BBC

In accordance with the Charter, the corporation has agreed to remove the ‘in-house guarantee’ which the majority of its programming falls under, and open up the making of new and existing programmes to outside production companies.

A Question of Sport, Songs of Praise and Holby City will be tendered in the next few weeks.

“These programmes have been chosen because they are approaching recommissioning decisions and their production schedules allow them to be put out to tender quickly,” said a BBC spokesperson.

Easter Rising: Voice of a Rebel​ commemorates the centenary year of the infamous conflict in Dublin where hundreds died as the people of Ireland wrestled for independence from Britain. BBC Learning worked together with Crossover Labs and VRTOV to provide the immersive experience on an Oculus Rift headset. 

At the RTS Midlands Centre conference, Joe Godwin, director of the BBC Academy and BBC Birmingham, discussed training and apprenticeship schemes, as well as the success of BBC Drama.  

The diversity workshop was chaired by former BBC community affairs correspondent Barnie Choudhury, and featured actor and broadcaster Phina Oruche, BBC head of business development Tommy Nagra and Godwin.  

Choudhury asked whether diversity had been “highjacked by those who want to stop creativity”, prompting an impassioned debate. 

"My generation grew up thinking that religion was completely marginal to British life, which, as for the rest of the world, has been proved more and more wrong,” historian Simon Schama famously said.

In this, if in little else, Schama and I have something in common. Born in the same year, I was also carried along on the wave of 1960s optimism, which assumed that everyone was basically good, life was getting better for all, and reason would triumph.

Monday

Joe Wicks: the Body Coach

Channel 4

7:10pm

The deal between BBC One and Agatha Christie Productions Ltd follows the critical success of 2015’s Christmas drama And Then There Were None, adapted by Sarah Phelps and starring Poldark’s Aidan Turner.

Rutherford has just returned from the Rio Olympics where he won a bronze medal in the long jump final. He announced his taking part in the celebrity dance contest on BBC's The One Show alongside actors Lesley Joseph and Tameka Empson.

Joseph is most remembered for her role in the 1990's hit sitcom Birds of a Feather, where she played promiscuous neighbour Dorien, while Empson rose to prominence in her hidden camera comedy 3 Non-Blondes in 2003. She currently stars on EastEnders as the bubbly but vicious Kim Fox.

Tony Garnett, now 80 and still a republican socialist, arrived with a bang as a standout producer of television and film drama in the 1960s. He made his mark with powerful, campaigning programmes such as The Wednesday Play’s Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home, which exposed the horrors of backstreet abortions and family homelessness.