The 1 Best Thing of the 00s

The 00s, or 'the decade with no name' have been awful. There have been more, bigger wars than we saw in the 90s, the economy lies in tatters. The decade started with popular music being an all-American, frat-boy nightmare and ended with popular music being an all-American 'Happy Hour' nightmare, marginally better for being sung by women. Film became overwhelmed by inexplicable, cheap CGI shite.

As befits the end of a decade, a rash of lists has appeared in print media, detailing the decades best films, most important figures, least significant spoons and so on. In the interests of concision, I'm picking my favourite thing of all. We're all busy people after all.

'Malcolm in the Middle' or 'Malcolm', considering the length of its title, was an American family sitcom that ran from 2000-2006. Family sitcoms are generally insufferable, unable to tread the line between love and hate - 'My Family' and 'Married With Children' settled on making their family's relations poisonous to the level where a viewer might have been moved to contact Social Services. The Simpsons tread this line with hitherto unseen skill, but the 00s saw its terminal decline, which manifested itself in globetrotting and Homer's ongoing metamorphosis into a howling sociopath.

'Malcolm' is unique in family sitcoms in seeing the family as a fundamentally flawed but necessary institution, and in seeing the family in terms of power relations. The constant brawling and arguments are status games, pleas for attention, cash or respect. 'Malcolm' also deals with the question of child abuse between siblings. That it does these things while being beautifully written and hilarious is a fucking miracle.

As is usually the case with sitcoms which focus on one character (Malcolm, the title character, is the only player able to converse with the audience), the other characters end up being more fascinating. In particular, Lois, the screaming mother of Malcolm and Hal, his broken father, are masterpieces of characterisation - complete individuals, capable of spite, inconsistences and, most radically, lust. When Homer and Marge 'snuggle', it's as comforting as cocoa, whereas Hal and Lois's sex involves trips to their town's red light district.

The shows' portrayal of childhood is also glorious - showing the 5 stages of childhood, from the infant (Jamie), the pre-adolescent near-alien (Dewey), pre-teen know-it-all (Malcolm), teen thug (Reese) to rebellious early-adult (Francis), discreetly and fully. Childhood isn't romanticised, neither is adulthood, marriage or any other institution, because of my favourite thing about 'Malcolm' - its politics.

'Malcolm' is political in texture and content. The family lead a life helmed to the Permanent Debt Economy that preceded the Credit Crunch - they are sub-prime, 'Malcolm' is a sub-prime sitcom. Lois, despite her clear intelligence, works part-time at a out-of-town megastore, Lucky Aide ("The 'L' stands for Value"). Hal works for an unnamed corporation, but is laid off when it succumbs to Enronitis. This leads to a grimly comic moment - Hal is framed for fraud by his company directors, and is tasered by the arresting officers immediately after declaring "I have complete faith in the U.S. government!". The family's troubles arise from financial stress, overwork and fear - keeping the contrived plots of Family Guy and the modern Simpsons at bay.

But, the 00s made a Marxist out of me, and I'll love and miss 'Malcolm' for its overt politics. Hal, quoting Marx and leading an occupation of Lucky Aide, Lois using all her wit to rescue Reese from his deployment in Afghanistan, and planning for a working-class government. It's cold comfort, but for this shit decade, it'll have to do.