BBC Three

Hosted by Zara McDermott, the eight-part series will follow five potential couples who have already matched through dating apps or social media but are yet to meet face to face.

The couples will be whisked away to a beach house in Greece for a week, away from their screens and the pressures of daily life to see if they can find love in the flesh.

Some of the couples have been talking for weeks, some years, but they have only interacted through apps, stories and DMs, so will their online persona match their real-world self?

Freeze the Fear with Wim Hof will air on BBC One, with the entertainment reality show following a group of celebrities as they undergo a once in a lifetime adventure that will test their mental strength under the guidance of extreme athlete Wim Hof. 

Extreme athlete Wim Hof, aka The Iceman, will train eight celebrities for a series of physically and mentally draining challenges over six episodes.

The intrepid contestants include musical theatre legend Alfie Boe OBE, singer songwriter Chelcee Grimes, Strictly Come Dancing professional dancer Dianne Buswell, sports presenter Gabby Logan MBE, Welsh weatherman-drummer Owain Wyn Evans, former footballer Patrice Evra, rapper Professor Green and actress Tamzin Outhwaite.

The incredibly personal documentary, James Arthur: Out of Our Minds (working title), will take place in the Northeast where Arthur grew up and has returned to after many years living in London.

Middlesbrough born singer Arthur will be open up about his mental health problems and issues he has had with antidepressants as he prepares to go out on tour. 

A government review discovered that 7.3 million, around 17% of the adult population are taking anti-depressants.

Created and written by Ryan J. Brown, the comedy horror - with an element of slasher - takes place aboard The Sacramentum cruise ship. 

New recruit 20-year-old Jamie (Oscar Kennedy, Ladhood) has joined the ship to try and infiltrate the 3,000 strong crew in a tense race to find his missing sister, who was working on the same ship during a previous tour but vanished mid charter. 

As Jamie learns the realities of cruise life, he discovers the different tribes within the staff, from the theatre kids, to the mafias, to the low paid workers. 

Inspired by real world accounts of what it is like to be a warehouse worker in Britain, the factual drama comes from the team behind Killed By My Debt and Murdered By My Father. 

The fictional story follows warehouse worker Alys (Poppy Lee Friar), as her childhood friend Megan (Aimee-Ffion Edwards) joins the same distribution centre as a trainee manager. 

Megan is desperate to keep and excel in her new job and pressures Alys to increase her ‘pick rate’, which puts Alys and her baby at risk. 

With the UK as the host nation, the series will see queens from different Drag Race franchises compete in an international arena, showcasing their country’s finest drag with the hopes of becoming Queen of the World. The queens will need to impress RuPaul and the judges, Michelle Visage, Alan Carr, Graham Norton and a host of celebrity guest judges, including Clara Amfo, Daisy May Cooper and Jade Thirlwall.

The channel will be available to watch on Freeview, Sky, Virgin and Freesat, broadcasting from 7pm every night. The channel can also be watched live on the BBC Three channel page on iPlayer (TV, mobile, and web) with live re-start available.

With a broad content mix of drama, comedy, entertainment, documentaries, news and sport, audiences can expect the returning channel to provide a rich multi-genre offering.

In two months’ time, almost six years to the day that BBC Three became a solely internet network in order to save money, the service is returning as a linear channel. Arguably, it’s not a moment too soon. For, along with every other traditional broadcaster, the BBC is grappling with how to attract younger audiences and compete effectively with the streamers.  

When a new BBC Three comedy made its low-key debut in the spring of 2007, no one imagined that Gavin & Stacey would go on to become the comedic equivalent of a national treasure. 

Despite its two writers’ utter lack of experience as screenwriters – James Corden and Ruth Jones had met as actors on Kay Mellor’s slimming club drama for ITV, Fat Friends – it soon became clear that here was a startlingly original show blessed by a group of fully realised characters, a script crackling with wit and an unusually brilliant cast.