The High Court in London refused to grant an injunction against HarperCollins of an autobiography written by Ben Collins. The BBC had launched legal action last week, arguing the book would breach confidentiality obligations.

Several British publications had already speculated that Collins was the Stig, who wears a white racing uniform and does racing test runs for the BBC Two show, based on financial records from his company.

When the BBC began to seek the injunction, officials with HarperCollins accused executives of wasting taxpayers’ licence fees on attempting to keep The Stig’s identity secret. However, representative of the BBC cited confidentiality statements signed by Top Gear talent and staff and said that such a revelation violates copyright.

Top Gear executive producer Andy Wilman said in a blog post on the show’s website last week that the rights to The Stig belong to the licence payers, “not to some opportunists who think they can come along and take a slice when they feel like it.”

The whole point of the Stig is the mystique – the bizarre characteristics he has, the wonderment created about what he might think, feel, do or look like. Kids adore the conceit, and I believe adults, although they know it’s a man in a suit (or is it?), gladly buy into the whole conceit because they find it entertaining.

Collins, who has not been officially verified by the BBC as The Stig, presumably took over the role in 2003 after the original “black” Stig, driver Perry McCarthy, also outed himself in an autobiography.

To see immediate reaction to the news from within British entertainment (including Jonathan Ross’ Tweet that he himself is actually the Stig) check out my British TV Twitter list.

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It’s kind of interesting, because much like British soap operas, the main charm of “The Bill” seems to have been in its history and tradition, not because it’s particularly riveting television. In fact, the show was frequently a subject of many comedy skits and jokes on panel shows.

When the news broke about its cancellation in March, comments began pouring in on the Radio Times story about it and haven’t stopped. The last episode was the main topic of discussion on this morning’s Radio 1 morning show, mostly because one of the sidekicks is known to be a weekly watcher of the show and is going through all the stages of grief. And talk about it has been all over Twitter.

Personally, I never got into it partly because I’ve never really been into police dramas. But if you do watch the finale or want to get a good taste of what it was about, make sure to check out this excellent column in The Guardian that details all of the details Brits could always count on when they watched the show. Frankly, it’s almost a list of the tropes present in all crime dramas, but these have a distinctly Anglophile twist.

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Mary is 50 and works at a Tesco in Ireland. She had quit singing for 11 years because of low self-esteem. Yes, the story has some similarities to Susan Boyle. And like Susan Boyle, she blew me away with her rendition of “I Who Have Nothing.”

I’m happiest because the Auto-Tune scandal happened the first week and Mary was aired without any tweaks, so unlike everyone the first week (and indeed all past contestants and Boyle herself) there is no doubt that she sounds completely incredible.

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“Frankie Boyle’s Tramadol Nights” was described by Channel 4 promoters as “no-holds-barred stand up” show that will feature pre-filmed sketches. Considering Boyle’s uneasy at best relationship with the censors at the BBC, one of the highlights should be a sketch described at the British Comedy Guide as “‘Untitled Street’, a new BBC soap opera which is so politically correct that actor’s faces are blanked out to avoid offence and plots are so ambiguous that the viewers have to guess for themselves what it’s about.”

Two other new shows slated for fall and winter runs on C4 feature unknown comic Morgana Robinson, who will be doing sketch-based comedy that sounds very Catherine Tate-like as well as celebrity impressions, and not-so-unknown Robert Webb, who will debut “Robert’s Web” *rimshot* where he examines the funny available online each week before a studio audience.

As for a possible return of Jimmy Carr, David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker and Lauren Laverne, the British Comedy Guide says that C4 has ordered an untitled show by the team that produced the special to run on either Thursday or Friday nights at 10 p.m. from Zeppotron, the production company behind Brooker’s “Newswipe,” Mitchell’s “Would I Lie To You?” and Carr’s “8 Out of 10 Cats” (which also returns this fall.) Talks are reportedly underway to bring back all four presenters, but there’s a very tight turnaround on inking deals. The show is reportedly slated to begin airing in October.

In case you actually watched regular BBC or Sky election night coverage and missed the excellence of the C4 show, it was probably the closest that “The Daily Show” has ever come to England beyond getting John Oliver to jump across the pond. Quite sensibly, they didn’t put Brooker on until after the polls closed. No problems with that on the follow-up!

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At the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival, BBC Controller Jay Hunt said that three additional 90-minute episodes of the show, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, have been commissioned. The first three episodes of the show aired on BBC One in July and will air in the US on PBS in October.

“We’ve been overwhelmed by the warmth of response to our new Sherlock Holmes and John Watson and can’t wait to take them on three new adventures next year,” said Gatiss and Moffat in a statement. “There’ll be baffling new puzzles, old friends and new enemies – whether on two, or four legs. And we might well be seeing the cold master of logic and reason unexpectedly falling. But in love? Or over a precipice? Who can tell?”

Gatiss also took to his Twitter account with the news, although he later said to fans, “Hope you understand that the writing & production of 3×90′ films doesn’t happen overnight.” Presumably that was to squelch the frustration that there will be another year to wait now after one of the better cliffhanger endings on modern television.

At the festival, Hunt also said the network has commissioned two additional two-hour specials of “Luther” to air next year, a new comedy panel show headed by Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert, and yet another British cookery show, this one with food author Simon Hopkinson.

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BBC director-general Mark Thompson said at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival Friday that, “Within a year, we wish to launch an international commercial version of the iPlayer.”

