TV ratings - 10 March: 3 million go Inside John Lewis

www.guardian.co.uk - First episode of the docusoap grabs an 11% share of the audience between 9pm and 10pmBBC2 proved there was life in the docusoap yet with nearly 3 million viewers for Inside John Lewis, its look behind the scenes of one of the UK's best-known department stores last night, Wednesday, 10 March.The first instalment of the three-part series began with 2.7 million viewers, an 11% share of the audience, between 9pm and 10pm, according to unofficial overnight figures.This was more than twice the 1.3 million who watched Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares USA at the same time on Channel 4, a 5.4% share. Ramsay had another 302,000 viewers on Channel 4+1.The Gordon Ramsey show was also beaten by Channel Five's NCIS, which had 2.1 million viewers, 8.4% of the audience.But the evening belonged to ITV1's coverage of Manchester United's 4-0 Champions League win over Milan. ITV1's coverage averaged 7.3 million viewers (30.3%) between 7.30pm and 10pm.Live coverage of the match itself, which kicked off at 7.45pm, averaged 8.1 million viewers over two hours.ITV1's live football easily had the better of BBC1's MasterChef, which had 3.8 million viewers (15.7%) between 8pm and 9pm, and BBC1's celebrity life swap show Famous, Rich and Jobless, which had 3.6 million viewers (14.6%).The fourth episode of BBC2's Lambing Live had 2.4 million viewers (9.9%) between 8pm and 9pm, eclipsing Channel 4's Relocation, Relocation, which had 1.9 million (7.8%) and another 218,000 on Channel 4+1.New BBC2 series Rhod Gilbert's Work Experience, in which he tried his hand at being a refuse collector, began with 1.4 million viewers (7.4%).The series, which was first shown on BBC1 Wales, was neck and neck with Channel 4's Desperate Housewives, which also had 1.4 million (8.1%) between 10pm and 11pm and another 127,000 on Channel 4+1.But it beat Five's Law & Order: Criminal Intent repeat, which had 1.1 million viewers (6.2%). To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".TV ratingsTelevision industryJohn Plunkettguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)

Noises off: Is theatre elitist?

arts.guardian.co.uk - Theatre blogs are anxiously debating whether 'experimental' theatre turns off 'regular' peopleIf you're a playwright, who should you be writing for - yourself or other people? This debate began when Scott Walters noticed this post on the Poor Player blog, in which Tom Loughlin laments the fact that he has hit a period of artistic ennu: the theatre and art he sees around him have lost their appeal. The only thing that still holds his interest are "the people I meet who have absolutely nothing to do with theatre or academia," he writes. "The man doing my bathroom is a great guy and wonderful to talk to… I ate lunch yesterday with a complete stranger at a local diner and had an interesting conversation about next to nothing." He concludes: "I wish I knew how to create theatre for these people. I'm depressed that I don't. They deserve better."For Walters, this sentiment goes to the core of what he thinks theatre should aim to do. We should, he says, be "trying to create theatre that has something to say to people who are just living life day to day. Not high-flying intellectuals, not artists, but just the folks who work the cash registers of our lives." He expands on this idea in another post where he analyses Naomi Wallace's The Trestle at Pope Lick Creek, set during the Great Depression. This play, he says, engages in a kind of formal experimentation that can be hugely alienating to many people. He describes how one elderly couple who saw it "were left desperately trying to figure out what the hell happened. Instead of trusting the power of her story and the humanity of her characters, Wallace had turned her play into an elaborate puzzle." He goes on: "Wallace's play took the working class experience seriously, the small town experience seriously, but she couldn't write for them - she had to signal that, while she was on their side, she is still a member of the intelligentsia, the artist-specialist class."This question of social class in theatre is a fraught one. After all, the average theatre audience in both the UK and US is overwhelmingly middle-class, thus raising all sorts of ethical and aesthetic questions about how one presents the lives of people on a different rung of the social ladder. As J Holtham asks in a guest post on the Parabasis blog: "Is there a difference between writing TO an audience, writing FOR an audience and writing ABOUT an audience?" It can be very tempting to agree with John McGrath, who suggests in his remarkable book A Good Night Out that if we are to dramatise the lives of working people on stage, then we should seek out theatrical forms with which those working people will most easily be able to connect.Yet do we ever have the right to tell writers how they should or should not be writing? Matthew Freeman argues that we do not. His response to the arguments of Walters is simple: "Write your own plays." "There's no use scolding artists when their experiments don't connect with you," he writes. "They're going to experiment anyway. Those same experiments do connect with someone, I'll bet. Maybe not you all the time. Luckily, there are lots and lots of plays. Go read a different one." Walters, in a follow up post, acknowledges that the best solution is not to persuade existing writers to change, but to encourage those who have never written before to put pen to paper for the first time.Of course, the experimental and the popular don't always have to be opposed. I leave you with this fascinating interview with Tim Etchells, the artistic director of Forced Entertainment and occasional diarist on this site, on the Art Review website, which marks Etchells's current exhibition at the Gasworks Gallery in London. Etchells's discussion of his project, Art Flavours, where he sought to forge a collaboration between the Italian academic and critic Roberto Pinto and the ice-cream maker Osvaldo Castellari is an excellent example of how high-brow experimentalism can be brought together with a quite literally tasty populism. Buon appetito.TheatreChris Wilkinsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Harry Hill signs two-year deal with ITV

