ITV

Malpractice won favour with both critics – “intricately plotted and beautifully, leanly written”, said The Guardian – and audiences: it was ITV1’s most watched drama launch episode of 2023 when it aired last spring. Ahead of filming starting on series two, the RTS talked to some of the talent behind the show, including its creator, former NHS doctor Grace Ofori-Attah.

She pitched an idea for a hospital-set thriller about medical malpractice to Simon Heath, CEO of World Productions, whose award-winning dramas include Line of Duty and Save Me.

Four years ago, the UK identified its first cases of a new, highly infectious disease. Within two months, Covid-19 had claimed the lives of thousands of people and the country found itself in an eerie lockdown.

Behind closed hospital doors, the scene was very different: it was one of chaos, as an unprepared and overwhelmed health service struggled to keep people alive.

Love Island: All Stars

Monday

ITV2, 9.00pm

Ex-partners, best friends, and those jilted at Casa Amor; this new batch of islanders have a rich interpersonal history – all of which is detailed over 10 series of Love Island on ITVX.

Taking the place of the winter series, Love Island: All Stars hopes past islanders can forge new connections with each other - their shared experience perhaps leading to a stronger foundation.

Let’s catch up with some old favourites and see what brings them back to old faithful – the Love Island villa…

Criminal Record

Wednesday

Apple TV+

From the mind of Vera creator Paul Rutman comes Criminal Record, a stern detective drama focusing on the effects of institutional errors, centring around an old ‘solved’ murder case.

Mr Bates vs The Post Office

ITV1, 9.00pm

The Detectorist’s Toby Jones stars as the Erin Brockovich of the British Post Office Scandal, Mr Bates.

What does the job involve?

Working with the brilliant producers and writers we have in this country, we look for dramas that we think people will watch and love on ITV – and then we facilitate the producers to make them. We’re out there telling people what we think might work for ITV, and the producers also come to us with great ideas.

We want ideas that will surprise and challenge us, so we’re not simply doing the same thing over and over again.

What was your route into TV?

Sir Lenny Henry admitted he was unusually nervous before the Midlands premiere of his latest TV drama, because his family was in the audience.

Cary Grant was the ultimate Hollywood star, the suavest man on the silver screen during cinema’s golden age.

Whatever the role – from the unscrupulous newspaper editor of His Girl Friday to ordinary-man-on-the-run in North by Northwest – he was always Grant: charming, urbane, the epitome of cool.

Surely, then, only the vainest of actors would sign up to play him in Archie, ITV’s new four-part drama about Grant, written by Jeff Pope?