End of Summer stars Julia Ragnarsson, who Swedish thriller fans may recognise from The Bridge. The series begins in 1984, on the disappearance of a five-year-old boy named Billy that devastates his family.
20 years later, a chance meeting between Billy’s sister Vera (Ragnarsson) and a strangely familiar man (Erik Enge, The Sandhamn Murders), leads her to question the truth surrounding the case.
Both semi-finals and the final itself will air on BBC One and BBC iPlayer. The contest will be taking place in Sweden, with the Grand Final taking place in the Malmö Arena on Saturday 11 May next year.
The BBC has also confirmed that the search for the United Kingdom’s act and song entry took place over the Summer. It was led by Lee Smithurst, executive producer at BBC Studios and Will Wilkin, commissioning executive at BBC Music.
Details over the UK’s entry, though, are yet to be announced.
This means classic episodes of the sci-fi juggernaut will be available to watch ahead of the three 60th anniversary specials. Though exact broadcast dates are yet to be announced, the BBC confirmed they will air at some point next month.
Every episode of programming will boast multiple accessibility options, including subtitles, audio description and sign language.
All members of the Walsh family have a longstanding relationship with Gladiators. Barney grew up on the set of the original series, watching his mum Donna Derby choreograph the Gladiators cheerleaders, and even taking some of his first steps on the arena floor. Bradley (The Chase) stepped up to compete in a Celebrities vs Jockeys special in 1997.
When it arrived on our screens in 2002, Spooks was truly revolutionary. British telly had mastered the cerebral spy thriller – most notably with the BBC’s revered adaptation of John le Carré’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Alec Guinness as master spy George Smiley – but Spooks was different.
Not everyone was happy with the Royal Television Society crowning BBC Three Channel of the Year. As one young viewer tweeted: “@bbcthree how can you win channel of the year, if you don’t actually exist on a channel?”
The success of online-only, schedule-free BBC Three shows that our idea of what constitutes a channel is evolving.
This year has been BBC iPlayer's best year so far according to stats from the BBC, recording the amounts of requests shows have had on the online platform.
October and November saw the highest average number of daily requests BBC iPlayer has ever had, at 11.7 million in each month.
BBC Three had a good year on BBC iPlayer, with drama Thirteen’s first episode requested more than 3.2 million times, the second most popular episode of any series across the year so far. These are promising figures, considering BBC Three made the transition to online in February.
Comedian Hugh Dennis aired the thoughts of many trying to navigate the new television landscape when he introduced this session. In a video diary shown to conference delegates, he was seen stuck inside a room for a month. His task was to watch all the content available to modern audiences.
“Watching telly used to be so easy,” he complained. “Four channels, maybe five – everyone watched the same thing in the same place at the same time, unless your family was at the cutting edge of technology and had a VCR.”
In May 2016, the government released a White Paper which contained a series of propositions for changing the way public service broadcasting operates in the UK.
In the UK we have the TV licence which pays for the creation of the content of the BBC. It is this licence that means that you can watch ad-free programming on the BBC.
Jumping on the binge-watching trend, the broadcaster will make the costume drama available as a box set on Friday, two weeks before its premiere on linear television.
The BBC previously released the smash hit comedy Peter Kay's Car Share on iPlayer ahead of its terrestrial transmission, but this is the first time it has done this with a drama.
