UK TV

The problems and dilemmas facing ITV

ITV1 logo

ITV is having problems. We all know that. It’s share price is down the tubes, it’s having to cut jobs, its ad revenues are in decline, it can’t afford to do local news any more, its ratings are falling, it’s even having to cancel Primeval.

It’s having problems.

Over the last few days, I’ve been swanning around various people blogs (including Dan’s and Joe’s) and mailing lists, explaining to everyone who hates ITV – which is pretty much everyone – what its problems are and why they’re not all its fault. I should have been doing proper work, I know, but all these years of trade journalism haven’t been for nothing you know, and I do like the sound of my own typing.

Anyway, I thought I’d cobble together all the various postings, try to assemble them into some kind of coherent but occasionally self-contradictory mass, and let you muse on them – and argue the toss if necessary. Note, a lot of it’s been off the top off my head, so don’t quote me for truth or even accuracy on all the details: imagine them as broad sketch outlines of poor ITV’s problems – and why it had to cancel Primeval.

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Sitting Tennant

Sitting Tennant: Happy birthday Marie and Persephone

A very special mid-week Sitting Tennant to say happy birthday to frequent Sitting Tennanters Marie and Persephone, who’s been saving this one up especially – is making your own birthday present a Canadian tradition?

No need to caption – it’s for your own enjoyment (and Photoshopping purposes). And since it’s got Kelly Reilly in it, there’s something for everyone, I hope.

Hope you have a great day, you two. Regular Sitting Tennant will be back on Friday.

UK TV

Review: Above Suspicion

Kelly Reilly in Above Suspicion

In the UK: Sunday 4th/Monday 5th January, 9pm, ITV1

While shows like Demons demonstrate that ITV1 still has somewhere to go to redeem itself with drama after a decade of predominantly awful output, something that we can probably all agree on is that ITV1 is the home of decent crime TV in Britain.

While the Beeb has restricted itself to anaemic period stuff, comfy escapism like Jonathan Creek, Inspector Lynley cobblers or excruciating rubbish like The Invisibles, ITV1 has been producing classics of modern, gritty crime fiction for decades, including the Prime Suspects, Cracker, Wire in the Blood and even The Bill. Okay Wallander was good, but for the most part, BBC1 has sucked, while ITV1 has done well.

Blimey though, has it really been nearly two decades since the first Prime Suspect. Doesn’t time fly? I’m sure they’d be cranking out more episodes if only Helen Mirren hadn’t decided to get old, curse her.

That might well be the thought Prime Suspect creator Lynda La Plante had when she was writing the novel Above Suspicion – while simultaneously being unable to get much stuff on TV other than one of those few ITV1 crime misfires, Trial and Retribution, and the slightly bland The Commander. “If only we could do Prime Suspect: The Early Years, hopefully with some hot young actress. Let me write that as a novel and see if they adapt it.”

Hey presto, here it is. A two-part mini-series starring the exceedingly hot (and talented) Kelly Reilly as a young rookie DC hunting a serial killer. This one’s going to run and run.

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Friday’s “bearded west country zone” news

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Today's Joanna Page

TV star casting in the West End: good or bad?

Today’s biggish news is that famed director and writer Jonathan Miller has decided to have a go at West End casting practices – and in particular the casting of David Tennant (and Jude Law) in Hamlet.

Apparently, he’s been trying to get his no-star version of Hamlet into the West End but can’t, even though he reckons the performances are bound to be better than either Tennant’s or Law’s.

So the question for you, my friends, is does he have a point? Or do West End producers have a point?

For my own part, I’m very easily swayed by some big film or TV names into turning up at a theatre when I otherwise wouldn’t: my most recent theatre attendances (off the top of my head) have included Fat Pig (Joanna Page, Robert Webb, Kris Marshall, Ella Smith), Art (bloke off Dalziel and Pascoe, Sean Hughes and Alistair McGowen if I recall correctly), A Few Good Men (with Rob Lowe and John Barrowman), The Master Builder (Patrick Stewart and Kelly Reilly), Patrick Stewart’s one-man version of A Christmas Carol, and Sexual Perversity in Chicago (Matthew Perry, Minnie Driver, Hank Azaria, Kelly Reilly).

That’s money in the pockets of theatres that they otherwise wouldn’t have had with less well-known casts. And the West End isn’t exactly cheap.

More to the point, are celebs possibly the best choices? Maybe they’re famous because they have talent. David Tennant isn’t exactly unknown in theatre.

In fact, is Miller just grumpy because he couldn’t get his own production off the ground? Why have a go at a version of Hamlet that hasn’t even started performing? 

Fat Pig is the most obvious piece of TV celeb casting at the moment, so why not pick on it? Is it because, way back in 2002, he cast the RADA-trained Joanna Page in his production of Camera Obscura at the Almeida (to generally excellent reviews), and so wouldn’t have had much of a leg to stand on?

What do you think? Are good actors being overlooked? Are they being overlooked in favour of better, more famous actors? Or is celeb casting a necessary evil in a competitive market?