Five years after hanging his talkshow hat up for good, Michael Parkinson is returning to TV – in a talkshow with Sky Arts, which on Thursday announced him as part of a schedule of programmes that will include Emma Thompson as the Queen and Tom Jones in his first ever acting role.
The channel announced a raft of new programmes, which include increased comedy and drama output and a new strand called Playhouse Presents, one of which will have Thompson starring in a comedy drama based on the real event when Michael Fagan broke into the Queen's bedroom at Buckingham Palace.
Parkinson returns to television five years after his talkshow finished on ITV. Sky Arts channel director James Hunt said it was a real privilege to have him. "He is one of our country's finest broadcasters, having interviewed everyone in the entertainment industry worth knowing, from Bing Crosby to Bette Davis, Rod Hull to Madonna."
It will be an interview programme, albeit not one where he's likely to be attacked by a hand puppet (Rod Hull) or introduce someone pretending to be a Nazi (Peter Sellers). Parkinson, 76, will instead conduct six hour-long masterclass interviews in front of a live audience with subjects still to be named.
A starry lineup of drama and comedy was also announced by the channel. As well as Thompson, the Playhouse Presents strand will include programmes with David Tennant, Martin Shaw, Trevor Eve, Sheila Hancock and Gina McKee.
Sky Arts said Tom Jones would make his acting debut in a drama by Jim Cartwright called King of the Teds, in which he will star as Ron, a man recently made redundant by a bottle factory. It will also feature Alison Steadman and Brenda Blethyn.
Tennant will star as a witty and acerbic artist called Will in a drama called The Minor Character by the witty and acerbic Will Self; and Olivia Williams and Martin Shaw will star in City Hall, about a woman who becomes an internet hit by standing up to rioters and ends up as mayor of London.
Other programmes will include Nellie and Melba, co-written by Sandi Toksvig and Paul O'Grady; and Nixon's The One which will star Harry Shearer (Mr Burns, Principal Skinner and more in The Simpsons) as President Nixon based on more than 198 recordings made between 1971-73.
Sky Arts had its budget tripled earlier this year and now aggressively challenges BBC4. It has already announced it is bringing back Melvyn Bragg's South Bank Show and its eclectic awards.
In a raft of announcements the channel said it had commissioned the American artist Doug Aitken to install an artwork on Albert Dock in Liverpool for the city's biennial later this year. In a partnership with Tate Liverpool, the work will be the first project in Sky Arts' Ignition Series in which it is offering up to £200,000 over three years to create new art works.
Quite what the art work will be is another matter. His previous works include Sleepwalkers, an enormous multiscreen cinematic installation that covered the exterior of Moma in 2007 and Sonic Pavilion in the Brazilian rainforest in which he has lowered microphones a mile deep to listen to the earth. Sook-Kyung Lee, Tate Liverpool's exhibitions and displays curator, said Aitken's "previous installations, which have transformed public spaces around the world from New York to Hydra Island, Greece, show that we can expect an installation that is significant and compelling."