Three heads are better..

Ah, Delivering Quality First in BBC Drama: replace Kate Harwood, the Head of Drama who left in March to revive Euston Films, with three people.

Hilary Salmon will be based in London, Hilary Martin in Salford, and a third person will join them, provided the headhunters can find another Hilary.

"Despite the creation of additional roles, the [Ben] Stephenson and Mark Freeland (controller of fiction and entertainment) devised restructure is not expected to increase overall headcount", says staff website Ariel.

But I'll take a small wager the three salaries together outstrip Ms Harwood's £209k package,,,,

• Ms Salmon features in a BBC training video from 2013, on the topic of producing clear sound in tv drama, presumably unwatched by the people who made Jamaica Inn and Quirke. 

Speak up

BBC DG Lord Hall may prefer to support his 300-odd Glastonbury troops from home, but he wasn't far away yesterday. He popped in to the National Trust's Barrington Court, some 25 miles south of Worthy Farm, to watch shooting of Wolf Hall.

The six-part adaptation of Hilary Mantel's novel stars Damian Lewis as Henry VIII and Mark Rylance as Thomas Cromwell. The visit was gushingly welcomed by director Peter Kosminsky, but he may have tweeted before being issued with a set of anti-mumbling guidelines....

Thirty five years making television programmes and such a thing has never happened before. Leadership. #wolfhall
— Peter Kosminsky (@kosmoSFL) June 27, 2014

Original British Columbian Drama

And so, as BBC TV boss Danny Cohen bigs up Original British Drama against overrated US Box Sets, BBC Worldwide announces the US premiere of Intruders, with the look and feel of a Box Set To Come. It's about "a secret society devoted to chasing immortality by seeking refuge in the bodies of others", and stars British-morose-specialist John Simm as a former LAPD cop with "a troubled and violent history", seeking tranquillity in the "moody Pacific Northwest" with wife Mia Sorvino.

I'm sure Danny'll find space in his schedules somewhere...

How tv works...

The Crimson Field, the BBC1 WW1 field hospital saga, is not coming back. Its six episodes all rated above 6m viewers - the creators had plans for stories over the next three years of centenary-marking. A BBC spokesperson said "In order to create space for new shows and to keep increasing the variety of BBC One drama, it will not be returning for a second series".

Ripper Street, the BBC1 gaslight cop saga, dropped to audiences below 5m for its second series, and, with co-funders BBC America, Auntie pulled the plug. Now, after Amazon Video decided to invest, filming has re-started in Dublin. "This is an exceptional opportunity to bring back Ripper Street for a third series by working with the right partners", said BBC tv drama boss Ben Stephenson.

Original British Drama, chosen 'cos it's cheaper?  Entertainingly, the BBC Trust yesterday published draft guidelines about commercial relationships.

Furniture

Congratulations (so far) to the launch team for Good Morning Britain for keeping their new set secret.

I'll place an each-way bet that tables feature more than sofas.

Below - Good Morning America, NBC Today, and CBS This Morning sets.

School's out

It drifted to Scotland, and now it's drifting to a close. The Road has met its Waterloo in Greenock.

The BBC1 school soap was relocated from a comprehensive in Rochdale, to an independent in Greenock in April 2012, using the former Greenock Academy building; programme makers Shed Productions have leased the Madeira Street site until the end of March 2015.

The original commitment was for 50 hour-long episodes of Waterloo Road to be made in Greenock but that was increased to 70 hours.  Filming is expected to resume at the site, for series 10A, around May/June, producing ten episodes for Autumn 2014, and ten for early 2015.

The first series, in 2006, averaged audiences of 4.6m; the most recent, ending in March, returned 4.7m. BBC1 Controller Charlotte Moore said "It's important to make room for new drama and we are committed to commissioning new drama series for 8pm. There are some really exciting ideas currently in development but nothing to confirm yet."   What's the betting on it being Scottish - or Welsh ?

Flashing blades

And so, au revoir to The Musketeers on BBC1 - with the tenth episode of the first series returning 3.98 million viewers in the overnights. Down from 7.4m for the opener.

Recommissioned. But will it hold on to a Sunday slot for Series Two ?

Duty spoiler

(A post of rather specialist interest - or perhaps not when we get the overnight viewing figures. If you're Noel Edmonds or only watching Line of Duty on catch-up, do not read on....).

So, for series 3 of Line of Duty, creator and writer Jed Mecurio offers a new anti-hero: Matthew 'Dot' Cottan, played by Craig Parkinson.

In last night's Q&A on the BBC TV Blog, Mercurio confirmed: To answer a common question: the ambush was set up by Cottan, acting as an intermediary between Tommy's criminal associates and corrupt officers Akers, Prasad and Cole.

Why did Denton change direction driving in the flashback to make Akers and Thomas say, what is she doing, Why were they all killed?

