, Victoria Hamilton and Richard Dormer also failing to make sense of a nonsensical, broad brush script about a solar flare taking out the UK's power supplies.
Netflix gave us the hysterical Harlan Coben drama 'The Stranger' with Richard Armitage, Dervla Kirwan, Jennifer Saunders and Stephen Rea in which Hannah John-Kamen's mysterious figure in a baseball hat ran around annoying people, threatening to expose secrets from their lives.
BBC1's thriller 'The Nest' with Martin Compston and Sophie Rundle promised a lot more than it actually deliverec with a weak tale in March and April about a property developer and his wife trying to procure the services of a surrogate mother.
The third series of 'Killing Eve' continued its downward slide on BBC1 in April and May despite Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer's best efforts, running down its reserves of shock.
David Hare's BBC1 thriller 'Roadkill' with Hugh Laurie about about a populist Conservative politician and the channel's adaptation of Vikram Seth's 'A Suitable Boy' also fell short of expectations.
'The Trial of Christine Keeler' was a flawed but much more interesting affair, as it shone a light on the exploitation of women by men during the events surrounding the Profumo scandal.
Adrian Dunbar was the best thing in the so-so Irish thriller 'Blood' which returned for a second season on Channel 5 in the UK and Virgin Media One in Ireland.
In October, RTE1's 'The South Westerlies' with Orla Brady, Steve Wall, Eileen Walsh, Ger Ryan and Patrick Bergin underwhelmed.
The channel made up for that dull drama a month later though with 'Dead Still' - a more daring Victorian Dublin tale with Michael Smiley as a photographer and Aidan O'Hare as a detective.
'Derry Girls' creator Lisa McGee and her husband Tobias Beer's thriller 'The Deceived' on Channel 5 was a thundering disappointment, with limp lead performances from Emily Reid and Emmet Scanlen in a remarkably inept du Maurier-style tale set in Donegal.
The winner of the most hyped TV drama of 2020, however, had to be HBO's predictable murder mystery drama 'The Undoing' with Nicole Kidman, Donald Sutherland, Noah Jupe and Hugh Grant doing that, um, um, very English, um thing he always does but in a slightly more shifty way.
There was plenty of drama to be in US politics as news channels and documentaries pored over each series of lows in the Trump Presidency.
2020 began with wall to wall coverage of a US Senate impeachment trial Trump was always going to survive given the numbers and for s while it looked like a strong economy might just carry him home in November's election after the Democrats' shambolic Iowa caucus.
But then Coronavirus hit and the horrific killing of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis, sparking a wave of Black Lives Matters protests across the US.
Trump's shambolic performances in press conferences about Covid and his appalling tear gassing of anti racism protesters to enable him to have a ridiculous strongman photo opportunity with a Bible outside a church near the White House only served to fan the flames in a country deeply divided by his Presidency.
The President's handling of the Black Lives Matter protests led to an ill tempered interview on ITV's Good Morning Britain during which former New York Mayor and Trump loyalist Rudy Giuliani exploded over Piers Morgan's questions.
Democrats and disgruntled Republicans rallied around his opponent Joe Biden who chose the Californian Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate.
However, with Covid ragjng, voters were faced with Presidential nomination conventions like never before, with the DNC opting for a mixture of live speeches from Delaware and mostly pieces to camera from party grandees and newly gained Republican backers of Biden's like former Ohio Governor John Kasich.
The RNC convention was more of a Trumpfest with senior figures absent from the podium but lots of speaking slots of his family and loyal acolytes like Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and press secretary Kayleigh McEnaney.
Don Jr's eyes during his contribution triggered fevered speculation on Twitter as to their cause and months later, people's eardrums were still recovering from the manic screeching of his partner Kimberly Guilfoyle.
With Biden fighting most of the election from Delaware because of Coronavirus and enjoying a huge poll lead, Trump tried to turn things around with rallies but fell victim to a hoax in Tulsa that led him to believe one venue was going to be so packed to the gills, it required an overspill.
He was instead confronted with the reality that young political activists had pranked his campaign, with swathes of empty seats in the auditorium.
