Reboot

Iconic dating show Blind Date is set for another reboot with it said to be getting a Love Island-style twist when it airs on Disney+

One of the most iconic gameshows is set to return to our screens, but with a twist. Fans of eighties television will be buzzing at the news that Blind Date is set for a reboot.

The dating show which was hosted by Cilla Black is set for a revival. However, instead of its previous ITV home, the show is set to appear on Disney+.

And in a dramatic twist, the show will see contestants spend time on a tropical island as hopefuls compete for a dream wedding on the golden sands. An insider claims the show will have “hints of Love Island about it”.

Talking to the Sun, the source said it’s a “radical departure” from the old style Blind Date. They told the publication: “But fans will recall a lot of the dates took place in hot, sunny climes abroad, and ­producers want to recapture some of the steamy fun, and expand upon that.

“Even the wedding element has hints of the old show, because the dream was always that the dates on the programme would lead to couples tying the knot.”

And they added that not all of the old ­characteristics will be eliminated, with plans still set to incorporate the show’s famous ­sliding wall. The source went on to say the show’s producers hope to “hire a top female host just like Cilla”.

It’s said a star-studded line-up of female hosts are being eyed up to step into Cilla’s shoes. Among those being rumoured are Holly Willoughby, Davina McCall and The Traitors‘ Claudia Winkleman.

It’s unknown whether the show will provide a replacement for voiceover Graham Skidmore, aka ‘Our Graham’.

The show’s return was speculated earlier this month, 22 years after it last aired. The ITV show originally aired on Saturday nights from 1985-2003. At the time, saw hundreds of couples meet for the first time looking for love.

Like most dating shows, many didn’t last past the studio doors, however a number of couples did make it all the way to the alter.

Any reboot won’t be the first time the show has been revived. Most recently, in 2017, the show made its return on Channel 5. It came two years after the death of original host Cilla Black – with Paul O’Grady replacing the late host.

Melanie Sykes also joined the show as a replacement for ‘Our Graham’ providing the iconic voiceover. The show ran for four series until June 2019. Original voiceover Graham died in 2021 at age 90, seven years after the death of host Cilla Black in 2015.

READ MORE: GAP’s kids clothing sale with cut price Disney, Barbie and more for summer holidays

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IT is one of the most nostalgic TV reboots of the year – but I can reveal the return of Blind Date will come with a very modern Love Island-style twist.

Earlier this month I revealed the programme, made famous by host Cilla Black in the Eighties on ITV, was being revived by Disney+.

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But it will have a different flavour because much of the show will be spent on a tropical island — just like Love Island, hosted by Maya Jama— where contestants will compete for a dream wedding on the golden sands.

A TV insider said: “This sounds like a radical departure from the old Blind Date, one that definitely has hints of Love Island about it.

“But fans will recall a lot of the dates took place in hot, sunny climes abroad, and ­producers want to recapture some of the steamy fun, and expand upon that.

“Even the wedding element has hints of the old show, because the dream was always that the dates on the programme would lead to couples tying the knot.”

Cilla was at the helm for 18 years on the show which saw a contestant firing questions at three hopefuls concealed from their view by a wall — which slid back to reveal their chosen date.

One of the hopefuls in 1991 was Amanda Holden.

The TV insider added: “In the reboot, the creators are not entirely dispensing with all of the old ­characteristics either as there are still plans to incorporate the show’s famous ­sliding wall and hire a top female host just like Cilla.”

Disney+ is imminently expected to confirm it is reviving Blind Date, though all details have been kept firmly under wraps.

No presenter has signed up as yet but the channel is targeting some big names in British TV, with the main criteria being that they have to be hugely famous women.

Here’s hoping whoever gets the role doesn’t mind getting a bit of sand between their toes in the course of the job.

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KATH TAKES FLIGHT

KATHERINE KELLY is back dishing out the drinks . . . 13 years after pulling pints in the Rovers Return.

