BBC Four

Gritty Canadian drama Cardinal heads to BBC Four

Detective John Cardinal (Billy Campbell, The Killing) is the eponymous star of the series, who joins forces with Lise Delorme (Karine Vanasse, Revenge) to hunt down a vicious serial killer in the icy wastes of a small Northern Ontario town.

Adapted from Giles Blunt’s award-winning novel Forty Words for Sorrow, the first in the John Cardinal series, the six-part drama will air later this year.

BBC announces slow TV Yorkshire special

This special follows a number of other successful slow TV programmes on the channel including All Aboard! The Sleigh Ride and Slow Week.

All Aboard! The Country Bus will take viewers on a peaceful and idyllic ride along one of the most spectacularly scenic bus routes in Britain.

Filmed in real time, the camera capture the road ahead and passing scenery, as well as the occasional chatter from the regular riders.

Subtitles, sass and sex: why foreign programming is booming

Subtitles, sass and sex are the latest must-haves for broadcasters who are serious about satisfying their audiences. British viewers’ expanding appetite for foreign-language shows has taken in the mafia in Gomorrah on Sky Atlantic, the chilly Icelandic landscape of Trapped on BBC Four and the visceral drugs drama Prófugos on Channel 4’s new online service, Walter Presents.

Who will own the future of television?

RTS Cambridge Session 1

Who will own the future – the broadcasters, the content owners or the global tech behemoths, such as Google, Facebook and Apple? The question is not new, but it is becoming ever more pressing for people in television.

James Purnell, the BBC’s Director, Strategy and Digital, led this comprehensive opening debate, “Happy Valley or House of Cards? Television in 2020”.

Kim Shillinglaw: It’s bloody hard to make great television

When Kim Shillinglaw became Controller of BBC Two last year, one of her predecessors took her for a drink. Roly Keating had launched BBC Four, moved on to BBC Two and filled in as temporary boss of BBC One. In a meeting room in New Broadcasting House, Shillinglaw recalls with terrible clarity what he told her.

“He said, ‘You will find BBC Two is the toughest. Let me tell you that now. BBC Four has a lot of individual commissions but not very much money, so there’s a limit to how many things it can commission.

Michael Jackson: From Macclesfield to Manhattan

Michael Jackson's stellar career encapsulates much of the creative history of TV during the past 30 years. He was an innovative independent producer back in the 1980s, reinvented BBC Two in the 1990s, and went on to run Channel 4. There, he launched Queer as FolkAli G and Big Brother, before crossing the Atlantic to work for the legendary mogul Barry Diller.

Today, still based in New York, his career has swung full circle. Jackson is once again working as a producer.