Sky takes over production of Five News from ITN. The first scheduled Sky produced news programme had been due to air on 3 January, but two shorter bulletins for 1 and 2 January were hastily added to provide updates following the Indian Ocean tsunami on Boxing Day 2004.[1]
Fox Kids UK finally rebrands to Jetix, as part of a global rebranding package by ABC Cable Networks Group. The first programme shown was Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!.
5 January – Desperate Housewives makes its initial UK debut. Overnight figures indicate it achieves an audience of 4.4 million viewers.[2]
Christian Voice confirms plans to launch a private blasphemy prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer: The Opera, which features Jesus, Mary and God as guests on The Jerry Springer Show.[4] The group subsequently attempts to prosecute BBC Director-GeneralMark Thompson, but their bid is rejected by the High Court. An attempt to overrule that decision is also rejected in December 2007.[5]
Vote for Me, a contest to find an independent Parliamentary candidate, makes its debut on ITV.[6]
11 January – Debut of the six-part BBC Two documentary series Auschwitz: The Nazis and 'The Final Solution' which tells the story of Auschwitz concentration camp.[7] The final part is aired on 15 February.[8]
14 January – ITV's Vote for Me contest is won by former lawyer and convicted fraudster Rodney Hylton-Potts, who presented a "cabbies manifesto" that includes halting immigration, scrapping the Human Rights Act and legalising all drugs. However, the programme is soon caught up in controversy because of the winning candidate's extreme political views.[9][10] Hylton-Potts went on to stand against Conservative leader Michael Howard as a candidate for Folkestone and Hythe at the general election, but came in seventh place and lost his deposit.[6]
21 January – The auction channel bid-up.tv is rebranded as bid.tv.
23 January – Happy Mondays dancer Mark Berry, known professionally as Bez wins the third series of Celebrity Big Brother.[11]
26 January – Debut of The Rotters' Club on BBC Two, a three-part adaptation of Jonathan Coe's novel of the same name about growing up in 1970s Birmingham, and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.[12][13]
27 January – Holocaust Memorial Day and the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp are observed in the UK. BBC Two and BBC News 24 air Auschwitz Remembered, a special news programme providing coverage of memorial events.[14]
February[]
3 February – An audience member on the evening's edition of Question Time uses the show's final question to propose to his girlfriend, who says yes. It is the first time a marriage proposal has occurred on the programme in its 25-year history.[15]
9 February – The Africa-based BBC journalist and producer Kate Peyton is killed in a shooting incident in Mogadishu, Somalia while reporting on that country's nascent peace process.[18]
16 February – The first series of the UK version of The Apprentice debuts on BBC Two.[19][20]
18 February – Adele Silva will reprise her role as Emmerdale temptress Kelly Windsor five years after leaving the series, it is reported.[21]
19 February – EastEnders celebrates its 20th anniversary on the air, airing a special episode in which Dirty Den Watts is killed by his new wife Chrissie. 14.34 million watch the episode (shown on 18 February).[22] It is the UK's second highest rated programme of 2005 (the first was an episode of Coronation Street three days later).[23]
21 February – MasterChef relaunches as MasterChef Goes Large.
22 February – Eamonn Holmes announces he will step down from his role as a GMTV presenter after twelve years.[24]
23 February – UKTV Style Gardens, a channel dedicated to gardening programmes, launches.
24 February – ITV airs another episode of its police drama The Bill to feature a storyline in which characters are killed off in a fire at Sun Hill police station. Computer generated imagery was used because producing a real explosion and fireball ripping through the station corridors was not possible.[25]
26 February – Sound TV, known pre-launch as The Great British Television Channel, launches on Sky Digital (588). It closed in the Autumn.
