C4 Goes For Talking Point TV With Spring/Summer ’99 Schedule
The Barbican last week, Quaglino’s this week. It’s a hard life but somebody has to go to all these programme schedule launches. Tim Garden, director of programmes at Channel 4, today unveiled the channel’s output for Spring to Summer. He began by saying that the channel had ‘woken up’ and would be setting out its stall to remain Britain’s most talked about television station. There was even a dig at ITV with the comment that C4 was ‘not a machine for shovelling ratings’.
Channel 4 seems to have rediscovered its distinctive edge, with programmes like Psychos, Love in the 21st Century and Test Match Cricket (okay maybe not that last one). Sure, there is the reliance on top rated imports like ER, NYPD Blue, Ally McBeal and Friends (new series starting in July), but there will be 37 pieces of new, home produced drama to offset this.
Gems in the schedule would appear to be the aforementioned Psychos, which is set in the psychiatric ward of a Glasgow hospital; Coming Soon, a comedy drama that follows an avant-garde theatre group on an ill-fated tour of Scotland and Merlin, a four-hour drama which tells the tale of the great sorcerer and has a cast including Sam Neill, Helena Bonham-Carter, Miranda Richardson and James Earl Jones. There is also Dockers, the latest offering from acclaimed writer Jimmy McGovern, which features writing contributions from some of the actual Liverpool Dockers who have been caught up in the 28 month dispute.
Channel 4’s factual programming is as strong as ever with programmes like Dispatches and Time Team aiming to cover the issues that do not appear on ITV or BBC1. In April there will be an analysis of the first two years of the Labour government. The season of programmes will appear under the banner of Blair’s Britain and will include If John Smith Had Lived, The Power List – Scotland and, long overdue in some people’s eyes, The Trial of Margaret Thatcher. There will also be a short series of The Real…, focusing on such talents as Prince Phillip, Peter Mandelson and ex-Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.
This is the schedule which includes Channel 4’s major sporting acquisition of last year: Test Match Cricket. Viewers will be able to see ball by ball coverage of the three tests against New Zealand as well as interviews, phone-ins, features and primetime highlights of all internationals involving the English cricket team.
There will also be a series of themed nights in the upcoming months focusing on such cult classic as Withnail and I, Starsky and Hutch and, to kick off its second series, South Park.
Also mentioned at the press conference, following on from successful pilots, was the news that Chris Evans’ Ginger Productions will be making The Zoe Ball Show, some new primetime shows for ex Big Breakfast co-hosts Denise Van Outen and Johnny Vaughan and the one true star of The 11 O’Clock Show – Ali G.