The thing with Bad Girls is series 8 wasn't great. If they had carried on with hard hitting storylines like Series 1-5 had I think it could have ran for longer.

ITV3 used to repeat Wild At Heart after The Royal had finished then they would go back to The Royal. They have stopped repeating Wild At Heart now which has made me think the rumoured revival from January could be true. ITV Encore did the same when the Cold Feet revival was announced.

There is some rose tinted spectacles viewing going on here. Several of those dramas were axed because ratings dropped by standards of those times. Some were self inflicted by the programme or there were external factors. London's Burning and Soldier Soldier saw big drops as did Heartbeat.

Agreed but it's apparent there was an element of sabotage involved spearheaded by bosses having a misguided strategy for chasing younger viewers - amongst other factors.

I believe Simon Shaps is one of the worst things to ever happen to ITV. He unceremoniously disposed of many long running shows and did little in the way of replacing them.

His schedule overhaul of 2008 was also, in my view, more bad than good. He described it as a “modernised, streamlined schedule designed for easier navigation with regular slots for programming.” Meh, I think that's mostly gumph.

Wild At Heart foolishly ended because ITV thought coming second to Call The Midwife was a disaster. It wasn't. All that happens if it returns is that it will most likely come second to Call The Midwife again.

Winning EVERY timeslot isn't everything, increasing ratings in that timeslot is also a good strategy.

Simon Shaps was useless.

Chasing youth meant ending some very popular programming and pissing off ITV's heartland audience. Not every show needs to skew young. Doc Martin is one of the oldest skewing dramas on television but by volume of viewers does well. Sometimes you can get a decent number of younger viewers by having a big number of total viewers overall.

Shaps also axed It'll Be Alright on the Night, Rosemary and Thyme, Bad Girls, Today with Des and Mel and more. Some of those were doing respectably enough in the ratings.

I remember reading leaked emails between Laura Mackie and Simon Shaps discussing whether to axe Bad Girls, saying something like "Shed are preparing to send Rock Rivals script next month which sounds very promising" in justification for axing Bad Girls. And we all know how Rock Rivals turned out (unless you've forgotten it entirely, in which case I envy you!)

IIRC he also axed Foyles War didn't he but was later revived? And The South Bank Show was another of his casualties. It's all flooding back now, and it's painful.

Yes things need to change in TV but he was all axe, no replacement. He really buggered ITV up for a long time and it's only just recovering.

I'm sure if Wild At Heart came back this time next year it would rate well. The Sunday night schedule could look something like this...

7:00 - The X Factor
8:00 - Wild At Heart
9:00 - Victoria

The X Factor would probably do just as well at 7 as even maybe even better. It would also mean Wild At Heart wouldn't be going against Call The Midwife or another big BBC Drama.

No way X Factor would be at 7pm. That's where the Strictly results go and BBC1 would move it to 8pm. Wild At Heart was doing well when it was axed. If they bring it back for January against Call The Midwife it would come second again.

If you keep every drama that falls to 5m you might not find another drama that can do better than it. BBC1 axed Zen after one series in January 2011 as well as the solid performing Lark Rise To Candleford that was getting 6/7m in January opposite Wild At Heart. They were replaced by Call The Midwife.

I forgot about the Strictly results being on a Sunday. Call The Midwife has the advantage of no adverts so it will of course get higher ratings. March-May could probably the best time for Wild At Heart then.

Call The Midwife also got higher ratings as it was and is a far better show than Wild At Heart in my opinion. Wild At Heart had no trouble against Lark Rise To Candleford.

Call The Midwife is a brilliant show I agree. I did like Wild At Heart to though and feel there is a space for both shows if the revival rumour is true. They just need to schedule Wild At Heart somewhere where it isn't against Call The Midwife.

Prime Suspect was another victim of Shaps as well. His predecessor had wooed Helen Mirren to come back in 2004 so they began production. Then, when Shaps came in he told them that it would only be a one-off commission, despite Mirren and La Plante, as well as the American backers (WGBH Boston) that it would be a regular fixture if they all wanted it to be.

Everything he cancelled left ITV in a really precarious position, it's shows like Downton and X Factor that have kept them alive long enough to be able to make things like Broadchurch and the more quality things we're seeing now. Shaps cancelling good quality things to make way for trash like Celebrity Fit Club will always stick in my head.

