Reality TV and disaster movies were nothing compared to Mother Nature in 2005, so it’s only fitting that a hurricane tops the list of the year’s most memorable television programming.

1 KATRINA COVERAGE | As the world watched, Hurricane Katrina brought misery to the Gulf Coast and a massive career boost to CNN’s intrepid (and fabulously groomed) Anderson Cooper. But the real storm hit when the sun came out and the failure of government at every level lay exposed in the glare of the 24-hour cable news channels. The effect of seeing poor African-American residents of New Orleans begging for food and water was something no amount of Bush Administration voodoo could exorcise from viewers’ eyeballs. Jolted by this glimpse of a separate and unequal nation amid the floodwaters, Americans responded to the celebrity appeals of hurricane-relief telethons and turned thumbs down on the preside

On the Cartoon Network, a quiet revolution is taking place. Airing from 11 pm to 6 am every night except Friday, the Adult Swim programming block — aside from being designed for insomniacs and the unemployed — seems to be nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. That coveted 18-to-34 demographic is not only the main audience but the creative force behind Adult Swim. Which makes it one of the smartest, freshest, and most consistently hip line-ups on TV. Some of the earliest Adult Swim shows — Harvey Birdman and Sealab 2021 — were recycled from failed Hanna-Barbara cartoons. Characters whom the core audience already knew and loved from childhood were retooled, recut, and redubbed with current references and lewd innuendo. And though cheap animation and raunchy jokes aren’t exactly novel, Adult Swim has set itself apart from similar shows via bleaker settings and adult humor. (That’s " adult " as in jokes about small-town government bureaucrats, not explosive diarrhea.) As on South

It’s a concept that would have been laughed out of most network offices 10 years ago: rig a brand new, lushly appointed house with 47 cameras and 76 microphones, then sequester 14 people inside for three months and let them cheat, bicker, and flirt. Today, of course, the result is an international smash. First airing in Holland in 1999, when nine volunteers were filmed for 100 days, the show inspired local versions from England to Australia to the US, where the sixth season has just begun. Big Brother (CBS, Tuesday at 9 pm, Thursday and Saturday at 8 pm) is creepy voyeurism at its worst and addictive television at its best.

Although you’d expect a show named for the oppressive government entity in George Orwell’s 1984 to be ubiquitous, Big Brother is more like omnipresent — which is exactly why it works. Not content with the thrice-weekly hour-long shows of previous seasons, CBS has bulked up coverage for BB6 with a saturation ad campaign and cross-promotion appearances by "