Britain's Got Talent

There is an irony to Amelia Brown’s rise to the top of the TV tree. The Fremantle UK CEO says: “My mother was hilariously strict with my TV watching and would not let me watch much of it… So, I would rebel and watch it where and when I could... she was a bit of a TV snob.”

She and her mum subsequently saw the funny side when Brown found success working on ITV hits Pop Idol, The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent and reminded her mother: “You wouldn’t even let me watch ITV!”

Call the Midwife Christmas Special

BBC One, 7:40pm

This year’s Call the Midwife Christmas special re-joins the midwives at Nonnatus House in December 1965, where they’re preparing for some joyfully traditional celebrations.

Here are some of our favourite reality TV moments. 

"What a sad little life Jane"

Come Dine With Me follows a group of strangers as they compete to be crowned the ultimate dinner party host, with each contestant creating their own version of the perfect dinner party, which will see them scored out of ten by each guest. 

If you thought that defining diversity was easy, think again. As the chair of a stimulating and thought-provoking RTS event, Aaqil Ahmed, formerly the head of religion and ethics at the BBC, concluded: “Diversity in itself is diverse. For me, that understanding of it isn’t there for a lot of people.… It’s not a numbers game… diversity is very complicated.”

Throughout the “Defining diversity? That’s easy” session, attempts to provide a definition that all the panel could agree on proved elusive.

The three-part series follows Emily Verma (Dew), a 27-year-old living the high life in London after flying the nest from her seaside hometown, Sandylands.

When Emily hears her father Les Vegas (Bhaskar) is lost at sea, she returns to her childhood home and reconnects with her old best friend Tina (Harriet Webb) and quickly befriends her oddball next door neighbours Derek Swallows (Walliams) and his wife Jeannie (Sophie Thompson).

When the BBC spiced up one of TV’s oldest formats to create Strictly Come Dancing, few thought it would create the holy grail of TV – a genuine pop-culture phenomenon that glued all ages to the box.

That was almost 15 years ago. Come Dancing, the show that inspired Strictly, first appeared in 1950, surviving in all its flouncy glory until 1998. It remains to be seen if even Strictly can last that long.

Monday:

University Challenge

8pm, BBC Two

The Oxbridge final sees Wolfson College, Cambridge, and Balliol, Oxford, go head to head for the University Challenge trophy, as Jeremy Paxman asks the questions.

The agreement with Syco Entertainment and FreemantleMedia UK extends ITV’s long-standing relationship with Cowell.

ITV’s Kevin Lygo was “delighted” that the shows were remaining on with the commercial broadcaster, adding “They are defining shows for us, ones that we are very proud to have as part of our entertainment slate.”

Kevin Lygo’s new job is possibly the biggest in British television – and certainly the most exposed. ITV’s incoming Director of Television must, together with his freshly minted team of commissioning chiefs, arrest a decline in audience that saw the main channel’s viewing share halve between 2000 and 2015.

Downton Abbey is gone, The X Factor is on the wane, and ITV hasn’t launched a breakout hit since Broadchurch in 2013. The company’s share price, which peaked at over 280p last July, fell close to 200p recently.