Something old, something new

Behind-the-screens changes in British TV are more complicated than any soap family tree. Keeping up with who's doing what to whom is a full-time job.

The BBC is on its best behaviour in the run-up to its charter renewal. With the merger of the two big companies, Granada and Carlton, a united ITV is not far away. Channel 4 re-thinks its strategy, with the aid of several executives fleeing from five and that will trigger changes at five, which also lost controller of drama Corinne Hollingworth to ITV this week. Satellite and cable continue to eat into the audience of the terrestrial channel. Even the industry's regulators are being replaced by a single body, Ofcom.

But what viewers want to know is not who's running the show but what the shows are on offer. The winter schedules - the series that will be on screen in the early months of 2004 - reveal the usual mix of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.

Making a series out of a drama is something which TV is good at. This coming season the deputy prime minister tries to outsmart his adversaries in Westminster, con artists are at work on the streets of London, and a campaigning local journalist determines to prove a man innocent of murder. And, having successfully relocated Middlesbrough's Transporter Bridge, the Auf Wiedersehen Pet gang head for Cuba.

All these are part of BBC1's drama portfolio, along with returning series such as Redcap, Down To Earth, Inspector Lynley Mysteries and Jonathan Creek.

Similarly, the ITV1 drama line-up is a key element in the bid to regain its audience share lead over BBC1. The new comedy drama from Cold Feet writer Mike Bullen, and a series about life on board a Royal Navy frigate are among the biggest potential hits.

Schedulers hope crime continues to pay in the ratings with two series featuring ill-matched pairs of detectives - Murder Squad, with Amanda Donohoe and Kris Marshall, and Murder In Suburbia, with Lisa Faulkner and Caroline Catz. That's in addition to the return of A Touch Of Frost, Taggart, and Midsomer Murders, and The Last Detective.

ITV has a bona fide hit with Ant And Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, back in the New Year, and hopes to find a replacement for Blind Date in Love On A Saturday Night. This live show aims to bring "boys and girls of all ages" together through games in the studio and with live outside broadcasts. Sounds alarmingly like C4's flop Boys and Girls show.

No sign of a new comedy series on ITV1 which, considering the channel's poor track record in that area, isn't surprising. BBC1 hopes Mad About Alice, with Amanda Holden and Jamie Theakston as a couple who've split up but are brought together by their nine-year-old son, will make viewers laugh.

Travels With An Unfit Mother is classed as entertainment yet the idea is hardly anything to laugh about. Weakest Link presenter Anne Robinson was thought unfit to bring up her own child and lost a bitter custody battle. Now she goes on a road trip across America with Emma, the daughter caught in the middle, with BBC cameras along for the ride.

ITV's factual output has more tales of cosmetic surgery (youngsters this time), lost loves, spoilt kids, and club reps. Elements of the BBC's factual output seems over-familiar too with films about sick children, surgeons, wildlife and more Tabloid Tales from Piers Morgan.

Comedienne Victoria Wood offers a fresh take on the dieting industry in Victoria's Big Fat Documentary (BBC1), while ITV undertakes a three-part examination of not-very-thin statesman Winston Churchill.

C4 isn't about to abandon its most successful formats. Wife Swap is followed by Boss Swap, a surefire ratings winner, while The Bodyguard tries to turn 12 ordinary people into security agents.

Faking It is back too. This time an ex-professional chess player bids to pass himself off as a football manager and a tattooed bicycle courier poses as a professional polo player at Princes Charles' local club.

What's important to remember, though, is that what looks good on paper sometimes loses that attraction on screen. These seem some of the surest bets.

Life Begins (ITV1). Cold Feet writer Mike Bullen's new comedy-drama has Caroline Quentin as a woman whose husband walks out on her and her two children as she nears her 40th birthday.

Auf Wiedersehen Pet (BBC1). After 2003's successful revival, the lads head for Cuba (but filmed in the Dominican Republic). Our men in Havana are recruited to rebuild the British Ambassador's residence.

Gunpowder, Treason And Plot (BBC2). Jimmy McGovern-scripted drama about Mary Queen of Scots, James I and the Gunpowder Plot. Robert Carlyle and French newcomer Clemence Poesy star.

Boss Swap (C4). Wife Swap was one of 2003's biggest hits. Now the makers present Boss Swap, where two managers from different fields change places for 12 days to run each other's business.

Hustle (BBC1). Man From UNCLE Robert Vaughn is a con artist working on the streets of London in this series from the makers of Spooks. Adrian Lester, Robert Glenister, Marc Warren and Jaime Murray are others in the gang.

Shameless (C4). The C4 first drama series - "funny and offbeat" is the description - by Paul Abbott, writer of Clocking Off, Touching Evil, Linda Green and State Of Play. It follows the Gallagher family on a Manchester housing estate. A second series has been commissioned even before the first is shown.

The Divine Michelangelo (BBC1). Dramatic reconstructions and experts are used to tell the story of the gifted artist. They try to reproduce elements of his masterpieces, including carving a replica statue of David from the same marble that he used.

Churchill (ITV1)/When Hitler Invaded Britain (ITV1)/Dunkirk (BBC2).

Celia Sandys, Churchill's grand-daughter, is advisor to a three-part documentary series about the politician, soldier and author. When Hitler Invaded Britain uses first person accounts from both Allies and Nazis to re-live events of the summer of 1940 when a German invasion was a real possibility. Still on a war footing, drama-documentary Dunkirk recreates the race against time to save the Allied army trapped in France.

Wall Of Silence (ITV1). Based-on-fact drama about a 17-year-old teenager beaten to death by a gang of youths after he answered them back as he walked through a South London estate late one night. James Nesbitt and Phil Davis star.

Britain's Best Sitcom (BBC2). After Great Britons and books, BBC2 embarks on a quest to find the funniest sitcom. A three-hour opening show counts down the Top 50, followed by ten more programmes in which celebrities champion a particular sitcom.

Published: 27/12/2003