Radio Times

So, the formula so far is to save the obvious finalist for last. This week, it was Jamie Archer, a 33-year-old dreamer whose afro was so overgrown, it had gone past cool and was now just a bit floppy and forlorn - a sign of how long he's been plugging away in small clubs.

Suddenly finding himself playing the O2 Arena, Jamie attacked Kings of Leon's Sex on Fire like a showbizzy grizzly. He was a poor man's Danyl Johnson but the judges said he was a good "performer", and even if they hadn't, he'd just done the gig of his life.

Rozelle...

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Coronation Street

Roll up, roll up - it's fairground time! I know what you're thinking: isn't every day a festival in Weatherfield? With the choice of freak shows ("Witness widow Maria fall into the arms of her husband's killer!"), the various houses of horror ("See Demon David Platt and his incredible performing eyebrows!"), and the men who look as if they've left the waltzers unattended (yes, you, Peter Barlow), you could be forgiven for thinking that all the fun of the fair was to be had on the cobbles in perpetuity.

Were we to play Pin the Tail on the Adulterer, we would run out of pins -...

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Biggest faker

We all know saying things like "Is there chicken in chick peas?" can endear housemates to viewers, which begs the question - is Sophie really as dumb as she makes out? Her performance in the geography test was suspicious.

Don't get me wrong, my geography is nearly as appalling as hers - it was in the diary room afterwards, when she insisted on calling Senegal "Senelegal", even after hearing BB pronounce it correctly several times, that it all looked a bit suspect. Sophie's not stupid. "Chad? The only Chad I know is Chad Michael Murray." Even her attempts to sound dumb are clever....

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I want to talk to you about the Klangers. No, not the cute, knitted, whistling alien creatures. I mean the hapless staff of Klangbury Council.

For those of you who haven't seen their BBC3 show, allow me to set the scene. There's deputy mayor Greg (not-so-affectionately known as "Fat Gut Sparrow Legs"), played by an astonishingly tall actor with a mad gleam in his eye and an endearing tendency to corpse.

Marek, the goggle-eyed minister without portfolio - memorably described as looking like "a testicle on legs" - is frequently to be found clutching a soft toy of nightmarish origins and might charitably be labelled "slow". Steve, the...

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It's over and I am so glad, if only for the simple reason that at last the Greek chorus that has grown in increasing volume with each passing series, claiming that "this Big Brother will be the last", will finally be silenced.

I am delighted that the end is in sight for this shallow, superfluous and degrading farrago, and that this shrieking babel will at last subside.

It's argued that Big Brother has changed the landscape of British television and this is sadly true. More significantly, though, and much, much worse, Big Brother has become a cultural and social marker, a totem for the...

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Channel 4 is to drop Big Brother after one more series next year - but it may be saved by another broadcaster.

The final series on Channel 4 comes a decade after the show's controversial and hugely successful launch in 2000. At its height in 2002 with Jade Goody's first appearance in the show, Big Brother regularly achieved audiences of around eight million. But the current tenth series is averaging just two million.

Channel 4's director of television Kevin Lygo said the series "had reached a natural end point on Channel 4 and it's time to move on".

Next year marks...

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It's the new season - a season that takes us near to the end of one Doctor and shows us the start of a new Miss Marple. There's going to be tension in new Spooks and maybe even more in the new-look Strictly Come Dancing. Robbie Coltrane is back, starring in a new crime drama, while Gavin and Stacey say their last goodbyes.

Every channel is launching new dramas, new factual series plus new comedy and entertainment, and all are bringing back old favourites. See what you think as Radio Times shows you the lot.

NEW DRAMA

Emma
Atonement's Romola Garai...

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Sixteen celebrities, including tennis star Martina Hingis and boxer Joe Calzaghe, have been named as the contestants in a new-look Strictly Come Dancing. The Sunday-night results show is gone, the Saturday original is extended - and for the first two weeks there'll also be a Friday-night show with different dances.