Thompson said the BBC Worldwide division has been making slow process in building their own version of the UK-only platform, which currently has both live streaming of all the BBC television networks and on-demand streams of shows for a seven-day period after airing.

Moreover, Thompson said that the network is developing a way for verified UK license payers to be able to use the existing iPlayer platform from non-UK IP addresses, presumably for Brits traveling abroad or expats who maintain residence in Great Britain and another country.

But there are still questions to be answered on the non-UK “global” iPlayer in its final execution. If people are paying a fee to the BBC for access (probably the most logical option) would this mean they’d also pay for the right to, say, watch “Doctor Who” and “Sherlock” on the much earlier UK timetable, or would shows that have US rights sold be blocked?

That would be bad news for the many DW fanatics who would gladly pay for legal viewing when it airs in the UK instead of seeking out not-so-legal downloads of the show online, and those people are many of those willing to pay a monthly fee for the privilege. However, for a network like PBS that is banking on this enormous “Sherlock” buzz for their fall ratings, at least the illusion of exclusivity is part of the price they pay for the rights.

Also, will this BBCWW iPlayer also include live streaming as well as on-demand? Note: only live UK television requires a license fee under the current structure, although UK culture minister Jeremy Hunt has said the exemption should end for video-on-demand. But if we’re paying, can’t we at least get BBC One and Two live? And could we also, just for the fun of it, get all those region-blocked previews and trailers that are on the BBC.co.uk site? After all, there would have to be some sort of logging into the site and cookies involved.

BBCWW has licensed some of their programmes out already in the US via Hulu, and Thompson said, “British ideas are no longer strangers in LA and the world’s other media capitals.” That may be true to an extent, especially with the division’s coproduction deals with Starz for “Torchwood” and “Spartacus.”

However, surely Thompson and others overseeing the development of the US market for BBC as a whole know that they cannot offer a limited amount of product such as what’s available on Hulu as a way to grow their audience here. There are some of us who won’t be happy until we can see “EastEnders”, The One Show”, “Mock the Week” and “That Mitchell and Webb Look”, amongst so many others, in as close to real time as they can legally and technologically make available.

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But there has been a big hole in the landscape – where’s the UK’s “The Daily Show”? So many politically verbose comedians all over the telly, but no nightly place for them to skewer the news of the day like Jon Stewart and his correspondents, and right afterward Stephen Colbert, do four nights a week here. It’s especially ironic because Stewart and Colbert’s shows undoubtedly have to be censored for language and innuendo on a level that would be laughable on British telly.

It looks like the success of “Stand Up For The Week” (which was just picked up for a second series order, wahey!) and the “C4 Alternative Election Night” have helped Channel 4 make the leap into trying out the format. “The Late List” will air nightly at 11 p.m. and be taped only a few hours before the airing.

According to the British Comedy Guide, channel representatives said the programme will be presented by “a mix of established and new talent.” and will feature a combination of celebrity guests and video clips that will “bring you everything you need to know about ‘today’ whether it’s news, entertainment, sport or anything else that may prove a springboard to great comic material.”

C4 has attempted to do late-night comedy before with “Tonightly” and “The TNT Show”, but those shows featured a typical two-host format. Possibly with the two recent successful shows, in particular “Alternative Election Night” – which generated enormous online buzz and if there is a special TV deity would inspire C4 to try to get some sort of even sporadic involvement from the unholy trinity of Brooker, Mitchell and Carr – they have figured out that a rotating cast of comedy, much like that of panel shows, may be the way to go.

“The Late List” is due to debut Sept. 6, with tickets already available online.

To keep up with what people working in British TV are saying, follow my Brit TV Twitter list.

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Basically, the guys are just back to school for fall term, talking about their rather pathetic summer and how they’re going to dominate their final year, and giving Will enormous crap (pun intended) for the events of last series’ finale. The new series is scheduled to premiere on Channel 4 in September.

In related news, there have been tabloid reports that Simon Bird, who plays Will, is holding out for more money before shooting a feature-length episode of the show later this month based on the boys taking a road trip to Spain. According to The Sun, Bwark Productions is now sending out casting notices for a character that would either recast Will or replace him on the show. However, show writer Iain Morris has refuted the claims on Twitter, and keep in mind that this is The Sun.

FYI, a great way of keeping up with the latest chatter online about British TV from the actors and production side itself is by keeping an eye on my Brit TV Twitter list.

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My annual ritual with “The X Factor” goes something like this: I tell myself that I should watch the first week, often because the BBC is sensible enough not to schedule anything interesting at the same time and because it’s one of those shows where things could be switched up and interesting unexpectedly and I would’ve missed it. Now that I think of it, way too much of my TV viewing happens for that reason.

I watch semi-regularly through the auditions, watch the boot camp week to see what insane outfit Sinitta wears, and then get through about a month or six weeks of the live shows because one or two of the acts are properly interesting and the mentors are of interest (last year: Robbie Williams week.) Then they get eliminated, I get bored and annoyed that the show becomes this pre-packaged pop factory, “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!” fills up my weekly quotient of cheese and I attempt to forget about it until the final and the annual controversy over the Christmas No. 1 arrives.