On Corrie she played feisty barmaid Becky McDonald, while now she’s cabin crew on new Channel 4 thriller In Flight.

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Katherine will also be serving up some nerve-racking moments as single mum Jo Conran whose life is turned upside down by crooks.

Through the airline she works for, she finds herself blackmailed into drug smuggling after her son is imprisoned in Bulgaria for a murder he claims he didn’t commit.

The six-parter, set in Bangkok, Bulgaria, Istanbul and London, wrapped filming this spirng and is set to air later this year.

STEPHEN IN TECH LESSON

STEPHEN FRY wants to make a futuristic TV drama series where e-mails, TikTok and SnapChat are “uncool” and people return to basic communication in “an unplugged life”.

The Celebrity Traitors star told podcast Extraordinary Life Stories: “I was planning to write a TV series in which this kid comes to a school and completely changes it.”

The pupil asks the teacher how to submit his essay as he doesn’t have a computer so can’t email it.

Stephen continues: “All the other (pupils) think ‘Who is this ridiculous child?’

“But then he starts influencing everybody. They think this is quite a fun way to live.

“We’ve come to a tipping point now where the uncoolest thing in the world is Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok.

“We know they’re harmful, but they are also vapid and shallow and silly.

“Imagine an unplugged life using all these fabulous old tools. You’d be the coolest people.”

SEX JOKE BIT MUCH FOR WILL

BRIT actor Will Sharpe came over all prudish about a sex scene in upcoming Netflix rom-com series Too Much . . . well, compared with the Americans on set.

He cringed as US actress Megan Stalter, who plays the lead role in the show about an American woman coping with a new life in London, joked with the show’s US creator Lena Dunham after the X-rated action.

At this week’s launch of the show, which drops on July 10, Lena said: “One of Meg’s favourite things to do is to ask you after a take: ‘What face were you making during that?’

“One time it was right after a sex scene and Meg was like: ‘What face were you making during that?’

“And I heard Will’s mic, like: ‘Jesus f***ing Christ, Meg!’”

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Zombies were dormant when screenwriter Alex Garland convinced director Danny Boyle to resurrect the undead — and make them run. The galloping ghouls in their low-budget 2002 thriller “28 Days Later” reinvigorated the genre. There’s now been so many of them that they’ve come to feel moldy. So Garland and Boyle have teamed up again to see if there’s life in these old bones.

There is, albeit sporadically and spasmodically. “28 Years Later,” the first entry of a promised trilogy, has a dull central plot beefed up by unusual ambition, quirky side characters and maniacal editing. It’s a kooky spectacle, a movie that aggressively cuts from moments of philosophy to violence, from pathos to comedy. Tonally, it’s an ungainly creature. From scene to scene, it lurches like the brain doesn’t know what the body is doing. Garland and Boyle don’t want the audience to know either, at least not yet.

The plot picks up nearly three decades into a viral “rage” pandemic that’s isolated the British Isles from the civilized world. A couple hundred people have settled into a safe-enough life on Lindisfarne, an island that’s less than a mile from shore. The tide recedes every day for a few hours, long enough to walk across a narrow strip of causeway to the mainland. Jamie (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Isla (Jodie Comer) were young when normality collapsed, roughly the same age as the kids in the film’s cheeky opening flashback who are watching a VHS tape of “Teletubbies” while hearing the screams of their babysitters getting bitten. But these survivors have managed to grow up and become parents themselves. Given their harsh circumstances, Jamie and Isla have called their son Spike.

Name notwithstanding, 12-year-old Spike (Alfie Williams) is a sweet kid. When his father slips him a precious ration of bacon, he gives his share to his mother, who now lies weak and confused in an upstairs bedroom. The script pushes too hard to make Spike naive — blank and moldable — instead of what narrative logic tells us he is, the hardscrabble child of two stunted children. His career paths are hunter, forager or watchtower guard, but he seems more like the product of a progressive Montessori school, even with his dad urging him to cackle at shredded deer intestines. When the boy’s not looking, Jamie’s shoulders sag as he trudges up the stairs to Isla’s sickbed, showing us a hint of adult complexities he alone understands.

