ITV unleash the big guns with The Fixer and He Kills Coppers
Tuesday, March 18th, 2008Viewers return to the (real) third channel
ITV seem determined to reverse recent fortunes by bringing the big guns to bear on the competition in the form of a new brace of gritty gun-toting crime dramas which sees plenty of shooting and killing.
The new drama The Fixer, the pilot episode of which was broadcast last week, is pretty much a rewrite of the gritty 60’s TV show Callan, featuring the same premise; a shady Government body recruits a former ex-Special Forces man and his cellmate to be an unofficial government hitman – they kill people to earn their freedom. Starring Andrew Buchan as John Mercer, the titular Fixer, and Tamzin Outhwaite as a femme fatale, the debut episode revolved around the taking out of an Albanian gangster and netted ITV a nice share of the ratings (6.2m).
ITV have also been heavily punting their adaptation of Jake Arnott’s He Kills Coppers, which is concerned with the murder of three Met officers in 1966. Spanning two decades, the series begins in the build up to the final of the 1966 World Cup, it takes in the ‘Clean Up The World Cup’ initiative on strip clubs in
Executive chairman Michael Grade has insisted that company is experiencing a turnaround. He said: “We’re focused on a three to five year growth plan, we’re fixing the fundamentals of the business, we’ve recruited a phenomenal team, (and) viewers are coming back to ITV.”
The Fixer is broadcast every Monday at 9pm on ITV1, and He Kills Coppers unloads both barrels this Sunday the 23rd of March.
