June 2006 Archives

Once again, our Friday round-up of all the bits you may have missed in the past week.

The week on TV Today:

• Mac’s back
• Square Eyes: 1-2 July
• I cracked!What did you expect, Mr C?
• RDF to offer programme downloads
• The nation’s favourite?
• How to earn £50,000 for a 3-minute pilot
• “The F-Word is a pile of poo”
• When we were 1
• Square eyes 26-30 June
• Death of a television legend

And from elsewhere on The Stage:

• Geena Davis confirms Commander in Chief telemovie
• ITV signs comedians Gervais and Murray
• Kirsty Young is Desert Islands Discs host
• Brass Eye writer Bussman takes one-woman show to Edinburgh
• Spinal Tap’s Shearer to star in BBC radio comedy
• Parfitt to develop BBC programming for teenagers
• Futurama to return in 2008
• Actor Kenneth Griffith dies
• Elton John to headline EuroPride stage show
• TV review: Harry Venning reviews Saxondale, Beau Brummell: This Charming Man and The Girls Who Came To Stay.
• Obituaries: Peter Bryant, TV producer; David Butler , actor and writer; Judy Wilson , actress

One thing I’ve noticed about living my TV life via Sky+ and its one-button Series Link feature is that I carry on watching TV series that I would otherwise have given up on within the first couple of weeks. One of those series was Commander-in-Chief, the US drama series which played out on ABC1 over here, and starred Geena Davis as Mackenzie ‘Mac’ Allen, the USA’s first female president.

How can I put this kindly? It stank, but enjoyably so. It was the sort of show where you could safely hit the mute button knowing you weren’t missing much, then mull over why CinC’s Oval Office looked like a shabby imitation not of the White House, but of The West Wing’s sets, why Donald Sutherland had agreed to be in this nonsense, and what 21st Century woman would ever name their son ‘Horace’.

Awful as it was, I just couldn’t stop watching it. Sadly, it didn’t really improve. But it’s quite reassuring to know that, now that it’s been cancelled, series creator Rod Lurie is creating a one-off telemovie sequel. Rumours have abounded for a while, but series star Geena Davis confirmed to our very own Liz Thomas, who’s working over in Monaco at the Monte Carlo TV Festival:

We are definitely making a telemovie of the show - that is my next project. Hopefully you know then we will be able to some more episodes after that.

I can’t help thinking she’s being a little optimistic in her hope for a second season. But now that The West Wing is over in the States, with just a few more episodes to run here on More4, it’d be good to be able to see a US President who looks like they know what they’re doing…

There are two words that strike dead into any TV reviewer (or, for that matter, previewer). No, I’m not talking about “Doctor Who”. Or “Big Brother”. Not even “Hollyoaks spin-off”, although the blood does run cold even typing that last one. No, I’m talking about the dreaded “drama documentary” — a curious mongrel which cross-breeds two successful genres, but somehow manages to lose the best elements of both.

Which makes it all the more surprising, then, that The Somme — From Defeat to Victory (8.00pm Sunday, BBC1) is actually quite good. Showing to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the cataclysmic World War I battle, the programme follows a group of young friends from Salford, who fought and died side-by-side in the French trenches. Based on extensive research, the documentary shows how the five-month-long battle changed the British army’s tactical approach to warfare, and turned such monumental carnage — 20,000 troops died in a single day — into eventual victory.

Battles of the heart, subterfuge, disguise and partner-swapping aplenty abound, when the BBC shows a live broadcast of Mozart’s classic comic opera Così Fan Tutte (7.00pm Saturday, BBC Four) from Glyndebourne. Nicholas Hytner’s first opera in ten years, staged to celebrate the composer’s 250th anniversary, is “a very welcome return”, according to Stage critic George Hall:

His staging, with delicate period designs by Vicki Mortimer, subtly lit by Paule Constable, is visually elegant and probes this most complex of comedies with intelligence and perception. Arguably the humour is underplayed at first, but no one will feel short-changed by the end. The characters and the audience go through a profound and troubling experience.

Meanwhile, it’s all kicking off in Doctor Who: Army of Ghosts (7.00pm Saturday, BBC1), with the first of a two-part season conclusion that promises the return of the Cybermen and the despatch of Billie Piper to the great TARDIS in the sky. We also get to see inside the mysterious Torchwood Institute, led by ex-EastEnder Tracy-Ann Oberman, for the first time. Referenced in last year’s Christmas Day episode, and with references inserted (a little too clumsily, at times) into most of this season’s episodes, the Institute is due to get its own spin-off series on BBC Three in the autumn. As a taster, Doctor Who Confidential (7.45 Saturday, BBC3) gives a sneak peek, and promises some glimpses of John Barrowman, who is due to return in his acclaimed role as Captain Jack.

And we finish off with a little bit of populist culture — no, not Heartbeat (8.20pm Sunday, ITV1), of which there’s two hours of period nonsense this week, but the final episode of The Singing Estate (8.00pm Sunday, Five). The novice choristers are getting geared up to sing O Fortuna, from Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, in the Royal Albert Hall. Tensions are high, tempers are fraying, and there just isn’t enough time to rehearse. Will they succeed?

Well, what do you think? Ivor Setterfield is hardly Whoopi Goldberg in a wimple, but the dramatic structure of this show should be familiar to anyone. Still, it’s been a fun watch, and in a weekend where the schedules are dominated by football, tennis and Formula One, we have to take our comfort where we may…

I’m not proud of this, but back in the very beginning, when TV Today was but a prancing foal of a blog, I proudly set out my stall of Big Brother defiance:

“Whether I’ll be successful in my attempts to go organic in my avoidance of Big Brother remains to be seen…”

I smugly proclaimed, and, it did remain to be seen. But not for long. I did very well, all things considered, to be out of the living room at 9pm five nights a week (twice on Saturdays), but then it all went wrong. And who am I blaming? Nikki, that’s who…

I am fascinated by this creature who, during a raid to retrieve a book from the living room, was emblazoned across the diary room chair, pontificating in Peter Crouch-esque robotic gestures about something she didn’t like. Before I knew it, I was entranced and sat through the rest of the episode, accompanied by my partner’s knowing “I told you so” smile. It seems that Nikki wasn’t happy about somebody called Suzi waltzing in, and how ’I can’t even look at it!” was the mantra of the night.

Even better was the following night (oh yes, I was back, popcorn bucket on knee) when Nikki, clearly not a fickle young thing, proclaimed “I like her, I like her!”, once more on the subject of Suzi.

Curse you all, Big Brother housemates! I was strong, I was good. I’d even managed to pair all my socks in some Herculean effort to avoid you. But one five second burst of exposure had me drawn in quicker than Michael Owen on a plane back to Blighty.

And I still hate it. Watching Big Brother gives me the same feeling as eating KFC. Cheap, dirty, but Lord have mercy, it’s good!

This weekend begins my renewed efforts of detoxing myself away from the house, but my decision to have one final hit last night exposed me to the lunacy of Aisleyne and Lea’s vitriolic face-off. I might just have to look in one last time tonight… But it’s okay. I can give it up tomorrow. Can’t I?

Still, it’s good to see C4 doing well on the back of providing a World Cup alternative, recording its second highest audience share of the year thanks to some foul-mouthed entertainment… and Big Brother.

This one isn’t going away, is it? Gold-plated (well he should be for that money) BBC boy Jonathan Ross has, quite rightly, defended his supposedly lewd and crude questions to David “Diddy” Cameron on last week’s Friday Night with Jonathan Ross.

The thought of Mrs T in stockings aside, this one is all a bit silly, isn’t it? If you’re going to sit on Ross’s sofa, whoever you are, you’re going to suffer a fairly risqué line of questioning. Heck, even the Pope would probably count as fair game, and that’s an interview I’d gladly pay good money to see.

And I’m going to cut David Cameron some slack on this, because there doesn’t appear to have been any direct quote from Mr C himself on this subject. All the posturing and foot stamping has been coming from Lord Tebbit (and how nice it is to have the image of Tebbit in full-on biker/truncheon mode fresh in mode, thanks to Best Ever Spitting Image).

The Independent reports that Ross popped into Radio Five Live to state his case, saying:

“We don’t set out to upset people. I wouldn’t want to do that, even though upsetting Norman Tebbit has given me some small sense of satisfaction because he’s spent 12 years upsetting me.”

Well, quite.

It’s never pretty seeing politicians going on chat shows, and its especially painful watching Tories put themselves through the ringer as they tend to be particularly bad at it. Unless you’re Boris Johnson, naturally, who provides the nation with a walking, cycling mass entertainment industry just by getting up in the morning.

Cameron’s certainly been putting himself about a bit, what with Desert Island Discs (don’t worry Kirsty, I think you’re great!) and now Wossy. But why must they do it? Cameron’s better than most of his predecessors at hitting the circuit, but it’s still cringe worthy to watch, like watching your dad dancing at a wedding. And let’s face it, an interviewer like Ross (or indeed anybody) is not going to let an opportunity like this pass. But, the important thing to note is that he treats all his guests like this, so Mr Tebbit, do put that truncheon down and let the kids get on with it. They’re having fun!

The TV world has been abuzz recently with the details of broadcasters’ new media deals with Pact, the independent producers’ body, over new media rights. The reasons for these deals are not only so that broadcasters can offer programmes for download themselves, but after an agreed amount of time (in the case of ITV and Channel 4, 30 days ) indie programme makers will be able to pursue other new media deals.

The first of these has now been mooted. Broadcast reports (sub. req.) that RDF Media is to set up its own broadband site, possibly operational by the end of the year.

Still in the planning stages, it’s not clear yet how customers will pay for the content. RDF is apparently “exploring pay-per- view, pay-to-own and subscription models… [and] has also not ruled out making the service available outside the UK.” There’s also talk of expanding the service to other indies in time.

Although RDF owns Touchpaper TV, makers of dramas such as Rocket Man, The Queen’s Sister and NY:LON as well as Julian Fellowes’ A Most Mysterious Murder, they’re surely better known for their reality hits, Wife Swap, Shipwrecked (through subsidiary RDF Television) and the Phil’n’Kirsty property shows Location, Location, Location and their spin-offs (from IWC Media). So they should be encouraged by a US research report that claims users of video-on-demand (VOD) services are 27% more likely to watch reality formats than your average viewer.

It’s one of the most enduring TV sponsorship deals, but in the wake of its salmonella scare, chocolate giant Cadbury has temporarily pulled its sponsorship of Coronation Street until the hoopla and investigations have calmed down a touch.

Is this the right move? I’m not so sure. The partnership between ITV (ne Granada) and Cadbury is in its tenth year, and the branding is so fused with Corrie’s identity that it’s going to look mighty peculiar to have episodes going out without it after all these years…

I’m no fan of corporate sponsorship, but it’s here and clearly isn’t going anywhere, so I’m not sure of the benefit in pulling the idents, even if only for a couple of days. In a time of crisis like this, trying to put your head in the sand and pretend you don’t exist is counter-productive. Keep your consumers reassured that you’re still in business, that you’re still the nation’s favourite and once this all settles down you’ll all be stuffing your faces with Dairy Milk again. Won’t you?

But is there something we’re not being told here? The reporting of this story puts the slant on Cadbury having pulled the idents, but could this be spin from ITV? Has the channel itself requested the removal of Cadbury’s name to protect the reputation of Coronation Street as the nation’s favourite soap and keep its hands squeaky, cosily clean? That, in the grand scheme of things, would make a great deal more sense and a move I couldn’t argue with.

