It is official now; ‘Battlestar Galactica’, is the year’s best. This sci-fi allegory about war, terrorism and artificial intelligence has won the 2009 Television Critics Association Award for the best Program of the Year.

Written by Ronald D Moore, the series won against other nominees including ‘Lost’, ‘Saturday Night Live’ and last year’s Emmy winner ‘Mad Men’, among others. The series which has a multi-national cast from the US, Canada and Britain, has had a successful run for four seasons on the U.S. Sci Fi Channel.

Meanwhile among other awards, ‘Mad Men’ won the TCA Award for outstanding drama second year in a row. ‘The Big Bang Theory’ won the best comedy among all the other strong contenders like ‘How I Met Your Mother’, ‘The Office’, and even last year’s winner ‘30 Rock’.

Also the newer lot and the veterans among TV series saw interesting winners. On the one hand, the HBO series ‘True Blood’ emerged the best new program while retired medical drama ‘ER’ won the critic’s Heritage Award. The Heritage Awards are given to a series which has had a profound impact on culture in one way or the other. This year’s winner ‘ER’ belongs to this league running 15 successful seasons from 1994-2009.

Also in the individual awards category, ‘Breaking Bad’s’ Bryan Cranston won critics award for outstanding individual achievement in TV drama while ‘The Big Bang Theory’s’ Jim Parsons won the same award for comedy. These both awards are akin to ‘best actor’ in their individual categories. Also veteran performer Betty White saw herself adorned with a special career achievement award.

This year’s ceremony marked the silver anniversary year of Television Critics Association Awards and saw much fan fare. This organization is pretty widely recognized across US and Canada with representation from about 200 newspapers, online critics and magazines.