I thought ITV were talking about reviving Wild at Heart and had been in touch with Stephen Tompkinson who's agreeable.

ITV should commission pre-watershed drama for Sunday and Wednesday at 8pm. As part of this I'd bring back The Bill and Where The Heart is to sit alongside other commissions like The Durrells and newer hits.

If I were in charge I'd be inclined to swap The Chase and ITV News hour on weeknights, reinstate Sunday soap block, ban drama from Tue/Thu entirely, and focus on cheaper factual on these nights. Axe News at Ten on Fridays but add it to (most) Sundays.

Example of how the schedule shape could be stronger - slots in red are variable and open to schedule all shows in, genre specified where appropriate. Example shows given in these red slots. The rest is pretty fixed and the anchor/shape of the schedule.



This would provide a focused schedule of light entertainment on Saturday, pre-watershed drama on Sunday and Wednesday, big-budget drama on Monday, filler/docs on Tuesday and Thursday, and flexible Friday nights with no fixed news slot. Relevant anchors throughout and room for variety.

I think this would work a lot better than the current but yes it's just another fantasy.

It's planned but haven't heard anything about it recently. The last thing I saw was an interview with Amanda Holden which said she had been asked back even though her character had been killed off.

I hope it's still going ahead though as it's a brilliant series and should have never been axed.

Whislt that's true to an extent, you shouldn't cancel things just because their figures have dipped slightly. All the shows that were canned had good brand name recognition and none of them had bad ratings. Lark Rise to Candleford was ended because the writer/showrunner wanted to move onto something else and the cast didn't want to do it without him. Obviously, they got the monster hit Call the Midwife out of it, but if they'd commissioned something that turned out rubbish like Undercover from a few months ago instead, they'd be in trouble.

There's enough slots on TV to commission new shows as well as shows that are past their prime but still do respectable business. Look at Midsomer Murders - it's way past its prime and doesn't get the cushy slot it used to, but it's still a solid 5m banker for ITV and it sells well abroad. It helps to have a lot of successful shows on the network, because the ratings bankers help fund things that might be risky.

Look at Channel 5. They struggled for years because the only hits they could point to were imports of CSI. Now, they can go "Well, we've got Big Brother, our documentaries do well, Lip Sync Battle UK was a success for us" etc, which makes them more attractive to advertisers and allows them to make things like Suspects.

ITV only survived because they were able to leverage the success of Downton. They sold advertising in blocks, essentially forcing advertisers to buy ad space in other slots if they wanted to advertise during Downton. This allowed some of the hits they have now to blossom, things like The Chase and Tipping Point as well as allowing them to keep some shows on the air which are flops here but do well abroad.

ITV just need to focus on getting some returnables now. It'd be good if they could get a good weeknight returnable, something like DCI Banks. It's a shame that all their best stuff ratings wise seems to be events, like Cilla. BBC had the same with The Night Manager, although that could come back.

@ James J.... Nice list but YBF needs resting. It rates badly and prevents any momentum for 7pm. It's an awful alternative to whatever BBC 1 has. Try Wheel of Fortune or a proper Family Fortunes. ITV really needs to realise that celebrities should be kept to holiday gameshows.

I would certainly be up for reviving Wild At Heart. I loved that show. It made Sunday for me. And considering DCI Banks will likely be axed after this series (I predict ratings will drop to low 3m) I suspect Tompkinson will be looking for work.

Heartbeat I think should stay in the past. I love watching the rpt's, but I can't see it doing much in a revival series.

I would like Rosemary & Thyme to return though - even for a one-off Christmas special and potential specials. It might have been corny and fluff, but it was cosy viewing. And considering Pam Ferris has left CTM, she's free to do it - as is I imagine Felicity Kendall. If you look on Amazon DVD sales, there is a real love for the show.

Stephen Tompkinson is in Trollied but it's not a very big role so I'm sure he'd be well up for returning to Wild At Heart.
Heartbeat, The Royal both ended on cliffhangers with Dr Ormerod getting stabbed, and Blaketon getting impaled so I think it would be good if these came back for 2 hour specials at least. If they did sucessful then they could be re-comissioned for a series.

I can't comment on Rosemary And Thyme as I haven't seen it yet but have heard good things about it.