Lindsay got cold feet about going along with Akers' plan. We always felt there was a danger this particular story point might not be clear to everyone, but it was very important to understand how much she regretted the ambush, and why she fought so hard to conceal her complicity.

But why was Akers killed in the ambush but not Denton - as like Denton she had been corrupted.

Prasad in his testimony at the start said that Akers was killed because she knew too much about the plotting of the ambush. Cottan asked Akers if Denton wanted to know details, and was satisfied that she didn't.....The plan was to kill Tommy and anyone who knew about the conspiracy to kill him. Denton was spared because she was ignorant of who was behind it all. 

In the scene between Akers and Lindsay, Akers said Tommy would be handed over to the criminals who wanted him silenced. Obviously something bad would befall him but Akers and Lindsay would have to live with that. Akers had no idea she would be targeted, due to her knowledge of the conspiracy. Akers could have made up any story to make Tommy move to somewhere he'd be vulnerable to an ambush, but she chose to involve Lindsay, having caught Lindsay questioning Tommy about Carly's disappearance. Akers took the chance that Lindsay would cooperate due to Lindsay's desire to help find Carly.

In the end, we felt that it was credible that the conspirators didn't kill Lindsay. Even if she was investigated, she knew nothing about who was really behind the ambush. After all, her best guess was that it was Mike Dryden, which was completely wrong. And, having taken Akers' bribe, Lindsay had a lot to lose by coming clean to AC-12. These discussions went on for hours, sometimes days!

The ambushers approached the cars head on. How would a tracker help? Were they planning to chase after them on Crown Avenue. If that is so, wouldn't they be nearer the junction ready to turn onto Crown Avenue?

Thanks for considering this point in detail. In constructing the logic of the ambush, we never specified the location where the ambush would have taken place if Lindsay hadn't taken the detour. This was deliberate. It provides the flexibility to place the ambush vehicles on a parallel road at the time of the detour. Seeing the tracker signal deviate, they were able to choose a route to intercept the police convoy, and this happened to lead to a head-on convergence of the vehicles. We actually mapped all this out at the location where we filmed the sequence in case we needed to shoot scenes to explain it in detail later in the series. As it turned out, none of the editorial team felt this was necessary, but I respect the fact that you may disagree.

Was Ackers call to [Kate] Fleming just a red herring?

This was one of two phone calls (the other being Dryden's call to Lindsay on the night of Carly's disappearance) that we had planned to explain if they became very important to the overall conspiracy, but in the end we decided not to include these scenes in the series. We shot the scene of Dryden's call to Lindsay but it didn't make the final cut.

SW13

Even the presence of Vinnie Jones couldn't boost BBC1's Musketeers last night - down a further 200,000 viewers to 4.3m in the overnights. Next week, a family in Barnes will probably improve things a little, with Alice Patten joining the cast as Sister Helene.

Totemic

Whilst the wider world ruminates on the cultural significance of moving BBC3 online, do not underestimate the impact within upper floors of Broadcasting House of the news that Front Row, on Radio 4, and uber-critic and presenter Mark Lawson are parting company, after sixteen years.

Mark's presenting duties on the BBC go further back, to the Yentob-commissioned Late Show on BBC, which morphed in Late Review, before being semi-absorbed in Newsnight.

Front Row, only-begotten child of Kaleidoscope, is generally (apart from Russell Crowe days) a most civilised show - and one can't imagine Mark would give it up voluntarily, though today's announcements are at pains to stress "agreement".

Back in January, The Sunday Times reported that a petition signed by 15 members of the Radio Arts Unit had been presented to Graham Ellis, Controller of Production and Deputy Director of Radio.  The Guardian's take this evening is that Lawson, who also writes for the Guardian, is understood to have denied any suggestion of bullying, though acknowledges there were editorial arguments.

Mark will now be able to make more use of his Northampton Town season ticket, and spend more time tracking the fortunes of his beloved Leeds United FC.

Deja

BBC 1's latest drama commissions can hardly be accused of addressing market failure. The most-trumpeted is David Walliams starring in adaptations of Agatha Christie stories featuring married detectives Thomas and Prudence Beresford aka Tommy and Tuppence.

Walliams said (with my italics splitting the infinitive) “In bringing these thrilling stories to the screen, it is our ambition for Tommy and Tuppence to finally take their rightful place alongside Poirot and Marple as iconic Agatha Christie characters."

This slightly belittles LWT's 1983 take on the duo; a ten-part series called Partners in Crime, starring James Warwick as Tommy and Francesca Annis as Tuppence, still ticking along on ITV3 - cf 6.20am this morning...

The DVD was reissued in September last year, if Walliams cares to pick up a copy.

Smoothbore

Last night's fifth episode of the Musketeers on BBC1 dropped to 4.5m viewers, from 7.4m achieved by the first of the run. 8.8m watched the preceding programme, Call The Midwife, meaning 4.3m found something better to do at 9pm.