Really, there are so many things that I’m not thrilled with about the show that it’s become a yearly rant for me. For one thing, it’s kind of like how the Christmas season keeps getting extended – it’s about a month too long. I would suggest to Simon Cowell that if he does indeed revamp the UK version of the show as he begins the US version, he consider adopting the “Britain’s Got Talent” schedule and do the live shows possibly three nights a week (Tues, Thurs, Sat?) over a month instead of dragging the show out from August through December. I know that’s a tougher deal than with BGT because that would mean the acts preparing three songs a week. But isn’t part of having “the X factor” and being a proper star is going all out? Not to mention a shortened schedule might prevent the months of flu that seem to endanger at least one or two acts each year.

The second is that I can’t stand press-packaged drama, and “The X Factor” is the worst offender. Frankly, I could be arsed if any of the contestants are dating each other, if they hate their mentors, if they have hourly diva fits at practice (not a great idea if you’re wanting to build a rep to get a record deal, IMHO) or what in the heck Cheryl Cole and Dannii Minogue are wearing at any given moment.

Sometimes the hard-luck stories are endearing. One of my all-time fave contestants was Rachel Hylton from two years ago, who was an ex-druggie with five kids, four in care, and did an amazing Take That cover that singlehandedly made me like that song. But the show gets mired in that crap more than the music. And don’t even get me started on Jedward, although in retrospect I tuned in to hate on them for three weeks longer last year than I probably would’ve made it normally.

All that said, there are reasons I watch this when I don’t watch “American Idol,” and even after kinda falling a bit out of love with BGT this year. Those reasons have been slightly illustrated the last five weeks as I inexplicably have continued to watch another performance reality show, “Don’t Stop Believing” on Five, which is a straight-off attempt to capitalize on “Glee.” I tend to hate myself for about 10 of the 15 minutes I spend watching (thank you to on-demand viewing where I can fast-forward through “the story” of the choral groups and a lot of the commentary) and only get any real pleasure when there’s about one group a week who is really, really good.

But what I’m getting out of “Don’t Stop Believing” that makes me realize “The X Factor” does have something special is the judging. And when I say that, I am not saying I’m a big fan of any of the judges individually but Simon Cowell, who I’m convinced could slate and simultaneously give useful advice in a turnip-judging contest. Particularly, one of the great British things that I have accepted that I’ll never “get” is why people adore Cheryl Cole so much. I’d say the same about Louis Walsh, but I’m not sure most Brits really like him either.

But as a group, the judges are not only slightly combustible (who can forget the famous wars between Dannii and former judge Sharon Osbourne a few years back) but can give proper advice and know what they’re looking for. I will never really understand why Louis put Jedward through boot camp last year, because their performances through that point were really awful, but then once they got to the live shows, he obviously knew the boys were going to entertain. And they did. Has anyone really forgotten about them in those Britney red latex suits yet? And on the other end, Cheryl and Dannii are good at figuring out how to bring that pre-packaged pop action out of their acts, and in the end Simon makes it sell.

This year things will be shaken up with the judging early-on, which will probably be enough reason to watch through boot camp. As anyone who’s read the Daily Mail in the past three months knows, Dannii just had a baby and is still on maternity leave, and Cheryl came down with malaria during the auditions. So there have been guest judges on all of the shows through the live rounds, all famous Britpop girl acts, sometimes older (Geri Halliwell was the first) and the newer (Katy Perry and Pixie Lott.) This is something Idol did in the US when Paula Abdul quit last year, and it certainly attracted attention.

In any case, it ’tis the season where this is going to dominate British pop culture news ridiculously. The best we can hope for is that Simon really was being serious when it was leaked to the tabs this week that he’s banning over-performed songs from the auditions (no more “Sex On Fire”, hallelujah!) and sob stories. Hopefully the focus will go on the music and not on the cheese and scandal. And pigs could fly over Surrey. Both seem equally likely.

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“That Mitchell and Webb Look” are in the middle of their fourth series run on BBC Two, and it’s safe to say that their sketches haven’t missed a step. If anything, it makes one want to go back and look at the great highlights from the first three series.

The first video is from the first episode of fourth series, and as much of their comedy does, it takes peccadilloes about the truly worthy things to be picky about in life, such as correctly pronouncing words, to a whole new level.

(Note: This is the only clip that I’m posting from Series 4, partly because previous series used to be on BBC America regularly and I wouldn’t want to “damage the value” enough to diminish the chances of this one also showing up there whilst I positively promote a show they could sell. And also because I hope highlighting classic clips will endear the BBC to this posting enough to not get the clips yanked from YouTube and to possibly get us some freaking US DVD sets. *genuflects towards BBC Television Centre*)
TMWL also has a fun way of skewering history and military strategy, as well as what is really valued by government agencies.

A frequent subject is pushing the boundaries of socially-acceptable innuendo, especially if they can poke fun at network standards and practices in the process.

I know very little about snooker, but if there’s this much drinking involved, I understand why it takes up so much time on British telly. It also pays homage to the good ol’ days of sports commentating. Oooh, that’s a bad miss.

In an unrelated note, a regular feature pokes at 70′s slapstick sitcom comedy whilst being as offensive as possible. Hennimore gives Jack Tripper a run for his money in his ability to always screw things up.

And if you are a fan and wondered what David Mitchell and Robert Webb’s personae would probably be like if they did a Hollywood action film (or, because of the Welsh accents, “Torchwood”), here you go.

