New BBC Three season - full details
BBC Three is to be shortly re-branded with a new pink logo and colourful set of idents. The new look, which cost £380,000 to design, will usher in a new multimedia era for the channel. The aim is to turn BBC3 into the UK's "most ambitious multiplatform network", a strategy which will include simulcasting all the channel's programmes on the internet and, potentially, an extension to the number of hours it broadcasts each day.
The new pink "whimsical" logo and idents will hit screens in the next few weeks, replacing the channel's current 'blobs'. A series of six final idents have been filmed featuring the blobs singing goodbye songs. Little Britain star Matt Lucas voices one of these 'goodbye idents' in character as Dafydd, in which he quotes his "I'm the only gay in the village" catchphrase before bursting into song with I Will Survive.
BBC Three's insistence that all pitches to the channel, from now on, "must be embedded in a wider, multimedia proposition, in line with the channel's ambitions to close the gap between television and the internet" means viewers can expect regular slots for user-generated content in prime-time, and the placing of interactive ideas at the heart of programmes. New programmes in development include an eight-week talent show called Upstaged which will be streamed on the web for five weeks before being shown on television for the last three, and Lily Allen and Friends which was conceived as an extension of the singer's MySpace page, and has been named by her fans.
Speaking at the channel's season launch this morning, BBC Three controller Danny Cohen also revealed some of the comedies in BBC Three's 2008 schedule. We have full details on all these shows below...
Gavin and Stacey
The critically acclaimed comedy makes a welcome return after triple success at the British Comedy Awards and being named 'Best New Sitcom of 2007' in our own British Comedy Guide Awards.
The honeymoon's over for newlyweds Gavin and Stacey in the new series, and their married life begins in earnest at the Shipman family home in Essex. But, as the reality of living so far away sinks in, Stacey starts missing her home in Barry Island along with her mum and her Uncle Bryn. Meanwhile, Gavin and Stacey's best friends, Smithy and Nessa, are coming to terms with their own stark reality: they're not even friends and yet they're having a baby together.
Julia Davis (Nighty Night) and Sheridan Smith (Grownups, Two Pints) guest star in this second series which is, once again, written by Ruth Jones and James Corden.
Coming Of Age
The full first series of the sitcom written by 19-year-old Tim Dawson. Coming Of Age, which was piloted last year, takes viewers into the outrageous and scatological world of a group of sixth-form students living in Abingdon.
Jas, Ollie, Matt, Chloe and DK are regular teenagers - their lives revolve around college, their bedrooms and, because they are always getting thrown out of the local pub, Ollie's garden shed.
Coming Of Age shows life from a teenage perspective. It talks about being young, loving for the first time, fancying your history teacher and dealing with those pesky, unwanted erections-in-public-places.
Pulling
The Bafta-nominated and acutely observed comedy about the loneliness of having fun is back. Pulling follows the lives and loves of three friends as they endure the exhilarating highs - and devastating lows - of being young(ish), free and single.
Featuring a cast of talented British comedy actors and a sparkling script, it takes a long, hard look at sex, love and friendship - not to mention what you do when you don't recognise the person you've woken up with.