It was a demoralising blow for Trump but his loyal fanbase still turned out at rallies, often without face masks, despite concerns that they could spread Coronavirus.
They were energised by Trump and the Republicans' appointment of Amy Coney Barrett as a Supreme Court Judge following the death of Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg - although the announcement of her nomination in the White House Rose Garden in October quickly became a super spreader event as Covid walloped a number of Republicans who attended.
Trump's bizarre behaviour over his Coronavirus diagnosis, with a Marvel Avengers style video of his return to the White House, and bizarre Fox News and Axios on HBO interviews about his cognitive test results and his handling of Covid provided plenty of ammunition to talk show hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert.
But that was nothing compared to his performance on the most fractious debate in the history of US Presidential Elections in which he tried to throw Joe Biden off his game by constantly interrupting him and whining about being unfairly treated by the moderator Chris Wallace.
There was only one more debate after Trump refused to accept changes to the second debate because of his Coronavirus diagnosis but while he dialled down the ranting, he still got personal about Biden's son Hunter and claimed he was the least racist person in the room.
Attempts by the Trump campaign and the former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani to cook up a scandal about Hunter Biden's laptop were treated with extreme caution by most of the media.
As Trump trailed in the polls and realised the massive effort the Democrats were making to ensure people voted early or by mail, he and his apologists like Fox News host Sean Hannity started to lay the groundwork in the summer for disputing the eventual election result by claiming a Biden victory would only be achieved by a massive effort to have fraudulent ballots cast.
So it came as no surprise, except possibly to former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, when he tried to claim victory on election night before the mail ballots were counted in many key states.
Trump's subsequent denial of reality and the Republican Party establishment's acquiescence of it, looked increasingly ridiculous as Biden won the majority of electoral college votes after capturing key states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia.
However the strong performance of the Republicans in the Senate and Gubernatorial races and in narrowing the Democrats' advantage in the House of Representatives only served to underline the huge task facing President Elect Biden as he tries to heal a deeply divided nation.
The reality is that Trump attracted the second highest tally of a Presidential candidate in US history and still lost but his loyal fanbase will continue to dictate the dynamics of the Republican Party for decades to come.
Even after the unsurprisingly amateurish response to the election result with the Four Seasons Total Landscaping press conference, the deluge of dismissals of Trump legal arguments at a state and federal level, the Rudy Giuliani hair dye incident and Melissa Carbone's disastrous appearance as a star witness at a hearing in Michigan, Trump supporters still kept the faith that he would somehow emerge the winner of an election he clearly lost.
But all this provided plenty of fodder for talk show hosts like Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel, James Corden, Trevor Noah, Bill Maher and John Oliver who initially struggled without studio audiences to adjust to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Missing the laughter of their audiences as they were forced to perform in the living room, kitchen or study of their homes, some hosts fared better than others with Colbert eventually finding his groove.
On the other side of the Atlantic, BBC1's Graham Norton and RTE's Ryan Tubridy opted to go into the studio and conducted interviews over zoom.
However the Covid crisis really saw RTE1's 'The Late Late Show' come into its own as a rallying point for the country, raising money causes like Pieta House, Barnardo's, the Children's Books Foundation, the Simon Community and other causes.
Not only did Tubridy help lighten the mood with interviews with Irish celebrities like Saoirse Ronan and Colin Farrell and international celebrities like Ricky Gervais and entertain with music from the like of Sinead O'Connor and a fantastic collaboration between Denise Chaila and Sharon Shannon but the annual Festive season Late Late Toy Show burst with viral moments
These ranged from Tubridy swearing while opening a bottle of Fanta, a child naming a puppet Polly Protestant and an amazing kid called Adam King whose fascination with space, respect for his hospital porter and virtual hugs captured hearts around the world including former astronauts like Chris Hadfield and the people at NASA.
If most talk shows struggled with the exception of 'The Late Late Show', so did satirical shows like 'Have I Got New For You' and Channel 4's 'The Last Leg' whose socially distanced versions either on Zoom or in TV studios suddenly seemed thin
Award shows like the BAFTA television awards hosted by Richard Ayoade on BBC1 and the Emmys hosted by Jimmy Kimmel on ABC also struggled despite having two sharp hosts.
