The year is barely a week old but already BBC1 and BBC2's much-heralded winter schedules are suffering a bumpy ride. For starters, recent catastrophic events in Asia have led to the postponement of Supervolcano, the centrepiece of BBC1's £178m new season.

The factually-based drama charts the possible consequences of a supervolcano erupting under the Yellowstone National Park in the US and was billed as "a true story - it just hasn't happened yet". BBC executives decided it wouldn't be appropriate to screen it so soon after the Asian tsunami disaster.

There are those, namely clean up TV campaigners and some churchmen, who wish BBC2 Controller Roly Keating would not so much postpone as cancel tonight's screening of the stage hit Jerry Springer - The Opera.

They claim the musical is blasphemous and contains far too much bad language. Some of those who've bombarded the BBC with more than 15,000 complaints might even have seen the show.

Some viewers might find the idea of Tory MP and ex-Celebrity Fit Club participant Ann Widdecombe as a TV agony aunt even more objectionable than Jerry Springer. She'll be attempting to solve family crises, love quandaries and workplace spats in The Ann Widdecombe Project. No wonder Keating called BBC2's winter schedule as having "some very unique perspectives on the world around us".

Entrepreneur Sir Alan Sugar goes looking for young business talent to join his empire in The Apprentice, the British version of the US show in which Donald Trump did much the same thing. Candidates will carry out weekly assignments to test their business acumen and entrepreneurial skills.

Opposition leader Michael Howard and his former fashion model wife, Sandra Paul, allow BBC2 cameras into their home - and everywhere else - for a behind-the-scenes documentary fronted by Michael Cockerell.

On the comedy front, The Office's Martin Freeman takes a new role as the black sheep in a South London family in The Robinsons.

Jonathan Coe's novel The Rotters' Club has been adapted for BBC2 by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais. Sarah Lancashire and Hugh Speer star in this story of three Birmingham families set against a backdrop of class conflict and strike action.

The busy Clement and La Frenais have also adapted the Robert Harris bestseller Archangel, starring Daniel Craig as an Oxford historian attempting to uncover the mystery behind the alleged secret diaries of Josef Stalin.

Other drama highlights of BBC1's winter season include Cherished, with Sarah Lancashire playing Angela Cannings, the mother wrongly accused of killing two of her babies. In Faith, Maxine Peake and Christine Tremarco play sisters struggling for survival during the conflict between the Thatcher government and the NUM in the 1980s.

Two books become TV series - Meera Syal's Life Isn't All Ha Ha Hee Hee, about three schoolgirl friends navigating their thirties, and Fingersmith, taken from Tipping The Velvet author Sarah Waters' Booker-nominated novel. Star Imelda Staunton is currently winning rave reviews for Mike Leigh's new film Vera Drake.

This year sees the much-anticipated return of Doctor Who, with Christopher Eccleston taking over as the Time Lord. Billie Piper plays his companion Rose Tyler. The Doctor's return is being masterminded by Queer As Folk writer Russell T Davies, author of a three-part series about Casanova that will debut on BBC3. Peter O'Toole plays the legendary lover as an old man, recounting his conquests. David Tennant, recently seen in BBC1's Blackpool, plays the younger Casanova.

ITV1 also gambles on drama attracting big audiences. Word is that Julie Walters should start thinking about her speech as she accepts another best actress award. Not for those Asda ads but for Ahead Of The Class, in which she plays Marie Stubbs, the retired teacher given one year to save from closure the West London Catholic comprehensive school where headmaster Philip Lawrence was murdered.

Through a mixture of old-fashioned discipline and inspirational ideas, she and her team turned around the fortunes of the school where fighting, stealing and truancy were rife.

Senior Coronation Street writer Peter Whalley has scripted Baby War, a 90-minute film raising issues concerning parental rights. A couple's adopted baby is snatched by his biological father, a Dublin politician, and taken to Ireland, beyond the reach of English law. North-East actress Gina McKee, Steven Waddington and John Lynch star.

Those seeking something more frivolous, if not downright trashy, can seek comfort in the return of Footballers' Wives. Two are due to deliver babies - Tanya Turner, newly released from her spell with the other Bad Girls in Larkhall Prison, and Amber Gates. Top player Conrad Gates is the proud father of both babies.

ITV1 also tries its luck again with The All-Star Comedy Show, now re-titled Monkey Trousers. The sketches are written by Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer, backed by a pool of new and established comedy writing talent. Steve Coogan, Mackenzie Crook and Alistair McGowan are among the performers. Expect to see Vic and Bob in cameo appearances.

C4's comedy hope for the new season is Meet The Magoons, which has been developed out of the 2003 Comedy Lab season. The series is written and directed by and features Hardeep Singh Kohli in the tale of four Indian lads who work in a curry house in Glasgow.

Born With Two Mothers is a drama based around an IVF mix-up which results in a white woman giving birth to a black boy. Lesley Sharp, Lennie James, Sophie Okonedo and Adam Kotz star.

And C4 continues with both Countdown and countdown series such as The 100 Greatest and Best Of. Expect to see The Best Ads Never Seen along with The 100 Greatest Pop Videos, Tearjerkers, Cartoons and War Films. Documentaries don't rate quite so much attention, so we'll only see The 50 Greatest Documentaries Ever Made.