When the idents do come back, I think the Cadbury board should personally go to every viewer’s house, handing out free chocolate in the shape of Fred Elliott at about 7.29 pm. It’d work for me!

Mobile network 3 has announced that the company is looking for ideas for a TV show to be made exclusively for mobiles.

The network already allows the trendiest term in modern media, ‘user generated content’, through its See-Me TV service: if you upload a video, you earn a little bit of cash every time somebody else downloads it.

This new project, though, is to be of a more professional nature:

At a presentation at Bafta [on Tuesday], the company, the UK’s newest network with 3.5m customers, dangled a cash carrot in front of producers. It is looking for a concept or format that will engage the mobile audience and will commit £50,000 to make a pilot of the best idea pitched by the end of July.

The new programme will be broadcast over the network’s 3G channel.

So, put your thinking caps on — but remember some of the lessons learned by MTV, as we described last month:

To be intelligible on screens sometimes smaller than 2 inches by 2 inches, most shots must be close-ups. Producers also have to limit zooming, panning and quick movement, which can blur because of slow streaming rates and because cellphones often deliver only 15 frames of video per second, compared with 30 frames per second on regular television.

We’re coming to the end of the BBC’s own experiment with content especially for mobile phones, with their TARDISODE drama-cum-trailers for Doctor Who. It’s interesting to note, though, that the BBC have pretty much ignored MTV’s rules of thumb, with the result that the episodes don’t really work on mobiles, although they look pretty good streamed from the BBC’s site.

No details yet on entry requirements for 3’s competition, or where to send your ideas to — we’ll bring you more when we get it. A personal plea, though — make your ideas much easier to understand than those horrible adverts for the phones themselves. No singing cherries, floating jellyfish, musical capsules or flying silk sheets, please!

More from the lovely Paul Jackson, who was on ebullient form at yesterday’s Broadcasting Press Guild lunch. This time the topic was Gordon Ramsay and honesty was the dish of the day.

The executive, clearly a little hurt by the expletive-tastic chef’s decision to sign up to Channel 4 for four years, said that he felt let down. Apparently the fiery Ramsay had all but signed on the dotted line — at least, he’d indicated that he was an ITV man on the Saturday of ITV1’s Soccer Aid final.

Sadly a day is a long time in TV land and sure enough by the following Monday, Kevin Lygo was able to rub his hands with glee.

Now on the face of it, Jackson may be saying that Ramsay’s decision was fair enough, all’s fair in love and TV, and that he’s looking forward to having lots of him on ITV1 this autumn (in the form of the American take on Hell’s Kitchen), but here is what he really thinks of the former Glasgow Rangers footballer’s new Channel 4 show:

“If Gordon thought The F-Word was the answer, I don’t know what he thought the question was because The F-Word is a pile of poo. I am not alone in thinking that he has injected a lot of Hell’s Kitchen into the middle of the show.”

Ouch.

Hard to believe, but the all-new TV Today is a month old this week, and what a month it’s been. We’ve seen the troubled ITV announcing major changes to its output, including the slashing of in-house children’s programming. Channel 4 has gone Big Brother crazy (I didn’t) and today launches a streaming TV service via the wonders of broadband.

The BBC has kept quiet about its upcoming tsunami drama and paid Jonathan Ross a huge amount of cash to stop him defecting elsewhere. And Five just keeps hanging on in there like Tim Henman, and we just can’t help but cheer them on.

We admitted to loving Holby City, we loved Sean Tully even more, and even the walking Viagra that is Russell Brand couldn’t escape our steely gaze. And once in a while we may have mentioned how much we adore Doctor Who (well we do, alright?)

But how has it been for you? Is the potent TV Today cocktail mix to your liking, or do we need more vermouth? Do you want more news, more hard-edged comment, more Ant and Dec? In other words, are we getting it right? Don’t be shy and let us know what you think…

Just when you thought it was safe to start switching the TV back on and have a decent chance of avoiding sweaty men knocking balls around, Wimbledon comes along and spoils it all. Oh well. Not to mention the fact that TV listings magazines currently read like one of those old Fighting Fantasy books. If there is no live football tonight, turn to page four and the schedule might look like this. Otherwise, if Argentina thrash Germany and it doesn’t go to extra time and only two goals have been scored, then turn to page 7 and if you’re lucky, Emmerdale might be on at 3am. On ITV4. They’d have better luck turning the Radio Times into an episode of Deal or No Deal…

Thankfully, as last week, there is an oasis of sanity in Still Game (BBC2, Monday 9pm). This brilliant comedy gets better series by series, and in a world where the loss of the sit-com is bemoaned with the regularity of an Edinburgh Castle cannon, it’s good to see this unashamedly traditional comedy still doing business after five series. This week, Jack and Victor offer to decorate Isa’s living room, but go a little further than Homebase in their enthusiasm to get the job done. Brutal one-liners exist in synergy with a great cast of characters – a treat.

Conversely, the jury is still out on Saxondale (BBC2, Monday 10pm) after an intriguingly patchy first episode last week. There’s no faulting Steve Coogan’s performance in this latest vehicle, and now we have the set-up of Saxondale’s world mapped out, this second episode may well bring everything together to be truly great (much as Tim Henman says to himself every year around this time).

Technically outside our remit of drama, comedy and light entertainment, the dawn of a new series of Property Ladder (C4, Wednesday 8pm) is always worth mentioning. If there was a religion devoted to the property goddess that is Sarah Beeny, I’d be first in line at the altar to worship. She’s like your best ladette mate fused with schoolmistress charm, and you ignore her advice at your peril. But, ignore it they do, these fools who arrive week in and week out to do up their recent property purchases. Will they ever learn? Let’s hope not.

I’m the first to admit that I can have some strange leanings in my viewing habits, but even I spend sleepless nights worrying about my soft policy on Holby City (BBC1, Thursday 8pm). I might even go as far as believing it to be compellingly plotted, excellently acted and tightly directed, but some of you might start suggesting stronger medication. By comparison, Casualty feels like it’s stuck in 1987. This week, the magnificent Connie Beauchamp has some probing questions to ask Elliot Hope… You see? Brilliant!

Finally (a word Tim Henman has to look up in the dictionary) there is Coup! (BBC2, Friday, 9pm), a satire on Sir Mark Thatcher’s involvement in the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea from the pen of John Fortune. Robert Bathurst is Thatcher, with Jared Harris as Simon Mann, who tapped Thatcher for a loan and a helicopter like you might borrow a tenner from your dad. This is bound to be controversial, and so it should be, but the satirical bent seems at odds with what are quite weighty issues. After her recent turn in The Line of Beauty, Caroline Blakiston climbs the political ladder to the very top here, getting to play Mrs T herself. One to watch, if only to see where the fallout starts and ends.

Oh, and finally, come on Tim! Or not…

Dynasty, Starsky and Hutch, Hart to Hart, Charlie’s Angels, Beverley Hills 90210, Fantasy Island, erm… Matt Houston. All TV icons, and today the television industry mourns the loss of one of the greats, Aaron Spelling, the producer mogul who died yesterday, having brought these and many other TV shows to the screens

Even if you didn’t know his name, chances are the Spelling stamp is on one of your much favoured childhood favourites, whether it be the roaring excesses of uber-cops Starsky and Hutch, the graceful charms of those three little girls Charlie’s Angels, or the opulent sleuthing of Hart to Hart (Jennifer Hart who was, by the way, “gorgeous!”).

In a career that stretched way back to the mid-1950s, Spelling had something of a delicious Midas touch, casting beautiful people to populate his shows, exemplified in the anti-Dallas, Dynasty, and teen soap Beverley Hills 90210, controversially featuring his daughter Tori that had the masses screaming nepotism. Guilty pleasures is a phrase that could be assigned to a great deal of Spelling’s output, and even fare like Sunset Beach seemed deliberately pitched to be garbage of the highest order, but easily the most watchable commodity Five had in its arsenal before the arrival of CSI. Even as recently as 2006, I’ll happily admit to sneaking a look at Charmed on a Saturday night over a tub of Ben and Jerry’s before heading to the pub.

But it’s in the cosy hinterland of the mid-seventies and early eighties that Spelling’s work will spark the most nostalgic pub conversation fodder. Not all Spelling shows crossed the Atlantic, but he did have a talent for midwifing product that travelled well. Starsky and Hutch was essential dressing-gown-on-the-sofa viewing for any red-blooded eight-year-old on a Saturday night in 1977, and TJ Hooker put Captain Kirk in a cop uniform. Best thing ever! Even Hart to Hart had a part to play on those post bath Sunday evenings, bringing those queasy butterflies that there was school to go to the following morning, but it wasn’t here until the closing titles finished and bed beckoned.

Generations of TV viewers have a lot to thank Aaron Spelling for, but the likes of Joan Collins, William Shatner and John Forsythe owe him a greater debt – a sizeable pension in syndication repeat fees…

From the week on TV Today:

• Are ITV’s cuts the way to success?
• Square Eyes: 24-25 June
• Are you ready for your close-up?
• Heartbeat country
• Channel 4 to simulcast TV shows on broadband
• The curtain comes down on Top of the Pops
• Brandwagon, part II: the supremo strikes back
• Love thy MBE
• ITV pulls out of in-house children’s television
• More Freeview homes = good news for ITV?
• The Brand bandwagon rolls on
• Square Eyes: 19-23 June

Elsewhere on The Stage:

• Dyke will front C4 TV talent search
• Santer becomes EastEnders chief as Harwood promoted
• C4 to simulcast shows on broadband
• BBC1 to broadcast ‘historical ER’
• Top of the Pops dropped after 42 years
• ITV axes award-winning children’s production arm
• Universal Music to partner C4 Radio in licence bid
• It’s All Over for BBC comedy sports quiz
• Queer Eye star Bennett to host Gaydar radio show
• Freeview on course to overtake Sky
• Housewife wins Channel 4 playwright reality show
• ITV agrees Pact deal on new media rights
• Sky One lands Kylie cancer fight interview
• BBC1 to stage dance talent search
• TV Review: Harry Venning reviews The Play’s The Thing, The Singing Estate and Drop Dead Gorgeous

This week, ITV bosses laid out their plans to cope with the shortfall in advertising income that they’re facing. But is their proposed solution really going to help — or plunge them into more trouble?

Simon Shaps, ITV’s director of television, laid out this week the cuts that the company hopes will contribute a £100m reduction in the company’s expenditure. It’s going to cut back significantly on the number of one-off and two-part dramas that it puts out, instead concentrating on longer-running series that can be made more cheaply.

But at the same time, Shaps wants to improve ITV1’s performance in the advertiser-friendly markets of young, upmarket viewers who are currently staying away from the channel in droves. And like it or not, that takes money.

Part of the company’s plans include an extra payout to its shareholders of £200 million — taking the total cash returned to shareholders to £500m in 2006. I’m not a broker or city analyst, so maybe that may make sense in the world of the stock markets — although analysts responded by downgrading their opinions of ITV’s stock to one level above ‘junk’. Surely, though, that money could be better spent on improving the quality of the broadcasters’ content? Just think what half a billion pounds could buy in terms of well-made, interesting programmes that make ITV’s portfolio of channels a genuine destination again. Cutting the amount of money instead makes me worry that ad revenues will continue to fall, as the viewers ITV already has defect to channels that believe in spending money on decent programming.

