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ITV axe hit crime drama with Hollywood actress after just two series

ITV axe hit crime drama with Hollywood actress after just two series

Scottish Sun5 hours ago
This comes after the channel announced huge cuts to its daytime shows
COLD CASE ITV axe hit crime drama with Hollywood actress after just two series – leaving fans gutted
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ITV HAVE axed a hit crime drama with a huge Hollywood actress after just two series.
Fans have been left absolutely gutted after the commercial broadcaster has seemingly made yet another huge cut.
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ITV has reportedly axed DI Ray amid a slew of cuts
Credit: ITV
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Parminder Nagra starred as the titular detective in the gritty crime drama
Credit: �Justin Slee 2023
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An ITV spokesperson confirmed the show did not have high enough ratings to get recommissioned
Credit: ITV
Bend It Like Beckham actress Parminder Nagra, 49, led the star-studded cast of DI Ray.
The star is also known for roles in huge projects such as NBC's ER, The Blacklist and Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
She played the title role of DI Rachita Ray alongside the likes of Game Of Thrones and Killing Eve star Gemma Whelan.
Law & Order: UK actor Jamie Bamber completes the lineup playing DCI Martyn Hunter.
However, it's been reported that ITV have axed the series due to ratings that were lower than expected.
An ITV spokesperson confirmed to TV Zone: "We're really proud of what DI Ray achieved, but sadly the viewing figures for series two didn't meet with ITV's expectations.
"It's always a very difficult decision not to recommission a drama and in this case DI Ray really brought a fresh perspective to the crime genre."
They added: "We'd like to thank Parminder Nagra, Maya Sondhi and the team at HTM Television for two brilliant series."
The drama followed Leicester-born inspector Ray who takes on a horrific homicide investigation.
However, the case forced her to confront a personal conflict she has faced throughout her life between her South Asian heritage and her British identity.
DI Ray fans stunned as they spot EastEnders icon in series two of ITV drama
On her very first day, she was told the murder that she has been assigned to is a 'culturally specific homicide'.
Despite waiting for the promotion, she suspected that she was chosen as a 'token appointment' for her ethnicity, rather than for the merits of her ability as an officer.
Although she stayed determined to solve the case and find the killer, she was left to call out the biases of her colleagues that they brought to the investigation.
This is combined with the fact that she had to look into the world of organised crime.
Crime dramas on ITVX
Crime drama buffs have a wide selection of choices on ITVX - here is a selection of some of the programmes available to binge. Professor T: Based on a Belgian TV series of the same name, former Death in Paradise lead Ben Miller plays the title character. Professor Jasper Tempest is a criminologist with OCD who helps the police solve crimes. The cast also includes Emma Naomi, Barney White and Andy Gathergood.
Based on a Belgian TV series of the same name, former Death in Paradise lead Ben Miller plays the title character. Professor Jasper Tempest is a criminologist with OCD who helps the police solve crimes. The cast also includes Emma Naomi, Barney White and Andy Gathergood. The Beast Must Die: This series follows a mother's grief for her son, who was killed in an accident. Nicholas Blake's novel of the same name has been adapted for the programme. Stars include Cush Jumbo, Jared Harris, Billy Howle and Geraldine James.
This series follows a mother's grief for her son, who was killed in an accident. Nicholas Blake's novel of the same name has been adapted for the programme. Stars include Cush Jumbo, Jared Harris, Billy Howle and Geraldine James. Red Eye: Starring Richard Armitage, Jing Lusi and Lesley Sharp star in this six-part thriller, which mostly takes place during an all-night flight between London and Beijing. With dead bodies piling up and a mystery to unravel, the heroes must work fast to get to the truth.
Starring Richard Armitage, Jing Lusi and Lesley Sharp star in this six-part thriller, which mostly takes place during an all-night flight between London and Beijing. With dead bodies piling up and a mystery to unravel, the heroes must work fast to get to the truth. The Twelve: This Australian drama originally aired as a miniseries in 2022, with the episodes dropping in the UK in February 2023. Four months later, the show was renewed for a second season. Jurassic Park star Sam Neill stars in the leading role of barrister Brett Colby.
This Australian drama originally aired as a miniseries in 2022, with the episodes dropping in the UK in February 2023. Four months later, the show was renewed for a second season. Jurassic Park star Sam Neill stars in the leading role of barrister Brett Colby. Manhunt: Martin Clunes stars in this drama based on true murder investigations. Series one focused on the death of Amélie Delagrange, which took place in 2004, while the second depicted the search for serial rapist Delroy Grant.
This comes after ITV announced sweeping changes to its Daytime output.
Good Morning Britain will be produced by a team at ITV News at their headquarters at Gray's Inn Road.
Meanwhile Loose Women and Lorraine will only air on a seasonal basis for 30 weeks of the year.
Lorraine Kelly will also only take to the airwaves for half an hour at a time for a reduced show from January.
This Morning will also join the other programmes in moving out of the Television Centre complex in White City and will be broadcast from a new studio - rumoured to be at the Hospital Club.
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Parminder Nagra stars as the title role as she is brought on to solve a complicated homicide case
Credit: ITVX
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Game Of Thrones actress Gemma Whelan also leads the cast of the cancelled show
Credit: ITV
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Former EastEnders actress Annette Badland also made a guest appearance in the show
Credit: ITV
DI Ray is available to stream on ITVX.
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Coleen Nolan details 'devastating' impact of Loose Women cuts as staff in limbo