Finally, as they tend to do in their sketch-between-sketches, the longtime comedy partners (like Fry and Laurie, they started collaborating in Cambridge’s Footlights) poke fun at each other. Or mostly they make fun of Mitchell’s socially awkward persona. Which is actually comes off much better, IMHO, for him than for Webb. When did the world decide which one was the most attractive of the two? On behalf of geeky womankind, I demand a recount.

TMWL airs on BBC Two on Tuesday nights at 9 p.m. UK time (3 p.m. CST for those who have TARDIS timewarping abilities.) Their executive producer, Gareth Edwards, has been blogging “highlights” of the production at the BBC Comedy Blog. And also make sure to check out “Would I Lie To You?” on Friday nights, where Mitchell gets at least one proper rant off a week as he spars with Lee Mack, Rob Brydon, and a rotating cast of TV celebrities who attempt to get away with lying to each other. I could also list the multiple projects they work on together or separately, but I’m beginning to sound like a publicist.

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This relative amount of Holmes-virginity was a big reason why I haven’t written about the show previously, because the Internet is far too full of people complaining about subjects they don’t really know about as it is. I haven’t felt very qualified to say how well it lives up to Coyle’s original texts or the previous films. But with tonight’s superb finale, I realized that No. 1 is the big, beautiful thing about this series.

1. You don’t have to be a Sherlock Holmes fan beforehand to get sucked in.

If you like a good drama and suspense, you will enjoy “Sherlock.” If you have enjoyed the plotting and the production values of Moffat’s “Doctor Who,” there’s a good chance that you will find a similar comfort level with the show.

2. If you enjoy seeing a really great bromance onscreen, you won’t get much better than Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman.

Cumberbatch, who has been quoted as saying that he turned down the role of the 11th Doctor because he basically didn’t want to see his face on lunchboxes yet, may not really get his wish. Sherlock is a role he will forever be associated with. And Freeman has finally gotten the chance to move beyond being Tim from “The Office” in public perception.

The two of them, as their characters struggle to understand things about each other that seem plain confounding, are thoroughly entertaining. I’m considering starting a drinking game for every scene where Sherlock leaves a crime scene or a suspect’s flat and forgets to bring John with him. If you’re starting from the beginning, try that and I suspect you’ll get quite tipsy within the first 90 minutes.

3. This show is so thoroughly full of London colour that you forget the characters came from a different time period.

From the taxis (which play a big part of the first ep) to the trains (third ep) and the pubs and the flats…no one could accuse this of being a Hollywood production. And there are so many excellent location shoots – big parts of the second episode take place in Chinatown and inside a London historical museum.

Moreover, this is modern London, with plenty of modern references to everything from John’s time as an Army doctor in Afghanistan (I didn’t know until after the first ep that the original Watson also spent time there – how ironic that the British are once again involved in conflict in that area) to the seeming addiction of everyone in the show to texting, blogging and online searching that ends up playing a big part in Sherlock solving cases.

4. The BBC extending the reach of the show online with Sherlock and John’s blogs, amongst others.

For as long as Twitter has existed, there have been characters “living” through network-controlled accounts. But the BBC has taken that a step further by incorporating John’s “therapy” blog into the storyline from the first moments of the show, and they’ve added the fun of giving Sherlock his own geeky “The Science of Deduction” blog, which gives his character instant net-fame.

The characters interact with secondary (and, in the end, not-so-secondary) characters through the comments. And it’s kinda fun to think about the two of them watching Sherlock’s first James Bond film together. I do hope that the BBC keeps the accounts active through our wait for the next series of the show, which I hope to God isn’t very long. But that might be complicated by…

5. The cliffhanger ending from hell.

Obviously, I can’t talk about this very much because of spoilers. *channels River Song* If you don’t mind being spoiled, I recommend looking at “Sherlock” as a trending topic on Twitter for the sheer reaction spilling forth from the UK about 4 p.m. CST this afternoon. Not everyone loved it, particularly elements of the characters involved (“Graham Norton” was trending for awhile, and you’ll understand why) but it certainly grabbed everyone’s attention.

We were told to expect a shock, but the real shock was not where you would expect it. To not give anything away, the Big Bad was not surprising, but what happened at the very end might be compared to the end of “Inception.” It was so good that knowing that there won’t be an answer to it until at least Christmas is extremely infuriating.

In any case, it would be an awfully good time for the BBC to announce a Christmas special (yes, quick turnaround, but other than Doctor Who has made Brits appreciate paying for their license fees lately in their drama department?) and hopefully a six-episode series order for next year. It figures that Moffat is helming this and is in the middle of getting ready to shoot another 13 episodes of DW very soon, because that’s going to make things difficult. But there is now another reason to count the hours until primetime Sunday in England, and that’s a very good thing.

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Anyone who watches British comedy at all knows the extremely mixed history of American remakes of wonderful Britcoms. Frankly, it’s a miracle that “The Office” made it (thank a great cast and that apparently NBC couldn’t steamroll Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant in the process of making it) because for it there is “Coupling,” “Spaced,” “Men Behaving Badly,” and “Teachers.”

And then there’s the ones that didn’t or haven’t even make it to a pilot. Frankly, I’m thankful for “Gavin and Stacey” because I had heard the redeveloped plot involved Gavin being in NYC and Stacey in South Carolina and the two meeting “halfway” in New Jersey. What?!?

After “Coupling” died its very painful and embarrassing death, Steven Moffat was very vocal about how NBC screwed him and the show over at every stage after they bought the American rights.