The pool of TV ad income is getting smaller, of that there’s no doubt. As multichannel television takes hold in the UK, there are also more channels fishing for the lucrative ad contracts than ever before. Right now, it feels as if ITV are responding by throwing away their well-made fishing gear, and replacing it with a piece of twine on a stick.

Square Eyes has had a tough old time this week — not so much picking out the best of this weekend’s telly, but working out when the blithering heck anything’s on. With the BBC having the rights to England’s second round World Cup game, everything depended on whether they finished top or not. Apparently that’s been decided (I wouldn’t know — Michael Owen is the only reason I ever watch football, so I lost interest after 58 seconds of the Sweden match), so things may start to settle down a little on the scheduling front. However, every World Cup match from now on could be subject to extra time and penalties, so be prepared for last-minute changes.

On to Saturday, then, and we’re sticking with a sport theme(ish), with this week’s slice of Doctor Who (7pm BBC1), which visits London just in time for the opening of the 2012 Olympics. Rather than heading straight to the stadium, though, the Doctor and Rose get sidetracked by mysterious goings-on in the newly-built Dame Kelly Homes Place, where a children’s drawings are coming to life… It’s a curious episode this week, and not one that will be to all tastes — but as next week sees the start of the climactic end-of-series two-parter, a change of pace is welcome.

Over on Channel 4, The Play’s The Thing (8.15pm) reaches its own finale. Of course, by now everybody knows which play has won, and with press night happening last night, the reviews are out. It’s kind of going against TV Today’s remit to say this, but if you want to see great, experimental theatre by new writers, you don’t need to wait until a reality TV show covers one play — there’s loads of great stuff going on in fringe theatre all over the country all year round.

Staying with theatre, the last in the current run of The Culture Show (8.40pm, BBC2) sees comedian Danny Robins come to the end of his ‘Supersize Shakespeare’ experiment, where he attempted to see all 37 of the bard’s plays in just 30 days.

Skipping to Sunday, and for the young and young at heart, there’s The Children’s Party at the Palace (6pm, BBC1), a celebration of children’s literature and TV entertainment. Some specially-written Harry Potter scenes are promised, together with The Queen’s Handbag, a live show with a bunch of characters from all branches of children’s entertainment.

Something not for the children — although arguably still juvenile — is Best Ever Spitting Image (10pm ITV1), showcasing the classic satirical puppet show. While the series itself was patchy at the best of times, this hour-long show (presented by new puppet forms of Ant and Dec) is full of some of the best bits, as well as interviews with some of the voice talents and the personalities who had the mickey taken out of them so mercilessly. If that doesn’t satisfy your appetite for latex tomfoolery, ITV4 has two episodes starting at 11pm.

I’ve just had an interesting conversation with a writer from The Times, who’s preparing a piece for Saturday’s paper on the implications of HDTV on actors.

I think he’s aiming for the same sort of angle as this one featured on TV Predictions, which tries to make out that HDTV is going to be the primary cause for Hollywood celebrities running to the nearest cosmetic surgeon — as if they don’t do that already. After all, cinema screens are far larger than TV screens; any perceived defects are going to be far more visible when they’re projected to many times larger than natural size.

I’m not an actor, of course — and therefore am more than willing to be corrected by someone who is — but my perception is that most actors will be more concerned about (a) where the next job’s coming from and (b) that they’re giving a good performance — or at least a good enough performance that they’ll secure the job after that. Those are concerns that have been around since before the dawn of television, and they won’t change.

Truth is, away from the Hollywood obsessions with perfection that drive normally sane women to starve themselves until they’re stick thin, just so they can land that dream role on Desperate Housewives, our greatest performers are loved not in spite of their flaws, but in many cases because of them.

If HDTV is going to bring any workplace challenges, it’s far more likely to affect the make-up artists, set designers, costume makers and directors of photography who, along with the actors, have to convince us, the viewing public, that we’re watching real people in a real environment. The new technologies will make any corner-cutting that much more visible.

The actors, of course, have a role to play too — to be as realistic in their portrayal of their character as they possibly can be. And, despite what any journalist would have them think, no amount of nips, tucks or face-paralysing Botox injections can help you with that.

Even bloggers with their finger on the pulse of this business we call telly need a holiday from time to time, so this week finds me on a family break in the North Yorkshire Moors. Not particularly interesting in itself, but I’m sitting writing this over a pint of foaming local Stella in The Goathland Hotel, aka The Aidensfield Arms, pub of choice to characters of that ITV perennial, Heartbeat.

Goathland, which doubles as Aidensfield, is a blink and you’ll miss it place, pub on one side, garage on the other. But the ratings phenomenon that is Heartbeat brings coach loads to this remote little village all year round. I can’t ask the residents what they think about this perpetual intrusion into their lives as I haven’t actually seen any residents, but the few shops and B&Bs in the locality must do very nicely off the back of tourists and regular visits from the Heartbeat crew. And if I didn’t know better, I’d say the train station down the road is where the Hogwarts Express pulls into, so that must bring the kiddies in too.

TV locations are a curious thing. The bar of the Goathland Hotel (ITV shoots interiors for the Aidensfield Arms here too) is plastered with postcards, pamphlets and general Heartbeat bumf, but the bar staff seem reticent to answer questions on the subject. They’ve even produced a book of the 18 frequently asked questions, which can be yours for a quid, so you don’t have to. But on the whole, everybody seems quite happy with the reciprocal arrangement that brings a few thousand pensioners streaming into the area every year.

But, if Heartbeat ever went to year round production, Goathland would be dumped quicker than you can say “Theme tune sung by Nick Berry” for a dedicated back lot, much as happened when production was ramped up on Emmerdale to its current insane levels of output. Somewhere in the village of Esholt stands the original location for The Woolpack, once a destination for coach trips, now a sadly neglected location from a bygone era of TV production (but I’m sure the beer is still lovely). Ever since Granada closed its backstage tour theme park, the public are now denied the opportunity to wander down Coronation Street itself. Back in my time there as a tour guide in my post university days, Corrie’s requirements for filming on the Street set amounted to a couple of days a week, if that. This gave plenty of time for the masses to have their pictures taken outside the corner shop and buy a Rovers Return teapot from the giftshop that is now the doctor’s surgery. If the park was open now, I doubt the Street set would be open at all due to the demands of the filming schedule, now magnified to ridiculous levels.

So, from a jolly piece about being on holiday, I’ve turned this into a rant about the outrageous levels of soap production. I appeal to soap producers everywhere - slash the number of episodes and let your adoring public walk down Coronation Street once more. It’s your national duty!

[Ed’s note: Expanded story is now available in our news section] Channel 4 is to air its commissioned programmes simultaneously on the main channel and on broadband, making it the first major UK broadcaster to launch a service of this type. Chief executive Andy Duncan said that broadcasters had to start thinking of new media as the “now media”.

Talking at the New Statesman annual media lecture, he said:

I don’t see the digital revolution as an attack on Channel 4’s power as a public broadcaster. I see it as a fantastic opportunity to build on what Channel 4 has always done - stimulate, infuriate, debate, create. The difference is we’re doing it in many more ways than just via broadcast these days, because we have to engage with the public wherever they are.

The new broadband simulcast will be available to PC users from June 27 via the channel4.com website but will not include films or acquired shows such as Lost and Desperate Housewives. At launch it will still carry the same commercials as the television channel, but the broadcaster plans to see advertising on the broadband service once it has been established. Registered users will be able to access a streamed live version of the Channel 4 schedule, allowing them to watch Channel 4’s flagship shows at the same time as their TV transmission.

It started back on January 1, 1964 — and will finish on July 30 this year. Yes, pop warhorse Top of the Pops is finally getting the axe, leaving goggle-eyed telly waif Fearne Cotton with just seventeen remaining TV presenter jobs (honestly, the girl’s everywhere - she’s even doing Love Island later this summer).

It’s hard to put one’s finger on exactly what went wrong with TOTP. Being tied in to the singles chart, which latterly became more subject to the caprice of the record pluggers and less about the public’s musical taste, didn’t help. Arguably, the real problems started when the show moved to Friday nights, immediately robbing it of that crucial Friday morning “did you see?” conversation piece in the nation’s schoolgrounds. More recently, the advent of 24-hour music jukebox TV channels, and saturation coverage of artists and performers on all the other channels, have denied TOTP the unique position it once enjoyed.

Ironically, as a show, Top of the Pops is arguably stronger now than it has been in a long while. Hiring Andi Peters as executive producer, much scorned at the time, was a sensible move — having created Channel 4’s successful T4 strand, and before that, The Noise, ITV’s long-forgotten Saturday morning precursor to CD:UK (itself now axed, although it’ll be resurrected in its new home on Five soon), the show gained a confidence in itself that had been missing for a long time. With a dwindling audience it didn’t feel like it could take the risks it once did, but was not much the worse for all that.

Alas, the move to Sunday nights on BBC2 gave the first signs that the Beeb, while not wanting to euthanise their long-running brand, were at least content to let it wither away out of sight.

So in a few week’s time, we’ll only have our memories of a great TV show left. And while I am of course far too young to remember Pan’s People in their glory days, I still smile whenever I hear Dexy’s Midnight Runners singing Jackie Wilson Said — remembering their TOTP performance in front of a giant blow-up picture of darts player Jocky Wilson. Ah, the glory days…

Having written a perfect riposte to the Brandwagoners (even if I do say so myself) from my suitably lofty high horse yesterday, I took myself off for a rare night of non-broadcast related fun to see Market Boy at the National.

Being the polite sort I put my phone on silent and sat back to enjoy the show (which, incidentally, is a lot of fun) but nipped out at the interval to check my voicemail and rather was amazed to have a rather long list of Russell Brand related messages.

Sadly most of these blog readers seem to be more focused on my private life, how one whores round a barbecue, and of course who and how many of said friends have been involved in the described entanglements with the gothic creature.

Thankfully just as I was starting to think that the salacious (or otherwise) snippets had taken away from the case I was making, ITV entertainment supremo Paul Jackson drops me a line, telling me that while he loves the piece, word that he is planning to work with the popular comic is just industry speculation. He cheerfully adds:

“I am not talking to him, for precisely the reasons you outlined in your article.”

Phew. For a moment I thought that I was going to become part of the phenomenon I was questioning. Oh and one more thing while I’ve got your attention, the network are lining up a new all-star show called Benidorm as part of their charge back into the comedy world. Details to come in the next few days…

Rudolph Walker’s name in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list to receive an MBE was a very welcome nod for a great actor. Walker has been a backbone of the EastEnders rosta for a good few years now as Patrick Trueman, when the comings and going in the Square have been getting silly. It would be easy to say he received the MBE for having to endure Patrick’s ridiculous affair with Pat (surely the most hideous soap sight since the last time Ken and Deirdre had a good snog up). But that’s too flippant and easy – Walker has been a face on British TV for years, always able to turn some fairly workaday lines into a credible performance (witness The Thin Blue Line for starters).

