When that estimable curator of classic British television, the Drama channel, began repeating Jersey-based detective series Bergerac (BBC, 1981-91) earlier this year, the Radio Times was less than laudatory, claiming the first episode showed ‘every one’ of its thirty-seven years.

As someone who was fairly vocal about the need for long-running BBC flagship series Doctor Who to seriously address its gender problems, I was pleased, but not overjoyed, when it was announced that the thirteenth Doctor would be played by Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to take on the role.

I was talking to my colleague Robin Ellis the other day (not the Robin Ellis who used to be in Poldark ; we couldn’t afford him): ‘Do you remember The Adventure Game , Robin?’ I asked. He looked at me blankly, as is his wont. ‘Early 80s, puzzle-based game, set on the planet Arg?’ Not a sausage. ‘The characters were really alien dragons in disguise, and all their names were anagrams of the word ‘dragon’? Silence deep as death.

Music 625: The Performance of Music on Television, c.1955-’85 Call for papers A Conference at the School of Music, University of Leeds 8-9 June 2018 With the support of the Sadler Seminar fund at the University of Leeds Convenors for the University of Leeds: Tim Boon, Marian Jago, James Mooney, Simon Popple and Edward Venn ‘Music 625’ refers to the television era ushered-in by the higher definition output of BBC2 in 1964.

2017 was something of an eventful year for British actor Jodie Whittaker. When the BBC announced on the 16th of July that she would be the one to replace the incumbent Peter Capaldi as the star and titular character of Doctor Who , her public profile was elevated to heretofore unseen heights.

The first month of the new year, as has been the case now since 2012, heralds the start of another new series of the BBC’s flagship and consistently highly rated Sunday night drama of community nursing, midwifery and medicine Call the Midwife . Promos and advance publicity for the seventh series have primed audiences for the introduction to the regularly recurring cast of characters of a nurse of colour, for the first time in its

Thank goodness for W1A (2014-17), the now defunct satire on life at New Broadcasting House first launched in the run-up to the BBC’s traumatic renewal of its Royal Charter (‘Don’t forget it’s a Royal Charter’ declared ‘Head of Values’ in the hour-long special which kicked off W1A ’s second series (BBC2 23.4.2015)). Now that Charter Renewal and all its attendant upheavals are in place, lets hope that the Corporation

How should the BBC make its huge archive public? This is the challenge that faces Peter Rippon, the newly appointed Editor of BBC Online Archive. Appointed a few months after the demise of the unmourned BBC Store in May, this appointment of a senior broadcaster shows a new seriousness of purpose in an area that seemed to be dying of neglect.

Viewer classification has been central to audience research and measurement since the early years of television. Efforts to gain knowledge of the viewing public have depended upon a system of classification and categorisation that segments and delineates the viewing public into recognisable social groups that can be used to steer programme policy and planning.

Last Sunday, faced with a disappointing episode of Philip K.Dick’s Electric Dreams ( Sony Pictures TV for Channel 4, 2017 – ) on Channel 4 and the blandness, not to say offensiveness of watching episode 3 of The Last Post (BonafideFilms for BBC, 2017- ), we turned to a repeat of The Monocled Mutineer (BBC, 1986) on the Yesterday channel.