Linda Herrick: A Shaw thing

There are moves afoot on Prime, the little channel that thinks it can, which should be a worry for TV One's programmers. However, the latest swifty is definitely not that 7pm kerfuffle and the bathos of Holmes' attempt to spread the scourge of talkback and texting.

Trying to watch Paul Holmes in its first week, I was repeatedly deterred by its first major handicap: that it is preceded by the dire The Price is Right and those desperate Aussie housewives trying to get their mitts on money. It's a turnoff.

That given, you have to hand it to Holmes for carrying on like a shouting maniac when those of a less self-believing nature would have slunk off long ago.

Prime - and Holmes - talk bravely about toughing it out, in it for the long haul, but the disinterest shown by masses of viewers so far must be causing deep angst.

But canny Prime programmer Andrew Shaw has tricks up his sleeve and from this weekend, he is going for a One weak spot: the Sunday night drama slot.

One has long held a monopoly in this genre and for the past couple of years, at least, the quality on offer has become wildly erratic, sometimes excellent, but too often the dustbin into which any old rubbish is chucked.

Typically it is filled with some crappy psycho-murder-serial killer nonsense, or a Sarah Lancashire vehicle which the schedulers seem to think we might find acceptable because it's British. (As an aside, can anyone explain why Sarah Lancashire has a career as an actor, let alone be perceived as a star?)

But now One's rule Britannia is meeting a significant challenge. Wily Shaw has nipped in there with his purse and nicked some seriously good Brit series from under One's nose and we, the viewers, will be better off. Starting the quaintly named Oyster Bay Masterpiece Theatre is a new series of Blue Murder, which if memory serves from when it played on One a couple of years ago, was a credible, interesting drama featuring the likeable Caroline Quentin as a single-mum police detective.

Shaw has also nabbed Roman Road which stars Quentin's former Jonathan Creek colleague, Alan Davies, the standup comedian turned actor. A comedy-drama, Roman Road features Davies and John Gordon-Sinclair as two friends walking from Chichester to London, which sounds boring. But the Guardian reckons that while the plot is at best slight, the dialogue is often a delight. Davies' skill in the art of ironic quippery has always been his strength and I'll be watching.

And I'll definitely be making the four-part series The Long Firm appointment television. Adapted from Jake Arnott's hard-boiled novel about gangland in London's East End, it stars the superb Mark Strong (Our Friends in the North) as crime boss Harry Starks. Harry is the hardest of the hard men, who enjoys the use of a red-hot poker and the music of Judy Garland. The venerable Derek Jacobi is also a key character — one Lord Thursby, admirer of pretty young men and colluder with Starks as he tries to go legit.

Shaw has also snatched a P.D. James drama, The Murder Room. Talk about bare-faced cheek: James' thrillers have always, always, been the property of One. With a spooky old museum, secret sex shenanigans and Martin Shaw as the broody Commander Adam Dalgliesh, reviewers in Britain have described The Murder Room as simply great.

One flaw in the Shaw lineup, though. Birthday Girl, a drama about a single teacher in remission from leukaemia starring ... Sarah bloody Lancashire.