Patrick Trueman aside, Walker is still best known for a role that still divides cultural commentators to this day (although audiences at the time didn’t need much persuading to tune in in their millions). As Bill Reynolds in Love Thy Neighbour, he underwent a weekly dose of racist outbursts from next door neighbour Eddie Booth (Jack Smethhurst). Love Thy Neighbour has long since been banished to the land of TV taboo, but I always wonder how many of its detractors have sat through an episode…

For some bizarre reason, the caretaker of my building has an entire run of Love Thy Neighbour on DVD, and thought I might like to borrow them. For fear of causing offence, I took the proffered box set, intending to keep them for a couple of weeks, unwatched, but found myself later that night drawn to firing the DVD player up. And I was surprised – not pleasantly, because it is awful in the way that only 1970s sitcoms can be. And yes, the dodgy expressions of racism are all present and correct. But this aside, as a product of its cultural backdrop, it’s very well written, and Walker does not play the oppressed minority. His character is just as posturing, macho and narrow-minded as his nemesis and frequently comes off looking just as stupid. It is the wives of these idiots, played by Kate Williams and Nina Baden-Semper who know exactly how things are in the world and are portrayed as intelligent, forward thinking women. For the 1970s, that’s pretty progressive. And if you want to see an example of what people wrongly accuse Love Thy Neighbour of being, try and seek out a copy of the thoroughly hateful and risible Curry and Chips.

So to Mr Walker, a tip of the hat, a raise of the glass, for a MBE well earned. And when critics try to tell you Love Thy Neighbour is something that it wasn’t, just smile knowingly and nod.

ITV has confirmed that it is to shut down its in-house children’s television department, although it hopes to sell it off as a going concern.

Staff at production units in London, Manchester and Leeds are affected by the closure, according to MediaGuardian.

“We can confirm that we are consulting on the disposal of ITV Productions Kids,” the spokesman said.

“The decision is part of [an] ongoing process of restructuring within ITV Productions, and ITV plc more generally, to improve efficiency in the business.

“The ITV Productions Kids unit has been responsible for many great children’s programmes, and ITV Productions Kids content will continue to be seen on ITV for some time to come.”

Notice they don’t say ITV1 — as pointed out yesterday, there is next to no children’s programming on the broadcaster’s terrestrial channel during the World Cup, despite ITV’s public service commitment to a minimum of eight hours.

It is claimed that part of the reason for ITV shying away from children’s TV is Ofcom’s proposed ban on junk food advertising, which is predicted to lose the industry £140m in ad revenues, as well as ITV’s poor advertising performance overall. The two elements together mean that the broadcaster has to concentrate on markets where it knows it can make money — especially important when the company is seen as ripe for takeover: we have to stop fat kids, but the fat cats roll on…

The news that Freeview is catching up with, and may overtake, Sky in the digital subscriber stakes is a little bit of good news for ITV. The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) quarterly report into the state of the TV marketplace shows that, although all five terrestrial channels have lost audience share in the last two years, ITV1 has a far greater share in Freeview households than on any other digital platform.

Part of the reason for that is both the channel and the platform have a skew towards the older end of the population. That’s also a risk for ITV, as the 55+ market rarely attracts the sort of advertising income that are spent on younger audiences. The Guardian notes:

According to industry estimates, next month [ITV1’s ad revenues] will fall 18.3% year-on-year and slip 13.4% in August. If those trends continue, advertising turnover at ITV1, the main source of profitability at ITV plc, will fall 11% this year to £1.4bn.

And of course, with lower ad revenues comes the threat of smaller programme budgets — thus meaning fewer quality programmes, whilch means lower ratings… and so the cycle goes on.

At the other end of the scale, the children’s market is one that could really benefit from the uptake of digital TV. ITV1 is still the strongest terrestrial channel for children’s viewing — a share of 14.7% compared to BBC1’s 13.8% — but the accumulated non-terrestrial share is a whopping 53.1%. Of course, the BBC’s two children’s channels have recently been joined by ITV’s own CITV — but just as it’s getting started, there’s next to no children’s television on ITV1 with which to promote the new channel. While the BBC pioneered cross-channel promotion with its CBBC and CBeebies strands on terrestrial, World Cup coverage has reduced the amount of CITV programming on ITV1 (excluding GMTV’s weekend cartoons) to a paltry half an hour this week.

Without an effective shop window for their nascent channel, ITV could find themselves falling behind in the children’s market, too.

Russell Brand. Everyone’s talking about him, sleeping with him, or trying to hire him. Love him or loathe him he makes great fodder for idle conversation and for showbiz hacks on slow news days.

I’d like, if I may, to use my life as an example. For the past three months whichever dinner party, barbecue, birthday bash or media mela I whore myself around to, some bright spark brings him up. Around the same time I came to notice that a small but perhaps disproportionate percentage of my friends -– all from different parts of my life -– have had some kind of sexual entanglement with the gangly one. Most recently of all I’ve found myself in whispered conversation with execs from ITV, Channel 4 and the BBC all telling me in hushed tones that they have had suitably dramatic lunches or meetings with the walking addiction, talking over the idea of giving him a show on TV or on radio.

Of course, a fling with Kate Moss helps, but all in all, this is the sort of blanket coverage that PRs and agents drool over. And as the hype snowballs so do audiences and it seems executives panic that they are missing out on the next big thing.

Now Brand is an intelligent, not half-bad comic in his own right, so news that he is penning a BBC radio show makes sense, and his zany madcap on-screen persona appeals to the holy grail 16-24 demographic and does pretty well for E4 and Channel 4 when cocooned in the world of Big Brother. So there is potential for him to develop well –- although speaking to the ever-twinkly Kevin Lygo last week, he seemed somewhat more reticent of the idea of a Brand-centred series at this stage than recent reports would suggest.

The problem with such bandwagon hiring and signing is that it doesn’t always make sense longer term. Industry folk might be getting lost in the spiel and pegging him as the answer to Jonathan Ross, but it’s worth noting that Brand’s show for MTV does pretty appallingly in the ratings. Now it might be the broadcaster, it might be the vehicle or it might be Brand so I agree it’s important to test talent, but I suspect for a few this is more about the ready-made column inches than anything else.

One source tells me that ITV are pretty keen to have him to front some sort of Ross/Parky-esque chatshow. Now I know they are trying to overhaul their image at the moment, with the fabulous Paul Jackson spearheading the way, but having failed to secure the likes of Gordon Ramsay et al despite offering the big bucks, to be honest this latest potential signing just smacks of desperation.

When an actor is associated with one role above all others, any new creation from the performer is always going to be viewed with suspicion, and so Steve Coogan attempts to give Alan Partridge’s Pringle sweater to a charity shop once more as Saxondale (Monday BBC2 10pm) arrives. Tommy Saxondale is an ex-roadie fallen on hard times, now forced to run a pest control business. He’s corpulent, rude and thinks he’s God’s gift to just about everything. As it’s got the pedigree of Coogan behind it, Saxondale is clearly going to be worth a look, but the inherent unpleasantness of the character misses the Captain Mainwaring rule of comedy, so expertly observed by David Brent. It’s okay to be unklikeable, but make sure your audience can pity you. Thankfully, Coogan has able support from Ruth Jones, (Little Britain’ s Myfanwy), who clearly should be for Wales what Ashley Jensen is to Scotland.

After complaining so vociferously about the lack of decent comedy in the schedules not so long back, my cup it seems doth runneth over with mirth early this week. Preceding Saxondale and bookending a repeat of The Catherine Tate Show, is the fifth series of Still Game (Monday BBC2, 9pm). This satellite of Scottish sketch show Chewing the Fat has become an entity in its own right, starring Ford Kiernan and Greg Hamphill as crotchety pensioners Jack and Victor. The show has a cult following around the world (the live version has toured internationally) and is genuinely funny with a gag rate that a lot of comedies only dream about.

The always controversial Gordon Ramsay returns with a new series of The F Word (Wednesday, C4 8.30pm). The first series was an odd mix of meaty cookery issues and oddly staged vignettes in the F Word restaurant, which looked like a hastily constructed set for a school play. But Ramsay is always entertaining, a foul-mouthed PT Barnum of the culinary world, and with his recent delicious run-in with Cliff Richard over a wine-tasting, expect plenty of celebrity scraps throughout the run.

Also on Wednesday night, and staying with C4, there is the double-header finale of series two of Desperate Housewives (10pm). This series has definitely not reached the heights of the first outing, but the flashbacks of how the residents of Wisteria Lane first met are good fun.

As the World Cup heaves it’s bulk ever onwards, BBC 2 and C4 are coming up scheduling roses, and sticking with C4 sees the second episode of Sugar Rush (11.05pm). This is sizzling, colourful stuff, and the question remains as to why such a deftly produced drama is put out at after 11pm, considering the teen slant to the subject matter. I’m not saying Sugar Rush should be put out in the Hollyoaks slot, but a little earlier would be nice. Or maybe the schedulers think that anybody watching will have the sudden urge to become a lesbian.

Finally, considering his recently reported new pay deal with the BBC, it seems an opportune time to check out Friday Night With Jonathan Ross to see if the Woss-meister is earning his allegedly whopping keep that has taken flak from the higher powers. I like Ross – in recent years Friday Night… and his Radio 2 show have become regulars in my viewing/listening habits. But is anybody worth that much hard wonga? Let’s see how he handles the decidedly slippery David Cameron, who could easily be Jonathan Ross after somebody has filed away all the rough edges and let Trinny and Suzanna have a go at him.

This week’s run-down of all the television-related stuff from the past week.

7 days’ worth of postings from TV Today:

• Mobile TV starts bringing in the money
• Square Eyes: 17-18 June
• Why’s she leaving? Because she wants to!
• Four’s imports: the rundown
• More awards please, we’re British
• Kids not cooking on gas
• Analogue spectrum may not be there for HD
• I ♥ Sean Tully
• Square Eyes: 12-16 June
• TV presenters to qualify for tax relief on agents’ payments?

TV-related news from The Stage:

• Piper’s Rose to die at climax of current Doctor Who run
• C4 snaps up two more US dramas
• Salford wins £400m BBC media village
• Channel 4 develops The Comic Strip-style celebrity sketch show
• Scream Films makes ad-libbed sitcom for Five
• TV industry would lose £140m in junk food ad ban
• Where the Heart Is to tackle mercy killings
• Cleese retires from performing
• TV Review: Harry Venning reviews Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns, Stan, The Kindness of Strangers and Sven: the Coach, the Cash and His Lovers

Yesterday, news crept out that the Sky Mobile TV, the joint venture with Vodafone that allows the network’s 3G handsets to receive multiple linear channels of television, now has 100,000 subscribers.

The subscriber figure for the streamed 3G service, called Sky Mobile TV, was unveiled by Sky’s strategic planning manager Alan Sewell during a panel debate at City law firm Denton Wilde Sapte on mobile TV.

Vodafone’s content development chief Graeme Ferguson told the event that 50% of 3G customers were opting for the free mobile TV offer for 30 days. After that two thirds were staying on as paying customers.

I think it’s unlikely that, as the article suggests, all 100,000 subscribers are paying the maximum £10 per month to receive all three channel packages on offer. But even if they’re not, that means that Sky Mobile is generating up to £1m in revenues per month. That’s impressive by anybody’s standards.

There should still be room for growth, though — especially when rights issues can be sorted out so that the channels on your mobile are exact copies of the ones on your TV set.

