Ambitious, engaging and contemporary – Winter/Spring 2006 on 91Èȱ¬ ONE
Introduction
The ultimate portrait of our planet, two new Poliakoff films looking at our recent past, the return of Doctor Who and midweek Davina McCall are highlights of the rich range of programmes on 91Èȱ¬ ONE in Winter/Spring 2006.
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Launching his Winter/Spring season of programmes, Peter Fincham, Controller 91Èȱ¬ ONE, says: "Over the years 91Èȱ¬ ONE has shown viewers the most incredible sights on the planet, but there's an even more amazing world out there which is captured for the first time in Planet Earth this season. This is exactly the kind of programme 91Èȱ¬ ONE should be showcasing.
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"And alongside this landmark series many of the strongest voices in UK contemporary drama feature, including Stephen Poliakoff, Jimmy McGovern, Tony Marchant and Russell T Davies.
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"Overall this is an ambitious season demonstrating enormous range - 91Èȱ¬ ONE heading in the right direction and working with the right talent. It's going to be an exciting 2006."
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Four years in the making, the team behind the multi award winning Blue Planet are back with Planet Earth.
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Narrated by David Attenborough, it is the biggest series the Natural History Unit has ever made.
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Featuring the world's greatest rivers and most impressive gorges, to its mightiest mountains and greatest deserts, Planet Earth provides the definitive look at the diversity of our planet.
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Stephen Poliakoff returns to 91Èȱ¬ ONE with two intoxicating new films chronicling our recent history.
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Friends and Crocodiles charts the shifting power between a boss and his secretary as their careers rise and fall in the rapidly changing work place of Eighties and Nineties Britain and features an all star cast lead by Damian Lewis, Jodhi May and Robert Lindsay.
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Gideon's Daughter is set in 1997 and stars Bill Nighy as an elegant PR consultant who struggles with the hollowness of his high profile public life against the backdrop of the Labour election victory and the death of Diana, Princess of Wales.
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Miranda Richardson, Emily Blunt and Ronni Ancona play the women in his life.
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Other new dramas include:
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Life On Mars, with John Simm playing a young detective who, after a near fatal car crash, finds himself transported back to 1973;
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The Family Man by Tony Marchant, in which Trevor Eve plays a charismatic fertility expert in a moving drama about four couples trying to conceive;
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and Hotel Babylon, a tantalising and seductive insight into the sexy world of a luxury five star hotel starring Max Beesley and Tamzin Outhwaite.
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Jimmy McGovern returns to 91Èȱ¬ ONE with a major new drama series, The Street, starring Jim Broadbent, Jane Horrocks, Sue Johnston and Timothy Spall.
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And Russell T Davies has a whole set of adventures in store for our brand new Doctor Who, David Tennant, and his feisty young companion, Rose Tyler (Billie Piper).
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This season Davina McCall will bring a touch of Saturday night sparkle to Wednesday evenings with a new primetime entertainment talk show featuring great guests and the best live music.
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Building on the success of Strictly Come Dancing, Just the Two of Us sees some of the nation's favourite singers paired up with well known faces to compete in a series of live duet performances.
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The duos will face the tough challenge of rehearsing, honing and singing live popular classics from country to big band, from rock to soul ballads.
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They'll then face a judging panel and a public vote. In a new twist, the viewer votes will be revealed region by region, with the least successful duo eliminated at the end of the show.
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As for the surviving couples, they're only as good as their last duet. As well as rehearsing their next song, the couples will travel to the region where they were least popular, and spend the next day campaigning for a better viewer vote.
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Leading the way with a unique tri-media service, 91Èȱ¬ ONE brings the whole of the UK together to experience one of the world's greatest sporting occasions in the World Cup 2006.
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Gary Lineker and Alan Hansen will lead coverage of the live and highlights action from 64 games and 32 nations.
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Following his investigative documentary, State of the Planet, David Attenborough updates his view in light of new revelations about our world in The Truth About Climate Change.
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The Impressionists is a landmark factual drama series which unravels the intimate history of the brotherhood of Monet, Cezanne, Degas, Renoir and Manet.
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The man behind the myth is explored in Hannibal, revealing what drove the 26-year-old to mastermind one of the most audacious military moves in history.
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Rageh Omaar explores The Miracles of Jesus in a series which examines the latest historical and archaeological findings to discover what the miracles said about Jesus.
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Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond embarks on a 5,000 mile journey to find something that may not exist in Richard Hammond and the Holy Grail.
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Krakatoa is an explosive drama-documentary bringing to life the infamous catastrophic eruption of 1883.
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The British rescue of a Russian sub trapped on the seabed of the Pacific Ocean – Submarine Rescue – features in a special documentary.
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Strictly Dance Fever, hosted by Graham Norton, returns to give anyone with a talent for dancing the chance to win a dream role in a professional dance company.
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91Èȱ¬ Again stars Samantha Janus and Bruce MacKinnon as newly-weds Ingrid and Mark who realise the only way to save enough money for their own property is to move in with Ingrid's parents.
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Alistair McGowan stars as wise-cracking detective Gil Mayo, a master of crime solving.