A Bouquet Of Barbed Wire: picks for 2010

Both The Times and The Independent highlight A Bouquet Of Barbed Wire in their 2010 TV picks listed today.

The Times - But when ITV drama hits big it tends now to hit very big. The Prisoner, a six-part remake of the 1967 Patrick McGoohan series, starring Jim Caviezel as No 6 and Ian McKellen as No 2, is now finally ready to go. Married Single Other will turn up soon, a romantic drama with, ITV no doubt hopes, a Cold Feet feel to it. Later in the year Julian Fellowes’ new period drama series, Downton Abbey, will air (don’t call it Upstairs Downstairs), Brenda Blethyn stars as an eponymous detective inspector in Vera and Rupert Penry-Jones and Phil Davis return in Whitechapel, this time riffing off the Krays, not Jack the Ripper. In the Seventies Andrea Newman’s A Bouquet of Barbed Wire was a bonking drama that became a ratings banker; it is being remade with Trevor Eve as the old goat originally essayed by Frank Finlay.

The Independent - ITV won't be giving up on the reality formats that saved its bacon this year, but in between long stretches of Britain's Got Talent and The X-Factor there will be room for some original drama. Back to the future seems to be the theme of their commissioning: there's a remake of The Prisoner, starring Ian McKellan, an updated version of Bouquet of Barbed Wire and what sounds very much like another crack at Upstairs Downstairs in Julian Fellowes series Downton Abbey, about life on both sides of the green baize door in a grand country house.