REALITY
Many people think they could run their organisation better than the boss. InI’m Running Sainsbury’s, they get to see if they can. Channel 4’s lead factual series for the winter, it follows staff as they take over sections of the business. In another big reality series,To the Ends of the Earth(BBC1), eight people compete for the chance to join the BBC’s award-winning wildlife department. The first collaboration between BBC Entertainment and its Natural History Unit, it will judge film-makers on both their footage and how they get it. SK

DRAMA
Contemporary angst is reflected in two remakes of iconic shows: The Prisoner(ITV1), starring Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen, takes Patrick McGoohan’s unfathomable series (the Lost of its day) and updates it to reflect modern-day paranoia about surveillance and liberty; and BBC1’sThe Day of the Triffids, set in 2011, after the oil runs out. The triffids that are supposed to supply the energy turn into rampaging, carnivorous veg that feed on people instead.

Freefall(BBC2, spring), starring Aidan Gillen, Rosamund Pike and Dominic Cooper, is a timely take on the catastrophic consequences of excessive City greed by the Bafta-winning Dominic Savage.Occupation (BBC1), the BBC’s first drama about the Iraq war, follows three soldiers who are “united in battle, but torn apart by the aftermath”, according to its writer, Peter Bowker. Bowker is also penning Desperate Romantics (BBC2) about the PreRaphaelites, pitched as a “rude gang drama” or a 19th-century version of Entourage, the American series about Hollywood egos.

Channel 4’s big new drama is Red Riding, an ambitious crime trilogy adapted from David Peace’s cult noir novels, with David Morrissey, Andrew Garfield, Sean Bean and Lesley Sharp; and Samantha Morton makes her directorial debut with The Unloved(Channel 4), a semi-autobiographical drama about growing up in a children’s home. In a follow-up to the seminal The Naked Civil Servant, John Hurt reprises his role as Quentin Crisp, the self-styled “stately homo of England”, in An Englishman in New York (ITV1).

No commissioner of drama ever went wrong by indulging the appetite for a murder-mystery, and two are bound to grab the attention:Trinity(ITV2), billed as a “superyoung, sexy” version, set in a university and starring Reggie Yates, Claire Skinner and Charles Dance; and Purves & Pekkala, from The Book Group writer, Annie Griffin, about two Edinburgh architects. Mark Gatiss and Daniela Nardini star. SK

HISTORY AND CULTURE
David Starkey reclaims the story of Henry VIII(Channel 4) from the wives who, he says, have taken over the more interesting story of Henry’s role in shaping the modern world; the Oscar-winning, piano-playingClint Eastwood is producing an Arena special (BBC2) on the crooner Tony Bennett; and the BBC has two big music series:The Birth of British Music (BBC2) tells the story of the cultural revolution that made British music, while Baroque!(BBC4) describes one of Europe’s most successful art movements.

Heston Blumenthal, the chemist of cooking, plunders the past to create the ultimate banquet for the 21st century in Feast(Channel 4). And a bumper BBC season on Darwin celebrates the 200th anniversary of his birth - although only 48% of the UK population accepts his as the best theory for the development of life, according to a 2006 Ipsos Mori poll. Perhaps documentaries by David Attenborough and Andrew Marr, among others, will convince the other 52%. SK

NONSITCOM COMEDY
British sitcoms aren’t the only “where there’s chuckle, there’s brass” output on television at the start of the year (see above). Channel 4’s School of Comedy is a sketch show performed by 12-to 16-year-olds and headed by Will Poulter, the young actor who shot to fame in Garth Jennings’s comedy Son of Rambow. It’s adult humour - indeed, the cast spend a lot of time dressed as grown-ups - and it is big and it is clever.

Gavin and Stacey stars Mathew Horne and James Cordenhave their own sketch show on BBC3, which combines studio routines with filmed skits. The two hit it off so well on the hit sitcom that they scripted this project and hope to tour it later in the year. Stewart Lee, who based an Edinburgh show on his frustration at having a BBC2 show cancelled, now has a BBC2 show called Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, while Alice Lowe, star of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Beehive, has a shock-doc spoof calledLifeSpam piloting on BBC3. Will Ferrell’s Comedy Central sendoff for George W Bush will get an airing on Channel 4; Al Murray’s new ITV1 show sees him trying out characters that have nothing to do with pub landlords; and rumours abound thatChris Morris may hit the screens after a long break, with a project on Islamophobia. It’s probably a good job you can’t afford to go out after all. SA

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