I would love to love it, but I gave up series one, episode 2!!

I just couldn't abide the 'canned' laughter track. OK, so I know it's filmed in front of an audience, but they couldn't have laughed enough and needed tweaking.

Also, the 'filmic' effect doesn't suit a multi camera sitcom.

Ultimately, I loved the original too much.

We know how it rates - the audience drops when Evans is on

I agree, it's bloody awful. I watched it for the first time since series one the other night and I haven't cringed that much at a BBC 1 sitcom for some time (which is saying something as there have been some awful BBC 1 sitcoms over the last few years). A shame really because the cast is quite good.

The over-hyped Endemol PR guy (Joe) over at Bother's Bar is saying the next series would be next year. Possibly in the spring once Davina finishes Got to Dance.

ITV1 schedules for week beginning 27th November are now confirmed.

- no overlap between X Factor and Strictly on the 27th, X Factor on from 19:45 to 21:40. I'm a Celebrity on from 21:40 to 22:40

I'm a Celebrity on Friday 3rd December, which was expected to be the date for the final is only on from 20:30 to 22:00. It is on Saturday 4th December provisionally from 21:15 to 22:15 and on the Sunday 5th from 21:00 to 22:00. It's also on the Monday 6th from 21:00 to 22:00... so its anyone's guess when the final is! Tuesday is TBA, Wednesday is Champions League, and Thursday 9th at 21:00 is TBA. Guesses on a postcard please, because the final is not on Friday 3rd! It looks like the final is on Monday 6th, but I'm not sure because that means the second Corrie gets displaced and potentially News at Ten (we'll get to Corrie's scheduling in a moment!)

It's also on Friday 10th at 21:00, but that is specifically labelled as the Coming Out show.

Right, Corrie... hmmm.

Monday 6th - 19:30 and 20:30
Wednesday 8th - 19:00
Thursday 9th - 20:30
Friday 10th - 19:30

...and, that's it. Tonight is down twice on Tuesday and Thursday at 19:30, one of them will go because of an hour Emmerdale so Emmerdale doesn't lose an episode from the Wednesday.

The 2nd Corrie episode on Friday 10th has gone, say hello to Countrywise Kitchen... what that is, is anyone's guess: http://uk-tv-guide.com/programme-det...tchen/Cookery/

Some utterly bizarre scheduling. The provisionals, because of I'm a Celebrity being extended and Corrie's special shows, I think will change quite drastically.

EE on Thursday was building up to a double wedding on Friday so very much a big storyline.

(As an aside, from what I've read about forthcoming stories and their dates, methinks EE will be having a double-birth storyline for Corrie birthday week.)


I enjoyed the first series of Reggie Perrin, whilst accepting that it was inferior to the original, but I found the first 2 episodes of series 2 pretty unfunny. Episode 3 was its last chance and this was a funnier episode, but after episode 4, which I found funnier than 1 and 2, I just felt I couldn't be bothered with this anymore, not with Autumnwatch Unsprung as an alternative on BBC2.

RP has had a bit of a ratings resurgence this last couple of weeks against weedy ITV1 opposition. Unfortunately the final episode this week is on against IAC.

The only reason I can see for the BBC to commission a 3rd series is to restrict the amount of time Martin Clunes has to film Doc Martin: "We think this series needs time to bed down so we'd like to commission two more series of 26 episodes each."

I imagine Countrywise Kitchen is a cookery programme spin-off from Countrywise and I imagine it's intended to be an alternative to Eastenders rather than competition for QI

Nice X Factor piss-take at the start of the F1 qualifying coverage.

Surely ITV wouldn't have the IAC final, XF final and Corrie's 50th all in the same week?! If they did, it would be huge, but I just can't see how it could possibly fit in. Having the IAC final on the Sunday would work and there would be a bigger audience available than on the Friday, but haven't ITV lined up special shows following the XF semi final shows? Corrie's scheduling will definitely change too. There's Corrie specials to fit in aswell. I was thinking it would go something like this:

Monday
7.30-Corrie
8.30-Corrie
9-IAC: Coming Out

Tuesday
7-Emmerdale
7.30-Factual
8-Corrie
8.30-Corrie Special

Wednesday
7-Emmerdale
7.30-Football

Thursday
7-Emmerdale
8-Corrie
9-Corrie Special

Friday
7.30-Corrie
8.30-Corrie
9-Corrie Special

Extra episode in anniversary week perhaps?

Well IAC is 19 episodes according to Radio Times, so that suggests that the final will be on Saturday 4 December. I suspect the Coming Out show will air on the Monday. Dunno what they'll show on the Sunday as the JLS and George Michael specials will presumably air the following weekend. Do they have any one off dramas on the shelf (apart from Come Rain Come Shine which has Christmas written all over it)? Or a film premiere perhaps?

As for Corrie, Zoe's schedule looks spot on.