March[]
3 March – Irish TaoiseachBertie Ahern opens RTÉ's new studios in London, based at Millbank opposite the Houses of Parliament.[26]
4 March – Channel 4 signs a £1m deal with Appletiser to sponsor repeat episodes of Friends during 2005.[27]
5 March – Cat Deeley presents her final edition of CD:UK, after 6 years.[28]
10 March – BBC One airs an edition of Question Time from Changhai, China, as part of the BBC's China Week.[29]
11 March – BBC One airs the tenth Comic Relief fundraiser. Highlights include a crossover between Antiques Roadshow and The Vicar of Dibley, as well as specials of Little Britain and Blind Date.[30]
17 March – ITV signs up Jerry Springer to present a daytime talk show to replace Trisha.[31][32]
19 March – Ahead of the return of Doctor Who later in the month, BBC Two airs a "Doctor Who Night", with three programmes celebrating the series. The Story of Doctor Who features cast and crew, including Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy discussing the original series. Some Things You Need to Know About Doctor Who provides a bitesize guide to the programme. Finally John Humphrys presents a Doctor Who special of Mastermind in which fans answer questions about the series.[33]
Actress Kim Medcalf, who plays Sam Mitchell in EastEnders speaks to the Sunday Mirror about her decision to leave the series, and her plans to focus on stage acting. Her final scenes will be filmed in May and her final onscreen appearance will be in November.[35]
23 March – Five announce plans to move its Trisha Goddard show to a morning slot from April to rival ITV's forthcoming The Springer Show.[36]
26 March –
Nine years after its last new episode and sixteen years since its last regular run, Doctor Who returns to BBC One for a new series, the twenty-seventh in total since 1963. Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper star. An average 10.81 million viewers, over 40% of the watching audience, tune in, winning its timeslot and making it No. 3 BBC show and No. 7 across all channels for the week. The premiere episode of the revival, "Rose", went on to become the UK's seventh highest rated programme of 2005.
Gordon Hendricks, performing as Elvis Presley wins the sixteenth and final series of Stars in Their Eyes. He is the second Elvis impersonator to win the contest. Stars in Their Eyes continued until the following year, with a final junior series and a number of celebrity specials.
30 March –
As a test trial, the small Welsh towns of Ferryside and Llansteffan have their analogue television signals switched off.[37] The trial proved a success and the digital switchover fully began two and a half years later in Cumbria.
Only days after his having debuted as the Ninth Doctor, the BBC announces that Christopher Eccleston will be leaving Doctor Who after only one season.[38]
April[]
1 April – Thomasina Miers wins the 2005 series of MasterChef Goes Large.
2 April – Digital channel BBC Four broadcasts a live re-make of the famous 1953 science-fiction drama The Quatermass Experiment. The production is the first live drama broadcast by the BBC for over twenty years, and draws BBC Four's second highest audience to date, with an average of 482,000 viewers.
4 April – BBC Four airs Speak No Evil – The Story of the Broadcast Ban, a documentary recalling the 1988 broadcasting restrictions imposed by the Government of Margaret Thatcher on organisations in Northern Ireland believed to support terrorism.[39]
5 April – It is reported that Ofcom may fine ITV Central for broadcasting a pre-recorded late Central News bulletin for the East Midlands.[40]
8 April – 13.03 million viewers watched Ken Barlow tie the knot with Deirdre Rachid on Coronation Street, one day before The Prince of Wales' wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles (7.36 million viewers watched). The scheduling move echoed Ken and Deirdre's first wedding, which occurred two days before Charles's nuptials to Diana, Princess of Wales, and which also beat the Royal wedding in the television ratings (see 1981 in British television).
14 April – The BBC removes advice from its website warning that Doctor Who was too scary to be watched by children under the age of eight, describing the statement as "a mistake".[42]
16 April – David Tennant is announced as the Tenth Doctor.[43]
18 April – Launch of the teleshopping channel iBuy.
27 April – Eamonn Holmes presents his final edition of GMTV after twelve years with the broadcaster.[44]
28 April – BBC One airs a special election edition of Question Time, featuring the leaders of the three main political parties. Tony Blair (Labour), Michael Howard (Conservative) and Charles Kennedy (Liberal Democrats) are each questioned for 30 minutes by the audience.[29]
May[]
3 May – The Sun has reported that Labour Party chiefs are concerned that the 5 May episode of EastEnders in which Dot Cotton learns to drive could distract viewers from voting.[45]
4 May – Tim Campbell, a 27-year-old transport manager with London Underground wins the first series of The Apprentice. His prize is a £100,000 job with Sugar's firm, Amstrad.[46]
5–6 May – Coverage of the 2005 general election is shown on British television. The Labour Party attains a third successive General Election victory.
7 May – Family Affairs wins Best Storyline at the British Soap Awards for a story in which a couple discover a family friend has been abusing their daughter.[47]
9 May – Corpus Christi College, Oxford wins the 2004–05 series of University Challenge, beating University College London 250–140.
