Weird has become the new normal

For that matter, who would have believed back then that zombies, historically the least scary, most boring of all horror movie monsters (even the great George Romero essentially used the shuffling undead as props to shore up his satires on consumerism), would be the focal point of not one but four hit series, each with its own unique style?

Dead Set carried on Romero's satirical legacy by letting rabid zombies loose in the Big Brother house. The Walking Dead put flesh on comic book characters and then let the hungry hordes tear it back off in gloriously gory, unflinching fashion.

Eerie French chiller The Returned offered a singularly . . . well, French vision of zombies, in which those back from the grave have hearty appetites for food (but not, so far, the human variety), drink and sex.

In the Flesh took zombies away from the usual stomping grounds of graveyards and spooky woods and into the narrow laneways and narrower minds of an English village rife with fear and prejudice.

Welcome to 21st century television, where what were once regarded as niche interests have infiltrated the mainstream to the point where they've begun to dominate it. Weird is now the new normal, and the result is some of the best, most imaginative, most thought-provoking TV drama the medium has  ever spawned.

It's not all just about scary stuff, although the success of American Horror Story and especially the superb Penny Dreadful, with its ingenious deployment of famous characters from the literature of the macabre, proves the audience for things involving creatures of the night stretches well beyond incurable old horror buffs like me.  Television drama in general has taken a turn for the weird - and more often than not, the wonderful too.

The last 12 months or so have been a fertile time for quirky, off-centre dramas. Channel 4's Utopia, a thriller about the hunt for a mysterious graphic novel that was itself styled to look like a graphic novel, was one of the most eerie, spellbinding and beautiful things I've ever seen, and terrifying into the bargain.

The magnificent True Detective showed that it's possible to take even the most familiar tropes of the police procedural and serial killer genres and reassemble them into something dazzlingly new - and entrancingly weird.

But for sheer weirdness (and indeed sheer wonderfulness), Fargo leaves every other drama series we've seen this year, including awards bait like Line of Duty and Happy  Valley, at the starting gate.

Plenty of people, me included, have showered superlatives over the way Fargo mixed thriller, dark comedy, farce, romance, graphic violence, and homespun values of honesty and decency with an expert hand that never once lost control of any of these elements.

But it's only when you sit back and reflect on all 10 episodes that you fully appreciate just how jaw-droppingly strange a series it was.

Given that Fargo's odd structure and startling changes of tone from one scene to another were even more extreme than anything in the Coen brothers' source movie, it's remarkable it was given the green light at all, let alone by Fox, one of America's major networks.

The fact that it was lapped up with equal relish by viewers and critics signifies just how much television drama has changed in recent years.

When David Lynch and Mark Frost unleashed Twin Peaks on an unsuspecting world back in 1990, the world responded with a gasp; here was a drama series unlike anything ever seen before.

I suspect that if Twin Peaks were to debut in the current television climate, it would fit right in.

RAP BATTLE: This, as I'm sure you've noticed, is the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War. It appears the BBC, which has undertaken an epic, four-year commemoration of the conflict, fears some viewers haven't noticed. Namely, Britain's young people.

In an effort to get the yoof up to speed, the BBC has made a YouTube video featuring actors dressed up as key figures behind the conflict and rapping about the causes behind the war.

According to The Guardian newspaper, in one sequence Emperor Franz Josef of Austro-Hungary raps: "Russians, Mongols, Turks, my bitches, better watch out 'cos my finger trigger itches."

I was about to say you couldn't make this stuff up. You could, of course; it's just that nobody would believe you.

TIGHT-LIPPED: I happened to flick over to Watchdog on BBC1 this week and briefly thought my satellite signal had frozen.

Nope, it was just that host Anne Robinson's face has been so immobilised by Botox and plastic surgery, the only part that moves any more is her mouth. "Hey, Doctor, you missed a bit!"

DING-DONG: The sound of millions of former teenagers' illusions being shattered will soon echo around the globe when US channel Lifetime airs a new TV movie set to expose the unsavoury behind-the-scenes secrets of popular, squeaky-clean 80s kids' comedy Saved by the Bell.

You have to wonder, though, how much damage a mere drama can do to unfortunate erstwhile cast member Elizabeth Berkley, left, who effectively wrecked her nascent movie career by getting her kit off in the notoriously sleazy and toxic turkey Showgirls.