www.guardian.co.uk - Comedian will make two more series of TV Burp and You've Been Framed in multi-million pound dealHarry Hill has signed a multi-million pound two-year deal with ITV to make more series of TV Burp and You've Been Framed.The new agreement will see independent production company Avalon produce two series, each of eight episodes, of TV Burp for 2010 and 2011.ITV also has an option to extend the deal and order two more series of TV Burp, another one next year and one in 2012. The two new series of You've Been Framed will be produced by ITV Studios.The deal includes an agreement to develop new programme formats for Hill. He has already won several Bafta awards for the long-running ITV1 show TV Burp, which has developed into a ratings hit for the network."If you're a light entertainer there's really only one place to be on a Saturday night, and that's ITV," said Hill.You've Been Framed has averaged 4.7 million viewers across its current run on ITV1, according to ITV.ITVTelevision industryHarry HillMark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)

RTL '100% committed' to Channel Five, says Zeiler

www.guardian.co.uk - Five will be 'a valuable asset' for shareholders as UK TV market consolidates, says parent company chief executiveGerhard Zeiler, the chief executive of Channel Five's parent company RTL, said today that the group remained "100%" committed to the broadcaster despite last year's loss, noting that it will be a "valuable asset" in the expected consolidation of the UK TV market.Zeiler, who earlier today reported an overall loss of €41m (£37m) at Five last year, and an operating loss of £8m, added that backing the UK subsidiary remained in the best interests of RTL shareholders."As I have said before, not only for the the fourth and fifth [sized TV companies] but other players in the [UK] market, consolidation will come," he said. "To take part in the consolidation, as I'm 100% sure Five will, is a valuable asset. So it is the right decision and in the interests of shareholders to stay in the [UK] market."When MediaGuardian.co.uk asked for further clarification, Zeiler added that taking part in the consolidation process in the UK broadcasting sector did not equate to a concession that Five was not viable unless it was merged with another player."We stay 100% committed to Five, we believe in the standalone viability of Five," he said. "In the worst [advertising] crisis of 2009 the operating loss was [just] £8m. There is a standalone value to Five and in addition to that, a second chapter, is that there is also additional value in the consolidation process. There will be consolidation and we will take part in that, as will others - the endgame will be different in terms of numbers of players."Zeiler added that Five, which made savings of 19% or £65m last year through job cuts and reducing the programming budget, was at the end of its cost-cutting strategy."There is nothing planned [in terms of cost cutting]," he said. "When you see the market going up it is also good news for us. Our whole approach to costs in all markets over Europe is that we have to be flexible."But if there were not a sustained recovery this year, he added, then Five would have to look again at its cost base.Zeiler indicated that the UK was one market where RTL - which predominantly owns advertiser-funded, free to air commercial TV and radio networks across Europe - would not look to move into pay-TV, although it is looking at opportunities elsewhere."The stronger you are the better you are in a position to do so [exploit pay-TV opportunities]," he said. "The UK is very much crowded compared to other markets."Zeiler was also cautious about interpreting how much commercial broadcasters will benefit from the BBC's strategic review which is, in part, designed to leave more room for rivals to develop their businesses."We all will see if there are opportunities for commercial television broadcasters when the new government is in and the first discussions are had between the BBC and the government," he said. To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".Channel FiveRTLTelevision industryMedia businessMark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)

