ITV to scrap new drama
by our excitable young reporter Simon Hunt
 

ITV bosses are turning up the heat on the team behind new drama "The Abbatoir" by threatening to axe the show before it's first episode has even finished being shown.

If ratings for the new drama, starring Dame Judi Dench and Tamzin Outhewaite, do not hit the required 9m viewers by the half-way ad break, the show will be immediately halted and replaced with a stand-by broadcast, "Traffic Wardens From Hell". ITV bosses have come under fire previously for ending the run of under-performing programs mid-series, but this may be the first time a broadcast is interupted half-way through its debut episode because of poor ratings. Audience figures will be measured in "real time", using new techniques which are able to detect when viewers stop paying attention, even if they don't turn the TV off.

"The Abbatoir" cost £6m to make and concerns a romantic liason between a retired Abbatoir attendent (played by Dench) and a Dutch exchange student, Fleur Nissel, played by Outhewaite. It also stars former Blue Peter presenter Diane Louise-Jordan in a supporting role. Dench, whose sitcom "As Time Goes By" ran to seven hundred and thirty episodes in under four years, claimed to be unphased by the threat from hard TV bosses.

"I'm a Dame," she was quoted as saying. "I don't give a fuck."