Digital TV Blog

The BBC has announced that it will not be broadcasting another series of the Saturday Night drama show Robin Hood.

Despite beating ITV1’s Primeval in the ratings when the show returned to television screens in March, fewer than 2 million people tuned in to watch the final of the BBC2 series on Saturday evening, which saw Robin Hood murdered by a poison-tipped sword after disposing of his arch rival, the Sheriff of Nottingham.

Now BBC executives have decided scrap the series altogether. The drama, which was made my independent production company Tiger Aspect, starred Jonas Armstrong in the title role and Keith Allan as the Sheriff of Nottingham.

A BBC spokesperson confirmed the news: “Viewers have enjoyed three fantastic series of Robin Hood but with the death of Robin in last week’s finale, we feel that the show has reached its natural conclusion.”

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Veteran ITN newsreader Alastair Stewart has told the BBC it would bebfit from a “Beeching style enquiry” to assess whether all its services are “really necessary and viable”. Stewart also attacked the licence fee as a “monopolistic, guaranteed, inflation-proofed income stream to dream of”.

Speaking at a CBI dinner in Liverpool last night, Stewart called for a “shakeup” of the BBC to help protect the plurality of news output across the country and the success of the struggling commercial sector in the current economic climate.

“In extreme circumstances we need unusual solutions and this is just such a circumstance,” said Stewart, a regular presenter on ITV’s lunchtime news, as well as the ITN-produced London News.

Stuart said he supported recommendations made by Lord Carter’s final Digital Britain report last month to top-slice the licence fee to help pay for ITV local news services, saying that it should not be considered exclusively as a “BBC licence”.

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Joe Swash, winner of I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! is to move in with Pamela Anderson for a week as part of a new show for TV channel Living.

The channel, which is owned by Virgin Media, will screen two one-hour specials, Pamela Anderson: At Home with Joe, and Pamela Anderson: When Joe Came to Stay, to be broadcast in the autumn.

The programmes, which are made by independent production company Summer Films, will follow the former EastEnders actor as he spends time with his teenage pin-up on Malibu beach and in Paris, where Anderson currently models for Vivienne Westwood.

Living has made a name for itself in recent months for following the lives of celebrities. Earlier this year the channel pulled in big ratings for its series of programmes about Jade Goody’s battle with cancer, of which she eventually died, and her marriage to Jack Tweed. Living has also commissioned a series following another former Baywatch star, David Hasselhoff, as he makes a tour of the UK.

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Martin Freeman and Alexander Armstrong will star in a new BBC Four comedy drama celebrating the classic years of British computing in the 1980s.

Going under the working title Syntax Era, the show documents the on-going rivalry between maverick visionary Sir Clive Sinclair, played by Armstrong, and his former colleague Chris Curry (Freeman) as they go head to head to achieve domination of the growing home computer market.

“Those of us that lived through the eighties will remember the sense of excitement when gadgets and technology started to appear in our homes,” says Controller of BBC Four, Richard Klein.

“But not many of us will know the fascinating stories behind their arrival. Alexander Armstrong and Martin Freeman are excellent choices to portray Sir Clive Sinclair and Chris Curry at a time when battling to have the UK’s most loved home computer was their number one priority.”

The 90-minute drama was written by Tony Saint and uses archive footage from programme’s such as John Craven’s Newsround to illustrate the buzz around Sinclair and Curry’s inventions, as well as the infamous Sinclair C5 battery-powered tricycle.

Davina McCall and Holly Willoughby are battling it out to take over from Fern Britton on This Morning, according to a report from the Daily Mail.

The paper reports that ITV bosses have narrowed the shortlist, which included Fiona Phillips, Mel Sykes and Gabby Roslin, down to the twp presenters and will announce their decision in the coming fortnight.

A source is quoted as saying: “There are good reasons for having either one of them - they appeal in different ways. We are in a buyer’s market for this job and talent are not dumb. They know it is a very good gig.”

Co-host Phillip Schofield is understood to have given his backing to Holly Willoughby, 28, with whom he presents Dancing on Ice.

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UKTV has announced that Chris Tarrant, host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, will front a new children’s TV show for the channel.

