President-elect Barack Obama waves to his supporters after delivering his victory speech in Grant Park in Chicago on Nov. 4, 2008. (David Guttenfelder/Associated Press)

Television in 2008 was all about reality — no, not the clumsily written, rigorously edited world of "reality shows" like Rock of Love or Survivor. From the tension and tactical manoeuvres of the U.S. presidential race to the thrills and chills of the Olympic Games in Beijing — reportedly the most expensive Games of all time — TV this year was largely about real-life drama.

But that's not to say that scripted television didn't make its own impact — far from it. Here's our list of 10 TV moments that stuck with us in 2008.

The Beijing Olympics

Thanks to the mind-blowing resources major networks poured into their coverage of the 2008 Olympic Games — NBC reportedly broadcast 212 hours of material every day; 3,600 hours in total — it was impossible to avoid getting infected with the fever this summer. Granted, the Games had a built-in hero. All-American swimmer Michael Phelps, with his love of Big Macs, his mom and gangsta rap, captured the hearts of viewers as he went on to beat Marc Spitz's 1972 Olympic record by winning eight gold medals (and countless endorsement deals).

Talking heads: real news is the new fake news?

Coverage of the U.S presidential election dominated most folks' TV sets throughout 2008. And this year, more than ever, savvy pundits – whether they were the anchors of fake news reports or authentic journalists who asked the necessary questions – helped shape public opinion. Highlights: Katie Couric's excruciating interview with Sarah Palin; The Daily Show's poignantly hilarious missives from the campaign trail; the cogent, wry commentaries delivered by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC; and Stephen Colbert, whose mimicry of conservative ideologues continued to slay us.

Mad Men

This AMC-produced drama about advertising in the '60s has enough nifty bells and whistles (Sumptuous production design! Era-specific gadgets! Incessant smoking!) to sustain an initial infatuation. But in Mad Men 's second season, the show had to prove it had enough substance to keep viewers captivated. And it did.

Jon Hamm portrays Don Draper, the creative director of the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency, in the AMC series Mad Men. (Craig Blankenhorn/AMC/Associated Press)

Jumping ahead two years (to 1962), season two lingered on the demons haunting tormented leading man Don Draper (Jon Hamm ) and the rest of its rich cast – particularly the women. Tenacious Peggy (Elizabeth Moss ) endured both the guilt of choosing a career over accidental motherhood and the stress of being a maverick girl in the boys' club of copywriting; bombshell Joan (Christina Hendricks ) weathered abuse; anomic wife Betty (January Jones ) grew a backbone, but maintained a tenuous grasp on her mental stability. A year before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, women were wrestling with the shifts in their social standing. Despite the fog of testosterone that hangs over the show's mid-century Madison Avenue milieu, one of Mad Men's great strengths is its roster of complex female roles.

The return of Saturday Night Live

For a while there, Saturday Night Live felt painfully irrelevant, mired in a sludge of lacklustre writing and few standout performers. But this year, SNL rocketed back from the crypt, providing fodder for Monday-morning water cooler conversations week after week.

Granted, they were blessed with satire-ready material: a presidential election whose putative prom queen (vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin) happened to be a dead ringer for one of the show's most talented alumna (Tina Fey). But writing off this remarkable comeback as merely the result of a perfect storm is too easy. SNL also demonstrated renewed acuity in its writing (largely thanks to head scribe Seth Meyers), a willingness to take risks on absurdity (see: the GIRAFFES! video; Andy Samberg's digital shorts; that wacky Lawrence Welk skit) and the continued evolution of Kristen Wiig, whose zany characters rank with those of Gilda Radner and Lily Tomlin.

Tina Fey and Oprah on 30 Rock

Yeah, yeah: Tina Fey owned 2008. But lest we forget, even diehard 30 Rock fans went into season three worrying that the cult comedy would jump the shark. For one thing, the parade of high-profile cameos occasionally felt a bit too manic. But Oprah's heavily promoted appearance (in the form of a tranquilizer-fuelled hallucination on an airplane) made for one brilliantly surreal episode. The moment where a drugged Fey slurs something about "sirrrting beside Borpo" before big O waxes rhapsodic about "sweater capes" and sundry Favourite Things was pure, meta-media gold.

So You Think You Can Dance Canada

With the news that CTV is putting Canadian Idol on hiatus, the unprecedented success of So You Think You Can Dance Canada seems even more noteworthy. In its inaugural season, SYTYCDC established itself as the first Canadian-made version of an international reality franchise to boast contestants who could compete at a world-class level. The judges were duly impressed, as were audiences: ratings for the finale peaked at 1.9 million viewers.

Dragons' Den host Dianne Buckner, centre, stands with the Dragons: From left, Robert Herjavec, Arlene Dickinson, Jim Treliving, Kevin O'Leary and W. Brett Wilson. (Jeffrey Kirk/CBC Television)

Dragons' Den

Also on the CanCon tip: CBC TV's Dragons' Den prospered this year, with ratings that just went up and up and up. Though some may be perplexed by the popularity of a program that's essentially just about wannabe moguls begging steely capitalists for validation (and, uh, cold hard cash), I get it. The nutty get-rich-quick schemes and insane inventions pitched at the Dragons are almost as entertaining as the eager beavers doing the pitching.

90210 gets a failing grade

There was a lot of hype surrounding the return of the beloved soap about the existential crises of poor lil' rich kids in Beverly Hills. With the success of tween-geared series like Gossip Girl and our own Degrassi – and show's addition of a Degrassi star, plus original cast members like Jennie Garth and queen bitch Shannen "Brenda Walsh" Doherty – it was hard to imagine how the nouveau 90210 could go wrong.

But oh, did it ever. All the ADHD-friendly editing, super-trendy soundtrack selections (courtesy of music supervisor Liz Phair ) and ostentatious BlackBerry twiddling couldn't make up for the wooden acting and ham-fisted scripts. Rumour has it that next season features dramatic plot twists (pregnancy and mental illness!) and even more dramatic guests, so we'll try to withhold judgment before writing off the new 90210 with a giant "whatever."

R.I.P., procedurals and prime-time dramas

The past 12 months have been a slow death march for most procedurals and prime-time shows, which were hit particularly hard by the writers' strike that kicked off 2008. Grizzled hospital drama veteran E.R. is calling it quits; former fail-safe hits like Grey's Anatomy and C.S.I. lost crucial cast members; even trusty stalwarts like the Law & Order franchise showed signs of panic. (The Law and Order: SVU episode where a chimp crawled out of a basketball and hugged Captain Cragen was the definition of jumping the shark – or should I say, shocking the monkey?)

NBC's recent announcement that it would be giving all of its 10 p.m. weekly timeslots — the traditional domain of mature dramatic series — to deposed late-night kingpin Jay Leno was the final nail in the coffin. The reign of the drama is officially over.

Barack Obama's victory speech

First, there was the gorgeous oratory, a speech so heartfelt that even the most cantankerous curmudgeon was left teary. And then there was the spectacle of watching history unfold onstage: Barack Obama, surrounded by the beaming faces of his wife and daughters – the first African-American First Family of the United States.

Even Oprah couldn't contain herself, clinging to a stranger in the crowd at Chicago's Grant Park as though every cell in her body was vibrating as she bore witness to the monumental event. Obama's victory speech was one of those rare moments where a television broadcast broke through the medium's usual limitations: instead of feeling isolated and subject to a mediated version of global goings-on, you were left with the sense that you'd truly participated in a world-changing event.

Sarah Liss writes about the arts for CBCNews.ca.