C4 Launches Autumn Schedule

Channel 4 has announced its Autumn line-up, which features three major drama series – A Dance to the Music of Time, Bombay Blue and Underworld – together with new comedy and documentary series. Robbie Coltrane also stars in a factual series indulging his secret passion for engines in Coltrane’s Planes and Automobiles. The season’s budget of over £100 million is more than 25% up on last autumn.

This is the first season to be introduced by the channel’s new Chief Executive Michael Jackson, who comments: “With the imminent arrival of hundreds of channels serving smaller and smaller audiences, there has never been a greater need for Channel 4 – a distinctive and innovative broadcaster that touches the whole country at some time or another, rather than confining itself to one small niche.”

Leading this autumn’s three major drama series is Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time which will run as four feature-length films. James Purefoy, John Standing and Simon Russell Beale star along with Claire Skinner, Miranda Richardson, Sir John Gielgud, Edward Fox and Alan Bennett.

Bombay Blue is the channel’s first police serial and the first contemporary British series of its kind to be shot in India while the third major series, Underworld, is a six-part comedy thriller commissioned by the channel’s Entertainment Department from the makers of Drop the Dead Donkey.

Film On Four starts with Trainspotting and includes Mike Leigh’s award-winning Secrets and Lies, Beautiful Thing and theatre director Robert Lepage’s first feature, The Confessional. There is also a raft of new arts programming as well as comedy from Jo Brand, Rory Bremner (plus the two Johns) and the first series from rising duo Armstrong & Miller.

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