ITV's Director of Programmes David Liddiment talks of "balancing the new with returning favourites and a schedule studded with major television events".

The new Controller of BBC1, Lorraine Heggessey, talks of an "emphasis on modern, home-grown and intelligent programmes whether they are drama, comedy or factual".

The only difference is in money. ITV tends to be shy about putting a price on its winter season whereas the BBC boasts of spending £158m, including an extra £20m on drama than over the same period last year.

The viewer might be excused for shrugging and saying "Promises, promises...". We've heard it all before and after surveying what BBC1 and ITV have in store for the Winter 2001 season, the offerings might best be summed up as more of the same. There seems no sign of anything as untried, untested or revolutionary as last year's Big Brother.

Comedy is notable by its absence on ITV which seems to have abandoned trying to make people laugh altogether. There's just one new comedy High Stakes featuring Richard Wilson, trying to shake off the Victor Meldrew tag, and Jack Shepherd as British bankers facing up to the challenge of international global capitalism.

New comedy on BBC1 has Lee Evans in his first sit-com, Birds Of A Feather star Pauline Quirke becoming the object of Office Gossip and Clive Anderson Now back with more chat.

What ITV seems to be doing is successfully taking on the BBC in the drama field. Two of the winter series, adaptations of Thomas Hardy's The Mayor Of Casterbridge and Charles Dickens' The Life And Times Of Nicholas Nickleby, are the sort of classic dramas that used to be the Beeb's territory.

The commercial channel has the monopoly on bankable star names. David Jason returns in a new two-part A Touch Of Frost but must surrender his most hard-working actor on TV title to John Thaw. Inspector Morse may be dead but the actor's career is thriving.

He teams with another of ITV's star team, Sarah Lancashire, in The Glass, which is set "in the tough world of selling". In Buried Treasure, Thaw's an estate agent looking after the grandson he never knew he had. He completes his hat-trick with another two-hour Kavanagh QC legal drama.

Busy Michelle Collins too returns - has she ever been away? - as a serial bigamist in Perfect, a drama created by Susan Oudot. Actress and writer previously teamed up for BBC's Real Women.

There are new dramas from writers who've had previous TV hits. Pretending To Be Judith, about an aspiring actress hired by a man to impersonate his dead mistress, comes from Bouquet Of Barbed Wire's Andrea Newman.

Paula Milne, who wrote The Politician's Wife, returns to the world of politics (as well as greed, sex and revenge) with Thursday The 12th. The audience will know from the start that someone in the family has been murdered but the identity of the victim and therefore the killer isn't revealed until the final denouement. Ciaran Hinds stars in both this and The Mayor Of Casterbridge. Milne's Second Sight, meanwhile, returns to BBC1 with Clive Owen investigating.

Lucy Gannon, creator of Soldier Solider and Peak Practice, gives us the Edwardian drama Plain Jane with Kevin Whatley and son Jason Hughes both vying for the affections of their maid, the Jane of the title.

Amanda Holden - who starred in her own marital drama with comedian husband Les Dennis last year - takes the lead in The Hunt, a "story of love and class divisions in rural England". The lord of the manor and master of the hunt (Adrian Lukis) gives chase and its not a fox he's after.

Hornblower, Bad Girls, AandE, The Vice and Midsomer Murder all return to ITV while the BBC says hello again to Monarch Of The Glen and Ballykissangel.

Back too, despite Harbour Lights sinking without trace in the ratings, is Nick Berry. He partners Stephen Tompkinson - "as you have never seen them before" - in In Deep in which they play undercover detectives. Another sleuthing pair are Nathaniel Parker and Sharon Small who team up as Elizabeth George's duo in A Great Deliverance.

Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole was last seen on ITV. Now he switches to BBC1 for The Cappucino Years with Steven Mangan as the adult Adrian, now a celebrity chef. Deborah Moggach has adapted Nancy Mitford's tale of the upper classes in pre-war London, Love In A Cold Climate.

Also on BBC1, Ronan Bennett's drama Rebel Heart tells of a young man's coming-of-age during the tumultuous years between 1916 and 1922. One of last year's best new dramas Clocking Off returns and its writer Paul Abbott has also penned Best Of Both Worlds. This has Alice Evans, on view in the current cinema release 102 Dalmatians, as a happily married flight attendant who begins a double life with a bachelor in Italy.

Several familiar faces take on different guises. Martin Shaw is a maverick High Court judge caught in a conflict of personal and professional interests in Judge John Deed, while David Suchet leaves behind Poirot to join a crack police squad, our answer to the FBI, in the thriller NCS (that stands for National Crime Squad).

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