Party | Comedy review

arts.guardian.co.uk - Arts theatre, LondonThere are pitfalls when comedians make theatre. Sometimes they strive too hard to be serious; sometimes (judging by the reviews of last summer's The School for Scandal), they don't strive hard enough. The 2007 If.Comedy award winner for best newcomer, Tom Basden, sweeps all such considerations aside with his new play about student politics, an idiosyncratic and highly enjoyable piece performed beautifully by a crack cast of upcoming comics.It's light on plot, but funny enough for that not to matter. Four dopey students have assembled in wannabe leader Jared's shed - summerhouse, he claims - to draft a manifesto for their right-on new political party. The fifth attendee, Duncan (Edinburgh Comedy award champ Tim Key) has been invited because his dad runs a printer's shop, which is handy for marketing. But Duncan cares less for campaigning than for the lemon drizzle cake.This generation of comics is much given to childlike behaviour in their own work: Josie Long is all sticky-tape and crayons; Anna Crilly and Katy Wix (who both star here) make like delinquent infants in their sketch shows. Basden so exaggerates his characters' petulance and political ignorance that they're no longer remotely plausible as adults. These are people who go tongue-tied when asked to talk about climatechange; who think "Muslims" counts as a country. These are, in other words, overgrown kids - vividly so, in the case of current Edinburgh Comedy Award Best Newcomer Jonny Sweet, whose curiously fey manner (his delivery is half singsong, half orgasmic moan) brings the bossy-boots would-be PM Jared irresistibly to life.But who cares about credibility when the style is this seductive, and the jokes this good? The script bears the hallmarks of Basden's standup: witness nuggets such as "What is pillaging?" "It's somewhere between rape and theft." There are echoes of Brass Eye, too, in the ridiculously binary foreign policies: "Are we for or against China?" Elsewhere, the script simply gets out of the way, leaving the stage clear for extraneous comic business, such as the oddball sequence in which Duncan fills right to the brim everyone else's glass of water.Party is like Camus's Les Justes restaged by precocious Sunday school pupils. The satire is slight, but stealthy - not least in the suggestion that democracy as reinvented by simplistic idiots still passingly resembles the system now in use, or the play's hint that, if you started politics from scratch these days, the first thing you'd consider would be branding. These points are lightly made, in a production by Phillip Breen that is chock-full of gags and charisma. You wouldn't want this lot running the country. But comedy-wise, they get my vote.Rating: 4/5ComedyTheatreBrian Loganguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

Waiting: detainees' wives get a voice their husbands never had | Victoria Brittain

