Top of the Pops is to return to our screens for two one-off shows over the Christmas period, despite earlier assurances from the BBC that the music show would not be brought back.
The Top of the PopsChristmas Special and New Year Special will be presented by Radio1 DJs Fearne Cotton and Reggie Yates.
Cotton said, “I am beyond excited at the thought of a return to the mighty TOTP studios for these one-off shows. Reggie and I feel truly honoured to be able to introduce this year’s number one - both shows are going to be huge.”
The BBC had previously rejected calls to bring the long-running show, which was axed in 2006, into this year’s Christmas schedule. However, yesterday the corporation announced a Top of the Pops comeback with not just one but two shows over the festive period.
The news was welcomed by Jimmy Saville, who presented the show when it first went on air in 1964. “Let’s try it for Christmas, see how it works…,” he said. “When it started in 1964 it was a good programme.” Read the rest of this entry »
Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling has been confirmed as the next host of Countdown, Channel 4 announced today. He will be joined by maths whizz Rachel Riley, a 22-year-old Oxford graduate who will take over Carol Vorderman’s role.
Stelling is best known for his knowledge of match day statistics on the Sky Sports programme Soccer Saturday, and has been named Sports Presenter of the Year for three years running. His appointment ends months of speculation as to a replacement for the Countdown host Des O’Connor, who announced his resignation in July.
“I am delighted to be hosting Countdown and follow in the footsteps of such great broadcasters as Richard Whiteley, Des Lynam and Des O’Connor,” he said. Read the rest of this entry »
John Sergeant has spectacularly decided to quit the BBC talent show Strictly Come Dancing, saying there is a “real danger” he might actually win.
Sergeant, 64 and the oldest contestant on the show, sparked mixed reactions from the audience and judges. Despite consistently finishing bottom of the judges’ rankings after a series of lamentable performances, the public kept voting the so-called “dancing pig” back into the show.
He said that he had decided to call it a day because his continued popularity with the general public was beginning to “irritate and annoy people”.
Graham Linehan’s offbeat sitcom about the (very) small IT department of the fictional Reynholm Industries returns to Channel 4 this Friday for a third series. Much of the humour of The IT Crowd is derived from the social ineptitude of Moss (Richard Ayoade, below, left with the monitor) and Roy (Chris O’Dowd, below right, with the copy of Mustard), the two “standard nerds” who do all of the actual work and the technical ineptitude of their supervisor Jen (Katherine Parkinson, below, middle) a Head of IT who doesn’t know the first thing about computers.
Attempts by Jen to ingratiate her charges with the rest of the company and secure them dates with real life 3D humans fail miserably, as do their attempts to bring their manager’s knowledge of modern day IT up to speed – Roy jokingly tells Jen that Googling ‘Google’ will ‘break the Internet’ – she mistakenly believes him, to her eventual embarrassment during a head office meeting.
Despite being considered outcasts and social misfits by the rest of the company despite their dependence on them to keep the computers humming, the feeling is mutual; Moss and Roy have set up looped recordings of basic suggestions such as “Are you sure it’s plugged in?” and “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” on their answer phone, which seems to do the trick most of the time…
After an incredibly successful comeback of the seventies’ fly-on-the-wall documentary The Family, Channel 4 has commissioned a second series of the revamped show in what is set to become a long-running format.
The first series drew in 3 million viewers at its launch in September, featuring the Hughes family from Canterbury which was filmed around the clock for six months. The second series, to be made for Channel 4 by independent production company Firefly, will feature a different family, since the Hughes family is no longer “ordinary”, having spent so much time in front of the cameras, said Channel 4’s head of documentaries, Hamish Mykura.
“The Family is coming back in some form. I don’t know what the new family is going to be like but it is not going to be the Hughes as they are no longer an ordinary family. The new family will be contrasting and different,” said Mykura.
Wallace and Gromit are to make a comeback this Christmas in their first Christmas Special for 13 years.
The new 30 minute feature film, A Matter of Loaf and Death, sees the scatty, cheese-loving inventor and his astute pooch open a punningly-named bakery at their home - Top Bun - only to find a ‘cereal killer’ is targeting all bakers in town. Much to Gromit’s consternation Wallace becomes preoccupied with his new love interest, a former bread commercial star named Piella Bakewell (*rolleyes*), and once again the canny canine is left to uncover the murderer.
The film reunites Oscar-winning animator Nick Park with Bob Baker, who co-wrote A Close Shave and The Wrong Trousers.
A Matter Of Loaf And Death took Park and his team of animators two years to make altogether, each second-and-a-half of screen time the result of a whole day’s painstaking work. The film had originally been given the name Trouble At T’Mill, but this was changed after executives decided that international audiences may not get the northern accent. Read the rest of this entry »
Rupert Everett is to present a two-part documentary about Lord Byron for Channel 4.