Spike’s storyline is a fairly simple coming-of-age journey. Once he’s slayed his first infected (“The more you kill, the easier it gets,” his dad gloats), Spike decides to sneak his sick mother to the mainland in search of a mythological being: a general medical practitioner. But straightaway, the movie’s editing (by Jon Harris) starts having a fit, seizing our attention as it splices in herky-jerky black-and-white archival footage of earlier generations of kids marching to protect their homes, both in newsreels and classical retellings including Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film of “Henry V.” The chilling electronic score by the Scottish group Young Fathers blurps and drones while an unseen voice recites Rudyard Kipling’s “Boots,” a poem about the grinding Boer War that was first published in 1903, but whose sense of slogging exhaustion sounds just as relevant to us as it would to Beowulf. These theatrics sound fancy, but they play deliberately abrasive and confounding. “28 Days Later” forced the audience to adapt to the ugliness of digital cameras, and despite the years and prestige that Garland and Boyle have accumulated since, they’ve still got a punk streak.

The filmmakers seem to be making the point that our own kinder, gentler idealism is the outlier. Humankind’s natural state is struggle and division. In this evocative setting, with its crumbling castle towers and tattered English flags, we’re elbowed to think of battles, from Brexit to the Vikings, who first attacked the British on this very same island in 793. A 9th century account describes the Lindisfarne massacre as nightmarish scenes of blood and trampling and terror, of “heathen men made lamentable havoc.” Those words could have been recycled into “28 Years Later’s” pitch deck.

As a side note, Lindisfarne remains so small and remote that it doesn’t even have any doctors today. The one we meet, Kelson (Ralph Fiennes), doesn’t show up until the last act. But he’s worth the wait, as is the messianic Jimmy (Jack O’Connell), who appears three minutes before the end credits and successfully gets us excited for the sequel, which has already been shot. (Jimmy’s tracksuits and bleached hair are evidence that his understanding of pop culture really did stop at Eminem.) Their characters inject so much energy into the movie that Boyle and Garland seem to be rationing their best material as strictly as Spike denies himself that slice of pork.

This confounding and headstrong movie doesn’t reveal everything it’s after. But it’s an intriguing comment on human progress. The uninfected Brits have had to rewind their society back a millennium. When a Swedish sailor named Erik (Edvin Ryding, marvelous) is forced ashore, he talks down to all the Brits like they’re cavemen. They’ve never even seen an iPhone (although the movie was itself shot on them). Upon seeing a picture of a modern Instagram babe plumped to a Kardashian ripeness, Spike gasps, “What’s wrong with her face?”

The infected ones have regressed further still and they’ve split into two sub-species: the grub-like “slow-low” zombies, who suck up worms with a vile slurp, and the Neanderthalish sprinters who hunt in packs. The fast ones even have an alpha (Chi Lewis-Parry) who is hellbent on taking big strides forward. One funny way he shows it is he’s made a hobby of ripping off his prey’s heads to use their spines as tools, or maybe even as décor.

Dr. Kelson, a shaman, sculptor and anthropologist, insists that even the infected still share a common humanity. “Every skull has had a thought,” he says, stabbing a freshly decapitated one with his pitchfork. He’s made an art of honoring death over these decades and his occasionally hallucinatory sequence is truly emotional, even if Fiennes, smeared with iodine and resembling a jaundiced Colonel Kurtz, made me burst out into giggles at the way he says “placenta.” Yet, I think we’re meant to laugh — he’s the exact mix of smart and silly the film is chasing.

