Channel 4

ITV Studios’ Managing Director, Julian Bellamy, wants people to know that he is open for business for creative talent and great ideas – wherever they may come from.

“We’re in a world now where creative talent has never been more in demand, more diverse, more commercial, more mobile – and if you don’t embrace that as a producer, you won’t survive and prosper,” he said. 

Bellamy already has a large talent pool to choose from. ITV’s strategy of acquiring independent production companies means that it owns 23 labels in the UK alone, with investment in a further five.

Timewasters has charmed critics and attracted healthy audiences with its mix of jazz, time travel and good jokes. Notably, it also has an all-black leading cast but, according to its creator, Daniel Lawrence Taylor, it is, “first and foremost”, a comedy.

Updated for television, Chimerica takes place during the 2016 US Presidential election and explores current political issues including censorship, fake news and the impact of political protest.

Victoria Pendleton

Best known for taking gold during the Beijing and London Olympics, cyclist Victoria Pendleton also won nine World Championship gold medals during her career.

Pendleton has since switched saddles to compete as a professional jockey.

Over the past couple of decades, Stephen Graham has become increasingly hard to avoid on both TV and film. The variety of roles he’s taken on is extraordinary. He can play cops and robbers, modern and period drama, ordinary and larger-than-life characters. He is convincing in all of them.

Peek around the corner of Badgers Bar in Derry and you’ll see the larger-than-life faces of Erin, Clare, Michelle, Orla and James plastered over the wall. As far as signs of a show’s success go, they don’t get much bigger than a five-metre-high mural.

From the moment the profane and brilliant Derry Girls burst on to our screens last year in a haze of teenage escapades, nostalgic music and 1990s artefacts – such as pastel printed wallpaper, Baby-G watches and armed soldiers on the streets – it captivated its audience.

As TV producers, we’re facing more global competition than ever before. Whenever they wish, viewers can watch one of many programmes from around the world on Netflix or Amazon, rather than one of our shows. Or they can stream or download dozens of feature films available via their TV sets.

I genuinely believe that the best response to this difficult situation is to embrace the creativity of the whole country, and not just rely on London­based programme-makers.

Surprise hit of the week is 100 Vaginas, in which the artist Laura Dods­worth photographs the genitalia of 100 women and then talks to them about the images and how they feel about their bodies. It’s a great film – bold and political and warm – but firmly at the art-house end of the channel’s output. Everyone is delighted when it attracts an audience of more than 1 million.

Llas Vegas (w/t) will see the duo source five single-story vintage buses and renovate them for a glamping site in North Wales.

With no previous business experience, Vegas and Dixon will be pushed to their limits to get the glamping site ready for the summer season, especially as neither have conducted renovations of this scale before.

“I bought a bus online. Not because it’s what showbiz folk do, but because my camping van got nicked and it had been my wee bit of creative space heaven,” commented Vegas.

Cheat

Monday: ITV, 9.00pm

ITV’s new four-part thriller, Cheat, features Katherine Kelly as sociology lecturer Leah, and Molly Windsor as Rose, her scheming student.

Set in Cambridge, Leah (Katherine Kelly) is close to securing a permanent position as a professor when negligent student Rose (Molly Windsor), submits an unbelievably good dissertation. Leah accuses Rose of deception, only to be left vulnerable to a series of sinister attacks from the student and her father, a wealthy benefactor of the college.