ONCE again, ITV kow-tows to the broadcasting law that decrees all shows in its 8pm-9pm slot on Sunday evening MUST either have the word "heart" in the title, or involve people dispensing medical care to a close-knit community. Close-knit, but with secrets. And heart. Secrets and heart.
The Royal Today will be a modern-day spin-off from the network's series The Royal, which feels like it has been running since the mid-cretaceous period and is set in the seaside idyll of Elsinby, sometime in olden times. The Royal itself was a spin-off from Heartbeat.
What will make The Royal Today so intriguing - and you can bet your last thrupenny note it won't be the storylines or the dialogue - is that producers have today announced the casting of Jack Ryder. To say that the former EastEnder has been in the showbusiness wasteland since quitting the soap in 2002 and dumping all over his former castmates in the News of the World would be an understatement. There are belts of Arctic tundra that would be considered environments more hospitable to the jobbing actor than that in which Ryder has existed in recent times: namely, sat on the sofa at the home he shares with wife Kym Marsh, probably watching the same episode of Neighbours twice a day and looking into cures for male pattern baldness.
But in her infinite compassion, Dame Showbiz has given him another chance. "Ryder will play a hard-working nurse called Adam Fearnley," tempts the press release, "who is highly popular with the student nurses despite being in a long-term relationship with his girlfriend, Heather."
One suspects heartache will ensue.
If you're still undecided as to whether to tune in or to simply surrender to Withnailian medication and come up smiling on Tuesday, the document heralds another quite unmissable comeback.
"Also starring in the show," it trills, "will be stage and TV actor Paul Nicholas, who will play a meticulous consultant surgeon."
Of course he will. Can you afford to miss it? Or at least not to buy shares in Nembutal today?