“The network [expletive] it up, because they intervened endlessly. If you really want a job to work, don’t get [NBC studio head] Jeff Zucker’s team to come help you with it, because they’re not funny,” he told the Star-Ledger at the time.

So in a sense, it’s incredibly brilliant irony that the creator of “Friends,” probably NBC’s most successful sitcom of all time, is now doing a show that in all appearances is recreating the experience that Moffatt had with “Coupling.” And because he’s smart, David Crane is sticking with BBC Two and Showtime.

The show “Episodes” stars Matt LeBlanc (if you lived under a rock in the 1990′s, he was one of the main cast of “Friends”) and costars Stephen Mangan and Tamsin Greig. If those last two names don’t fill you with a certain sense of ecstasy, please go to Hulu and watch “Green Wing” and “Black Books” immediately.

The basic premise of the show is best described in this excellent New York Times article, but can be summed up that Mangan and Greig are British screenwriters who have a huge hit in the UK that is brought over to the US, completely eviscerated by network executives, and LeBlanc is, well, Matt LeBlanc playing their main lead.

“Episodes” was promoted at the Television Critics Association panels on Thursday, and it’s only natural that it’s being promoted as LeBlanc’s big comeback. His character is described as a sendup of himself similar to Larry David in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” But the funny parts were how Crane, his writing partner, “Mad About You’s” Jeffrey Klarik, and co-producer John Mulville – who had his own nightmare remake with “Game On” and Fox (“The journey of taking an English show to America – believe me, things can go wrong.” – shamelessly poked hot sticks at the traditional American networks. Basically, Crane said he never considered taking the show anywhere other than one of the premium cable networks because both he and Klarik were so fed up with their own past experiences.

The show is scheduled to debut on BBC Two this fall, and on Showtime in the US in January.

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This snippet of info pretty much epitomizes what the show’s stock trade has been in – taking a celebrity who has either a bit of controversy themselves or with their family line, sending them off on travels all over the world to look up records or finding buildings where their ancestors lived, and generally finding a story that, for better or worse, usually ends in some measure of tears.

Actually, the tears part has become a sort of a side joke to some of the people who appear on the show, generally the ones who don’t have some sort of quest to either find out exactly how their grandparents or great-grandparents died in WWII or in the Holocaust or who don’t have their own sad histories that end up being uplifted by finding they have upstanding ancestors a few generations back. Indeed, not every show is depressing.

David Mitchell went to Scotland to find out why his family, about three generations back, gave up their sheep farming and seemly randomly moved to southern England, and the greatest angst he suffered was in a funny sequence where he tried to get wireless Internet for research whilst sitting beside a remote-looking Scottish loch and launched into one of his famous rants. Barbara Windsor, who did have a bit of a personal journey in trying to find out about the family of the father who abandoned her as a teen, spent most of her episode finding joy that she is not only a proper Eastender, but that a branch of her family has their picture printed on the cigarette machine in a pub. David Tennant had a great time at a Londonderry football game after finding out that his grandfather was a football star who had a cap for Scotland and then married a Northern Irish beauty queen. Jeremy Clarkson went on a quest to find someone in his family that would be mechanically inclined, I guess to justify Top Gear to the haters.

But there’s an awful lot of melodrama and heartache on most of the episodes. If you want to get right depressed and spend an evening losing a bit of faith in mankind, watch Jerry Springer’s ep where he finds where both of his grandmothers died in the Holocaust, including one who was amongst the first gassed in Poland. Springer’s own parents lost their shoe business in Germany and were amongst the last refugees to receive asylum in the UK before WWII started, and despite finding a distant cousin at the end whose own branch managed to make it to Israel and survive, it’s hard not to cry yourself along with Jerry as the credits roll. And Stephen Fry’s episode isn’t much cheerier in that regard – he went to the ghetto where his great-grandparents were deported to from Vienna and died.

Kim Cattrell might have the most famous episode of Who Do You Think You Are? and her ep largely inspired Lisa Kudrow to produce an American version on NBC. Cattrell is from Liverpool and had always wondered what happened to her grandfather, who randomly disappeared when her mother was a young child and left behind a wife and three daughters in extreme poverty. On the show, she found out that he simply moved to Manchester, committed bigamy about a year later, had more kids, served in the British Navy and ended up emigrating to Australia. In the end, Kim’s mother and sisters not only saw the only existing pictures of the father they barely knew, but were able to make contact with their half-siblings in Australia.

However, there’s a lot of lost black sheep finding their whiter-hued flock. In a very weepy but happy episode, Davina McCall traced back the French family she felt she’d lost with her estrangement from her mother and found that her great-grandfather was a very highly esteemed head of the Parisian police force who took a courageous stand in the Dreyfus treason trial. She also found that an ancestor on her father’s side was one of the main stonemasons of Windsor Castle and later built Upton Park. Patsy Kensit’s father was part of an infamous London crime syndicate and spent time in prison, and she said she’d lived her life with the shadow of his criminal past. So she found some sort of redemption in finding a direct ancestor who was a vicar and who ran a campaign to help the plight of the poor in the 1830′s.

Not every episode is the most interesting in the world, but in all it’s not bad at all. And it’s an excellent way to learn a lot of English history. Between Tennant’s discovery of his family’s roots in the Northern Irish troubles, and Chris Moyles discovering the roots of his grandmother in the Irish slums, to the Indian roots of Meera Syal, to the extraordinarily complicated family line of Boris Johnson (who comes from pretty much every conceivable place in Europe) you learn quite a bit. Plus it gives you your own idea of how to trace back your own ancestry, without the benefit of BBC researchers.