So who, then, are the savages? The infected or us? The film shifts alliances without taking sides (yet). I’m unconvinced that sweetie pie Spike is the protagonist I want to follow for two more movies. But whatever happens, it’s a given that humans will eventually, stubbornly, relentlessly find a way to tear other humans to pieces, as we do in every movie, and just as we’ve done since the first homo sapien went after his rival with a stick. That’s the zombie genre’s visceral power: It reveals that the things that make us feel safe — love, loyalty, civility — are also our weaknesses. “28 Years Later” dares us to devolve.

Every year, Emmy prognosticators weigh the chances of TV’s newcomers. But what about newcomers that are also old-timers?

Whether you prefer to call them remakes, revivals or reboots, reimaginations of beloved movies and TV shows are all the rage: Think of CBS’ “Matlock,” which swapped in Academy Award winner Kathy Bates for Andy Griffith as a charming lawyer who gets things done in the legal system; Peacock’s “Bel-Air,” which turned a multicam sitcom into a drama; or HBO’s “Perry Mason,” which was less about the courtroom than Mason as private investigator.

When it comes to awards season, though, reboots aren’t such a hot commodity. Max’s “Gossip Girl,” Paramount+’s “Frasier” and ABC’s “The Wonder Years” came and went with no wins, and continuations like NBC’s “Law & Order” and “Will & Grace,” Fox’s “The X-Files” and CBS’ “Murphy Brown” have generally not received the same love from voters as their original runs.

Not all reboots fizzle at the Emmys, though. Here are six examples of rethinks that not only brought back beloved series from the graveyard but made them award-worthy all over again.

‘Shōgun’ (2024-present)

Emmy wins: 18

Anna Sawai in “Shōgun.”

(Kurt Iswarienko / FX)

With 26 nominations and an astounding 18 wins, the premiere season of “Shōgun” is the first Japanese-language series to take home an Emmy for drama series. In addition to the top prize, the adaptation of James Clavell’s 1975 historical novel won awards for stars Hiroyuki Sanada (lead actor, drama) and Anna Sawai (lead actress, drama) plus a raft of below-the-line Emmys. The original miniseries’ take on Clavell’s story of colonialism and war in medieval Japan didn’t do so badly, either — in 1980 it scored 14 nominations and won three Primetime Emmys, including one for limited series.

‘Queer Eye’ (2018-present)

Emmy wins: 11

“Queer Eye” cast members Antoni Porowski, left, Tan France, Jeremiah Brent, Jonathan Van Ness and Karamo Brown.

(Netflix)

The fixer-upper series featuring five gay men zhuzhing up the lives of more staid straights was a phenomenon when it originally aired between 2003 and 2007 but was comparatively overlooked by the Emmys, picking up a win for reality program in 2004 plus three other nominations. Meanwhile, Netflix’s reboot — featuring makeovers of more than just straight guys, and a less snarky sensibility — has earned 11 Emmys to date, including six wins for structured reality program (2018, 2019-23).

‘Westworld’ (2016-22)

Emmy wins: 9

Thandiwe Newton and Aaron Paul in Season 4 of “Westworld.”

(John Johnson / HBO)

“Westworld” stands out on this list because it reimagines a feature film, not an earlier TV series — in this case, the 1973 movie written and directed by Michael Crichton and starring Yul Brynner. The film scored no top-line awards or nominations, but the HBO reboot, which premiered in 2016, landed 54 Emmy nominations and nine wins across its four-season run, including a 2018 trophy for Thandiwe Newton (lead actress, drama) for her performance as the series’ cunning madam, Maeve Millay.

‘One Day at a Time’ (2017-20)

Emmy wins: 3

Justina Machado, left, and Isabella Gomez in “One Day at a Time.”

(Ali Goldstein / Netflix)

The story of a single mom raising her growing daughters earned three nominations during its original run from 1975 to 1984, including one in 1982 for star Bonnie Franklin (lead actress, comedy); director Alan Rafkin and supporting actor Pat Harrington won. The Netflix reboot, which recast the Romanos as the Cuban American Alvarez family and shifted the action from Indianapolis to L.A., was nominated for each of its four seasons and won two, as well as a special Television Academy Honor.