• Sky Mobile TV has 100,000 Vodafone subs - DTG News

It appears, or so I’m told (not having been infected with World Cup fever), that there’s little to no drama to be found in England games at the moment. You have eighty minutes of turgid nonsense, followed by a frantic conclusion in which everything’s wrapped up, but leaves you feeling a little flat. Jokes about this drama unfolding on ITV primetime in the comment box below, please…

Away from football, however, and there’s some really good stuff. The highlight, which will annoy at least one TV Today commenter, is this week’s Doctor Who (Saturday 7:00pm) — not least because it’s not Doctor Who as we know it. Messrs Tennant and Piper pop up in supporting roles this week, with the focus switching away from the time-travelling twosome onto a group of people who have become obsessed with following the events of the mysterious “Doctor” and his blue box. Earlier this week, TV Today’s Mark described it as:

the most unusual, funny, touching, brilliant piece of television I’ve seen in a long time. The fans are going to hate it, but the general audience will lap it up!

That should be recommendation enough, of course, but if you’re still wavering, take a look at the mouth-wateringly intriguing guest list: Peter Kay, Marc Warren (Hustle) and Shirley Henderson (Dirty Filthy Love, Harry Potter’s Moaning Myrtle).

Following straight after on BBC Three, Doctor Who Confidential (Saturday 7:45pm) promises to continue the series’ in-depth look at modern television production techniques. This week, the show looks at some of the new ways in which the BBC’s online team have been continuing the drama in new ways, with downloadable mini-episodes, interactive games and episode commentaries. While it’s easy to think that a series like Confidential would only be interest to sci-fi fans, any show that can engage an audience into finding out more about TV production for thirteen weeks — and become one of the UK’s highest-rated non-terrestrial shows in the process — gets the thumbs up from us.

Back to more traditional drama now, and Channel 4’s theatre reality show, The Play’s the Thing (Saturday 8:10pm) follows the ten short-listed playwrights as they enjoy a masterclass with playwright Stephen Jeffreys, and struggle to turn their winning synopses into full-length plays. Reaction from TV critics to this series has generally been favourable; reaction from the theatre world has been less so. Director Paul Miller was disappointed:

In order to cope with this un-televisual subject matter, the programme resorts to showing the panel (Sonia, Mel Kenyon and Neil Pearson) meeting and interviewing the writers. The impression is then given by the editing that this is what they base their decision on. Cue much self-conscious X-Factor-style cod-angry trading of clichés. The jocular, naughty-Uncle voice over by Geoffrey Palmer, and the leather-sofa-ed, creaky-stairwell settings, make the theatre seem out of touch with reality, childish and stupid. Naturally.

If, however, this sort of reality-cum-docusoap is your thing, there’s also the second episode of Five’s The Singing Estate (Sunday 8:00pm), taking 40-odd people from Oxford’s Blackbird Leys Estate, and training them up to sing as a choir in the Royal Albert Hall.

Also on Sunday, and well worth the recommendation if only to compensate for my cheap jibe against ITV dramas at the top of the piece, is The Girls Who Came to Stay (ITV1, Sunday 9:30pm). Alun Armstrong and Lindsey Coulson play a middle-aged couple who foster two Belarussian girls for a month. Doesn’t sound the most appealing of premises, but the emotional baggage the girls bring with them, and the inter-relationships they develop with their British hosts, make for an effective, and affecting, one-off.

Something that Doctor Who fans have feared for months has happened – Billie Piper is dematerialising from the TV drama that marked her renaissance from former kiddie pop hobbit and Mrs Chris Evans into an accomplished, confident TV actress.

Unlike last year’s galactic gaffe (translation: PR lies) over the departure of Christopher Eccleston, it seems the BBC publicity machine has played a cleverer game this year. Piper has been very keen to stress in interviews that she was looking forward to starting on work on the third series of Doctor Who, and David Tennant has maintained she was staying… And now it turns out that not only is Rose leaving the Tardis, she might also end up being Cyberman sushi when the final episode airs on 8th July.

With the third series of Doctor Who commencing filming in the next few weeks, The Sun reports that Piper’s replacement has already been cast and will join David Tennant in the forthcoming Christmas special. Piper meanwhile is currently taking on another adventuring role, that of Sally Lockhart in a lavish BBC adaptation of Phillip Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke.

But who could possibly replace the English Rose after she changed the concept of the Doctor Who assistant from screaming bimbo whose sole function was to get the dads watching, to well-rounded character who developed from episode to episode. Here’s what TV Today thinks…

• Vicky Pollard. Unemployed Bristol lass looking for work (although she’s booked for panto). Comes from an estate, just like Rose Tyler, and could take on anything from an Axon to a Zygon… by drinking them under the table. The Tardis translation circuits might have trouble with her unique speech patterns, and don’t trust her with anything important. She’ll either lose it, eat it or sell it for beer money.

• Grace from Big Brother. Sudden availability expected this coming Friday.

• Tanya Turner. That much fake tan could get her mistaken for a monster, but this recently unemployed footballer’s wife would bring some much needed style to those dingy Tardis interiors. Her wardrobe is bigger on the inside than out in a mutton/lamb interface kind of way, but she isn’t great with the sonic screwdriver – her nails just get in the way. Looks great in an airhostess’s uniform.

• Tony Blair. Mr Blair’s agent, one Mr G Brown, Esq, is apparently keen for his client and close personal friend to take up the role. Negotiations continue…

So Channel 4 has fired off the starting gun and revealed its host of imports to pepper its schedules with. Sources tell me it’s not been a great year for shows across the pond, with very few really standing out and quite a lot of ‘romcom’-style series that might just be too saccharine for UK audiences.

I seem to spend a lot of time on here wagging my finger accusingly at various parts of the TV industry, so it’s pleasing today that I can be unapologetically back-slapping towards the excellent showing by British TV shows in Canada’s annual Banff World Television Awards.

Bleak House bagged yet another gong, this time for Best Mini Series, with the BBC also getting a first major awards nod for Life on Mars in the Continuing Series category. Bleak House is a no-brainer when it comes to awards, but it’s great to see the excellent, but risky, Life on Mars getting some recognition. This should bode well for the John Simm/Philip Glenister starrer in the domestic awards season, and the Kudos team must surely be looking to the BAFTAs next year.

The Beeb also took awards in Best Comedy for the Kate Winslett episode of Extras, Best Information (Current Affairs) for the documentary Mischief: A Dirty Weekend in Hospital, and the Social and Political Documentary catergory for Children of Beslan.

Jamie Oliver’s trophy cabinet continues to creak under the weight of yet more silverware. The much-feted Jamie’s School Dinners took the Lifestyle Program award, seeing Channel 4 rounding off a pair of awards with Young Black Farmers triumphing in the Unscripted Entertainment Program catergory.

Whether awards mean anything in the final analysis should never be an issue. Winning awards is nice, and when the recognition comes from the non-domestic market, this should be a source of real pride for the British TV industry.

So, to all the winners, sit back, light a cigar and enjoy a glass of bubbly, and then back to work immediately and make some more quality telly.

As a child of the Multicoloured Swap Shop/Tiswas era (the phone number 01 811 8055 is indelibly etched into my mind) I find it sad to note what is happening to BBC1 and ITV1’s Saturday morning schedules. Last Saturday saw the launch of Saturday Cooks! (the exclamation makes it sound like a musical) on ITV1, hosted by Antony Worrall Thomson, going up against a compilation repeat of BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen, hosted by erm… Antony Worrall Thomson. While this culinary bent is not a new thing (Saturday Kitchen has been resident on BBC1 for some months now), it does firmly relegate the traditional Saturday morning childrens’ programming to BBC2 and the CITV channel.

By its very nature, TV has to move on, along with the needs of the schedules, but I don’t have to cast my mind back too far to remember when Ant and Dec ruled the Saturday morning airwaves in the essential hangover viewing that was SM:TV Live. The Saturday morning tradition of a three-hour childrens’ show used to be a fertile breeding ground to nurture great presenting talent, and a hot bed of imaginative and innovating programming. It’s not without reason that anybody in their 30s remembers the Swap Shop/Tiswas face-off fondly. Two very different shows catering to a wide and very challenging audience, and that continued for over two decades, with the BBC dominating the market for the most part.

But something happened. Blandness started to bleed into the mix, coupled with plastic presenters cloned from the same gene pool, it seemed. Once we had Phillip Schofield and Sarah Greene, Sandi Toksvig and Neil Buchanan. Now we have Pop Idol refugees Sam and Mark. Come on, give me strength…

In this multi-channel age, it’s far too easy to shunt specialist programming into ever more niche cable channels. The quality of output from both the CBBC and CITV channels is not in question, but how far can the traditional childrens’ schedules of our premier terrestrials be skimmed until they all but disappear?

And the Saturday morning situation is a worry. I’m not at all convinced that the format of a Saturday morning kids’ show is dead. I want imagination, I want innovation, I want some decent talent that hasn’t been programmed into the presenter machine, I want a presenter with a beard… Actually I don’t, Noel Edmunds is doing well enough on C4, but it does seem a long time since these shows were fronted by anybody who was actually of an age to need a shave. Or maybe I’ve just grown too old. But my point stands – bring back decent kids shows to Saturday morning TV!

The current Saturday morning situation has provided me with a dilemma, though. I adore Saturday Kitchen, but was perfectly happy where it was on BBC2. After a couple of weeks of repeats, James Martin steps into the vacated shoes of Wozza, and the battle with his predecessor over on Saturday Cooks! will begin in earnest.

The prospects for the popular Martin’s tenure look good, considering AWT’s first outing for ITV1 couldn’t better a repeat of himself in Saturday Kitchen Second Helpings. The BBC1 compilation pulled in 0.9 million, with an 18.9 per-cent share, compared to Saturday Cooks!’ 0.6 million and a 12 per-cent share. It’ll be egg whisks at dawn, mark my words.

Saturday Cooks! is on ITV1 on Saturdays at 9.25am, while James Martin takes over head chef duties on BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen on 24th June.

Mighty Truck of Stuff is currently running on BBC2 on Saturdays at 9am, with the recently displaced Saturday Showdown being given a slot on the CITV channel on Saturday at 9.25am.

Last week, TV Today covered the trials delivering HDTV over DTT (Freeview). At the time, we noted that any full-scale rollout would probably depend on the analogue spectrum — the frequencies currently used for transmitting terrestial analogue channels — being allocated to DTT.

Broadcast (subscribers only) now reports Ofcom’s Ed Richards as saying it’s unlikely that the spectrum will be handed over to existing broadcasters.

Richards said he was “not convinced” by the BBC’s claims that it needs additional spectrum on DTT to deliver HD services and said there was an argument that the BBC could deliver more services through new compression techniques on the capacity it already has.

“If we accept the argument on high definition – what about Ultra HD – does that mean more spectrum still?”, said Richards.

So it looks as though DTT may not be getting many new services (if any at all) after analogue switchoff, unless broadcasters are going to prepared to dig deep to buy spectrum.

Coronation Street is never better than when it’s dealing with stories that work on a very basic emotional level. Storylines involving serial killer husbands or hit-and-run taxi drivers are all very well, but you can’t beat some good old father-son conflict.

Recently, one of the real stars of the Street has proven to be Antony Cotton. His character, Sean Tully started out as just a teatime-friendly version of Alexander Perry, the brash scene queen he played in Russell T. Davies’ Queer As Folk, popping up in the background of scenes where Corrie’s first full-time gay character, Todd Grimshaw, hit Manchester’s Canal Street for the first time. Indeed, the parallels between Sean and Alexander remain — both moved in with their best friend’s mother; both make an extra effort to be the life and soul of the party. And, as regular Street watchers will know, Sean’s relationship with his parents is far from simple, as was Alexander’s.

