Contract negotiations with the BBC broke down when the corporation reportedly wouldn't match Channel 4's offer.
The shock announcement was followed by the news that presenters Sue Perkins and Mel Giedroyc would not be following the show after it left BBC One. Star judges Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood have not yet confirmed if they will stay with the production.
Despite being one of the world’s oldest games, chess is far from being forgotten. From 2020’s The Queen’s Gambit spiking sales of chess boards and books, to the chess.com app being the most downloaded in February 2023, new players across the globe continue to find love for the 1500-year-old game.
Now Chess Masters will bring together 12 amateur players from across the UK to compete in heats and knock-out rounds.
Sat before the tyrant, Davies, and his long-suffering assistant Horne, will be Julian Clary (Friday Night Live), actor, writer and stand-up Lucy Beaumont (Meet the Richardsons), multi-award-winning stand-up Sam Campbell, comedian and former Bake Off presenter Sue Perkins, and actor, writer and director Susan Wokoma (Cheaters).
For 16 series, Taskmaster Greg Davies has been setting five comedians absurd and surrealist tasks from the comfort of his big red throne, joined by his assistant ‘little’ Alex Horne.
Contestants must earn points by completing tasks such as “be photographed in the most unusual situation wearing this fez” or “conceal this pineapple”, and the one with the most points at the end of the series goes home with a trophy in the shape of Greg Davies’ head.
Sue Perkins travels the US-Mexican border to discover the realities of living on either side, which Trump famously wanted to divide with a wall.
The two-part series will see Perkins embark on a 2000-mile journey from coast to coast across one of the most contentious borders in the world. Starting in the Mexican city of Tijuana on the Pacific Coast, Perkins will travel across the continent, ending in Matamoros, a city on the north-eastern border.
On the Central American side, Perkins helps build a hostel with Honduran volunteers for refugees fleeing violence, while on the US side she shadows an Arizona sheriff to uncover the fight against Mexican criminal drug cartels.
The six-part series, written and created by Joe Parkham and Joe Markham, follows two best friends, Fran (Perkins) and Jamie (Giedroyc), who only have each other to rely on as they try to move forward in the world.
The only thing is, they kill people for a living which adds a certain element of complication to their lives.
Joe Parkham and Joe Markham commented: “We can’t believe that something which has been knocking around inside our heads for so long has been brought to life by two of the funniest people in the country, along with a load of our other comedy heroes.”
Produced by Tiger Aspect, Hitmen (working title) will be a six-part original comedy that tells the story of contract killers Jamie (Mel Giedroyc) and Fran (Sue Perkins). The duo are not your average assassins, however, nor the most professional, as the pair botch up assassinations and work from a scruffy van. Their incompetence sees the pair thrown into ridiculous adventures, testing their friendship along the way.
Twenty children, aged 9-13 years, from across the UK have signed up to take part in the series. They will be competing against each other in invented games and challenges centred around spelling conundrums before one of them is crowned champion in a final showdown.
When Kim Shillinglaw became Controller of BBC Two last year, one of her predecessors took her for a drink. Roly Keating had launched BBC Four, moved on to BBC Two and filled in as temporary boss of BBC One. In a meeting room in New Broadcasting House, Shillinglaw recalls with terrible clarity what he told her.
“He said, ‘You will find BBC Two is the toughest. Let me tell you that now. BBC Four has a lot of individual commissions but not very much money, so there’s a limit to how many things it can commission.