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The bit that’s been left out of most of the major market coverage of Morgan’s impending deal is the rise and fall of his British journalistic career in England, and how that could potentially be a warning sign to CNN that he could be trouble. He was fired from his job as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004 for not only running fake photos of Iraqi prisoners being abused, but refusing to apologize for doing so and even refusing to admit that anything in the paper’s reporting was wrong.

Before that, he had editorial jobs for both The Sun and The News of the World, and still writes a column for the Daily Mail. So basically the disgraced king of the redtops would be looking for redemption for the Worldwide Leader in News, an organization that’s so ingrained in US journalism that they’ve established their own national news sharing network with local outlets that might be compared to the BBC.

But while they are succeeding on that side, the primetime ratings are suffering in a very public way. Which brings us to where Piers has found a measure of redemption, and it’s really not in the two “Got Talent” franchises (although Britain’s Got Talent is going to suffer without the Piers and Simon grumpy old men tag-team.) Where he has shone – yes, Charlie Brooker would smack me silly for saying that he has, which makes me feel strangely guilty – is in ITV1′s “Life Stories With Piers Morgan.” Generally, the show consists of Morgan bringing on either a beloved or a controversial British entertainer, giving them a bit of a “This Is Your Life” treatment and then interviewing them. Frankly, although the setup on a stage with a studio audience is different, the interviews aren’t so much different.

Except that while King has really not had any game for awhile and famously does no research, Morgan does pull out some investigative chops for his. He brings out the whole person behind the celebrity veneer, warts and all, asks them the tough stuff, somehow manages to keep them onstage but usually gets an answer out of them that sounds in the ballpark of real. And yes, he makes people cry. He made freaking Simon Cowell cry, and I figured he had his tear ducts removed during an eye lift years ago.

But the best interview I saw him do was with Michael Winner, a famous 70′s director who then became a food critic and is probably more disliked than, well, Morgan himself. He had not consented to a sit-down interview for years and had walked out on several. But Morgan disarmed Winner and whilst being straight to him about how horrible he was to work with when they were colleagues, he also got him to completely open up about almost dying with a food-borne septic infection, a neglected and unloved childhood, and how he had lost his directorial career by refusing to compromise on the violence in the films he did with Charles Bronson. In short, I learned a ton and actually felt like I knew about man, not his latest project or future plans or his PR take on being misjudged by the evil media.

In short, I do think that Morgan’s show could potentially be exactly what both he and CNN need to complete what they need from each other – Morgan couldn’t get much higher journalistic redemption than this. However, CNN will also need to have a strong executive producer who can deal with Morgan’s ego and not let him run away with stories in a way that would make Nancy Grace look restrained. Surely Morgan realizes the rules are different here than in the UK, and whilst he took great pride in the UK for saying he didn’t have to keep the BBC’s standard for reporting, that’s not going to be the case here.

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The action centers around the Rev. Adam Smallbone, played by Tom Hollander, who is recently assigned to be the vicar of St Saviour’s in East London, a small church that struggles both monetarily and in parishioners. The easy subheadline to Rev would be “Not ‘The Vicar of Dibley’ in the least.” No rolling green hills and respectful countryfolk on this show. These are literally the mean streets of London. Adam is heckled by construction workers, ogled by an overly sexually excitable parishioner, mocked by his archdeacon, and not-so-subtly undermined by a jealous lay reader

Beyond Hollander, who is a lovely actor who manages to evoke both world-weariness and faith whilst looking like a less exuberantly glossy Declan Donnelly (hair and height especially), the show also stars Olivia Colman as Adam’s wife Alex. Colman’s biggest previous role was that of Sophie on Peep Show, and this character once again does a great job with being long-suffering and a bit dissatisfied with the way things are. However, unlike the calculating and underachieving Sophie, Alex is a successful solicitor who merely chafes at the traditional role of the vicar’s wife and with having her husband tending a flock of odd misfits as well as her own needs, and her love for Adam shows beneath the exasperation.

But whilst Adam finds himself so lacking in support sometimes that he spends scenes asking God for advice alone from his church’s pews, he finds what he needs from some unlikely sources. Such as Colin (played by Steve Evets) who is a hard-drinking layabout who serves as Adam’s most faithful parishoner and a bit of a moral compass. and Ellie (played by Lucy Liemann) is the parish school’s headmistress who shares Adam’s desire for success, albeit with a bit less enthusiasm for playing by the rules, and who also serves as Adam’s one temptation.

In all, Rev has been one of the more enjoyable half-hours of scripted TV I’ve seen in awhile, and seems like it might have great potential for a BBC America pickup if it makes it through a few more series. One could say such a show would be a gift from God for both British and American audiences.

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The infamous Wossy, who is set to end his longtime BBC1 chatshow later this summer, fell out of favour with the BBC after he and fellow comedian Russell Brand left a lewd message on Fawlty Towers actor Andrew Sachs’ answering machine during the taping of his Radio 2 show. His new deal will give him at least a year off, although his ITV deal leaves him free to present or make appearances on shows such as the Big Fat Quiz Show of the Year on Channel 4 and the 2010 British Comedy Awards.

“I am thrilled and excited that after a short break I will be rolling up my sleeves and creating a brand new show for ITV1,” Ross said to The Guardian. “I have worked successfully with most of the key figures at the network in the past and cannot wait to get back on screen with a fast, funny and unpredictable new talkshow.”

