Opinion: Ant & Dec Takeaway Our Saturday Night Woes

Why the return of Saturday Night Takeaway heralds a much-needed turning point for British television!
As tempting as it would be to simply ignore it, the fact is that the realm of British television these past few weeks has been rather unstable and tepid, lacking any momentum thanks to a thorough increased emphasis on US shows and thus highlighting our neglect of fresh new British shows so far in 2013. Worse still, the Saturday night slot, a slot that should forever be an area of the weekly schedules that excites channel executives in the hope of providing innovative, viewer-grabbing new programmes, has been virtually devoid of any concrete, sustainable additions to the roster in the seven weeks that have preceded this one.

The good news, then? With the return of ITV's hit reality-comedy live show Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway tonight on ITV1, everything may yet have just changed. Although I didn't manage to catch the whole broadcast live, I could immediately tell from what I had seen that this was worlds apart from the dire Tom Daley 'talent' content Splash (or as most of my colleagues prefer to call it, Trash) we'd had picking up lamentable viewing figures on the same channel just weeks before.  Takeaway was always heralded for providing moments you simply couldn't see anywhere else on British television, or indeed across the world to some extent, and this opening episode was no different in that respect- David Walliams hosting! Daybreak with a Twitter-themed broadcast! Robbie Williams doing a rendition of Singing In The Rain with the boys! These are the kind of random yet effective elements that mainstream viewers would usually dream of featuring across an entire show of this calibre, yet alone in the opening episode of its latest season. There could always be the chance that the ratings flop and ITV decide to axe the show, yet the nation has always rightfully shown a degree of faith and generosity to this comic duo of presenters' well-meaning programmes, which Push The Button and Red & Black certainly were not, so such a possibility seems relatively unlikely.

Knowingly then, there's a chance that Takeaway may have refreshed the tired Saturday night slot of its own accord. Yet in a manner of speaking, the show has appeared at precisely the right time to kick off a stronger schedule for Saturday nights in 2013 in general. With seven episodes of Ant & Dec's latest season of reality-comedy antics still to come, the show will have taken us up to April 13th. By that point, new seasons of Doctor Who, Britain's Got Talent and The Voice UK will all have begun in full force, driving us through to late May and late June respectively and thus taking Saturday viewers through a further four months of high-octane mainstream and cult entertainment. Beyond that, we've still got shows such as Atlantis, The X Factor, I'm A Celebrity! Get Me Out Of Here and the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary celebrations announced to continue Saturday night outings in the late days of Summer and throughout the Autumn and Winter of 2013, and thus there's plenty of extra entertainment already known to be coming our way in 2013 besides all of the treats yet to be announced. On top of that, hit dramas including Sherlock and Downton Abbey will of course be back on Sundays in late 2013 too, so that other weekend slot will likely be in safe hands now for some time to come.

Perhaps all of this is a rather optimistic assessment of the current situation of Saturday night television for the British public. Nevertheless, this writer likes to remain ever the optimist, and given just how horrific a watch Splash turned out to be and how unbelievably idiotic its recommissioning felt in light of the heavy criticism every episode came under, it's hard to see how things can go anywhere other than up from here. Certainly, with the likes of Ant & Dec, Doctor Who, Sherlock and countless other hit shows back on our screens for the remainder of 2013, the former signalling a return to the fun and zest of Saturday night TV days gone by, the future of this crucial area of British television seems in much safer hands. Be warned- from now on, choosing between clubbing and these all important must-be-taped programmes could become one of the most challenging propositions of each week!