BBC Four reveal plans at Edinburgh International Television Festival

I’ve been at the Edinburgh Television Festival this week and wanted to share the main things we at BBC Four are announcing. I’m pleased that the channel’s going from strength to strength; we’ve had an incredibly successful year with Slow Week, India’s Daughter from Storyville, and some very popular science programmes including Inside Sellafield with Jim Al Khalili. There’s also been strong arts programming, and the Proms have been really popular, so it’s fair to say the channel is thriving.

How are we going to keep up that momentum? Well, we are bringing back Slow TV, which proved so popular earlier this year, with a Christmas twist – The Sleigh Ride. We’re also going to do a big music competition called Britain’s Best Part-time Band. There’s also going to be the first live BBC broadcast from Television Centre since we moved out, in Live From Television Centre, we’ve got four regional theatre companies doing innovative theatre pieces – we are working with BBC Two on that as I’ll explain. There’s also good news for Scandi drama fans, we’ve three series coming this autumn: a new one called Beck, the return of Arne Dahl and the new series of The Bridge. Other Christmas treats on BBC Four include Frank Skinner doing a history of popular entertainment with Suzy Klein.

For me the core thing that BBC Four is always about is innovation: it’s about innovation in form, with seasons things like Slow TV; it’s about innovation in content; and it’s about innovation in talent which is what Britain’s Best Part Time Band is about – opening the doors of the BBC to new talent who don’t normally get to appear on our channels.

Over the last year I’ve been working closely with Kim Shillinglaw, Controller of BBC Two, building a productive, effective and, again, fiercely innovative relationship with BBC Two. The plan is more combined seasons, like the India season earlier this year; next we’re doing one around theatre – which is what Live from Television Centre is about and there are other things coming down the line as well. There’s now a really close and clear relationship between the two channels where BBC Two brings the audience the universe: big things, big subjects, and what BBC Four does is bring you the atom, a deep dive down into content in a way that no other channel will do.

We also want to build ever closer relationships with our audience – so what I’m very keen on, in the course of 2016, is that the audience be able to get more involved with BBC Four. As part of this we’ve got an exciting project around Land Art where we’re going to invite the audience to contribute to build a piece of art in the landscape. We’re also doing some interesting work around social media and music: we’re bringing back Brian Pern, who is our comedy music guru, and he’ll be tweeting and talking about our Friday night music output and building a conversation with the audience around that.

Cassian Harrison is Channel Editor, BBC Four.

• Find out what Charlotte Moore, Controller of BBC One and Damian Kavanagh, Controller of BBC Three spoke about at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.
• Read the press release about upcoming programmes on BBC Four.
• Read Cassian's blog 'Song and Dance on BBC Four and beyond'.
• Discover more about 'Live from Television Centre' on the BBC Media Centre website.