Considering that Wossy’s current talk show is far from unpredictable, it will be interesting to see if his ITV show makes many big changes. It could be said that he faces a challenge not unlike David Letterman when he jumped from NBC to CBS, because it’s unknown if he will be allowed to take some elements from “Friday Night With Jonathan Ross” with him (including Four Poofs and A Piano, his current sidekicks.) Also, it’s unlikely the new show will get a slot on BBC America unless a deal is made with ITV Studios and Ross’ Hot Sauce production company separately.

In the meantime, it’s rumoured that Ross and his old partner-in-crime Brand are pitching the idea of hosting a radio show on a US network, possibly XM/Sirus, where they could presumably call anyone they wanted and say that they had sex with their kinfolk and no one would bat an eye. Or, likely, particularly care.

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The World Cup Live show has scored really well for ITV, giving them record ratings on ITV4 (where half of the show airs after ITV1 goes to news.) Now the Daily Mirror has reported that they are anxious to keep Corden going by offering a golden-handcuffs deal worth around £6 million for three years. According to the Mirror (who should be regarded as about as accurate as the Daily Mail in their reporting, so not so much) Corden is going for a better deal than Adrian Chiles got recently when he jumped from the One Show for a £6 million/4 year deal.

The talk (and the grumbling) is that Corden’s show is basically a reboot of Chris Evans’ TFI Friday show on Channel 4 in the late-1990′s. If it is, Evans clearly doesn’t care – he not only appeared on World Cup Live (and was exceptionally manic in a way that gives me hope for his upcoming gig doing The One Show on Fridays) but was quoted by The Sun as saying he’s “the perfect man for the job.”

But even with Evans blessing and good ratings, is this show and ITV the right fit for Corden? Yes, the show is enjoyable. With a mix of celebrity guests (although it would be nice if more of them have a clue about football), silly games and audience stunts, it reminds me also of Ant and Dec’s (and Cat Deeley’s) breakout Saturday morning show SM:TV, and it’s actually tame enough for kids to watch. Corden has to win awards for being the most cheerful and understanding England fan through the whole World Cup, doubtless because he spent a lot of time with team members filming segments before they went to South Africa. Basically, it’s not a stretch to say that it’s a show that Smithy (Corden’s character on Gavin & Stacey) would have fronted if he were real-life.

But that brings us back to the thing that made Corden famous in the first thing – the amazing sitcom that he and Ruth Jones created and wrote for BBC. He’s a funny and sweet guy, but it could be said that his true brilliance is in writing and acting. Even in his Doctor Who appearance, in an episode that clearly was meant to be filler between big blockbuster CGI eps, he made a lovely turn as a call-center manager who rented the Doctor a room when he was stuck on earth. It wasn’t big laughs, and neither was his character on Gavin & Stacey much of the time. But he had the ability to make characters who could be caricatures or sidelines have a real part. And on Gavin & Stacey (which I’m currently watching the first series of for the first time, embarrassingly) all of the characters are written with great depth.

So should Corden go for the money, expand on his short-run zoo show of the moment and try to build himself into the next big presenting star? He could do it and do it well, although many would say that he is either shameless light entertainment or grating. But I hope that somewhere in that deal would be something that would let him create a new sitcom or dramedy for ITV. Because it’s a shame to let that comedic writing talent be put on the shelf. And if I were the BBC, even with their budget situation, it would be time to consider making a play for a similar deal for him themselves.

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In any case, last Friday night was the debut of Stand Up For the Week, a new weekly standup show on C4 hosted by Patrick Kielty. The whole idea is supposed to be a throwback to the late, great 11 O’Clock Show (launching ground for Ricky Gervais and Sasha Baron Cohen) and will feature regular standup routines by Rich Hall, Jack Whitehall, Andi Osho and Kevin Bridges. Which, considering how many times I’ve seen those faces on panel shows, feels more like an all-standup version of Mock The Week.

The show was pretty good. It surely will need a few weeks to get its initial footing, because at times the comics didn’t seem to be certain of what they could say and do without getting into massive trouble. Particularly because of the unfortunate coincidence that Whitehall, who the British tabs have dubbed “the new Russell Brand”, was caught by News of the World indulging in cocaine the week before. I know, a young British comedian seen taking drugs? Shocking!

But Whitehall, whom I have quite liked on Mock The Week and Would I Lie To You? because he’s quite intelligent and not focusing his talent on boasting about how many girls he’s pulling, had to address the issue, as did Kielty at the beginning of the show by saying Whitehall had spent the week “on the naughty step.” Whitehall spent a lot of his routine talking about how his parents had expected a paparazzi swarm but only encountered one guy who might have actually been a Japanese tourist. It was a graceful way to address it without addressing it (i.e. apologizing), but it was obviously a distraction.

Another highlight of the show was Osho, who did her routine about things that have been posted online in the last week. It was a nice mix of, well, another Mock The Week segment with true standup, but it worked and it was genuinely funny. She’s apparently going to do the same thing every week, so it’s worth watching just for that.

However, the best part of the show was “The Chair”, where a celebrity has to sit in it and basically endure a minute of roasting (okay, that’s the American definition of “roasting”, which involves ruthlessly making fun of them, not the much less family-friendly English definition.) This week’s participant was former LibDem MP and Cheeky Girl shagger Lembit Opik, who I must confess to find oddly entertaining. He endured a truly painful minute on “The Chair” and in exchange got 30 seconds to plug whatever he wanted. Apparently Opik is about to start his own standup comedy career. This might be taken as either an FYI or a warning.