In Sean Tully’s case, it was the death of his beloved Aunty Betty that caused him to get in contact with his estranged father, played by Tim Healy. Last week saw a touchingly amusing “coming out” scene, with a nervous Sean breaking off from discussing his favourite Eurovision entries of all time to divulge the “shock” revelation that he’s gay — only to find out that, of course, his father knew well before he himself did. It’s a wonderful scene, one that never ducks the stereotypical traits of Sean’s character, but shows the vulnerable side that Cotton portrays so well.

Oh, is the World Cup still on? I thought that would have been decided on penalties by now.

If the heat hasn’t driven you outside to the paddling pool or the pub, and you ca be bothered to navigate your way through the schedules of doom, you might find a couple of gems to pass an hour (but clearly no comedy…)

The Play’s the Thing (C4, Monday 10pm) will be of interest to The Stage’s theatre readership, but is also a fantastically realised piece of reality TV to counter the peptic rumblings of the Big Brother house. West End impresario Sonia Friedman is joined by actor Neil Pearson and literary agent Mel Kenyon as they whittle down the hopes of 30 aspiring play scribblers by selecting a piece to go into the New Ambassadors this summer. The remaining three instalments following the production from early rehearsals to opening night are bound to compelling in the extreme.

Alternatively, Five brings its latest US import to screens. Big Love (Five, Monday 9pm) is controversial in that concentrates on the life and loves of Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) – and he’s got a lot of loving to do considering he’s a Mormon with three wives. The big question here, however, is how any man (even of Paxton’s upholding good looks) could pull three babes like his wives – and keep ‘em happy… If you’ve lost it with Lost and aren’t that desperate about those Housewives anymore, this could be a pleasant diversion.

In the absence of any halfway decent drama (repeats of Midsomer Murders don’t count), it seems that reality is ruling the roost this week with a big launch from BBC2 in The Convent (BBC2, Wednesday 9pm). As a follow up to The Monastery, four women attempt to break the habit of their lives by stepping into Arundel’s Convent of the Poor Clares. If The Monastery was anything to judge by, there will be laughter and tears in copious amounts along the 40 days and 40 and 40 nights.

And to be honest, that’s about your lot, aside from a return for The Friday Night Project on, appropriately, Friday night (C4, 10.30pm). It’s a love it or hate it kind of show, and maybe I’m getting old and tired, but I’m starting to warm to the shaggy charms of Justin Lee Collins (aka The JLC).

And can I just squeeze in a quick mention Doctor Who ahead of a more detailed weekend preview? Love and Monsters (BBC1, Saturday 7pm) is the most unusual, funny, touching, brilliant piece of television I’ve seen in a long time. The fans are going to hate it, but the general audience will lap it up!

FT.com and the BBC report on an appeal ruling in favour of chat show presenters Richard & Judy, which says that the couple were entitled to offset the cost of their agent against tax. The entitlement, said to cover their period presenting ITV daytime programme This Morning, comes under a category normally reserved for “actors, singers, musicians, dancers or theatrical artists”.

The two news reports both seem to have their tongues slightly in their cheeks when covering Special Commissioner Howard Nowlan’s 29-page report — not yet published online, from what I can see — especially when it comes to the areas discussing why certain categories of presenter may be covered, but others may not:

In what must rank as one of the stranger moments in the annals of tax history, Mr Nowlan published a 29-page ruling, a large chunk of which was devoted not only to reviews of their work but also pronounced on the theatricality of TV performers who had the nothing to do with the case.

Bruce Forsyth, Ant and Dec, Anne Robinson and Richard and Judy made the grade as entertainers but the somewhat theatrical Jeremy Paxman will have to go through life knowing that – at least for tax purposes – he is “not a theatrical artist”.

In reaching his decision on Richard and Judy, Mr Nowlan watched hours of their work, including tapes supplied by Revenue officials in support of its case.

The commissioner was taken with Mr Madeley’s air guitar playing and Miss Finnigan’s cross-dressing.

But he was particularly delighted by a video showing the couple in bed, with Richard irritating Judy by pretending to be Chris Tarrant, from Who wants to be a Millionaire.

Expect further clarification over the coming days.

A quick run-down of all the telly-related stuff on the website this week.

From TV Today:

• Square Eyes: 10-11 June
• Laugh? You’ll be Lucky
• “That bloody bird!”
• HD starts trials on digital terrestrial
• One man and his dog
• We’re a digital nation now
• BBC still courts tsunami controversy
• States of the arts programmes on Channel 4
• Joking Apart
• Square Eyes: 5-9 June
• Turn on, tune in… buy a new box?
• What shall we watch on the phone tonight?

TV-related news from the rest of The Stage:

• Ross renews BBC deal despite rivals’ big money bids
• Hull’s Emu back on CITV
• C4 strikes Pact deal over new media rights
• BBC2 bags O’Briain for ‘life-changing’ chatshow
• Ramsay signs with C4 until 2011
• Strictly Come Dancing winners awarded roles in Footloose
• Channel 4 to screen ENO and Taylor-Wood operas
• Barrowman, Ian and Tyler are BBC1 Maria judges
• Granada’s Kakkar in running for ITV comedy controller post
• Five to move into digital with new channels
• TV Review: Harry Venning reviews Big Brother, The X Factor: Battle of the Stars and The Beckhams’ World Cup Party

In retrospect, it may have been a bit foolish to start a TV preview for British drama, comedy and light entertainment just a few weeks before the schedules get dominated by football and the omnipresent Big Brother. Still, there are one or two gems out there, we promise.

If you do want drama, though, Saturday is a BBC1 night, where of course there’s Doctor Who (7.00pm), with the second of Matt Jones’ impressively scary two episodes, The Satan Pit. While “the Beast”, the Big Bad of this week’s episode, is predominantly CGI in nature, his most chilling aspect is the voice — a deeply resonant performance by Gabriel Woolf, who did a similar job in the 1975 Tom Baker story, Pyramids of Mars. Coincidentally, Pyramids featured in the first episode of a Channel 4 drama by the then little-known Russell T Davies, which went by the name of Queer As Folk — script-edited by DW scribe Jones. Small world.

A little later, Casualty (8.20pm) welcomes a new paramedic, Aussie Greg Fallon, played by former Home and Away actor Kip Gamblin. Doubtless he’ll have a mysterious past and, before summer’s out, will have had at least one workplace affair, committed at least three acts of gross misconduct, and risked the lives of himself and all the other paramedics — and, as punishment, been on the receiving end of an exasperated sigh from Josh.

The big drama guns, though, come out for Viva Blackpool! (9.10pm), a one-off sequel by Peter Bowker of his hit detective-thriller-cum-musical, Blackpool. David Morrissey returns as Ripley Holden, now running the town’s first Vegas-style chapel of love. Now, I was never able to warm to the original series — and without costars Sarah Parrish and David Tennant in the sequel, I can’t say I’m predicting much of a change here. But maybe that’s just me.

On BBC2, meanwhile, The Culture Show (8.20pm) meets the newest stars of the West End — the puppets and actors that populate Avenue Q. The show, an adult satirical take on Sesame Street, has been going down a storm in previews prior to its opening on 28 June. The show also meets Perrier Award-winning stand-up comedian Laura Solon, and looks at how her dark material works on a UK provincial tour.

On Sunday, we sashay over to BBC Three for Drop Dead Gorgeous (10.00pm), a new comedy drama about a suburban family whose lives are turned upside-down when 15-year old Ashley (Sinead Moynihan) is spotted by a modelling scout. And that, really, is the only bright spot in the day. Even if you count a new Sunday night edition of Deal or no Deal, which, by Square Eyes’ totally arbitrary rules, we don’t. I don’t know how I’ll be able to cope. I may even have to go out and enjoy the sunshine…

It’s not an original thought to bemoan the state of the British sitcom, but surely things can’t get any worse? Trouble is, I think they just did.

It’s possibly not the right time of year to be doing this – the World Cup hoopla is playing havoc with the schedules, great weather driving masses to the beer gardens of the nation – but a quick scan of next week’s schedules shows a veritable drought of first run, bona fide home-grown British comedy. Has there been a hosepipe ban and I missed the memo?

Of the terrestrials, only BBC 2 has any brand new comedy in the next 7 days, with Monday evening’s comedy strand featuring an old stalwart, Dead Ringers at 9pm, followed by Feel the Force at 9.30pm. Dead Ringers is still solidly entertaining, but the decidedly lukewarm Feel the Force has not really felt my collar in the entertainment stakes. I desperately tried to like this. Green Wing’s Michelle Gomez is a phenomenal talent, and Rosie Cavaliero’s performances are always warm and likeable, but this sit-com of hapless coppers has not delivered on the promise of its premise.

Moving to cable, a flick to BBC3 on Sunday at 9.30pm will find a new episode of Grownups. Again, not the greatest recommendation in the world to advertise the state of the British sitcom.

And that, as Rigsby used to say, is “Goodnight, Vienna!” There’s the table leavings of a The Vicar of Dibley repeat on Sunday night on BBC 1 (9.30pm), Channel 4 has an episode of the underwhelming Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere (Tuesday, 11.05pm), with a BBC2 showing for the superior BBC3 comedy The Smoking Room at 11.20 on Thursday. With a Friday dusting off for a vintage Open All Hours (BBC1, Friday), it’s all looking dim and dismal.

Some big, big changes need to be made, and I don’t just mean hanging hope on the possibility of a Little Britain Christmas special (because the world needs one of those). And sorry, it is not enough to simply say: “The world cup is on and it’s sunny.” I don’t buy that as an excuse for a poor showing across any genre of television whether comedy, drama, documentary or Bill Oddie.

And I’m wagging my finger at all and sundry here, from Auntie, right down to Five and further afield. And no, reports on the start of filming of the new series of Extras haven’t gone very far to appease me on this issue. Now, where are my Are You Being Served? DVDs?

Michael Parkinson will no doubt be arranging to do a Salman Rushdie with the news that Emu is returning to our TV screens in a new CITV series, to be partnered by Toby Hull, the son of the late Rod Hull.

I love Emu as much as the next man - he was as much a part of my childhood as fish fingers and chips. I was slightly too old for Emu’s World, but Emu’s Broadcasting Company, running on BBC1 from the mid-seventies, was joyous. Doctor Emu and the Deadly Dustbins still haunts me during sleeping hours… But I’m at a loss with this latest nostalgic plundering.

The 26 part show, aimed at six to 11 year olds, will have Toby and Emu moving into a flat, and will be joined by two young friends, Charlie and Dani. The set-up sounds worryingly similar to the 2002 BBC revival of that other notorious puppet rascal of 70s mega-stardom, Basil Brush, in which Basil shares a flat with Mr Stephen and their two young friends… Has originality gone out of the window when it comes to puppets?

The success or otherwise of this new lease of life for the bolshy bird remains to be seen, but the enduring nature of the character’s lengthy career may go someway towards allaying fears of a damp squib. The surprising thing about the return of Basil Brush was that the scripts were incredibly tight and well structured, and that needs to be repeated here.