‘Battlestar Galactica’ (2004-09)

Emmy wins: 3

Michael Hogan as Col. Saul Tigh, left, Edward James Olmos as Adm. William Adama, Mary McDonnell as Laura Roslin and Jamie Bamber as Lee “Apollo” Adama in the TV movie “Battlestar Galactica: Razor,” part of the popular Sci-Fi Channel franchise.

(Carole Segal / Sci-Fi Channel)

In the decades between the original 1978-79 “Battlestar” and the full-throttle reboot, science-fiction storytelling on the small screen advanced at lightspeed, which may have helped the latter last far longer than the original. The story of human refugees fleeing space colonies destroyed by Cylon robots (who were now on their tail) earned the original series three nominations and two Emmy wins in below-the line categories. The reboot ended up with three Emmy wins of its own from 19 nominations, though all the wins were for special effects and sound editing. (A 2003 backdoor pilot became a three-hour miniseries and also earned three Emmy nominations.)

‘The Conners’ (2018-25)

Emmy wins: 1

Maya Lynne Robinson, left, Jayden Rey, Michael Fishman, John Goodman, Laurie Metcalf, Sara Gilbert, Emma Kenney, Ames McNamara and Lecy Goranson in “The Conners.”

(Robert Trachtenberg / ABC)

Let’s call this one an unplanned reboot. After ABC canceled its 2018 “Roseanne” revival due to star Roseanne Barr’s public flameout, the quick-thinking network teed up “The Conners,” which follows the titular family after its matriarch’s untimely death. Falling somewhere between a traditional revival and a full-on reboot, “The Conners” hasn’t matched the original “Roseanne’s” Emmy haul, which included 25 nominations and four wins (three for Laurie Metcalf and one for Barr). But the series, which recently concluded its own seven-season run, has performed solidly with voters, earning six nominations and one win in 2021 for editing in a comedy series.

There are rare moments in the culture when a children’s book resonates with everyone. Parents who buy the book for their kids find themselves moved by a story that is not intended for them but somehow speaks to them. Peter Brown’s “The Wild Robot” is one such book.

A tender-hearted fable about a robot who washes ashore on a remote island and goes native, the 2016 middle-grade novel from Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has spawned two sequels and last year’s hit (and Oscar-nominated) adaptation from DreamWorks Animation, with book sales for the series topping 6.5 million worldwide. Brown has now created a picture book titled “The Wild Robot on the Island,” a gateway for those still too young to read the original work.

“This new book gave me a chance to create these big, colorful, detailed illustrations, while still maintaining the emotional tone of the novel,” says Brown, who is Zooming from the Maine home he shares with his wife and young son. “I’ve added some little moments that aren’t in the novel to give younger readers an introduction and when they’re ready, they can turn to the novel.”

“The Wild Robot on the Island” picture book is geared for a younger audience than Brown’s earlier children’s novels featuring Roz the robot and friends.

(Peter Brown / Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

The new book’s mostly-pictures-with-some-words approach is a return to Brown’s earlier work when he was creating charming fables for toddlers about our sometimes fraught, sometimes empathetic attitude toward nature. In 2009’s “The Curious Garden,” a boy encounters a patch of wildflowers and grass sprouting from an abandoned railway and decides to cultivate it into a garden, while 2013’s “Mr. Tiger Goes Wild” finds the title character longing to escape from the conventions of a world where animals no longer run free. This push and pull between wilderness and civilized life, or wildness versus timidity, has preoccupied Brown for the duration of his career, and it is what brought Brown to his robot.

“I was thinking about nature in unlikely places, and the relationships between natural and unnatural things,” says Brown, a New Jersey native who studied at Pasadena’s Art Center College of Design. “And that led to the idea of a robot in a tree.” Brown drew a single picture of a robot standing on the branch of a giant pine tree, then put it aside while he produced other work. But the image wouldn’t let him go: “Every couple of months, I would think about that robot.”