As before, the sixteen will be divided into two groups with one dancing in the first week, the other in the second. The Friday show will be ballroom night with the couples dancing either a waltz or a tango, while the Saturday edition will be Latin night with the couples trying a cha-cha-cha or rumba...

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The X Factor likes to start each series with a little crisis. Remember Louis Walsh being sacked and rehired? This year it was Simon Cowell suddenly getting bored of singers singing in a closed room, and switching to tryouts in packed live venues. It sounded like media-friendly theatrics, but it's changed the auditions completely.

The show has never properly dealt with concerns about deluded auditioners who are chosen for humiliation, paraded for our entertainment. But the derision used to arrive months later, in distant living rooms and on sarcastic, readerless blogs.

Now, people like The Dreamgirls have 2,500 X Factor fans howling at...

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This is the first image of the animated Tenth Doctor, due to appear later this year in animated adventure Dreamland. Fans will first be able to see the six-part series via the BBC red button or on the BBC's Doctor Who website. The 45-minute long animation will also be broadcast on CBBC on BBC2 in the autumn, and on the BBC HD channel.

Written by Phil Ford - co-writer of upcoming Doctor Who special The Waters of Mars, as well as the brains behind several Sarah Jane Adventures and an episode of Who spin-off Torchwood - Dreamland sees David Tennant's...

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Biggest rejection

"I know, I'll send a message to my good friend Bea in the Big Brother house! She's been having a tough time recently. This is bound to cheer her up. I mean, I know I'm not her mum, or her sister Lianne, or her 12th cousin five times removed, but still…"

And if Bea's friend Tea (are they part of a gang, with other members called Lee and Dee?) felt rejected after her video message was snubbed, what about David? He and Bea had been "getting on like a house on fire", he thought. He'd given her hugs when she was feeling down and...

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EastEnders

Another week, another wedding - or at least an attempt at one - as Walford plays host to the joining of the most improbable pairing you're ever likely to see outside a Heston Blumenthal menu.

Dawn and Garry's big day dawns with only a few clouds on the horizon. But those clouds are of the thunderous sort: the bride's affair with Phil, and Minty's knowledge of said shenanigans; Dawn's unresolved grief over her dead beloved, Jase; Garry's off-putting resemblance to SpongeBob SquarePants… Better bring an industrial-strength cagoule. And wellies. And an inflatable dinghy. And the Red Cross's number on speed-dial.

Most of Dawn's clan arrived in...

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For anyone who followed Katie Price and Peter Andre's ITV2 reality series, with its laboured sexual innuendos, shallowness and naked materialism, our worlds made a little less sense when the couple split up. The final sequence of Katie and Peter: The Last Chapter earlier this year showed a solicitous Andre help a limping, injured Price over the finishing line of the London Marathon. Then - nothing. Fade to black. All over.

But ITV2 knows when it's on to a good thing and has neatly exploited the split with an Andre special and a six-part Price series, What Katie Did Next, which starts next Thursday...

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When Simon Cowell sat down to record the first audition for this year's X Factor, he looked rather glum, says fellow judge Louis Walsh. "It was in Glasgow. Simon wasn't himself, I don't know what was wrong with him. There was just no atmosphere." So what did Cowell, the undisputed king of TV talent, do later that day? "He went to the producers and changed the whole show."

Until now, X Factor participants have auditioned in a small room in front of a handful of people - the judges and the TV crew. In a split second on that dismal morning, Cowell decided that from...

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Kelly Osbourne will be among the celebrities strutting their stuff when Dancing with the Stars - America's version of Strictly Come Dancing - returns for a ninth series at the end of September.

Donny Osmond, singer Macy Gray and R 'n' B star Mya will also compete, as well as Melissa Joan Hart, star of Sabrina the Teenage Witch.

Kelly follows in the dance steps of former Spice Girl Mel B and Paul McCartney's ex-wife Heather Mills as the lone British contestant - but she won't be the only Brit on the show. Strictly judge Len Goodman is also...

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