Tarrant, who presented the children’s programme Tiswas in the seventies, has been appointed presenter of the new show, called Tarrant Lets the Kids Loose, which will air on the UKTV digital channel Watch.

The series of eight hour-long shows begins filming next month and will be broadcast in the autumn. It will see children aged three to six set out on “exciting missions”, including running a café, a radio station and a hairdressing salon. The participants only realise they are part of the show when they are brought into a studio with a live audience after having completed their assignment.

The show will be made by independent production company North One, with Lisa Perrin and Tess Cumming as executive producers, alongside North One’s Katy Thorogood and All3Media’s Ruth Wrigley. The series editor is Mike Agnew. North One is a subsidiary of All3Media.

Jonathan Ross has criticised the standard of weekend television in the UK, highlighting shows fronted by Graham Norton and Torchwood star John Barrowman.

Speaking on his Radio 2 show on Saturday, Ross poured scorn on Norton’s family series Totally Saturday, saying the entertainment show was so poor it made Barrowman’s Tonight’s The Night look impressive. Barrowman’s show sees ‘local heroes’ and ‘enthusiastic amateurs’ perform on stage with their favourite pop stars.

He said he missed shows like The Two Ronnies, and added: “Where’s that now? What have we got on TV over the weekend? We had had Graham Norton’s Totally Saturday. Well that’s not good enough.

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Torchwood star John Barrowman has accused the BBC of “punishing” the hit sci-fi drama after the corporation slashed the number of episodes in its new series from 13 to five.

The Dr Who spin off has been hugely popular with viewers since premiered in October 2006, moving from BBC3 to BBC2, and now BBC1 for the new series. However, its run has now been cut to five hour-long episodes - eight fewer than in the previous two series.

Barrowman, who plays leading character Captain Jack, said he was frustrated that the BBC had decided to slash the number of episodes as it promotes the show to BBC one.

“I’m going to get a little political and I’ll probably get into trouble for it, but … we were the most successful show on BBC3, ever [averaging 1.3 million a week; the opener drew 2.4 million],” he told the Radio Times.

“We moved to BBC2 because the ratings were so good; the ratings were great again [averaging 3.1 million] and we were beating shows that had been on BBC2 for a long time. The decision was made to go to BBC1 – and then we were cut. From 13 episodes down to five.

“The five episodes, the miniseries as I call it, are incredible – I have no doubt about that – but personally, I felt like we were being punished. Other shows move from BBC3 and 2 to 1, and they don’t get cut. So why are we? It felt like every time we moved we had to prove ourselves.”

However, Russell T. Davies, the show’s director, supported the change. “Part of us thought, ‘We could do another 13 episodes, we’ve learnt how to do that, and the second series was better than the first.’ But why not change it?

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The BBC sent 407 of its staff to cover the Glastonbury festival over the weekend - almost as many as it flew out to the Beijing Olympics. The corporation block booked a number of hotels within a 10-mile radius of the music festival for those on its payroll.

Presenters and camera crews as well as a clutch of the corporation’s top executives received free passes to attend Glastonbury in a “work capacity”. One of the executives, Mark Byford, the BBC’s deputy director-general, spent £240 a day on a chauffeur to ferry him from Waterloo Station to the festival. Sir Michael Lyons, chairman of the BBC Trust, also attended this weekend.

One BBC source estimated the cost of coverage to be £1.5 million, excluding any fee paid to the festival organisers. “We really don’t want anyone making unfortunate comparisons with Beijing,” he said.

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The BBC has announced that it will begin broadcasting programmes in High Definition on terrestrial television from December.

Freeview HD, initially comprising of high definition services from the BBC, ITV and Channel 4, will be launched on what is currently known as multiplex B. The roll-out of the service is planned to coincide with the digital switchover, starting with the Winter Hill transmitter which serves Liverpool and Manchester. Regions that have already made the switch to digital television will also receive the HD service from December.

In a posting on the BBC’s Internet blog, Graham Plumb, Head of Distribution Technology at the corporation said,” The plan is still to launch Freeview HD on December 2nd at the Winter Hill transmitter serving Manchester and Liverpool. The plan has always been to roll Freeview HD out around the country following switchover and Winter Hill was selected as the first achievable transmitter. There will need to be a retrospective upgrade of regions that have already switched.”

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