13 May – To celebrate the 80th birthday of Queen Elizabeth II in 2006, artist Rolf Harris is to create an oil portrait of her as part of a special edition of his BBC One show Rolf on Art, it is announced.[48] The programme aired on New Year's Day 2006.[49]
16 May –
BBC Weather relaunches, changing from 2D to 3D graphics.[50]
ITV launches Love Island, a rival to Big Brother. This appeared to be a ratings flop.
19 May – Eammon Holmes has signed a deal with Sky News to present their early morning programme Sky News Sunrise, it is reported.[51]
21 May – Greece's Helena Paparizou wins the 2005 Eurovision Song Contest with "My Number One".
23 May – Over one-third of BBC staff join a strike in response to proposed job cuts at the corporation.[52]
STV launches across Scotland replacing the previously separate services of Scottish and Grampian.
Fifi and the Flowertots a new stop motion animated series for children created by Keith Chapman the creator of Bob the Builder begins its screening on Five.
31 May – David Easter, who plays villain Pete Callan in Family Affairs is to leave the series in September, it is announced.[54]
June[]
18 June – Christopher Eccleston's final episode of the Ninth Doctor in Doctor Who, 'The Parting of the Ways', is broadcast on BBC One. David Tennant becomes the Tenth Doctor in the same episode.
20 June – Former nightclub owner Fran Cosgrave and presenter Jayne Middlemiss win the first series of Love Island.
25 June – The Girl in the Café, a comedy-drama by Richard Curtis made as part of the global Make Poverty History campaign, is shown by both BBC One in the United Kingdom and HBO in the United States on the same day.
26 June – Countdown presenter Richard Whiteley dies at Leeds General Infirmary following a short illness.[55]
29 June - CBeebies airs the last episode of children’s classic show Balamory
July[]
1 July – Channel 4 broadcasts the last episode of Countdown hosted by Richard Whiteley.[56]'
2 July – Broadcast of Live 8, a string of benefit concerts, in the G8 states and South Africa. They were timed to precede the 31st G8 summit being held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland from 6–8 July; they also coincided with the 20th anniversary of Live Aid.
4 July – The BBC apologises to viewers after a computer malfunction causes its new 3D weather graphics to freeze.[57]
7 July –
Regular programming is suspended by major networks to provide ongoing news coverage after a series of co-ordinated terrorist bombings strike London's public transport system during the morning rush hour.[58]
BBC One airs an edition of Question Time from Johannesburg, South Africa as world leaders convene for the 31st G8 summit in Scotland, and following the Live 8 concerts.[29]
8 July – The Animals of Farthing Wood airs on CBBC for the very last time but continues to air on RTÉ2 in Ireland.
17 July – After forty-one years broadcasting on BBC One, music show Top of the Pops is switched to BBC Two due to declining audiences.[60] This is not enough to save it, and it is axed the following year.[61]
19 July – Jessie Wallace confirms she will leave EastEnders at the end of the year, having played Kat Slater since 2000.[62]
August[]
1 August – BBC Broadcast, formerly Broadcasting & Presentation, and responsible for the playout and branding of all BBC Channels, is sold to Creative Broadcast Services, owned by the Macquarie Capital Alliance Group and Macquarie Bank. It is renamed Red Bee Media on 31 October.
2 August – Five announces its soap, Family Affairs will be axed at the end of the year.[63]
4 August – BBC One airs Sinatra: Dark Star, a documentary investigating rumours of Frank Sinatra's links to organised crime.[64]
12 August – Anthony Hutton wins series six of Big Brother.[65]
17 August – ITV announces plans to launch a children's channel to rival CBBC.[66]
22 August - Peppa Pig makes it debut in the United States, on Cartoon Network's programming block, re-dubbed with American voice actors. This turned out to be a flop, so Nick Jr aired the original British version where American children are learning to speak with British accents.