arts.guardian.co.uk - All the women in my new verbatim play, Waiting, found Britain an oasis of safety. Then 9/11 changed all thatFor years I have witnessed the "war on terror" with an intimacy few outsiders have, through women living in Britain whose husbands were in Guantánamo Bay. Mutual friends put us in touch, and we became friends - across a gulf of language, culture, religion and experience.Close up, I saw a truly frightening level of isolation, fear and despair. But I also heard touching love stories, saw the happiness of children placed above everything else, and an extraordinary resilience drawn from faith. Through these women, I met others, whose husbands were detained in Belmarsh prison under suspicion of terrorism - but with no charges brought. After their husbands' arrests, these women were abruptly isolated, even within their own communities. Their children's futures became unpredictable; the children themselves were scarred by confusion, fear, and - the older ones, sometimes - hatred. Under the pressure of incarceration (or, later, under house arrest), their husbands changed personality; they were gripped by paranoia; several went on hunger strike or tried to commit suicide; many remain on heavy medication.Two summers ago, after the first reading of my play about these women's lives, one of the actors sent me a text message. She said that whenever she saw a veiled woman on the bus she thought of Sabah, the woman whose part she had read and whose life she now couldn't get out of her mind. This weekend, Juliet Stevenson will play Sabah, one of eight Muslim women whose lives have been translated into verbatim musical theatre.It was Vanessa Redgrave's idea to make it musical. She read the script and said: "It should be an opera." But the idea terrified me: I wanted to keep the precision and detail of the text. I disregarded the idea until I met the composer Jessica Dannheisser, and heard her use a mixture of sung and spoken text in a performance of poetry and music for Palestine at Cadogan Hall. Maybe it would work, if she would take my play on. She did. Then her friend, the director Poppy Burton-Morgan, persuaded me to drop some characters, and miraculously produced the libretto for two singers.Some of my favourite actors - Gemma Jones, Manjinder Virk, Harriet Ladbury and Diana Hardcastle - came on board. Then came the cellist, Oliver Coates, the soprano Anna Dennis, and the mezzo-soprano Carole Wilson. A total of eight performers - three of them seen in short film sequences - play women from cultures as varied as those of Senegal, France, Jordan, Palestine, India and the English Midlands. In previous lives, some had been basketball stars, or teachers; some have degrees in business administration or economics. Others came from households where they were not involved in many family decisions.Like all verbatim plays, the truth of this one - which I called Waiting - depends on using only the actual words of actual people. These words have mainly been collected from many lengthy conversations, some of them translated from Arabic by the children, some of them taped interviews.All of these women came to Britain as refugees, or married refugees here. All had found Britain an oasis of safety; for many of them, their lives were in sharp contrast to the years of prison or torture previously suffered by their husbands. But 9/11 ended their idyll. Foreign men were arrested in droves for American cash bounties in Pakistan and Afghanistan - or on a business trip in Gambia, in the case of Sabah's husband - and sent to Guantánamo. In Britain, on 19 December 2001, a dozen foreign Muslim men were interned without trial in Belmarsh prison. Their wives had no means of knowing what had happened to their husbands and why.I never planned to write about my friends: privacy was extremely important to them. Only once or twice, when they specifically asked me to, did I write articles about them. But when I began to think about Waiting, it was as a joint project, a telling of life stories. When they come to London's South Bank to see the play this weekend, it will be as much to hear each other's stories as to see their own presented.Each of these women have so much in common; each has been changed forever by their experience of Britain. Their own words put it most powerfully. One said: "I can't remember happiness." Another woman recalled going to the zoo with her daughter's class. "She was so happy, so excited, running to see animals she'd never seen, like the giraffes," she told me. "I was smiling for her, but inside I was only thinking of those cages, and my husband in his cage." For some, things have gone from bad to worse, and then worse again. "Nobody can see my heart. This time will stay in my heart forever ... I must forget. I must forgive." After each show there will be a discussion including Salma Yaqoob, Helena Kennedy QC, Gareth Peirce, Manjinder Virk, Riz Ahmed, and Moazzam Begg.TheatreGuantánamo BayRefugeesVictoria Brittainguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Theatre)

FlashForward: more than just a flight of fancy? | Media Monkey

www.guardian.co.uk - Is everyone in the world about to black out for precisely 137 seconds? Monkey only asks after about 100 starlings died in unexplained circumstances in Somerset after tumbling from the sky for no apparent reason. Not unlike the incident in Channel Five's FastForward, when a whole load of crows kept simultaneously snuffing it, particularly this memorable incident in the Ganwar region of Somalia in, er ... 1991. Okay, so they're starlings not crows, so maybe the blackout will only last for 53 seconds. If only we had the FBI's Mark Benford to help us out. While you're at it, Benford, can you solve the even bigger mystery - when is FlashForward going to return to Channel Five?Channel FiveTelevision industryMonkeyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)

The Pacific: No war on costs at HBO | Media Monkey

www.guardian.co.uk - Never let it be said that HBO doesn't know the meaning of the word "big budget". The Daily Mail reports that its new wartime series, The Pacific - cost £133m - ordered "3,000 manufactured uniforms of herringbone twill, specially woven in India on old-fashioned looms to replicate the 1940s weave". Monkey feels you might need an HD box to appreciate them in full, however.HBOUS television industryTelevision industryMonkeyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)