Brown began researching robots and robotics, and slowly the story gestated in his mind. “Themes began to emerge,” says Brown. “Mainly, the idea of this robot becoming almost more wild and natural than a person could be. That was so fascinating to me that I wanted to let this thing breathe and see where it took me.”

Brown knew the involved narrative he had imagined wouldn’t work in picture book form; he needed to write his story as a novel, which would be new territory for him. “When I pitched the idea to my editor, she basically said, ‘Pump your brakes,’ ” says Brown. “If I was going to write, I had to include illustrations as well. The publisher thought it was a bit of a risk. They wanted pictures in order to sell it, because of what I had done in the past.”

(Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

Brown locked himself away out in the wilds of Maine, in a cabin with no Wi-Fi, and got down to it. “I was nervous, and my editor wasn’t sure, either,” says Brown, who cites Kurt Vonnegut as a literary influence. “I realized there was no other option but for me to do it. And once I got into it, I had a blast.”

Like all great fables, Brown’s story is deceptively simple. A cargo ship full of robots goes down in the middle of the ocean. Some of these robots, still packed in their boxes, wash ashore on a remote island. A family of otters opens one such box, which turns out to be Roz, Brown’s wild robot. As Roz explores this strange new world, she encounters angry bears, a loquacious squirrel and industrious beavers, who regard her as a malevolent force. But the robot’s confusion, and the animal’s hostility, soon dissolve into a mutual understanding. Roz is the reader’s proxy, an innocent who acclimates to the complex rhythms of the natural world. Eventually she is subsumed into this alien universe, a creature of nature who allows birds to roost on her chromium shoulder.

“Roz has been programmed to learn, but her creators, the men who built her, don’t expect her to learn in this particular way,” says Brown. “And so she uses that learning ability to mimic the animals’ behavior and learns how to communicate with them. Roz is the embodiment of the value of learning, and part of that is adapting, changing, growing.”

The story isn’t always a rosy fairy tale. There are predators on the island; animals are eaten for sustenance. Real life, in short, rears its ugly head. “It gets tricky. Life is complicated, right?”, says Brown. “But thanks to Roz’s influence, all the animals discover how they are all a part of this interconnected community.”

Roz adopts an abandoned gosling that she names Brightbill, and the man-made machine is now a mother, flooded with compassion for her young charge. Their relationship is the emotional core of Brown’s series. At a time when the world is grappling with the increasing presence of robotic technology in everyday life, Brown offers an alternative view: What if we can create robots that are capable of benevolence and empathy? Roz reminds us of our own humanity, our capacity to love and feel deeply. This is why “The Wild Robot” isn’t just a kid’s book. It is in fact one of the most insightful novels about our present techno-anxious moment, camouflaged as a children’s book.

The author kept his underlying fable intact in the new “Wild Robot” picture book.

(Peter Brown / Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)

“Technology is a double-edged sword,” says Brown. “There’s obviously a lot of good that is happening, and will continue to happen, but in the wrong hands it can be dangerous.” He mentions Jonathan Haidt’s bestselling book “The Anxious Generation,” and Haidt’s prescriptions for restricting internet use among children, which Brown endorses. “I don’t have a lot of answers, but I just think we need to reinvest in our own humanity,” he says. “We have to make sure things are going in the right direction.”

In subsequent books, the outside world impinges on Roz’s idyll. “The Wild Robot Escapes” finds Roz navigating the dangers of urban life and humans with guns, while a toxic tide in “The Wild Robot Protects” leaves the animals scrambling for ever more scarce resources. None of this is pedantic, nor is it puffed up with moral outrage. Brown knows children can spot such flaws a mile away. Like all great adventure tales, Brown’s “Wild Robot” stories embrace the wild world in all of its splendor, without ever flinching away from it.

“In the books, I just wanted to acknowledge that the world is complicated, and that people we think are bad aren’t necessarily so,” says Brown, who is currently writing the fourth novel in the “Wild Robot” series. “Behind every bad action is a really complicated story, and I think kids can handle that. They want to be told the truth about things, they want to grapple with the tough parts of life.”