Maybe with all the grim news, especially around Coronavirus, it was just too hard to quip.
Aside from those celebrities who died due to Covid, the world mourned to loss of other famous figures.
These included screen legends Chadwick Boseman who lost a battle with cancer, Kirk Douglas and 007 star Sean Connery, 'Avengers' stars Diana Rigg and Honor Blackman, accomplished character actors Brian Dennehy and Ian Holm, comedian and director Carl Reiner, Hollywood directors Joel Schumacher and Alan Parker, Swedish screen icon Max Von Sydow, Indian screen legend Irrfan Khan, the spy novelist John Le Carre and the 'Carry On' and 'Eastenders' star Barbara Windsor.
Football also said goodbye to Argentinian legend and World Cup winner Diego Maradona, England World Cup winner and former Middlesborough and Republic of Ireland manager Jack Charlton, his assistant Maurice Setters, fellow England World Cup winner Nobby Stiles, Italian World Cup winner Paolo Rossi and Liverpool, Spurs and England goalkeeping legend Ray Clemence.
Sport lost LA Lakers basketball legend Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna, Harlem Globetrotter Fred 'Curly' Neal, the "voice of golf" Peter Allis, motor racing legend snooker player Willie Thorne, WWE wrestlers Rocky Johnson, Shad Gaspard and James Harris (AKA Kamala), WWE announcer Howard Finkel, lenedary New York Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford and New York Mets legend Tom Seaver.
'Monty Python's' Terry Jones, comic actor Fred Willard, Forces sweetheart Vera Lynn, sitcom veteran Geoffrey Palmer, 'Boys from the Black Stuff' lead actor Michael Angelis, 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' mimic and actor John Sessions, satirist and 'Coronation Street' actor Roy Hudd, RTE presenters Marian Finucane and Larry Gogan, 'Gentle Touch' star Jill Gascoine, 'Give My Head Piece' actor BJ Hogg, Rush drummer Neal Peart and TV producer and director Tony Garnett also left us.
2020 also saw self-deprecating crooner and chat show host Des O'Connor, journalists Robert Fisk and Sir Harold Evans, 'B*A*P*S' star Natalie Desselle-Reid, Australian actor Hugh Keays-Byrne, Guys and Dolls singer Dominic Grant, 'Roots' and 'Starsky and Hutch' screenwriter William Blinn, garage DJ Steve Sutherland, rapper Ty Chijioke, actress Marge Champion, singer Helen Reddy, Toots Hibbert (frontman of the legendary reggae band Toots and the Maytals) and Kool and the Gang co-founder Ronald 'Khalis' Bell pass on.
'Jeopardy!' host Alex Trebeck, 'Scooby Doo' creator Ken Spears, 'Emmerdale' stars Paula Tilton and Johnny Leaze, sports presenter and BBC Breakfast television pioneer Frank Bough, 'Two and a Half Men' actress Conchata Ferrell, 'Twin Peaks' actor Clark Middleton, chef Michel Roux, CBBC's 'So Awkward' actor Archie Lyndhurst, '7th Heaven' actor Lorenzo Brino, Dave Rainford who regularly appeared on the BBC2 quiz 'Eggheds' and Jackie Stallone, mother of Sylvester, also died.
And if that wasn't enough, Bonnie Pointer of the Pointer Sisters, character, Sweet bassist Steve Priest, 'Sex and the City' actresses Lynn Cohen and Mary Pat Gleason, Kiss guitarist Bob Kulick, 'Star Trek: Voyager' actor Richard Herd, 'All My Children' star John Callahan, Pretty Things frontman Phil May, star of 'The Flash' Logan Williams, soul star Bill Withers and 'Seinfeld' star and father of Ben, Jerry Stiller left us.