In any case, I kinda can’t wait to see whom they get in “The Chair” each week. I wonder if it’ll generally be a comedian or if there’s the opportunity to get someone we’d all love to see get a royal telling-off. Could I nominate John Terry for one week?

Finally, the show ended with Brendan Burns, whom apparently made his first appearance on British telly in several years after being banned for bad behavior. His routine started with him discussing being sent to rehab for, amongst other things, sex addiction, and then consisted of him describing activities with his wife that illustrated why he probably ended up there. So if C4 is looking for that line of what they can get away with, Burns probably drew it.

In all, it was a good show, and definitely one to check out if you get a chance. I suspect this next week will be excellent, because Bridges is the show’s “sports reporter” and if there’s anything that England needs to find humour in right now, it’s the state of the football side.

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Joe is probably the best “X Factor” pick for a long time, and was logical. He had a whole region of England voting for him. Talent-wise, Danyl and Jamie were on par, but Danyl annoyed half the nation and the rest were watching Jedward instead of Jamie. There were a lot of people on Twitter who only watched the final to see Jedward again. And me, who watched for Robbie Williams.

Speaking of which, the Mirror would like to make me think he’s going to be a panelist next year. If it happens, I’ll be gobsmacked. That would be the first accurate “speculation” about the show’s future beyond Simon Cowell wanting more of everything. But I don’t think Danni will be back, and I personally will miss her.

(And since Radio 1 is doing their “Best of the Noughties” programmes, can we make a Worst list and put combining the names of celebrity couples and double acts on it and ban it? What would have happened if Ant and Dec had come along after that trend started.? Anc? Dent? PJuncan?)

Speaking of whom, I really enjoyed “I’m A Celebrity” a lot more than last year. There was one week of Jordan (who was actually less annoying in the jungle, and I can see why I used to like her a long time ago) and then after a week of pure awesomeness by the British public in making her do seven Bushtucker Trials in a row, she was gone and had dumped her boyfriend live on British telly. Massively cold.

And then George Hamilton started standing out, because he was an old-Hollywood Christopher Biggins, and by the time he was gone most of the boring ones were gone. Gino, Kim (who really did try to clean the jungle) and Jimmy did the hard work and came out on top. Justin was as close as we’re going to get to how John Barrowman would be like as a contestant, and Stu and Sabrina, well, spent a lot of time talking about how they weren’t a couple.

One of the things I liked best this year were ITV’s full use of new media in the show. They were reading Tweets and answering chatroom questions during the ITV2 after-show. And their Cover-It-Live chats were incredible. I actually do that stuff for a living, and that was a really fun crowd. Even Alan Carr showed up one day!

Ant and Dec’s jokes are so obvious that I saw them coming one to two minutes into the preceding SOT. But they are still funny because they manage to always come up with a new twist. There was a segment where Ant brings Dec tea and then presses his jeans that has to be in their 10-year IAC documentary next year (you really need to do one, guys.) This is my favorite show that they present…

…Until the “Britain’s Got Talent” auditions come around again in the winter. As far as I know, that and “Dancing on Ice” get started after all the Christmas specials. Catherine Tate as Nan again? David Tennant’s Doctor bidding adieu while Tennant drops in on Tate and on QI? Ant and Dec and Robbie Williams in a special?!? No one knows how to give me a Christmas gift like the BBC and ITV do.

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No word on Eve Myles (who probably has recently given birth herself – she actually was really pregnant in “Torchwood: CoE”) but Kai Owen was one of the first to reveal that TW was coming back, so it’s safe to assume he’ll be back too.

Now here’s where the speculation begins. And if you haven’t seen “Torchwood: Children of Earth”, get thee to a Best Buy and buy it and come back and read the rest later.

- Russell T. Davies now lives in LA, last I heard. Apparently his plan is to separate the show as much as possible from “Doctor Who” and it’s been made clear that the new Doctor won’t be dropping in (although Capt. Jack is in Tennant’s last “Doctor Who”) for appearances.

So what would be the best way to do the show minus the DW universe and whilst building a new team. America! BBC America has had record ratings for TW and Jack IS American. If he’s still wandering the universe, it might make sense him to go home again, per se.

(And if RTD or some BBC writers read this, Huntsville, AL,  has a space center, builds stuff for the shuttle and other spacey stuff, and a lot of weird creatures reside here. And Alabama just passed a law offering tax credits for TV and film shooting in the state. Just think about it. Huntsville is a bit like Cardiff.)

- I guess I will have to accept the fact that, no, Jack is not wandering the universe, figuring out a way to resurrect Ianto (I bet he wishes he had kept the Resurrection Glove he used on Owen) or Stephen. So a nice dashing doctor replacement would not hurt my feelings. Of course, Jack should show some angst over losing Ianto, but Jack is also the sex object for the whole world.

- I never really thought Gwen would be the last person standing, but she is and she’ll have a kid. I can see another kickass woman coming along who can go out on cases that will make Gwen’s jealous streak come out.

- Rhys? He’s going to take over the coffee duties and attempt to keep whatever hub they have in some sort of order. He’s not Ianto.

Feel free to speculate and to mourn Ianto’s death (again) in comments.

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