NEW Year’s Eve 2011 marked the end of an era. This was the last time we’d all be able to switch on the TV, listen to Big Ben and reliably count down the seconds until the arrival of the new year.

That’s because 2012 will see us all switch over to digital television, with its time lag of quite a few seconds, varying depending on whether you’re watching on cable, satellite or online.

So next time, viewers will be counting down “Ten ... approximately ... nine (more or less) ... eight-ish....”

Lots of us have trouble deciding how to celebrate the new year, which brings with it the pressure for you to be enjoying yourself at exactly the stroke of midnight.

It seems the problem has spread to broadcasters too, with BBC1 offering only 25 minutes of New Year Live (Saturday, 11.50pm), while ITV1’s ITV News and Countdown to 2012 (Saturday, 11.45pm) took up a mere 20 minutes.

The BBC’s presenter, Jake Humphrey, chatted to a few of the thousands of people waiting for the fireworks to get underway along the Thames.

Then, after the capital’s spectacular pyrotechnics display, the BBC packed up its outside broadcast vans and shut down, like a reluctant relative who half-heartedly stays up until just after midnight and then goes straight to bed.

Still, in Austerity Britain, we should probably be glad anyone can raise the money for New Year’s Eve fireworks. Next time, it’ll probably be a presenter handing round a box of sparklers.

For a lot of people, New Year’s Eve entertainment means Jools’ Annual Hootenanny (Saturday, BBC2, 11.15pm), but I lost interest in it a few years ago when I discovered it’s recorded weeks ahead.

I’m not one of those naive people who thought all the BBC’s Christmas product was produced at Christmas, and that Morecambe and Wise used to give up their festive celebrations to entertain us. And I know it would be prohibitively expensive to hire a lot of great pop acts for a live show on New Year’s Eve.

But the Hootenanny programme is dressed up as a live show, including a countdown to the new year and lots of celebrities wearing party hats and acting merry. The knowledge that they’re all putting on an act while worrying about their Christmas shopping ruins it for me.

One person who probably didn’t get a lot of Christmas shopping done is writer Steven Moffat, who says he barely takes any days off because of the pressure of writing both Doctor Who and Sherlock (Sunday, BBC1, 8.10pm).

His modernised take on the Conan Doyle stories is back for a three-episode run, with Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes.

Cumberbatch could easily swap places with Doctor Who’s Matt Smith – both characters are charismatic, impossibly clever and with athletic and intellectual powers verging on the superhuman.

This episode was an update of A Scandal in Bohemia, only with smart phones and violence, and dealt with Holmes’s run-in with Irene Adler (Lara Pulver), forever known by the detective as “the woman”.

It was gripping, clever and perfectly played by Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as Watson. But with Cumberbatch spitting out impossibly clever dialogue at nineteen to the dozen, and an ending which seemed to stretch the viewer’s credulity as much as the average Bond movie, Steven Moffat and his team will have to be careful the show doesn’t cross over into the ridiculous.

The title of Armando’s Tale of Charles Dickens (Monday, BBC2, 9pm) gave host Armando Iannucci top billing over the author he was celebrating. Fortunately, the programme was no ego trip for Iannucci, but an insightful look at our greatest author, which covered his genius as a comic and satirist, his real concern for the poor and powerless, and his unlikely celebrity status later in life.

This year marks the author’s bicentenary, so expect a lot of Dickens on TV before we all gather to ring in 2012 while listening to Big Ben’s bongs on FM radio.