Looking ahead to the week after that, it'll probably be pretty grim with lots of filler and repeats. They've got a 2 part fly on the wall documentary at The Savoy which could do OK I guess, and their Christmas schedule is looking pretty thin atm and they need a few more things to spin it out or it could be even worse than last year.

Some of yesterday's ratings:

BBC1 (including HD)
19:00- The One Show: 4.27m
19:30- Helicopter Heroes: 3.51m
20:00- EastEnders: 9.31m
20:30- QI: 4.42m
21:00- New Tricks: 6.90m

BBC2
21:00- David Attenborough's First Life: 2.10m

ITV1 (excluding HD)
19:00- Emmerdale: 7.22m
19:30- Coronation Street: 8.88m
20:00- Cheetah Kingdom: 2.63m
20:30- Coronation Street: 8.02m
21:00- Paul O'Grady Live: 3.78m

Channel 4 (excluding +1)
21:00- The Event: 1.00m
22:00- Million Pound Drop Live: 2.30m

Channel 5
21:00- The Mentalist: 1.34m

It's a shame that Coronation Street lost momentum since Monday. I was expecting the episodes last night to be back by the 10m mark again.

EastEnders has had a good week, with QI and New Tricks performing consistently.

ITV need to instate an episode of Coronation Street on Tuesday nights ASAP.

This was a special episode where someone who had been in the show since 1976 had left, so ratings were bound to be high. Coronation St seems consistent around the 8-9 million mark and is never out the top five shows so I can't see it doing anything wrong. Also CS does face some quite stiff competition from BBC One now and viewers aren't so tribally loyal to it as they were in the eighties.

It's been a very solid week for EE with all episodes very consistent (ratings wise anyway) and NT has also performed very consistently during its run.

POG should be near 4m inc HD and seems to have improved in the last couple of weeks.

Awful for The Event and it's surely a matter of weeks before it's pulled from its 9pm slot. Not much better for The Mentalist either-1.3m is quite a dissappointment considering how much The Event has fallen. Seems NT is the major reason for it being dented.

Ultimately, one could argue that the storylines just aren't gripping enough for the viewers to stay throughout the week.

I watched Mondays episodes and all of the scene's surrounding Jack and his death were great, quality viewing. However, all of the other stories left me cold and uninterested.

The Graham Norton Show rated well yesterday with 3.6m. His best ever rating I think.

I will admit the stories and acting have often become terrible in recent years and the two episodes a night has become a bit much. Also viewers don't automatically switch to ITV at 7.30 on a Monday night now like they used to- although people sometimes don't know if CS will be on or not as it's moved around so much. Might it be true as well that some of the elderly audience have died out and not been replaced, a fate which hit Take the High Road.
On a different note, New Tricks has performed consistently well. This quirky drama about elderly coppers certainly has been a big success for BBC One and at one stage was even beating CS in the ratings.

Great stuff. He's far better than Ross, who never recovered from the overblown Sachsgate farrago, and now getting the ratings to confirm it. The Beeb should have put Norton on Friday nights years ago.

Bit low key for the New Tricks season finale. I suspect the scheduling of a David Attenborough documentary against the final 2 eps of NT hasn't helped given they will appeal to a similar audience.

A classic example of the BSI in action.

I really enjoyed last year's first series of Reggie Perrin, too. I thought it had just the right balance between believable and surreal, but I think series two has seen the scales tip heavily on the surreal side.

I think the BBC and Simon Nye would be better off doing a new series of Men Behaving Badly, without Dorothy And Deborah.

Yes, it's a bit surreal. But so was the 1970s series.

I had huge misgivings about this reimagining of a classic series. The first series got off to a shaky start to my mind. The laughter track was annoying. I was unsure about the PA and 2 mad assistants characters. But it was genuinely amusing, Clunes was on top form, and I got into it. I think this second series has moved forward nicely, capturing the surreal silliness of the original in the 21st century.

Apart from the odd creaky gag, and the annoying laughter track (which you get used to), there's hardly anything to fault it in my view.

And then there's the A-list cast - Martin Clunes, Fay Ripley, the lovely Lucy Liemann, Neil Stuke, Geoffrey Whitehead, Wendy Craig, Alexander Armstrong, Colin McFarlane (the Chairman). Even Sally Lindsay in a regular cameo (rather overplayed).

Written by two top comedy writing talents in David Nobbs (writer of the books and original series) and Simon Nye.

It should work, and I think it does. But it's not getting the ratings. I think too many people (as evidenced by comments on this thread) have written it off without either giving it chance, or watching it at all.

A travesty.

I was amazed to discover she's 38! I thought she was about 25!

Seriously?! My list of "hot women around 40" gets ever longer.

Mind you, there are a few "around 50" on it as well...

BBC1 are hopeless at promoting sitcoms - thats the big problem. All they ever do is release an advert about 3 days before a new one airs made up of short 2 second clips of all the characters in 'crazy' situations - haha, not. If they have a 20 second trail, show a 20 second clip from the show that's funny - then people might actually watch.