We also lost 'Kojak' and 'Knots Landing' star Kevin Dobson, actor Ben Cross, Chi Chi Devayne from 'Ru Paul's Drag Race,' Lady Red Couture of 'Hey Qween!' fame, 'Coronation Street' actor Rodney Litchfield, Ranjit Chowdhury who starred in 'The Office,' former Red Hot Chilli Peppers guitarist Jack Sherman, actor Louis Mahoney, Welsh singer Ricky Valence, BBC Northern Ireland broadcaster Stephen Clements, country singer Charlie Daniels, DC Comics writer Denny O'Neill, Viacom chief Sumner Redstone, playwright Larry Kramer and UFO bassist Peter Way.
Little Richard died, as well as Kraftwerk member Florian Schneider, 'My Boy Lollipop' singer Millie Small, BBC 'Watchdog' presenter and journalist Lynn Faulds Wood, DJ and producer Andrew Weatherall, 'Gogglebox' star June Bernicoff, 'Scrubs' actor Sam Lloyd, rapper Pop Smoke, William Dufris who voiced 'Bob the Builder' in the US, 'Ugly Betty' creator Silvio Horta, medium and 'Celebrity Big Brother' star Derek Acorah and Afrobeat drummer and member of The Good, The Bad and the Queen Tony Allen.
The world also said goodbye to legendary rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen, composer Ennio Morricone, US light entertainment show host Regis Philbin, actor Earl Cameron, actress Shirley Knight, Fleetwood Mac co-founder Peter Green, 'I Can See Clearly Now' singer Johnny Nash, Primal Scream and New Order backing singer Denise Johnson, BBC Wales broadcaster Chris Needs, 'Glee' star Naya Rivera and 'Tutti Frutti' star Maurice Roeves.
'Love Island' presenter Caroline Flack tragically died in a year that also saw the passing of 'Sale of the Century' presenter and actor Nicholas Parsons, 'PBS Newshour' anchorman Jim Lehrer, the host of 'Inside the Actors Studio' James Lipton, 'Yes Minister' and 'Heartbeat' cast member Derek Fowld, the two grandmas from 'Friday Night Dinner' Frances Cuka and Rosalind Knight, 'GBH' and 'The Last Detective' cast member John Shrapnel, 'Desperate Housewives' actor Orson Bean, Andy Gill from the band Gang of Four, 'American Horror Story' and 'The OA' actor Harry Hains, 'Asterix and Obelix' co-creator Albert Uderzo and 'Upstairs, Downstairs' actor Christopher Beeny.
The world of politics mourned Nobel Peace Prize laureate and SDLP founder John Hume, former Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister and SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon, former French President Valery Giscard d'Estang, US Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, US Congressman John Lewis, fellow Civil Rights campaigner the Rev Joseph Lowery, former New York Mayor David Dinkins, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, former Egyptian President Hozni Mubarak, former Taiwanese President Lee-Teng Hui, former Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi, Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, former Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, Linda Tripp who found fame during the Lewinsky affair, anti-Apartheid campaigner Andrew Mlangeni and science marked the passing of NASA mathematical genius Katharine Johnston whose remarkable story inspired the 2017 movie 'Hidden Figures'.
At least, when times were bad there were some sitcoms to relieve the pain.
The third season of the BBC3 and RTE2 comedy 'The Young Offenders' did not disappoint as Chris Walley's Jock came to terms with being a dad with the help of his clueless pal, Alex Murphy's Conor.
On Sky 1, Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and director Michael Winterbottom appeared to draw a veil on their wonderful travelogue series 'The Trip' with the sublime 'The Trip to Greece' which saw both comic actors continuing to competitively outshine each other as impressionists but also reflect on their mortality.
The Canadian broadcaster CBC's sitcom 'Schitt's Creek' also came to an end on Netflix and went out on a high, sweeping away the opposition at the Emmys after an excellent sixth and final season.
Charlie and Daisy May Cooper's BBC3 rural life sitcom 'This Country' also left on a high in February, after three wonderful seasons.
The same could not be said for ABC's 'Modern Family' on Sky 1 which limped off the airwaves after a run that was probably three seasons too long.
2020 saw two space travel sitcoms.
