ITV’s new true-crime drama, The Pembrokeshire Murders, recounts the solving of one of Wales’ most notorious crimes.
Luke Evans stars as newly promoted Detective Superintendent Steve Wilkins, responsible for reopening the unsolved Coastal Path Murders of the 1980s in 2006.
No one could accuse Coronation Street of taking it easy, even though this would be understandable for a middle-aged British telly institution. Over the last couple of years the ITV soap has given viewers multiple murders, deaths and suicides; explosions and a minibus crash; a pre-teen pregnancy; and even a gay vicar.
Audiences have been lapping up the drama, which regularly attracts more than 7 million viewers. Corrie remains the nation’s favourite soap.
Everyone's favourite local watering hole the Rovers Return Inn may seem like a fake pub, but staff still pull a hefty number of pints each week, and Betty's famous hotpot lives on long after actress Betty Driver passed away in 2011. Weekly, The Rovers serves up 1,440 pints, 100 gin and tonics, and 84 hotpots - as well as 2,500 bags of crisps per year. The beer served is actually very weak - and very sweet - shandy, and the gin and tonics are just fizzy water and lime.
The challenges of a shifting TV landscape will be discussed by television executives at this year's RTS Cambridge Convention, chaired by BBC Director-General Tony Hall.
Click here for the latest programme and news about Cambridge 2015
Sir Lenny Henry admitted he was unusually nervous before the Midlands premiere of his latest TV drama, because his family was in the audience.
Cary Grant was the ultimate Hollywood star, the suavest man on the silver screen during cinema’s golden age.
Whatever the role – from the unscrupulous newspaper editor of His Girl Friday to ordinary-man-on-the-run in North by Northwest – he was always Grant: charming, urbane, the epitome of cool.
Surely, then, only the vainest of actors would sign up to play him in Archie, ITV’s new four-part drama about Grant, written by Jeff Pope?
The series will show the stars put their lives as food critics, YouTubers, presenters, and actors on pause to live in the Australian Hinterlands, alongside their hosts Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly.
Following the format the show has kept since its debut in 2002, the celebrities will camp outside in hammocks (if they’re lucky) and on the ground (if they are not), participating in regular ‘Bushtucker challenges’ at Ant and Dec’s behest.
In 2022, comedian Rhod Gilbert was diagnosed with stage four head and neck cancer. Now, in a one-off documentary for Stand Up to Cancer, Gilbert will be revealing his journey from diagnosis to recovery through a series of personal video diaries.
It’s quite a shopping list, but it’s a flavour of what broadcasters are looking for in factual programming, a panel of commissioners told an audience at an RTS East event in Cambridge last month.
Louisa Compton’s investigations unit at Channel 4 needed no more introduction than a brief clip of her recent Dispatches film on Russell Brand, but she stressed that, as well as seeking high-level, impactful investigations, she is looking for subjects to get people talking, such as Rebekah Vardy: Jehovah’s Witnesses and Me.
The past few years have been eventful for most, but the highs and lows of ITV’s fortunes have been particularly pronounced. Its advertising revenues were hit hard by the pandemic, but the broadcaster bounced back to achieve record advertising in 2021-22. At the end of 2022, there was another watershed moment: it launched ITVX, its heavyweight streaming service to replace ITV Hub with a combined 26,000 hours of ITV and Britbox content. But, this year, its advertising revenues have again slumped.
