Countryfile

Countryfile: Anatomy of a Hit

Countryfile launched on the BBC in 1988 to celebrate the ‘beauty and diversity of the British countryside’ and moved in 2009 to a high profile hour-length Sunday night BBC One slot. Since then it has gone from strength to strength, becoming Britain’s most popular weekly factual TV show regularly drawing in audiences of over six million and in February of this year, hit a peak of 9.4 million.

What's the secret of its success? How does it consistently deliver huge Sunday night ratings for BBC One?

Anita Rani's TV Diary

(Credit: BBC)

Well, I only went and won an RTS! What a wonderful, unexpected bonus after making the most important piece of TV I’ve ever made. My Family, Partition and Me told the story of the Partition of India, the brutal end of the Raj. Not only my story, the story of millions. My motivation for making it was realising, based on the reaction to my Who Do You Think You Are?, how little people know about this momentous period in history.

Event report: Countryfile: anatomy of a hit

“The journalism within Countryfile is the heartbeat of the programme,” said executive editor Bill Lyons, who was talking to a full house at the Everyman Cinema for an RTS Bristol Centre event celebrating the long-running BBC One magazine programme.

Over the years, Countryfile has investigated the countryside protest marches, foot and mouth disease, and rural domestic violence. “We don’t shy away from the grittiness of the countryside,” said Joanna Brame, who produces the series for BBC Bristol.

Who Do You Think You Are? line up announced

Mark Gatiss

The twelfth series of the genealogy programme will touch on almost a thousand years of history from the Tower of London to the Punjab in India, via the Wild West of the US.

Actor Sir Derek Jacobi uncovers a background of contrast, from humble roots in Walthamstow to the excesses of Louis XIV's royal court in France, while model Jerry Hall traces her pioneering ancestors from the cotton mills of Oldham to the plains of Texas.