ITV today unveiled its first full schedule since the untimely demise of News at Ten. The £170 million schedule, which ITV is hoping will give it a significant lead over the BBC, is packed full of new factual programming, entertainment shows, comedies and drama and film premieres. Over the course of the new schedule there will be 14 new first run drama series and 6 returning series such as Touching Evil and Where The Heart Is.
Pride of place in the new schedule would appear to go to ITV favourites Robson Green and John Thaw, both of whom have new series. Robson Green and Niamh Cusack star in the romantic comedy Rhinoceros, in which the estranged parents of a boy with a learning disability are thrown back together while searching for him in Wales.
After appearing in The Sweeney, Inspector Morse and Kavanagh QC, John Thaw decides to leave the crime field behind and stars as a plastic surgeon in Plastic Man (not to be confused with the old Hanna Barbera cartoon series of the same name). Meanwhile The Blonde Bombshell features Amanda Redman playing Diana Dors.
In order to counter any impending accusations of ‘dumbing-down’, ITV has been sure to highlight the number of factual programmes that will be shown over the coming months. In April the Network launches its new flagship current affairs programme, Tonight – With Trevor McDonald, while Melvyn Bragg presents Two Thousand Years, a twenty-part series on the history and influence of Christianity. Birth Race 2000 is a new series that focuses on the race to produce the first baby of the new millennium, while Two Strangers And A Wedding goes behind the scenes of the couple who had never met but agreed to get married on local radio last year.
There is still hope that ITV will come up with a popular new comedy series to recapture the past glories of Rising Damp, Man About The House and err .. Duty Free. With Grimleys progressing slowly and Days Like These floundering in the ratings, ITV has put itself in the firing line with the latest package of comedy programming. On offer there are Passion Killers, which is about a private detective agency that specialises in ‘honey traps’, Bostock’s Cup, a spoof documentary about a fictional football club that won the FA Cup in the ’70s, and Barbara which stars Duty Free‘s Gwen Taylor.
Despite press and viewer indifference, Chris Tarrant’s other game show Man O Man returns, as well as new shows from his fellow Capital Radio DJ Steve Penk: Would I Lie To You? and Give Your Mate A Break.
This is usually the time of year when viewers tend to disappear as the weeks go on. ITV is trying to counter this by showing all the James Bond films in sequence from early June, starting with Dr No and ending with the premiere of Tomorrow Never Dies.
It will be sometime before the new programme schedule can be fully branded a success or failure. Judging by its presentation, which had the usual gloss and hard sell, ITV is trying to convince viewers that there will be a wider selection of programming than they’ve ever had in the past.
Reviewer: Simon Wright
