Channel 4’s Autumn Schedule Unveiled
Coming cold on the heels of ITV and BBC1, Channel 4 finally announces its schedule for Autumn 1998. There are a wide range of programmes featured, many new commissions, and old favourites returning for new series.
Starting at the top and working down, Brookside continues it obsession with periodically having five episodes a week (as well as another video release and a Christmas special); a four-night special of teen-soap Hollyoaks; a new drama series featuring Jack Davenport (Miles from This Life) called Ultra Violet; a six part series about the ups and downs of trying to make it in the music business called The Young Person’s Guide To Becoming A Rock Star.
Special seasons of programming include: Drugs Season – a debate about the drug culture in Britain; My Night With Fry – an evening that celebrates and commemorates the lives of people who have died from AIDS or AIDS-related illness since the disease was first discovered in 1982; Breast Cancer, which marks the month long cancer awareness campaign in October and Sampled which talks to the leading stars of ’90s Cool. Ba Ba Zee returns for a five week run featuring films and programmes that reflect Black life and culture.
Amongst the entertainment on offer there is the final series of Drop The Dead Donkey and the return of Rory Bremner… Who Else?. Eurotrash returns for one episode only with original presenter Jean Paul Gaultier and there’s the tenth anniversary series of Whose Line Is It Anyway?. Also, the excellent Late Lunch returns in October in an hour-long format for Wednesday nights.
Channel 4 also manages to steal Simon Nye’s Is It Legal? after ITV decided not to commission a third series (this could turn out to be another Men Behaving Badly mistake in the making for ITV).
Lisa Tarbuck, fresh from filling in on the Big Breakfast, presents She’s Gotta Have It, a new topical clothes shopping programme which asks such questions as “should you wear combat pants if you’re a size 24? Can the apron dress look good on someone over 17 and larger than a size 8? Can you wear trainers with short skirts if you’re over 40?” You get the idea.
Sex Lives is a six part series where young people talk openly about, not surprisingly, their sex lives. The Rise & Rise of Viagra looks at the personal stories of those who have tested this new ‘wonder drug’.
Films that will be premiering on the channel include Forget Paris, Cops and Robbersons, Bullets Over Broadway, French Kiss, Casino, Bad Boys, The Usual Suspects and The Quick and the Dead.
Football Italia returns as one of the few foreign sporting events still on the channel following the discarding of American Football and Basketball.