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
Making great British TV drama is an uphill struggle. Yet Code of Silence is a reminder that, if there’s a smart idea on the table, winning a commission can be a doddle. After the pitch, it took just eight hours for ITV to come back to Mammoth Screen with a “yes”.
“Polly Hill [Head of Drama] and Kevin Lygo [Managing Director, Media and Entertainment] saw immediately that this was a new and arresting way to tell a contemporary story,” says Damien Timmer, Chief Creative Officer and founder of Mammoth Screen, a subsidiary of ITV Studios.
Nearly 45 years on, the climax of the Iranian Embassy siege in London on 5 May 1980 still excites TV producers and authors. Paramount+ is streaming Operation Nimrod, a documentary narrated by Tom Hardy and produced by Scottish indie Two Rivers. Ben Macintyre’s book The Siege, published last year, is being adapted for TV. And, by my count, this will be the fifth drama or documentary on the subject.
He joined the RTS in 1955 and was awarded a Fellowship in 1978 in recognition of the contribution he had made to the development of electronic engineering facilities for independent television, his contribution to the Society as a member of its Council and as the first Chairman of the new London Centre in 1976.
Roger was educated at the Oxford School of Technology. He joined the BBC in 1954 and subsequently worked for Granada and Associated Rediffusion, joining London Weekend Television in 1968.
He became Chief Engineer in 1972 and Director of Engineering in 1981.
On June 1955, a jury took just 14 minutes to convict Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in Britain. Charged with murdering her lover, David Blakely, outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, north London, Ellis was in the dock for little over a day, but the case sent shockwaves across the nation and contributed to the end of the death penalty.
The theory goes that ex-Islanders are the only ones who have gone through this unique experience – months with no distractions but each other, failed public love affairs, and being catapulted into the public eye – so they must be well suited. With last series’ winners Molly Smith and Tom Clare having just bought their first home together, it now has a proven track record.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office dramatized the unfathomable plight of hundreds of subpostmasters losing life-changing sums of money to Horizon IT.
But series director James Strong argues that part of the story’s success is that it isn’t entirely unfathomable. If you’ve ever felt your heart drop when checking your bank balance right before pay day, there’s a chance you can empathise with a woman alone in her Post Office, confronted with scarily large numbers.
