BBC

From the brilliant new voice of author Cash Carraway, Rain Dogs follows a dysfunctional family on the fringes of society attempting to go straight in a crooked world. Costello Jones (Daisy May Cooper) is a devoted mother who wants more for her young daughter, Iris (newcomer Fleur Tashjian).

As she hustles to survive, Costello leans on Selby (Jack Farthing), Iris’s pseudo father (and Costello’s pseudo soulmate) and Gloria (Ronke Adékoluejo), a loyal yet chaotic godmother and best friend.

Alison (Charlotte Richie) and Mike Cooper (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) moved into Button House after inheriting it from a distant relative. However, their talks of converting the mansion into a hotel upset its permanent residents, a set of ghosts who died in the house at various points in history.

A shock accident left Alison, who crucially is a living person, able to see her phantom friends; eight ghosts all vying for her attention, along with a whole cluster of plague victims living in her basement.

The initiative has catapulted many aspiring directors to success, with previous participants going on to work on international series and feature documentaries for the BBC, Netflix, Amazon and Sky.

What’s Great Expectations about?

Based on Dickens’ famous novel of the same name, Great Expectations tells the Victorian coming-of-age story of orphan Pip and his journey transcending his low social class.

The period drama is true to the original story. After Pip meets the mysterious and gothic Miss Havisham, he is catapulted into a high-society London where his life transforms. A tale of love, loyalty and wealth, the story follows Pip from childhood through to his adult years.

Halifax is the Lourdes for lesbians,” said producer-director and former Chair of RTS Yorkshire Fiona Thompson at “Celebrating Gentleman Jack: Changing lives”.

Not a sentence many would have anticipated hearing, but this is only one of the consequences of the so-called “Gentleman Jack effect”.

Anne Lister, Sally Wainwright’s eponymous Gentleman Jack, born in 1791, was a Halifax industrialist, landowner, diarist and self-assured lesbian, and hero of possibly the most important TV drama of recent times.

Last October, the BBC and the European Broadcasting Union chose Liverpool – standing in for war-torn Ukraine, the 2022 winners – to host this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

UK entry Sam Ryder, singing Space Man, came a strong second last year. Without the sympathy votes cast for Ukraine’s admittedly decent song, the long-haired Essex lad may even have won.

Children’s TV hasn’t been the same without Grange Hill, Phil Redmond’s seminal series, but the new kid on the block, Phoenix Rise, is taking up the baton for teen drama.

It’s singularly British: realistic and gritty, but also laugh-out-loud funny – and never patronising. With an urban soundtrack and a diverse cast, American high-school glamour thankfully feels a world away.

As Matt Evans, co-creator of the 20-part BBC iPlayer series, admits, “There has been a Grange Hill-shaped hole in the schedule.”

The sitcom, fronted by Brendan O’Carroll (All Round to Mrs Brown’s), saw runaway success due to its unusual fourth wall-breaking comedy style.

Although the series itself ran for only 3 series between 2011 and 2013, Agatha Brown and her collection of family and friends have made their return every year for Christmas specials, which the BBC has commissioned up to 2026.

Focused on a powerful love between mother and daughter, Rain Dogs is a wild ride into the chaotic lives of single mother Costello Jones, played by Daisy May Cooper (This Country), and daughter Iris, played by Fleur Tashjian in her breakout role.

Carraway claims Rain Dogs “isn’t autobiographical”, but there are strong shades of some of her earlier work. Skint Estate, Carraway’s acclaimed debut memoir, chronicled her experiences as a single mum living through poverty and the destructive austerity programme of the 2010s.