RTL cuts value of Channel Five by half after tough 2009

www.guardian.co.uk - Pan-European group says UK broadcaster made loss of £37m last year as its revenues fell 30%The owner of Channel Five, RTL, has cut the value of its subsidiary by more than half as the UK broadcaster reported losses of €41m (£37m) last year.RTL, the pan-European broadcaster which also owns The X Factor producer, FremantleMedia, recorded an impairment loss of €140m against the value of Channel Five's assets "mainly due to the worse than expected downturn in the United Kingdom". The writedown values Five, and its digital channels Five USA and Fiver, at €112m. RTL made a €337m writedown in the value of Channel Five to €252m in its full-year results for 2008.RTL said that it planned expansion into digital pay channels to reduce reliance on TV advertising.However, the RTL Group chief executive, Gerhard Zeiler, said that despite a cash chest of €789m "we don't see a major acquisition target in the short term, the board has decided to recommend a gross dividend payout of €3.50 per share, on par with the 2008 fiscal year".Overall Channel Five group, which includes Fiver and Five USA, reported losses of €41m last year as revenues plunged 30% year on year to €303m. In UK currency the revenue fall was 21% year on year.Channel Five group's operating earnings before interest tax and amortisation fell from a €2m profit in 2008 to a loss of €10m last year. It should be noted that this represents half the €19m loss that the group was running at in the first six months of last year.This loss consisted of a 75% year-on-year fall in earnings before interest, tax and amortisation to €4m at the main channel and a loss of €14m at digital channels Fiver and Five USA.The operating loss was exacerbated by restructuring costs which widened year on year from a €4m loss in 2008 to a €9m loss last year. Channel Five's losses were compounded further by a €22m programme writedown "relating to revised revenue expectations for acquired US series, based on weak market conditions". Total losses associated with Channel Five were therefore €41m last year.RTL also said that after several years of growing its share of the UK TV ad market Channel Five's share dropped from 9.6% to 8.4%.RTL said that Channel Five had reduced operating costs, excluding restructuring costs and writedowns, by £65m or 19% "mainly as a result of significant programme cost savings".Zeiler said that although the revenue decline in the market had "slowed considerably" since last autumn it did not expect a quick recovery of ad revenues to previous pre-downturn levels."While the group remains cautious, it will also continue to invest in promising business opportunities, based on its strong brands and content," he said. "These include on-demand services, as non-linear TV viewing grows rapidly, digital pay channels, to establish a second revenue stream, content production and the company's broad range of diversification businesses."Overall RTL, which is majority-owned by German media group Bertelsmann, reported that its annual net profits rose by 5.7% to €205m. However, this compares with a net profit two years ago of €563m. Total underlying group revenue dropped 7.5% to €5.28bn, while earnings before interest, tax and amortisation fell 17.6% to €755m.RTL said its results were "satisfying" with the second half of 2009 a "record" in terms of earnings.FremantleMedia, the maker of The X Factor, saw revenue fall by 1.7% to €1.18bn, with adjusted earnings before interest, tax and amortisation almost flat year-on-year at €160m. RTL said Fremantle's performance was solid, particularly in the US and UK.  To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".Channel FiveRTLTelevision industryMedia businessMark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)

RTL writes down value of Channel Five by half after tough 2009

www.guardian.co.uk - Pan-European group says UK broadcaster made loss of £37m last year as its revenues fell 30%The owner of Channel Five, RTL, has cut the value of its subsidiary by more than half as the UK broadcaster reported losses of €41m (£37m) last year.RTL, the pan-European broadcaster which also owns The X Factor producer FremantleMedia, recorded an impairment loss of €140m against the value of Channel Five's assets "mainly due to the worse than expected downturn in the United Kingdom". The writedown values Five, and its digital channels Five USA and Fiver, at €112m. RTL made a €337m writedown in the value of Channel Five to €252m in its full-year results for 2008.RTL said that it planned expansion into digital pay channels to reduce reliance on TV advertising.However, the RTL Group chief executive, Gerhard Zeiler, said that despite a cash chest of €789m "we don't see a major acquisition target in the short term, the board has decided to recommend".Overall Channel Five group, which includes Fiver and Five USA, reported losses of €41m last year as revenues plunged 30% year on year to €303m. In UK currency the revenue fall was 21% year on year.Channel Five group's operating earnings before interest tax and amortisation fell from a €2m profit in 2008 to a loss of €10m last year. It should be noted that this represents half the €19m loss that the group was running at in the first six months of last year.This loss consisted of a 75% year-on-year fall in earnings before interest, tax and amortisation to €4m at the main channel and a loss of €14m at digital channels Fiver and Five USA.The operating loss was exacerbated by restructuring costs which widened year on year from a €4m loss in 2008 to a €9m loss last year. Channel Five's losses were compounded further by a €22m programme writedown "relating to revised revenue expectations for acquired US series, based on weak market conditions". Total losses associated with Channel Five were therefore €41m last year.RTL also said that after several years of growing its share of the UK TV ad market Channel Five's share dropped from 9.6% to 8.4%.RTL said that Channel Five had reduced operating costs, excluding restructuring costs and writedowns, by £65m or 19% "mainly as a result of significant programme cost savings".Zeiler said that although the revenue decline in the market had "slowed considerably" since last autumn it did not expect a quick recovery of ad revenues to previous pre-downturn levels."While the group remains cautious, it will also continue to invest in promising business opportunities, based on its strong brands and content," he said. "These include on-demand services, as non-linear TV viewing grows rapidly, digital pay channels, to establish a second revenue stream, content production and the company's broad range of diversification businesses."Overall RTL, which is majority-owned by German media group Bertlesmann, reported that its annual net profits rose by 5.7% to €205m. However, this compares with a net profit two years ago of €563m. Total underlying group revenue dropped 7.5% to €5.28bn, while earnings before interest, tax and amortisation fell 17.6% to €755m.RTL said its results were "satisfying" with the second half of 2009 a "record" in terms of earnings.FremantleMedia, the maker of The X Factor, saw revenue fall by 1.7% to €1.18bn, with adjusted earnings before interest, tax and amortisation almost flat year-on-year at €160m,. RTL said Fremantle's performance was solid, particularly in the US and UK.  To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".Channel FiveRTLTelevision industryMedia businessMark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)