Critical

Success criteria seem to be getting tougher on BBC1. There'll be no third series of the Zola-story-relocated- to-Newcastle department store drama The Paradise. Its average audience over 16 episodes - 5.5m. Costs also may have been high - certainly the Lambton Estate, on the fringes of Sunderland had to invest in repairs to Lambton Castle, and the series provided work for a pool of 100 local extras.

Meanwhile, anxieties about replacing Ben Miller with Kris Marshall as lead for the third series of Caribbean cop caper Death In Paradise have been eased - last night's episode scored 7.2m in the overnights. Ben's best - 6.9m.

Niff

Last night's fourth episode of The Musketeers on BBC1 dipped to 4.8m viewers - the average audience for the last series of Ripper Street, which, unlike The Musketeers, wasn't recommissioned.  Babylon on Channel 4 got 1.6m - but doesn't return until much later in the year, which may give Pathos, Athos and Aftershave some respite.

The first two episodes of Belgian crime thriller Salamander on BBC4 on Saturday night returned audiences of 1.03m and 928k. Salamander provided the second highest rating of the year when it was first shown in Belgium in 2012, with the final episode attracting 1.8m viewers.

It is only the dead who do not return - Dumas

Odd press release for a Sunday: The BBC has signed up for a second series of its "much-heralded buckle of swash" (c Grace Dent) The Musketeers. Controller BBC1 Charlotte Moore says "I can't wait to see how things will develop in the next series."

Tonight's episode - number 4 of ten - is not only up against Mr Selfridge on ITV, but Channel 4's new Danny Boyle-directed comedy drama Babylon, where Twenty Twelve meets the Metropolitan Police. It should attract more than The Jump - and I'm guessing that'll take our French re-commissioned heroes down below 5m in the overnights.

Flashing blades and leather

Only another seven episodes of The Musketeers to go on BBC1. Overnight ratings for first three, in order: 7.4m, 6.2m, 5.3m. Expect to be trailed within an inch of your life, varlet !

Bridging the gap

I'm delighted to read that Hans Rosenfeldt, lead writer and co-creator of Danish/Swedish thriller, The Bridge, will be in a webchat answering questions straight after the series two finale on BBC Four this coming Saturday night.

Here's an answer he's already given. "In real life Swedes and Danes can understand each other, but we don't understand each other as well they do in the show. The co-creators and I decided early in the process not to make anything of it. So every Dane speaks Danish and every Swede speaks Swedish."

Maybe he'll get a follow-up from Philomena Cunk, media expert on Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe.

Upgraded exterior filming resource

See, if, say, Sid Hardball was one of Lord Hall's new no-nonsense non-executives, EastEnders luvvie Dominic Treadwell-Collins would have got nowhere with his new outdoor set strategy.

Sid: Let's be clear - you want a new outdoor set, yet you also want a full-scale temporary set for two years, while you muck about with the one that's served you ok for close to 30 years. What's the problem here ? Isn't the East End supposed to be run down ?

DTC:  We need a set that's 20% bigger to enable greater editorial ambition and improve working conditions for staff. Crucially, it will provide a greater sense of scale with more locations for our characters to spend time in, opening up new areas and opportunities that haven’t been possible before – all of which are in the best interest of our viewers.

Sid: And do you have a dossier of complaints from viewers that there aren't enough outdoor scenes ?  Was that a "no" ? Have you visited the East End recently ? Have you heard of "urban renewal", maybe seen a few building sites, eh ? Wouldn't a cost-conscious producer like you see the benefit of a few storylines that get the scaffolding in ? Developers, new social housing, chip-pan fires, Victorian sewer collapses, that sort of thing...

DTC: The BBC is currently exploring legacy options for the long-term use of the temporary set including visitor tours and educational opportunities.

Sid: So people are going to pay to see a set that's no longer the real EastEnders set ? Gimme a break. How much is this costing ?

DTC: We have an independent review which has highlighted the importance of the show to audiences and to the BBC as a whole, and supports investment in the exterior lot.

Sid: OK mate, but I'm not going in front of Ma Hodge on this one..It's your call, Lord Hall. Next case, Ms Bulford.

Steadied

The final episode of Death Comes To Pemberley on BBC1 did, after all, win its slot at 9pm - average audience was 4.43m/20.0%, a less-than-margin-of-error 10k down on part two.

Mysterious

Is a slow death coming to Pemberley ?  The Boxing Day audience for the BBC1 drama mini-series was 5.90m - one in four dropped out for last night's second part, returning an average audience of 4.44m. Tonight's finale is up against a Christmas Jonathan Ross Show, featuring Sir David Attenborough, Ray Winstone, Jamie Oliver,John Bishop and Rizzle Kicks. Female interest is supplied by Susan Boyle.