Yes, 2013 was a brilliant year for television. Taut, esoteric dramas invaded the mainstream. Cult hits blossomed into beloved classics. Streaming services further eroded the hegemony of linear broadcasting. This is the prevailing narrative of the year.

But it isn't entirely true. Sure, drama kept hitting height after height. But Saturday-evening telly – drama's cross-eyed, knuckle-headed cousin – concussed itself trying to lick the bottom of the barrel and spent most of the year staggering around, bleeding and dribbling and shrieking gormless non-sequiturs into its malformed fist. Viewed through the prism of Saturday-evening television, 2013 was almost heroically awful. Here are the top five worst offenders, as voted for by me. Consider it a warning from history.

Coming back next year … Tom Daley presents Splash!

Yes, it's coming back next year. And yes, Tom Daley has now transmogrified into an all-encompassing Hero of Our Times. But, god, Splash! was weird. The look of consternation on Vernon Kay's face whenever he thought his slacks might get damp. The berserk insistence of Gaby Logan to treat the show as an extension of the Olympics. The idea that Dom Joly falling into some water would ever be a ratings winner. The way that Splash! had a exclamation in its title, so that you sounded as if you'd just remembered something really important whenever you said it out loud. Splash! was all of this and more. But admittedly not much more.

Even more tortured than the first series: The Voice.

If anything, this year's second series of The Voice was even more tortured than the first, purely because it meant that people had seen what a hideous, no-gain waste of everybody's time it was and thought: "You know what? This has me written all over it." The lowlight of the year was the infuriating way in which Will.i.am and Jessie J could only communicate by making the sound of broken vibrators at each other. The best was when Will.i.am had a tantrum on Twitter before the final credits had even finished rolling.

It just didn't work … Your Face Sounds Familiar.

Each week, a team of celebrities impersonated famous singers chosen by the spin of a wheel. Each week, it didn't really work. Although Alexander Armstrong stole the show by having to play Susan Boyle in the final, the real winner was Bobby Davro. To this day, whenever I think of Your Face Sounds Familiar, I think of Davro dressed up as current-day Paul McCartney, looking for all the world as if he'd just stumbled out of a burning radioactive mutation factory, honking and wailing like the tormented ghost of mangled roadkill. That makes him the winner, right?

An atrocity: Doctor Who Afterparty Live

Months of loving, detail-fixated preparation had been poured into the Doctor Who 50th anniversary special. The show itself was a raging success. Then came the instruction to watch Zoe Ball host the live afterparty on BBC3. After that, darkness. The nadir of this atrocity came when One Direction, who hadn't even seen the show, were left to battle with a deafening minute-long feedback loop while Steven Moffat did his best not to kick everything in sight to splinters for ruining his big day. It was a relentless catastrophe from beginning to end, and it would have easily topped this list in any other year. But it didn't, and that's purely thanks to …

Mechanically mirthless laughter … I Love My Country. Photograph: BBC/Avalon

Months have passed since I Love My Country stopped being on television, but it doesn't feel that way. The thing has seeped into my bones. It exclusively forms the basis of all my anxiety dreams now. I'm trapped in a Technicolor poundland full of teapots and warped Keep Calm and Carry On paraphernalia. Gaby Logan is dancing madly in front of me, as if she's trying to shake off a spider's web, while Jamelia jerks and spasms around, screaming an atonal oompah version of Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen as she punches herself in the head. "Stop dancing," I scream at her. "I can't!" she screams back through a rictus grin. She's crying now. Meanwhile, Frank Skinner holds a Yorkshire pudding aloft as a sacrificial offering to the godhead Nigel Farrage, and everyone in the studio audience clutches their belly and rolls around in a mechanically mirthless approximation of laughter. It never ends. It never ends.