The programme, called Rupert Everett – In Search of Byron, will retrace the steps of the romantic poet during his travels through Portugal, Greece, Albania, Turkey, Switzerland and Italy, exploring Byron’s personal life and examining his relationship with the countries he visited.
Considered by many to be the first modern celebrity, from 1809 to 1811 Byron embarked on the grand tour of Europe customary for a young nobleman of the era. Avoiding the Napoleonic Wars, Byron headed for the Mediterranean, the birthplace of the Classical antiquity, hoping to follow in the footsteps of his Homeric heroes. The documentary will mark the 200th anniversary of his travels.
This will not be the first time that Everett has presented a history programme on Channel 4. Earlier this year the actor fronted a Channel 4 documentary examining the life of the infamous Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, called the Victorian Sex Explorer.
Everett said: “I love anti-heroes, and Byron is one of the 19th century’s great misfits. His story has everything: incest, sodomy, drugs, scandal, madness and war. But would we have found Byron as electrifying and seductive as his contemporaries did? Is his genius still relevant? Are his poems fresh or are they dried flowers?”
Infamously described as being “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”, Byron was a libertine of Herculean proportions, and his name is as synonymous with promiscuity as it is with poetry. Read the rest of this entry »
John Sergeant, the political correspondent whose hapless dancefloor antics on Strictly Come Dancing have earned him the nickname of a “dancing pig in Cuban heels”, has moved a step closer to winning the dance contest on a wave of public support.
Despite finishing bottom of the judges’ rankings, the rotund 64-year-old and his dance partner Kristina Rihanoff were voted back into the next round by a doting public, whilst the actress Cherie Lunghi became the latest celebrity to leave the show.
Sergeant may be popular with the viewing public, but his continued presence on the show is beginning to irk his fellow contestants, who have given their support to Lunghi, a professionally-trained dancer who had been tipped to win the contest. Breaking with protocol, Lunghi’s dance partner James Jordan yesterday expressed exasperation at the result: “I think Cherie had a lot more to show. This is supposed to be a dance contest. Please, please, people at home, vote for the dancing.” Read the rest of this entry »
Sky has announced plans for an online TV subscription service on its Sky Player platform - better yet, potential punters won’t have to take out a Sky TV contract to use it.
The Sky Player was set up in 2006 and currently caters to Sky TV customers only, offering a selection of on demand content from Sky branded channels. The broadcaster also offers third party content from ESPN Classic, History Channel, National Geographic and Baby First, and recently added access to the BBC iPlayer to its online services. The new subscription based package will offer a similar service to the BBC catch up service, and comes with its own electronic programme guide. There are predicted to be a number of online subscription packages when the service launches in the next few months, but prices have yet to be announced.
The planned subscription service sees Sky aiming to appeal to the YouTube generation of viewers, and to emulate the success of the BBC iPlayer. Read the rest of this entry »
Britain took an important step towards going digital as analogue transmitters in the Scottish Borders were switched off last night.
Tens of thousands of viewers in South East Scotland were affected by the move, as Analogue BBC2 was switched off at 12.31am in the first stage of the nationwide programme. Engineers from the broadcast technology firm Arqiva turned off the analogue signal at the main mast in Selkirk and its 11 relay transmitters - smaller transmitters which take the signal into more remote places. The BBC’s digital channels were up and running by 5am. The remaining analogue channels are due to be switched off in three weeks’ time.
The Border region, which encompasses South East Scotland and Cumbria, will be the first in the UK to become fully digital in a nationwide digital switchover programme which is expected to finish in 2012. A previous trial was carried out in the west Cumbrian town of Whitehaven last year. Read the rest of this entry »
Top of the Pops is to return to our screens for two one-off shows over the Christmas period, despite earlier assurances from the BBC that the music show would not be brought back.
Sky Sports presenter Jeff Stelling has been confirmed as the next host of Countdown, Channel 4 announced today. He will be joined by maths whizz Rachel Riley, a 22-year-old Oxford graduate who will take over Carol Vorderman’s role.
After an incredibly successful comeback of the seventies’ fly-on-the-wall documentary The Family, Channel 4 has commissioned a second series of the revamped show in what is set to become a long-running format.
Wallace and Gromit are to make a comeback this Christmas in their first Christmas Special for 13 years.
Rupert Everett is to present a two-part documentary about Lord Byron for Channel 4.
John Sergeant, the political correspondent whose hapless dancefloor antics on Strictly Come Dancing have earned him the nickname of a “dancing pig in Cuban heels”, has moved a step closer to winning the dance contest on a wave of public support.
Britain took an important step towards going digital as analogue transmitters in the Scottish Borders were switched off last night.