June 2011 Highlights

3 May 2011

Shameless US

 

Please note this document will be updated, and new information will be added over the coming weeks.  (We just figured there's only so much excitement you can handle at once.)

June sees the official start of summer, and the longest day of the year. Traditionally, the summer solstice is cause for celebration, though quite why is a mystery - all that sunlight can easily spoil one's view of the telly. Anyway, what you do with your June is up to you - you can go and dance naked around Stonehenge with a bunch of ageing Bob Dylan fans, or you can stay in and get properly involved with this melange of televisual brilliance on Channel 4. Set remotes for 'fun'...

Naked Apes (w/t)
Meet paramedics, Stuart, Ashley and Rachid: to the outside world angels of mercy; to their colleagues a trio of pedantic know-alls; and to the career alcoholics and late night revellers on the swarming streets of Leeds, nothing more than glorified taxi drivers with one drop-off point - Accident & Emergency.  Swept along by an endless tide of bodily fluids rarely their own, our trio bicker, fight and shag their way through the darkly funny maelstrom of their lives. Behind the uniforms, the sirens, and the incredibly fast driving, they are just three ordinary blokes trying to make it through yet another shift. But once they've finished saving other people's lives, will they be able to salvage their own? Starring Rhys Thomas, Kayvan Novak and Richard Madden, this new six part comedy drama series for Channel 4, written by Brian Fillis, takes an angular look at the lives, loves, neuroses and mishaps of a bunch of paramedics in Leeds - but this is no Casualty! 

The Channel 4 Comedy Gala Live
The Channel 4 Comedy Gala Live At The O2 in aid of Great Ormond St Hospital returns for a second year in a two-and-a-half-hour TV special.  The amazing all-star line up so-far confirmed for the biggest comedy event of the year includes: Alan Carr, Andi Osho, Dara O'Briain, Jack Dee, Jack Whitehall, Jo Brand, John Bishop, Jon Richardson, Jonathan Ross, Kevin Bridges, Lee Evans, Mark Watson, Michael McIntyre, Micky Flanagan, Rhod Gilbert, Rich Hall, Sarah Millican, Sean Lock & Shappi Khorsandi ... with many more to be confirmed.

Holiday Hijack
Holiday Hijack is a new six-part series that will see Brits plucked from the comfort of their luxury, all-inclusive resorts to explore the ‘real life' and hidden gems of their holiday destinations. Living cheek-by-jowl with a local family, often in challenging conditions, the Brits will experience the local food and countryside for the first time, and be put to work in the jobs that service the tourist industry, where they will see the environmental and social costs of their holiday choices. The six locations featured in this series will be The Gambia, the Maldives, Mexico, Kenya, Jamaica and a return show in the UK.

Hugh's Big Fish Fight Update
This one-off programme is a follow-up on Hugh's hugely successful series earlier this year, which saw over half a million people pledge their support to Hugh's campaign to ban fish discard. In the show, Hugh will be back in Brussels but this time supported by 600,000 signatures to check whether the campaign has persuaded the EU to ban the practice that sees perfectly good fish thrown back into the sea and entirely wasted. Hugh will also be checking with tinned tuna companies that had promised to use the sustainable pole and line catching method of catching fish. Have they been true to their word? And he'll be knocking hard on the doors of other seafood companies who have failed to do anything at all despite the massive public support. Plus there will be more surprises and more Hugh-shaped mischief to make sure that his message that we can't carry on like this is heard in all corners of the globe. 

Help: My House is Falling Down
Sarah Beeny returns for a second series of the show that aims to help people rescue their homes from the brink of disaster.   Armed with a team of specialists, she diagnoses and deals with a host of potentially terminal property problems - from serious subsidence to terrifying cracking, through severe water damage and even a home that might fall down a mine!   

The Sex Education Show
The Sex Education Show will return with a six-part series which will include the results of a nationwide survey revealing the sexual practices and attitudes of Brits, to reflect the changing sexual landscape of the nation. From the physically disabled to the blind, Anna Richardson will also discover the whys and how-tos of sex as she talks to those who often feel sexually invisible. Plus the programme will tackle the thorny topic of sex and religion. As always, the series will be accompanied by the comprehensive and highly successful Sexperience website www.channel4.com/sexperienceuk.

Shameless US
William H. Macy stars as the Gallagher family's alcoholic patriarch, Frank, in Shameless US - from Emmy Award-winning executive producer/writer John Wells (ER, The West Wing, Southland) - and is every bit as dysfunctional as his British counterpart, created by award-winning writer Paul Abbott (State of Play). Set in Chicago, Shameless US finds the sprawling Gallagher clan struggling to make ends meet in today's recession.

Fairy Jobmother
Fairy Jobmother Hayley Taylor takes on the challenge of getting the unemployed of Britain back to work. Life for Britain's unemployed is about to get tougher, with welfare cuts set to drastically change life for millions of people. Hayley visits four hotspots across the UK to help those who will be affected get jobs.  

The Space Shuttle's Last Flight (w/t)
This documentary will look at the rise and fall of the most ambitious space programme ever undertaken, the Space Shuttle. In June, when the Shuttle takes its last flight, the USA will no longer be able to put a man in space for the first time in over half a century.  To coincide with the Shuttle's last flight, this programme will tell the amazing story of its 30-year history.

Camelot
Camelot is a brand new ten-part medieval drama which will make its UK premiere on Channel 4 this summer complete with an all-star cast including Jamie Campbell Bower (The Twilight Saga: New Moon), Joseph Fiennes (Luther, Flash Forward), Eva Green (Casino Royale, The Golden Compass), Tamsin Egerton (St Trinians, Chalet Girl) and Claire Forlani (Meet Joe Black). Based on Thomas Malory's 15th century book, Camelot takes a new and contemporary approach to the classic telling of this historic and legendary tale.

First Cut
Channel 4's critically acclaimed First Cut strand launched in November 2007 as an eclectic documentary strand to showcase the best in bold, bright and original documentaries by up-and-coming filmmakers.  This June, the series returns with a run of ten new half hour films.

True Stories: The Pipe
In a remote corner of the West of Ireland sits Broadhaven Bay, the perfect picture postcard. However, this peaceful tranquility belies the turmoil that lies beneath, and the unique nature of the coastline, which has sustained generations of farmers and fishermen, has also delivered to Shell Oil the perfect landfall for the Corrib Gas Pipeline. The Pipe is a story of a community tragically divided, and how they deal with a pipe that could bring economic prosperity or destruction of a way of life shared for generations. In the most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland, the rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the worlds most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their state to protect their rights, they find that the state has put Shell's right to lay a pipeline over their own.

True Stories: Donor Unknown
Donor Unknown follows the story of JoEllen Marsh, 20, as she goes in search of the sperm donor father she only knows as Donor 150.