September[]
3 September – After several revamps and presenting changes, BBC One airs the final edition of its children's entertainment series The Saturday Show.[67]
7 September – The BBC and ITV announce plans to launch Freesat, a Free-to-air satellite television series to rival Sky.[68]
8 September – Faze TV, a British digital channel aimed at gay men, cancels its launch after failing to secure sufficient funding to deliver "sufficient quality."[69]
11 September – BBC One launches Sunday AM, a Sunday morning current affairs programme presented by Andrew Marr.[70]
12 September – In an interview with The Guardian, the BBC Director of News and Current Affairs Helen Boaden defends the broadcaster's decision to stick with initial reports of a power surge on the London Underground on the morning of 7 July until actual events could be corroborated, saying it was the right thing to do. "Some of our competitors talked immediately of 90 dead. They talked about three bus bombs. That was off a range of various wire services and it was complete speculation and we wouldn't go with that. We would be careful – we would try to check things out."[71]
19 September – The most famous children's classic television character Muffin the Mule (who has disappeared from TV screens for a very long time) is back with a brand new 2D animated series on BBC Two.
20 September – After seven and a half years, Emmerdale saw a new sequence to the opening titles of the series, with the same 1998 theme music alongside another helicopter montage, this time marginally slower and without the actors and the closing credits were generic ITV Network style credits over a continuous shot of the village, again from a helicopter, but filmed from a different angle. On the same evening, BBC One airs Derailed, a docudrama dealing with the 1999 Ladbroke Grove rail crash.[72]
22 September – ITV airs a second live episode of The Bill to mark the broadcaster's 50th year on air.
23 September – It is announced that Des Lynam will succeed Richard Whiteley as presenter of Channel 4's Countdown, with his first episode airing on 31 October.[73]
25 September – ITV1 airs an episode of A Touch of Frost called "Near Death Experience" to mark the broadcaster's 50th year on air. On the same evening, BBC One airs the network premiere of the 2003 Christmas-themed romantic comedy film Love Actually starring Hugh Grant, Liam Neeson, Colin Firth, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson and Mr. Bean star Rowan Atkinson.
26 September – The BBC is censured by Ofcom for its coverage of the London bombings on 7 July. Of particular concern to them was an incident in which footage of a man being carried by stretcher into the Royal London Hospital was shown as a BBC News 24 presenter commentated "Let's just take a look at some of the pictures coming from the Royal London." Ofcom concludes that "the pictures were used generically and the commentary did not reflect the seriousness of the images being transmitted". Channel 4 News is also criticised for not "fully reflecting the enormity of the images being reflected", although it had not breached the Ofcom regulations as the images were not used casually. ITV News is not criticised, however, because it provided a "clear narrative context [with] sensitive accompanying reporting".[74]
26–27 September – No Direction Home, Martin Scorsese's documentary on Bob Dylan, receives its broadcast premiere on BBC Two in the UK, under the Arena banner.[75][76]
30 September – CBBC identity relaunched, with its second marketing campaign since the launch of the CBBC Channel.
September – ITV celebrates its 50th anniversary with a collection of special programmes, under the name ITV 50.
October[]
3 October – BBC Four airs , a dramatisation of the novel of the same name by Simon Garfield that explores the lives of four people on 8 May 1945 as World War II comes to an end. The film stars Richard Briers, Sarah Parish, Ian McDiarmid and Lesley Sharp, and is the centrepiece of the BBC's Lost Decades season.[77]
Live action Icelandic health and fitness based kids' TV show LazyTown makes it debut on both CBeebies & Nick Jr.
5 October – The 6am CBeebies programming block on BBC Two ends and is replaced by an hour of Pages from Ceefax.
10 October – More4, a digital channel from Channel 4 offering factual content, launches.[79]
24 October – Sky News moves to new studios, with a new schedule and on-air look.[80]
25 October – The relaunched Doctor Who is the major winner at the annual National Television Awards in the UK, taking the Most Popular Drama award, with its stars Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper winning Most Popular Actor and Most Popular actress.
27 October – 16 December–Bleak House, a 15-episode adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel of the same name designed to capture a soap opera-style audience by using Dickens's original serial structure in half-hour episodes, is broadcast on BBC One.
28 October – Sheffield based rock band Arctic Monkeys make their first appearance on BBC Two's Later...with Jools Holland.[81]
31 October –
Sky3 is launched on British digital terrestrial and satellite platforms. On the same day Sky Mix is rebranded as Sky Two, and Sky Travel ceases transmission on Freeview.