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Love Island spoilers: Celebrity guest storms the villa for epic dance party - but the fun is eclipsed by two vicious rows
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Gerald Harper obituary
Gerald Harper obituary

The Guardian

timean hour ago

  • The Guardian

Gerald Harper obituary

Suave adventurers operating in intelligence or as undercover agents were all the rage on television in the 1960s: Roger Moore in The Saint, Patrick McGoohan in Danger Man, Patrick Macnee in The Avengers and, in more explicitly comic vein, Gerald Harper in the 1966-67 cult series Adam Adamant Lives! Harper, who has died aged 96, played an Edwardian swordsman and crime fighter, Adam Llewellyn De Vere Adamant, who returns to life in the swinging 60s after being frozen in ice for six decades. Devised by the BBC in direct response to ITV's The Saint, it was the brainchild of the executive Sydney Newman and the producer Verity Lambert, who had launched Doctor Who in 1963. But it lasted only a year. Harper switched channels to play a Yorkshire newspaper proprietor, James Hadleigh, in ITV's Gazette (1968), and his character proved so popular that he was both modified and upgraded to the status of country squire and merchant banker, seriously at odds with the modern world – as Adam Adamant had been. Hadleigh, in which Harper zoomed smoothly about in a white sports car settling minor local injustices, was one of the biggest hit series of the modern television era, attracting audiences of more than 10 million, sometimes 17 million, week in, week out, between 1969 and 1976 on ITV. And Harper became something of a middle-aged heart-throb, a role he enthusiastically embraced when playing himself as a popular middlebrow disc jockey in later life, first on Capital Radio in the 1970s and then BBC Radio 2 in the 90s, dispensing champagne and chocolates to listeners on his Saturday Selection. The secret of Harper's success was that he never fell out of fashion because he was a cultural anachronism to start with, a self-knowing, lighter comic version of, say, David Niven or Ronald Colman. And he had the good looks, style and innate sense of humour to carry this off, having honed his technique in years of stage work in Strindberg and Shaw, as well as in light comedy. At the height of his television fame he appeared on the London stage in comedy thrillers by Francis Durbridge: in Suddenly at Home (1971) at the Fortune – co-starring Penelope Keith and Rula Lenska – he was the volatile Glen Howard, planning to bump off his wealthy wife and abscond with his lover; in House Guest (1981) at the Savoy, with Susan Hampshire, he was an international film star caught up in a kidnap crisis. But, in between, he was also in Jean Louis-Barrault's outrageous Rabelais at the Roundhouse and played Iago at the Bristol Old Vic. Harper was born in London, the son of a stockbroker, Ernest Harper, and his wife, Mary (nee Thomas), and educated at Haileybury college, in Hertfordshire. After national service and a brief spell as a medical student, he trained as an actor at Rada in 1949. He made a 1951 debut at the Arts theatre in London in several short plays by Shaw, then joined the Liverpool Rep. He became a West End regular. In 1955 he was Jack Chesney in Charley's Aunt starring Frankie Howerd at the Globe, and in 1957 he sang: 'Her mummy doesn't like me any more' in Free As Air by Julian Slade and Dorothy Reynolds at the Savoy, a romantic, whimsical follow-up to the authors' Salad Days, set on a fictional version of Sark in the Channel Islands. He toured with the Old Vic and made his New York debut as Sebastian in Twelfth Night in 1958 and returned to London to co-star with Alec Guinness and Harry Andrews in Ross (1960), Terence Rattigan's play about Lawrence of Arabia, at the Haymarket. His television fame had not been a likely outcome of a modest roster of film appearances. He was barely noticeable as an RAF officer in his first movie, The Dam Busters (1955), but he rose through the ranks as a major in the Highland regiment in Ronald Neame's Tunes of Glory (1960), starring Guinness, and as an army captain in Basil Dearden's comedy The League of Gentlemen (also 1960), starring Jack Hawkins. And he popped up, in civvies, in two of the first three Cliff Richard movies, The Young Ones (1961) and Wonderful Life (1964). Once Hadleigh had run its course, Harper was a headline name wherever he appeared: as a magisterial QC in Royce Ryton's The Royal Baccarat Scandal (1988) at Chichester and the Haymarket, with Keith Michell and Fiona Fullerton; or as a less respectable grandee, the brothel-chain owner Sir George Crofts, in Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession at the Royal Exchange, Manchester, in 2000. He defied typecasting as Friar Laurence in a 2006 tour of Romeo and Juliet, and often played in touring casts of former TV stars, such as that including Peter Byrne (Dixon of Dock Green) and Jennifer Wilson (The Brothers) in Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None, for the producer Bill Kenwright in 2008. Harper was twice married, and twice divorced. His first marriage, from 1957 to 1975, was to the actor Jane Downs; his second, from 1976 to 1983, to Carla Rabiotti, an air hostess. He is survived by a daughter, Sarah Jane, from his first marriage, and a son, Jamie, from his second. Michael Coveney Gerald Harper, actor, born 15 February 1929; died 2 July 2025

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