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“More space for new ideas”

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 by

The Channel 4 winter launch. Held – ominously enough – in the former Tycoon Towers on the South Bank. Julian Bellamy, the network’s Head of Programmes did the honours. He began by reflecting on promises to overhaul the schedule, made back in August at the Edinburgh Festival. “This is the moment where you find out if we’ve delivered on those committments, or if they were just empty words”.

And, definitely the changes are ringing. The only returning 9pm series in the first three months of 2008 will be Grand Designs. Otherwise, there’s a slate of new stuff – the most interesting being a fortnight devoted to grub, featuring who Bellamy described as “The Three Tenors of Cooking”. So Hugh’s Chicken Run will see Mr F-W challenging the supermarkets to rethink their methods, Jamie Oliver reveals the “ruthless machinations” of the food industry in Jamie’s Fowl Dinners and – best of all - Cook-a-Long-a-Gordon LIVE. The title says it all.

There’s other stuff, of course, The Big Art Project, a new Peter Flannery drama, Stephen Hawking: Master of the Universe, a new comedy game show for Alan Carr… But the other announcement that particularly excited me was news Cutting Edge‘s run has been tripled – we’re getting 30 episodes this year. 

“More space for new ideas”. That’s this season’s slogan.

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