FAKING It fans have branded the show’s reboot a ‘fix’ – as it returns after 19 years.

The premise sees a brave volunteer dropped into a completely alien world and given just four weeks – and help from a handful of mentors – to master a new skill and convince a panel of experts that they are the real deal.

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Channel 5‘s reboot kicked off with Surrey luxury estate agent Rex swap properties for northern street markets.

Working gruelling 10-hour shifts, viewers watched Rex struggle to keep up, blend in and sound like a proper northerner.

However, he managed to convince two out of three market inspectors that he was a proper northern market trader.

Only one of the trio said: “There was something a little not quite there for me with the butcher. He was almost convincing!”

The others, however, felt he was genuine when he went up against a real-life baker, florist and dog treat seller.

Taking to X, some viewers branded the series a “fix” as they questioned the plausibility of not sussing out Rex as the phony.

One wrote: “Im calling B******t that two out the three didnt know Rex was #FakingIt.”

Another penned: “I’m watching the judges pretending not to know which the fake guy was. #FakingIt.”

Wheeler dealer and TV personality Tom Skinner was on hand to help coach Rex through the experience.

Although he initially criticised the newcomer’s slow start, stall display and lack of sales pitches.

Tom said: “To me, it looks like a warehouse storeroom doesn’t it… your store should look like Harrods. You’ve got to make as much as the space you’ve got, yeah?”

After Rex forgot everything Tom told him about pitching, the former Apprentice star said: “Mate, I have no heard you once talk about your stock to anyone.

“You need to be a walking advert. When they walk past… bring them in.”

Rex’s confidence grew, however, following  a crash course from a dialect coach, as well as the ultimate test of hosting a pub quiz using his new northern twang.

Top Channel 5 dramas

Channel 5 has become a hub for gripping drama, these are some of the best My5 has to offer.

• All Creatures Great and Small – Based on the best-selling novels by real-life vet Alf Wright, the show revolves around a trio of vets working in the Yorkshire Dales in the late 1930s. Eccentric Siegfried Farnon (Samuel West) hires James Herriot (Nicholas Ralph) for his veterinary practice at Skeldale House alongside himself and his younger brother Tristan (Callum Woodhouse). There James settles into his new life and even finds love with local farmer’s daughter Helen (Rachel Shenton).

• The Ex-Wife – New parents Tasha (Céline Buckens) and Jack (Tom Misson) seem to have the perfect life, but the constant presence of Jack’s overly friendly but suspicious ex-wife Jen (Janet Montgomery) puts pressure on the couple. But as the series progresses it becomes less clear who the bad guy really is and how far everyone will go to get the life they think they deserve.

• Heat – EastEnders alum Danny Dyer leads this four-part action thriller, set in Australia, which sees two families holidaying together during bushfire season. But instead of rest and relaxation, secrets and lies start to unravel — and not everyone will make it out alive…

• Lie With Me – Another soap legend jets off to Australia, this time its EastEnders alum Charlie Brooks who takes as a married woman trying to saving her marriage by moving halfway around the world after her husband had an affair. However it’s far from plain sailing, as a young and attractive live-in nanny comes to work with the Fallmont family, and tensions soon build and eventually, someone ends up dead.

• The Drowning – Jill Halfpenny plays Jodie, a woman whose life is shattered following the disappearance of her beloved four-year-old son, Daniel. However, ten years later, the grieving mother thinks she’s finally found her missing child, and embarks on a journey to discover the truth about him. But has she really just found the son she has been missing for so long? 

In addition, the posh boy was treated to an amazing hair transformation and some fake tattoos.

Faking It originally aired on Channel 4 from 2000 to 2006 and was highly acclaimed in this run.

The show, which can still be streamed on Channel 4‘s online platform, won two BAFTA awards.

Production company Banijay revived the iconic programme on Channel 5.

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