Emu is anarchic, and it’s the naughtiness that clearly endears children (the same goes for Basil). I’m hoping that Toby Hull will share his father’s deft talent for physical comedy and the straight man’s knack of being happily upstaged by the bird. If he doesn’t, and Emu’s wings are clipped, the project will be doomed to failure. And while I’m on the subject, where on earth is the immortal Grotbags?

But where will this desire for nostalgia end? Is it stifling originality, or does this vogue for resurrection merely acknowledge that, once a good idea, always a good idea? In a world where Doctor Who can bag three Baftas and dominate Saturday evening ratings (despite the press telling us otherwise), there seems to be life in classic formats yet.

As long as some bright spark doesn’t try looking at Roland Rat after a couple of drinks, we might just be safe.

TV Today shall watch the flight of the Emu with interest…

The four terrestrial broadcasters have today started their 450-strong closed trial for high definition (HD) broadcasts over digital terrestrial (DTT), reports the BBC:

The trial will offer participating broadcasters and their technical partners valuable lessons about delivering HD broadcasts on a digital terrestrial network and also research how the audience enjoys this new format.

It will help to discover whether there could be HD broadcasts on Freeview in future.

The trial is being conducted under an Ofcom licence which strictly limits the number of receivers and forbids reception of the trial stream by general members of the public.

With the extra bandwidth needed for each HD channel as compared to a ‘standard’ one, it’s possible that any HD broadcasts on Freeview would only be possible by re-using the analogue spectrum being freed up as a process of digital switchover (as The Stage reported last November; but part of the original concept for switchover was that the analogue spectrum could be sold off for other purposes, so there’s no guarantee it will be available.

Still, the trial goes some way to counteracting the claims by Sky chief exec Dawn Airey in last week’s Broadcast (subscribers only) that consumers going for DTT were getting “dumb digital”:

HD is a bandwidth-hungry proposition and DTT is a bandwidth-starved technology. It therefore seems slightly incongruous that if you are planning to go big with HD, you would continue to hit the fast- forward button on the rollout of DTT. An unsophisticated parallel with Dr Dolittle’s two-headed llama springs to mind.

So what will happen a couple of years down the track? The things we all want - HD, interactivity, broadband and time-shifting - are only available to those with the more advanced, high-bandwidth platforms, such as satellite, cable and broadband. Doesn’t this mean that the people who took up DTT under duress of compulsory switchover risk being stuck in a digital underclass?

Let’s hope HD will bring many things into focus. DTT might just be a bit of a lemon - it’s not really a fully fledged digital technology at all, it is like “Fisher Price” digital, or analogue with go-faster stripes. Whatever you call it, those tasked with delivering analogue switch-off should be wary they are not flogging a 20th century technology to a 21st century audience.

I don’t necessarily buy Airey’s argument — it’s in her company’s interest to denigrate anything that might be deemed competition, after all. But if Freeview transmissions do get HD capability, Sky will still be able to claim greater bandwidth, more usable EPGs and all the other features which have seen their subscriber base continue to grow.

Institutions come, institutions go (and then Russell T Davies brings them back), but Blue Peter has been a children’s TV bedrock since before double sided sticky tape was invented. And this week, the still cosily Reithian show had one of those occasional emotional moments that crop up from time to time with the announcement that presenter Matt Baker was leaving after 7 years of makes, bakes and dog walking faithful sheepdog Meg.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t seen Blue Peter for years. I started with the mighty triumvirate of Purves, Noakes and Judd (sorry, but I’ve never bought that Valerie Singleton was all that) and left the Mark Curry era when my dad suddenly announced he might want some rent and I needed to get a job so wouldn’t be home at ten past five.

But I love that Blue Peter is still there with a Greenwich-like regularity. I love that moments like the soon-to-depart Matt having a teary breakdown on screen in Monday’s edition when his exit was announced still happen. It helps me feel a kindred bond with today’s youngsters, that we could conceivably have a shared cultural lexicon thanks to a TV programme that hasn’t changed its core values since year dot.

In years to come, my nephew might fondly recall the episode where Matt Baker left, just as I remember the day John Noakes smashed through a block of ice on a bobsleigh. Predictably, my dad is a big fan of that elephant.

Media regulator Ofcom have revealed their latest analysis of digital TV usage in the UK, showing that the number of Freeview homes exceeds the number of houses with boring old analogue TV for the first time. Overall, there are now a whopping 18.2 million homes capable of receiving digital telly — 72.5% of households.

That being said, this headline figure only really talks about the “primary” TV set in each house. Secondary televisions — in bedrooms and the like — are still predominantly analogue; looking at market share on all TV sets, the combined digital television share drops to 40%, with 60% still being good old-fashioned analogue.

And this is, of course, the hidden cost of digital switchover — the portable televisions that we have tucked away in the corners of our houses will each need a set-top box if they’re to continue to be of use once the analogue spectrum is gone.

Meanwhile, Sky+ continues to rocket, erm, skywards, with 149,000 new subscribers in Q1 2006. And yesterday, Sky boss Dawn Airey give the first clues that the company is developing a massively upgraded version of its PVR — with a terabyte of storage. That’s 1024Gb, enough to store 500 hours of programming.

With that much storage, it would be good if Sky revisited their whole ‘multiroom’ strategy. It would be a more appealing sell to many households if such a large box stored programmes centrally, and allowed TV sets around the house to dip in and watch anything, rather than having to get their own satellite receiver and subscription.

• Digital Television Update - Q1 2006, Ofcom (PDF file)

Aftermath, the BBC/HBO co-production focusing on the tragic Asian tsunami of Boxing Day 2004, continues to court controversy in the media, and it seems this is a topic that needs some incredibly sensitive handling. Bizarrely, the BBC and HBO are remaining stoically tight-lipped on the subject, at a point when some frank disclosure on the activities surrounding the filming and overall tone of the piece would allay some understandable fears.

Until a statement appears, all I can do is read more press reports on the filming. These focus on the treatment of Thai extras being hired to play corpses, generally being paid less than Western extras, and the overall effect of having a film crew recreating a disaster on the doorstep of where it happened just 18 months previously.

Despite previous assurances in a statement from the BBC that

“We are fully conscious of the sensitivities of survivors and the imperative to handle the issue with compassion and insight”

it does seem fair to ask who thought this was a good idea? I’m not blind to the power of television to highlight world events, to deal with serious issues, it’s often what it does best, but is this too soon? I’m loath to judge Aftermath before having the opportunity to view it in context, but it is making me nervous.

A visit to to the HBO website gives me hope, with some promo copy affirming:

“TSUNAMI is based on extensive research and interviews, and explores universal questions about how governments, media and aid agencies respond when they are tested. “

along with the fact the script is by Abi Morgan, who penned Sex Traffic, but still.

Am I being naïve? Should everything be fair game to the pen of the dramatist, or should a prudent amount of time be allowed to pass, to allow wounds to heal that probably never will heal.

Krakatoa was one thing, but this is something else…

Aftermath is a Kudos production for the BBC and HBO and will be screened later this year.

Channel 4 unveiled quite a slate of arts programming this week, teaming up with everyone from the ENO and Artangel to Sam Taylor-Wood and the Ballet Boyz to push culture to the UK public.

In one room, Musicality and Operatunity director Michael Waldman debates his new project, Ballet Hoo!, which takes dance to disadvantaged kids and offers them a chance to perform with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, with William Trevitt and Michael Dunn, who have just finished filming a tour with Sylvie Guillem.

Across the way, the broadcaster’s inimitable director of television Kevin Lygo twinkles at Sonia Friedman - no doubt as they discuss the soon to open and broadcast The Play’s The Thing. Penny Woolcock, who brought us Death of Klinghoffer, talks enthusiastically to Channel 4 Arts head Jan Younghusband. The whole scene is so far away from the crass, freak show that is Big Brother that it’s hard to imagine we are talking about the same broadcaster, but the truth is that — at least in part — without the latter, it would be much harder to get such a wide range of the former.

I subscribe to far too many podcasts; iTunes is always helpfully disabling ones that I have set to automatically download, but haven’t listened to in ages. However, one of the few that I listen to without fail is William Gallagher’s UK DVD Review.

Gallagher, who in his day job has the unenviable task of compiling all those “On this day” spots for Radio Times, has been reviewing DVD releases every week for coming up to a year now. And while he covers many different types of DVD — film or TV, British, American or from further afield — this week’s edition, his 50th, is right up TV Today’s street. Unlike other weeks, the 50th podcast looks at a single release, but justly so, as it’s a DVD with an unusual history.

If World Cup fever is failing to get your temperature soaring, it’s slim-pickings in the schedules amidst the maze of footie related specials and Big Brother excess (and yes, I’m still completely housemate free).

Tonight sees the finale of the third series of New Tricks (BBC1 9pm), and still doing very brisk ratings business when audiences elsewhere are generally down. EastEnders refugee Hannah Waterman appears alongside theme-tune singing dad Dennis, in an episode that also features ex-Ender Joe Absolom as a young lad who asks the team to reopen an arson case.

Riffing on the excellent Paul Merton’s Silent Clowns (Thursday BBC4 9pm) is Tuesday’s touching drama Stan (BBC4 9pm). A dying Oliver Hardy (Trevor Cooper) is given the truth about the famous partnership from Stan Laurel (the always excellent Jim Norton). There are some beautiful flashbacks to classic routines, and the sense of respect throughout is palpable.

On Wednesday, another ubiquitous two-part ITV psychological thriller gets an airing, and The Kindness of Strangers (ITV1 9pm) is better than most. Hermione Norris (due later this year in the fifth series of Spooks) plays the nutter who penetrates the family life of Ellie and Joe (Julie Graham and Neil Pearson), but is this kind stranger (geddit?) all that she seems? Well of course she isn’t! Concludes Thursday at 9pm.

And if you really, really care, Albert Square says, “Oh, you’re off are you?” to Grant Mitchell (Friday 8pm BBC1) as he jets off into the sunset yet again. Ross Kemp must have earned enough to buy himself some new hair clippers in time for the next series of Ultimate Force, so we can all sleep safe in our beds tonight.

Next week, I’ll be casting some runes to divine when we can expect to see some episodes of Coronation Street in amongst the World Cup hoopla…

Picture: Nik Howden and Mark Goodenough as the young Laurel and Hardy. Photo: BBC/Laurence Cendrowicz

One of the reasons that Five has been able to announce the launch of two new digital services on all platforms is due in part to big changes at Top Up TV.

Five is buying space from the pay-TV broadcaster so that its two new channels (Five Life, which with its women-and-children-first strategy sounds similar to Flextech’s Living TV, and Five US, which as we exclusively revealed on Friday, will be an import-only channel that sounds, er, pretty much like Five’s primetime) can go free-to-air on Freeview. The move seems to be an extension of the two companies’ strategic partnership, as announced last November (PDF file).

The space for the new channels is being made available by converting the existing Top Up TV service into an on-demand, “non-linear” service, named “Top Up TV Anytime”. Broadcast (subscribers only) reports that subscription to the new on-demand service is likely to be the same — £7.99 — as for the current 11 channel service. However, the new service will require a new set-top box with a hard disk to store the on demand services.

Details are sketchy at the moment, but I can’t help feeling that current Top Up TV subscribers must be feeling a little put out at this news. Everything is pointing to a situation where, come the launch of Anytime, existing subscribers may well lose some or all of their existing subscriber package, and will have to purchase a new set-top box if they want to continue. While they may receive a discount (hints are that they’ll be charged £100 or so, while new subscribers will pay £50 more), that one-off cost could be enough to spur people to move to a competing Sky package.