Daisy May Cooper popped up in a supporting role in Armando Iannucci's 'Avenue 5' with Hugh Laurie and Josh Gad, a space cruise disaster take, whose tale of incompetent leadership in the face of adversity, seemed oddly prescient as Trump and others tried and failed to spin themselves out of health emergency.
Netflix's 'Space Force' took a ridiculously named Trumpian initiative, secured the services of Steve Carrell and John Malkovich and still managed to blow it with lame jokes.
The second season of Ricky Gervais' morose Netflix sitcom 'Afterlife' reunited 'Ever Decreasing Circles' stars Penelope Wilton and Peter Egan but was as frustrating as before - with some good moments but an over reliance on shock tactics and a thin veiled, toe curling pop at James Corden.
Lee Mack's BBC2 sitcom vehicle 'Semi-Detached' spluttered and stalled.
If you were prepared to find a sitcom something more reflective of the Covid era, BBC1 gave us 'Staged' - an amusing sitcom in which Michael Sheen and David Tennant pretended to be rehearsing for a West End play over Zoom which featured a memorable Samuel L Jackson episode.
A one-off, equally star studded comedy special by Tik Tok comedian Sarah Cooper on Netflix called 'Everything is Fine' tried to mine humour out of Covid and the US Election but failed abysmally.
There was no escaping Trump or Covid in factual television either, with a deluge of docs about the latter - the best of which were Alex Gibney's 'Totally Under Control' about the US administration's mishandling of Covid and BBC2's 'The Trump Show' which chronicled four years of dysfunction in the White House.
Hulu gave us a glimpse of what might have been with 'Hillary' on Sky Documentaries, a four part retrospective on the career of the drafted 2016 Presidential Election candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Not to be outdone, Netflix dropped the Michelle Obama documentary 'Becoming' in May which followed her on her book tour.
BBC2 also gave us two outstanding documentary series.
'Once Upon A Time in Iraq' which chronicled what went wrong after the deposing of Saddam Hussein but told it from the viewpoints of people on the ground who were observing events rather than world leaders.
While HBO's drama 'Succession' dominated the Emmys, 'The Rise of the Murdoch Dynasty' examined the family that inspired it.
As 2020 drew to a close, Fox News empire faced a new challenge from news channels even further to the right like Newsmax on One America Network as Donald Trump criticised Rupert Murdoch's channels for accepting Joe Biden as President Elect.
Fox played the Covid health emergency and the Presidential Election as it always does - talking out of both sides of its mouth.
So while its news shows and journalists preferred to face facts, much to the Trump administration's frustration, the opinion shapers like Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingram and Lou Dobbs indulged the President's fantasy about a stolen election.
Even in an extraordinary year, some things haven't changed but they desperately need to.
Consistent, factual broadcasting by Fox and less propagandising in 2021 would be a start.
It is fair to say after a year of self isolating, furloughing, face coverings and Zoom calls, the world will never be the same post-2020.
With the Covid vaccine offering hope that we might return to something approaching normality in 2021, here's hoping for a kinder, more selfless, more appreciative, less image obsessed world.
When John Oliver blew up 2020 in the last episode this year of his award winning HBO satirical show 'Last Week Tonight' we all agreed the sentiment.
It is what we build on the other side of 2020 that really counts.
Whether people are smart enough to pull together to do it will be the big test of 2021.
10 Best TV Shows of 2020
1. I May Destroy You (BBC3 and HBO)
2. Small Axe (BBC1 and Amazon Prime)
3. Normal People (BBC3 and Hulu)
4. The Late Late Show (RTE 1)
5. Better Call Saul (AMC and Netflix)
6. Schitt's Creek (CBC and Netflix)
7. White House Farm (ITV)
8. Once Upon A Time in Iraq (BBC2)
9. The Queen's Gambit (Netflix)
10. Tiger King (Netflix)
Most Memorable TV moment: Denise Chaila's spoken word performance 'Dual Citizenship' on RTE2's 'Other Voices: Courage' which really brought home what it is like to grow up as an Irish person with an African identity. A compelling watch from an exciting new voice.
Worst TV show: Cobra (Sky 1)
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