When it comes to television moments from the past year that stick in my mind, I can’t decide whether to start with the sight of a cheetah chasing down a gazelle on PBS’s “The Best of Nature” or a Mormon missionary chasing down a big-city pedestrian in another PBS documentary, “The Mormons.” The pedestrian got off light by comparison (he lived), but both incidents made for riveting television. It must be something about chase scenes that don’t involve Matt Damon driving on the wrong side of the road, or perhaps it’s simply the primitive urge to hunt and stalk that spreads itself across the entirety of the animal kingdom, all the way from the African plains to the living room couch.

A show that proved to many that long-form television could be all that cinema has ever been and maybe more came to an end this year, not with a bada-bang but with an ambiguous whimper. Still, “The Sopranos” went out trailing clouds of glory and, the writers’ strike aside, the anticipation that preceded the finale of HBO’s signature series and the Monday morning quarterbacking that followed has to be seen as the year’s defining television moment — even if it was just a cut to black.

Speaking of long-form television, how about that five-set Wimbledon final between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer? A few months later, Mr. Federer staged his annual demolition of Andy Roddick in a night match at the U.S. Open, dressed in black from head to toe on the instructions of his informal fashion adviser, Anna Wintour. Best of all was the moment when CBS’s annoying celebrity interviewer, Michael Barkan, spotted Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David in the crowd and began quizzing them about their various projects, going on and on as the match was in progress, to the increasingly obvious irritation of the two comedians.

“What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever seen at the U.S. Open?” Mr. Barkan asked them finally. There was a long — a painfully long — silence, before Mr. Seinfeld replied, “Not you.” End of interview. It may have been the television put-down of the year, and Mr. Seinfeld’s best moment on television since the demise of “Seinfeld” back in the Dark Ages. It was certainly far superior to his lukewarm cameo on “30 Rock.”

More ambitious long-form television was born with AMC’s “Mad Men,” Matthew Weiner’s epic cigarette-smoking contest disguised as a drama about the advertising world of 1960. Like Aaron Sorkin’s ill-fated “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” it started out promisingly but seemed in the end (not that it has ended) to be more compelling as a topic of conversation than as something to actually watch. The obsessive attention paid to the amount of imbibing and inhaling going on in the New York of 47 years ago was, in my view, a subconscious acknowledgement that, however injurious the alcohol-and-tobacco culture may have been on an individual level, the gradual banishment of these social lubricants has steadily helped usher in the atomization of society, where cafés are filled with people sharing their secrets with invisible strangers on Facebook while ignoring the person at the next table. In other words, iPhones are the new Marlboros. Just don’t ask anyone if you can bum one off them.

Unlike “Mad Men,” the two new shows of 2007 I enjoyed most were both extremely fast-moving: Showtime’s raunchy “Californication,” and USA’s “Burn Notice.” The former was a guilty pleasure, not just because of all the sex, of which there was truckloads, but because there was something undeniably tired and self-indulgent and condescending about David Duchovny’s role as a sardonic New York novelist stuck in the moronic inferno of Los Angeles. And yet there was hardly a dull moment in each half-hour episode, and if you’re going to play a sardonic, condescending East Coast novelist carousing in Hollywood, you have to admit, Mr. Duchovny made a damn good job of it.

As Michael Westen, the spy booted out of the CIA for undisclosed reasons in “Burn Notice,” Jeffrey Donovan was equally adept at playing a smart guy unwillingly marooned in Miami after having cavorted in places like Nigeria and Afghanistan. Aside from the fish-out-of-water element, what linked this otherwise very different show to “Californication” was the male-female banter. As Westen’s ex-IRA girlfriend, a trigger-happy babe unable to muster romantic feelings for any man who won’t enter a building before finding all the exits and entrances, Gabrielle Anwar was a strong contender for the funniest and sexiest woman on a new series. Sharon Gless was also wonderfully amusing as Westen’s hypochondriac mother, her presence in Miami being the chief reason her son generally preferred places like Kandahar.

If you’ll excuse the non sequitur, “What Liberal Media?” is the name of a book by the Nation’s Eric Alterman. I was reminded of the title while abroad this summer when news came down that “media baron” Conrad Black had been found guilty on various charges in a Chicago courtroom, including the extremely serious charge of being over-articulate. The anchors on CNN International were so jubilant at the verdict they literally couldn’t stop smiling, like a group of cannibals who’d just finished a particularly tasty meal. It’s a very strange thing, when you think about it. You work for one of the most famous news channels in the world, you’re watched daily by millions of people around the globe, your salary (surely) is extremely robust, and yet you suffer from uncontrollable class envy.

As 2007 marches inexorably to its conclusion, the writers are still on strike and I don’t blame them. Still, with all their parading around in front of the cameras in New York and L.A., it’s a shame they haven’t come up with a memorable slogan brief enough to fit on a placard. Obviously, inventing such short-form gems as “Workers of the World, Unite” is harder than originally thought, especially when you drive a Mercedes, and efforts such as “Unscripted? Yeah, Write” and “Solidarity with Writers” don’t make the cut. So for what it’s worth, here’s my suggestion for pithy placard-content that encapsulates what’s really going on: “The Internet Will Eat the World.”

bbernhard@earthlink.net