Sunday TV but not as we know it

You may have noticed some seismic shifts in the familiar Sunday TV landscape recently…

Mount EastEnders omnibus on BBC1 has disappeared from view. The familiar hills of Something For The Weekend on BBC2 have reappeared in a different location on Channel 4 with a new title Sunday Brunch. While your teenagers or grandchildren, if you have any, may be bemoaning the loss of teen branded T4 programmes such The Simpsons from Sunday mornings on Channel 4 (also great hangover fodder but I digress).

We’ll also be welcoming a mountainous newcomer to Sunday evenings as talent show The Voice starts broadcasting on Sunday evenings as well as Saturdays.

EastEnders

What on earth is going on? Although I’m not an EastEnders fan, I confess to occasionally having the omnibus on in the background if I’m doing something else on a rainy Sunday. So I and the 791,999 others who tuned in for what turned out to be the last ever Sunday omnibus edition on 1 April have been left wondering where it’s gone. The answer is the rather unusual slot of 00.05 on Friday nights or rather Saturday mornings.

“This slot is closer to the original transmissions and will be more consistent as it will not need to be moved for sporting commitments,” a BBC spokesperson said earlier this month. Thank heavens for Catch Up TV I say as I certainly won’t be spending my late Friday nights watching EastEnders that’s for sure.

Sunday Brunch

As for Something For The Weekend which I used to make a concerted effort to get up for (yes, I relish my Sunday lie-ins with the papers), it seems it’s the age old story of presenters defecting to the other side for more money.

So now we have two hours of Tim Lovejoy, rather than an hour and a half, on new Channel 4 show Sunday Brunch, which appears to be exactly the same format as its BBC predecessor Something For The Weekend. Let’s hope it doesn’t turn into another commercial disaster of Christine Bleakley and Adrian Chiles’s One Show to Daybreak proportions.

Of course as a huge Downton Abbey fan, I can’t wait until its return to its rightful dominating place at the peak of ITV1’s Sunday evening schedule from autumn.

While I like to think that, like Countess Grantham, weekends are beneath me, I actually look forward to Sunday TV before the working week begins again, especially on dreary days. So please TV schedulers stop the TV tinkering before we all get lost without a compass.

What’s your opinion on Sunday TV? Do you have a favourite Sunday TV programme? Let us know below