A report in yesterday’s Observer revealed that the BBC and ITV will be joining a consortium of other broadcasters to provide the UK’s very first live mobile TV service.

A six-month trial has been green-lit for six channels to broadcast constantly to subscriber handsets, including BBC News 24, Cartoon Network, Eurosport and one of the additional ITV digital channels.

I remain largely non-plussed by the impending mobile TV phenomenon and don’t really see its value beyond a promotional tool for TV shows. The so-called ‘Tardisodes’ to promote each new episode of Doctor Who have been quite good fun, but I can hardly see myself settling down to the latest episode of My Family in not-very-widescreen.

I can see the virtue of a rolling news channel that I can dip in and out of on a whim, but the planned six-month trial is effectively setting up a brand new television network, albeit of Lilliputian proportions. Somebody, somewhere, must have crunched their numbers on this and seen an encouraging bottom line, but I’m waiting to be convinced on the long-term future of mobile television.

Maybe in a few years time I’ll be asked by a hoodie sporting teenager on the bus if I can turn down that episode of Coronation Street because he can’t hear his drum’n’bass…

The axeman has certainly been busy at ITV in recent weeks, with Celebrity Fit Club, Rosemary and Thyme, Today with Des and Mel and Footballers’ Wives all receiving a brutal beheading in a new directive to beef up the channel’s output in a contemporary direction. And today, reports are filtering through from The Sun and The Independent, amongst others, that that the man with the big scythe is sharpening his whetstone at the doors of Stars in Their Eyes at the behest of ITV’s Director of Entertainment, Paul Jackson.

It’s always cruel when something of a national TV institution comes under threat, but in the world of The X-Factor, Strictly Dance Fever, Dancing On Ice and the eagerly awaited (by me, anyway) How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?, Stars is looking a bit tired. Why play fancy dress as Cher when you can be a celebrity singer in your own right and bag a lucrative recording deal into the bargain?

With Stars ratings having fallen from 10 million at its height, to around five million, Jackson’s sabre-rattling makes sense, well in line with the recent directives of ITV Director of TV, Simon Shaps. However, those sliding doors have not yet closed for good, with an ITV insider reportedly telling The Sun:

We have plans to modernise it — like going live and going interactive, where viewers can vote in. Viewers would miss it if it went.

No doubt they would, but tell that to Dixon of Dock Green. And if I was Chris Tarrant, I’d probably be phoning a friend right about now…

If TV Today is all you’ve read of The Stage this week, here’s what you’ve missed.

• BBC deal with Pact will give viewers ‘improved service’
• US network signs up Ant and Dec game show
• Five’s viewing figures dive
• Atkinson nets £4.5m as IMG snaps up Tiger Aspect
• Firth and Duff unite for gritty TV film
• BBC contest to pitch would-be musical theatre stars against professionals
• EastEnders writer teams up with Casualty’s Glain for BBC prime time drama
• Feature: Perfectly formed — Vivienne Clore, Geoff Atkinson and Vera Productions
• Leader: Advertising fight turns vicious
• TV Review: Soccer Aid & Imagine… Being Hamlet

TV Today blogger Liz Thomas’s interview with Vivienne Clore and Geoff Atkinson, of TV indie producers Vera, is now online. In it, they reveal that a new World Cup-related series, which they had originally planned for a terrestrial outlet, will be released virally on the internet.

They are working on a computer project to tie in with the World Cup - which will be written and filmed as the team progresses. Originally planned for a terrestrial broadcaster, things haven’t gone to plan but Atkinson still thinks the show will be a big hit through the internet and viral facilities such as YouTube - a cult site among the iPod generation. He adds, somewhat unexpectedly: “Getting things out there through virals is going to be more and more pertinent.”

Read the full interview

Well, Saturday night sees the big one, as Strictly Dance Fever (6:00pm BBC1) reaches the grand final. Not that I know anything about dance, but the three couples who have made it this far all seem fairly matched, particularly as JP and Stacey were finally eliminated last week (having seen off better dancers week after week). That should make for a good show — on the dance floor, at least: as I noted last week, the judges’ commentaries are an increasing irritant in shows of this type. Oh, for a talent show where the emphasis is on the talent for a change.

Of course, we’re not going to get that with X Factor: Battle of the Stars (9:00pm Sat & Sun ITV1), whose title applies far more to the “mentors” than to the pseudo-celebrities belting their sub-karaoke hearts out. Truth be told, it’s not a bad format, even in the celebrity form — but on a daily basis? A weekly format, à la Strictly Come Dancing or Dancing on Ice, would have given the contestants time to develop their skills and grow as singers. With a daily show, it’s been obvious who the top three acts are likely to be from the outset.

Moving on to drama, and as ever there’s Doctor Who (7:00pm BBC1) — this week, in the first of a two-part story by Shameless producer Matt Jones, getting its teeth into its first really alien environment since the series came back in 2005. For me, it’ll be interesting to see how effective the set designs are — while the series has excelled in producing effective contemporary and historical settings, its futuristic episodes have often been let down by scenery that looks like, well, scenery.

Remarkably, it’s not the only family drama on Saturday evening this week; ITV get in on the act with Pickles: the Dog Who Won the World Cup (4:00pm Sat, ITV1), a light-hearted comedy drama about the dog who located the stolen Jules Rimet trophy in 1966. A cast list including Keith Barron, Paul Kaye and Camille Coduri raises the hopes; the prospect of Harry Enfield playing the voice of Pickles does its best to dash them. But it’s good to see more family-oriented drama of this calibre still being produced by a commercial channel, even if the early scheduled time won’t exactly do it any favours.

Finally, on Sunday night, Laurence Marks, co-writer (with Maurice Gran) of some of Britain’s best-loved sitcoms, talks about the route he took from being a journalist to becoming a comedy writer. Unusually, his change of career was inspired by tragedy, when his father was killed in 1975’s Moorgate tube crash. In Me, My Dad and Moorgate (8:00pm Channel 4) Marks talks about the year he spent investigating the cause of the crash, and explains how his memories of his father’s life have informed his writing.

More bad news, it seems, for the nation’s youngest terrestrial broadcaster. Channel 5’s ratings slide that began at the end of the year shows no sign of stopping, despite some valiant attempts by director of programmes Dan Chambers.

In truth, it is fairly predictable news. It’s no coincidence that the steady growth the broadcaster had enjoyed petered out in around 2004. As multi-channel viewing began snowballing, more homes than ever snapping up Freeview and all the main broadcasters ploughing millions to build up their family of channels, Five went from being fifth on the channel-hopping list to maybe tenth or sometimes not at all.

It just isn’t where people look when they turn on the telly, so even when they do have good shows like Grey’s Anatomy or CSI, they pull in far less than they might. It’s the five effect. Comedy Everybody Hates Chris is a case in point - despite being a strong show and starting rather promisingly with around 2 million viewers, last week it ended with just a few hundred thousand.

Another issue is that because — apart from perhaps the American imports — the broadcaster has no big-hitting show: no I’m A Celebrity or The X Factor, and no soap opera banker to build its schedule around. So the plans to invest more into indigenous output — however noble — sometimes stumble when it comes to the delivery. Even if they have a reasonable homegrown show (a la Suburban Shootout), it can’t be sandwiched snugly between EastEnders and Casualty or Big Brother and, er, more Big Brother to get a good lead in audience.

Insiders tell me they are optimistic that things will pick up when they launch the two new channels on Freeview. That’s currently scheduled for October — but Five has been promising a multi-channel strategy for some years now, so take that with a pinch of salt. The plan is to have one female-skewed channel with a hefty chunk of solid children’s strand and, word is, the second one will be almost solely dedicated to US imports.

One thing that committed audiences of any particular series get irked by more than any other is the “spoiler” — a nugget of information that divulges a major plot point ahead of broadcast, potentially wrecking any sense of suspense. Of course, there’s an element of TV publicity that requires at least some information to be divulged — the trailer.

One of the numerous American programmes I’ve been following this season, ER, presented its series finale last night on E4 (the episode in question will be on Channel 4 on Monday night). As is the way of these things, it’s a highly dramatic episode, with a gunfight in the hospital that, thanks to some tongue-in-cheek direction, hovers perilously between an homage to Sergio Leone and a parody of the same. Several major characters get caught up in the action, with potentially serious consequences. I won’t say any more, because there will be those people who will want to watch the episode on Monday unspoiled.

In which case, I hope that Channel 4 don’t trail the programme the way its digital sibling did — with a trailer that includes the very last scene of the season. I watched the whole episode knowing that, at some point, [spoiler deleted] would end up [spoiler deleted] while [spoiler deleted] watched, unable to help because [spoiler deleted].

With so much action in the rest of the episode to choose from, is it really asking too much that a short promo, intended to encourage people to watch, doesn’t give away the ending?

It seems a nice moment of European symmetry that in the week France gets its very own version of The Office, Le Bureau, BBC4 should start showing the French thriller series, Spiral.

Catching the first episode of Spiral on its repeat last night, it’s clear the series owes a great debt to the CSI juggernaut, with liberal sprinklings of 24 (and if you look closely, there’s a garnish of our very own Waking the Dead). It’s quite disconcerting to see familiar CSI-stylee tracking shots of a cityscape, but with the Eiffel Tower plonked in the middle of them (and that’s the real Eiffel Tower, not the shonky copy they have in Vegas). It has a very pretty cast, mixing courtroom politics with police procedural shenanigans and on first viewing, if you’re not put off by the subtitles, it has bags of addictive potential.

But, free from the power of the US advertisers that often neuters the sting in CSI’s tail, Spiral is also pretty gruesome. In the first few seconds of the opening episode, a naked body is found in a skip, leaving nothing to the imagination, followed by a quite visceral autopsy sequence that would put Gil Grissom off his lunch for life. You have been warned…

And as for Le Bureau, it all looks rather jolly, and the word on the street is that it’s slipped onto the schedules of cable channel Canal+ rather deftly. David Brent has regenerated into Gilles Triquet, played by popular French actor Francois Berleand (his IMDB entry is enormous) complete with pencil thin tuft of beard. Wernham Hogg is now Cogirep, relocated from Slough to the Parisian suburb of Villepinte and Gareth and Tim become Joel and Paul. Staplers in jelly, it seems, do not travel well across the Channel. Check out Le Bureau’s website (it’s in French, but if you watch Spiral, that should help), and here’s hoping for a BBC4 showing soon to compare and contrast.

The link between excessive TV watching and obesity can seem somewhat of a no-brainer (writes this slim, svelte blogger). A new report from the British Dietetic Association (as reported in today’s Guardian) shows that children and teenagers are spending an average of 20% of their day watching TV, looking at a computer monitor or playing a games console.

Obviously, the BDA is concerned about the effect that such sedentary lifestyles may be having on children’s health:

Gadgets have such a powerful influence on youth culture today and it’s shocking how long kids spend in front of a screen each day.

There are so many demands on the time and energies that teenagers have, with school and college work, part-time jobs and socialising. It has also amazed us that there is no real help or guidance provided for teens - they really are a forgotten generation. Our aim is to change that.

But the overwhelming influence of today’s technology has other impacts, too. In particular, parents are starting to notice that children are starting to grow up not realising that television hasn’t always been ‘on-demand’.