Let's be honest here. Although budget cuts meant some shows were brought to a premature end, The Royal and Heartbeat were wheezing along in the ratings by the end. Much better to get them out of the way and have new shows ready to take their place. The Durrells will never match Heartbeat at its peak but it's doing a hell of a lot better than Hearbeat was in its final year. You can have programmes that evoke the spirit of some early dramas without constantly resurrecting them. I'd also say that Call The Midwife and Sherlock threw a grenade into the tepid world of Sunday night drama, showing other styles could work there.

TV should innovate not resuscitate.

Lazy to bring back endless old shows. It's a good job commissioners were good back then or else channels would be bereft of ideas now! God help television!

That's a very black and white way to look at it.

There's plenty of slots in that schedule above for brand new drama, comedy, light entertainment. "Endless" old shows being... The Bill... and... is that it? Also I meant Wild at Heart not Where The Heart is (too many heart names, haha).

The schedule above establishes flexible Saturdays for new and returning commissions; 8pm drama on Sunday for newer hits like The Durrells, new commissions and Wild at Heart (revival); 9pm Monday for brand new dramas, both series and one-offs; Tuesday and Thursday for all sorts of factual commissions; Wednesday 8pm for not only a The Bill revival but trials of other pre-watershed drama series (I mentioned the other day about a firefighting one); and Friday post-9pm flexibility for pretty much anything.

It's about reinstalling pre-watershed drama at 8pm on Sun/Wed. Part of that might be for some of the year to run Wild at Heart on Sunday and The Bill on Wednesday, but a lot of that would be new commissions too (The Durrells is a perfect example of what would occupy Sun 8pm sometimes in the year). I wouldn't bring The Bill back 52 weeks a year, certainly not for a while, so there would be ample space for other 6-10 part commissions in this slot with a hope they are successful and can return for longer.

In the case of Peak Practice and London's Burning, though, they were immediately replaced by two lookalike series in the shape of Sweet Medicine and Steel River Blues. Sweet Medicine especially was sold as a straight replacement. I guess the idea was that both series were declining a bit (London's Burning certainly was) so they could launch a new series which would hopefully bring along the existing audience and also interest a new audience who might have gone off or never watched the original series. I can't think of an example of that from adult TV but I suppose it's something like when Going Live became Live and Kicking - a new name and new presenters, but generally the same format.

Anyway, in the end it didn't work, presumably the series were so similar nobody understood the reason why they axed them in the first place. But I suppose it was an interesting experiment.


Yes, it was very much sold as Sarah Lancashire's first post-Corrie project, and it was also quite big news as it was the first TV series written by the acclaimed playwright John Godber. But it was a total disaster, and there's some nice stuff in the Radio Times Comedy Guide about its failure. It was filmed as a live audience multi-camera thing but that seemed all wrong for the plot and storylines, and what worked in the theatre didn't work on the telly.

Preston Front did indeed start with All Quiet On, and I remember it getting massive rave reviews, but over three series it never managed to pull in much of an audience. Actually it was written by another acclaimed playwright in Tim Firth and I remember someone else slagging off his TV work (might have been William Phillips in Broadcast actually) for being irritating whimsy.


Sorry to be a pedant but the big ITV Christmas premiere in 1986, and the one that got on the cover of the TV Times, was Dumbo.


That was especially the case with Soldier Soldier, the ratings absolutely plummeted when Robson and Jerome left. The audience just didn't take to their replacements. I remember it being quite the talking point at the time, the ratings just collapsed. Sometimes these things just don't work out. London's Burning had certainly been declining over the years as well. In some ways they were victims of their own success because the highs were incredibly high, at their peak they were doing enormous business and I suppose it was always doomed to be compared to that. It's a bit like X Factor in a way, it's still doing really well but it's always being compared to the enormous ratings it was getting in 2010.

They were huge shows at the time and I think London's Burning is a great example of popular drama, because it didn't have a very starry cast, but it would always win its slot, even when the Beeb were showing things like Pride and Prejudice against it. It's the kind of consistent rater that channels absolutely dream of.


Well, indeed, and television is a subjective business in any case. In the case of Zen, the Beeb just genuinely didn't fancy it, they didn't think it was distinctive enough and it was quite an expensive series. The ratings were alright but nothing special, and there's no point recommissioning these things if nobody's heart is in it.

It's always good to have good ratings but at the end of the day it's not good if stuff is recommissioned just for that. If they don't think it's doing anything creatively, or the series has reached its natural conclusion, so be it.