BBC

A Brief History of Tim, Motherland, and Porridge will all return to television with a full series. Each programme was piloted as part of the BBC's celebration of 60 years of the sitcom, marking the anniversary of the first TV episode of Hancock's Half Hour.

Porridge was brought back by the creative time behind the original 1974 sitcom of the same name. A reimagining of the BBC One favourite, the new Porridge stars Kevin Bishop as the cyber criminal grandson of Ronnie Barker's iconic inmate Fletcher.

Top Gear was relaunched in May this year with LeBlanc and Radio 2 DJ Chris Evans fronting the broadcaster's flagship motoring show. The pair were supported by motorsport boss Eddie Jordan, champion driver Sabine Schmitz, and journalists Chris Harris and Rory Reid over the series' six-week run.

The show launches with a double episode, released simultaneously on the channel.

Class is set in Coal Hill School, a regular time-travelling hotspot since the Doctor first arrived there in 1963.

Years of time travel have caused the barrier between space and time to wear dangerously thin, and something frightening has been waiting on the other side…

The series is darker than previous Doctor Who spin off The Sarah Jane Smith Adventures, and is suggested to be more in line with adult sci-fi hit Torchwood.

HyperNormalisation will explore the time of uncertainty we currently live in, where even those in power don’t know what to do.

The documentary is inspired by the unpredictable events of recent times – from the rise of Donald Trump to Brexit, the war in Syria, the endless migrant crisis, and random bomb attacks.

It seeks to explain both why these chaotic events are happening, and why we and our leaders can’t understand them.

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.