T-Mobile flashmob wins TV ad of year

www.guardian.co.uk - Mobile phone commercial set in London railway station takes accolade at British Television Advertising AwardsT-Mobile's flashmob-style advert at London's Liverpool Street station won the TV commercial of the year accolade at the British Television Advertising Awards last night.The commercial, created by the ad agency Saatchi & Saatchi, beat competition including Comparethemarket.com's TV campaign featuring the meerkat Aleksandr Orlov.VCCP, the ad agency behind Comparethemarket.com's ads, won four gold awards for its work including the prize for best series of commercials.Bartle Bogle Hegarty won the coveted ad agency of the year award. BBH picked up a total of seven gold awards for work including the Robinson's Wimbledon sponsorship, which played on the chance of a first British men's singles champion in almost 75 years and a hard-hitting TV ad for Barnardo's about sexual abuse.The agency also won the award for best viral for the five-minute ad made using a single shot, called "The Man Who Walked Around the World", that featured Trainspotting actor Robert Carlyle walking down a mountain path in the Highlands to tell the story of Johnnie Walker whisky.Production company Rattling Stick won the award for best production company for the third year in a row. To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email editor@mediaguardian.co.uk or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".AdvertisingTelevision industryMark Sweneyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)

Five Days and MasterChef | TV matters

www.guardian.co.uk - Cheeringly, last week's ratings for BBC1 primetime challenge the assumption that cheap reality is more popular than expensive dramaAn obsession with ratings has been one of the wrecking-balls in British television. Once raw numbers become the qualification, populist formats will generally prosper at the expense of challenging material.Last week, though, brought a historic and optimistic exception to this rule, with Five Days securing around 6 million viewers each night at 9pm on BBC1, while MasterChef, recently expanded and translated to peak-time, was struggling to achieve half that audience in the previous hour.These figures challenge the conventional opinion that cheap reality is a better bet for schedulers than expensive drama. Although the BBC's recent promise to divert money to high-quality programming is widely assumed to be politically motivated, these statistics suggest - contrary to common cynicism about public taste - that it may also prove a popular policy.Though pleasing, the outcome of this fiction/kitchen stand-off also surprises me. Although Five Days was further evidence of the astonishing reserves of acting talent in Britain - in-demand younger stars such as David Morissey combining with veterans including Bernard Hill and Anne Reid - it failed to reach a satisfying resolution after the ambiguities and atmosphere that had been meticulously built up.This is the second time recently, after ITV1's Collision, that a drama stripped across the week has used a thriller format but a non-thriller denouement. It's healthy to resist generic cliches, but sometimes they deserve to be observed.There should, though, be another series of Five Days, and there might be a chance for the episodes to stretch to two hours because it's hard to believe MasterChef will still be there at 8pm.Having already destabilised one hit format - Strictly Come Dancing - through over-extension, the BBC has now done it again. MasterChef worked as a diverting half-hour. At an hour three times a week in BBC1 peaktime, it has become bland and overambitious.TelevisionTelevision industryMark Lawsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds More... (Film & TV)