The first episode of Countdown hosted by Des Lynam airs,[82] as does the first episode of Deal Or No Deal, reviving Noel Edmonds's TV career on Channel 4.[83]
November[]
1 November – ITV4, a digital channel aimed at men, is launched in the UK. It is launched on Sky Digital Channel 120 on 7 November.
3 November – A special edition of Question Time featuring David Cameron and David Davis—the two candidates in the forthcoming Conservative Party leadership election.[84]
7–28 November – BBC One broadcasts ShakespeaRe-Told, a series of four adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays based in 21st century Britain. The plays in order are Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, The Taming of the Shrew, and A Midsummer Night's Dream.
11 November – EastEnders is the first British drama to feature a two-minute silence. This episode later goes on to win the British Soap Award for 'Best Single Episode'.[85]
16 November – Lucy Ratcliffe wins the first cycle of Britain's Next Top Model, securing for herself a modelling contract among other prizes.
17 November - Little Britain moves to BBC1 due to it being a success on BBC3, kicking things off with the first episode of the third series. Tom Baker provided that evening's continuity announcements on BBC1.
18 November –
BBC One broadcasts this year's annual Children in Need appeal. It contained several highlights including Catherine Tate in EastEnders, the BBC Newsreaders performing Bohemian Rhapsody, and a brand new Doctor Who adventure. The first to fully star David Tennant as the Doctor, the 7-minute episode directly follows on from The Parting of the Ways and directly leads on to The Christmas Invasion.[86]
It is announced that Five has bought a stake in DTT's pay-TV operator, Top Up TV.[87]
22 November – Producers of ITV's I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! confirm that contestant Elaine Lordan will not be returning to the show following a stay in hospital. She had twice collapsed on the set of the jungle-based reality show, but had been given a clean bill of health by doctors.[88]
28 November – The actress and I'm a Celebrity contestant Kimberley Davies is taken to hospital with a suspected fractured rib after she is injured in a stunt that goes wrong. Davies had jumped from a helicopter as part of one of the series' "bush tucker trials" when the incident occurred. Responding to criticism that it had not taken the correct safety precautions, ITV says that Davies was given a full safety briefing before she performed the stunt.[89]
29 November – Kimberley Davies withdraws from I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!.[90]
December[]
2 December – BBC Three's weeknight news bulletin The 7 O'Clock News is broadcast for the final time. It is axed following a report which a report into the BBC's digital output[91] claimed that the show "achieves nothing and attracts tiny audiences".
3 December – ITV1 screens the British terrestrial television premiere of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second film in the Harry Potter series. Overnight viewing figures indicate it is watched by an audience of eight million (a 37% audience share). The evening's edition of The X Factor, screened after Chamber of Secrets, is watched by 9.7 million viewers (a 42% audience share), giving ITV1 its best ratings since February 2002.[92]
7–16 December – Space Cadets is shown on Channel 4, a hoax reality TV show where the contestants believe they are in a space shuttle orbiting Earth, when in fact they are in a set in a disused aircraft hangar in Suffolk.
10 December – Westlife's version of "You Raise Me Up" is voted the 2005 Record of the Year by ITV viewers, the fourth time the Irish boy band have won the title.[94]
15 December – Sir Trevor McDonald makes his final ITN news broadcast after over 25 years. As a tribute, the closing theme tune for the News at Ten Thirty that night is replaced with the News at Ten theme used from 1992 to 1999, McDonald having presented the show during that time.
17 December – Cricketer Darren Gough and dancing partner Lilia Kopylova win the third series of Strictly Come Dancing. Shayne Ward wins the second series of The X Factor on the same evening.[96]
19 December – Rolf Harris unveils his portrait of the Queen at Buckingham Palace.[97][98]
21 December – The BBC is to trial a three-month experiment in which its Saturday morning schedules for BBC One and BBC Two will be swapped. The changes, taking effect from January 2006, are being implemented because of frequent scheduling changes caused by big events and breaking news stories, and will mean children's programming will be absent from BBC One's Saturday morning lineup for the first time since 1968.[99]
BBC One airs the Doctor Who Christmas Special, "The Christmas Invasion"; this episode marks David Tennant's first full-length story as the Tenth Doctor.[101]
Shane Richie and Jessie Wallace leave EastEnders when their characters Alfie and Kat Moon depart for America.[102]
29 December – The last edition of Click Online broadcast under its original title before it is renamed Click.