Second run for Father Brown

Father Brown has been re-commissioned for a second series as BBC One daytime ratings increase following the axing of the Children’s BBC slot last month.

The latest version of Father Brown, starring Mark Williams, based on the stories by GK Chesterton, is to return for a second run newspaper The Guardian reports. The series is currently airing in the new BBC One daytime line up and has seen the audience share rise up by 4% on the same period last year, when CBBC still aired in the late afternoon schedules.

The children’s programming had occupied the 3.15pm to 5.30pm (more recently ending at 5.15pm) slot since 1985.

A second ten episode series of the corporation’s version of Father Brown follows the successful two week run of ten editions stripped Monday to Friday across the schedule.. Broadcast in the slot directly before the old CBBC block, at 2.10pm, the drama secured healthy figures of around 2 million viewers.

Victims of the changes are sister station BBC Two and other public service broadcaster, Channel 4.

The beeb’s second channel has  fallen from a 13.1% share to 6.9%, while Channel 4 – who have also re-jigged their schedules – has seen a decrease from 13.4% to 8.1% during the same former CBBC timeslot.

Channel 4 seem keen to ‘kill off’ their longest running none-news programme, the game show Countdown, by moving it into the early afternoon schedules. The programme, produced by ITV for the network, has aired since January at 2.40pm. It’s not the first time the programme has been moved around the schedules for new programming.

The latest to fill Countdown’s most recent former slot is quiz Face the Clock which has managed to draw only half the audience the veteran words and numbers game pulled in. ITV isn’t suffering from the changes, the broadcaster who dropped their main channel CITV slot in 2006, has seen a rise over just over 2% to its afternoon audience share, helped by popular series such as The Alan Titchmash Show, Dickenson’s Real Deal and Tipping Point.

The original Father Brown drama, starring Kenneth More, was produced by ATV for ITV airing for thirteen episodes in 1974.

[Written by Mike Waktins, source: The Guardian]