CHRISTOPHER STEVENS reviews last night's TV: Not even Vicky McClure can save ... trends now
Without Sin
Psst! Want to know some old news? Keep it to yourself, but I can let you see a couple of last week's headlines, wrapped around a portion of haddock and chips.
You're not interested, of course. Who would be? And for the same reason, why would you want to watch Without Sin (ITV1)?
Yes, it stars Vicky McClure from Line Of Duty. Yes, it airs nightly at primetime all this week. But it's been available on the streaming ITVX service for months, and that makes it yesterday's news.
For the life of me, I cannot understand why ITV bosses are now launching their biggest shows via video-on-demand, sometimes half a year before screening them on the TV channel.
Actor: The new drama Without Sin stars Vicky McClure from Line Of Duty (pictured left)
Tragedy: McClure plays Stella, a dope-smoking taxi driver and ex-drinker, whose 14-year-old daughter Maisy was killed by a burglar while Stella was out partying and her husband Paul was bedding his boss
Viewers who log on to ITVX currently have the option to watch major series, as yet unaired on ITV, such as David Tennant in Litvinenko, about the murder of a Russian defector, and A Year On Planet Earth, an epic wildlife series narrated by Stephen Fry.
How many will actually do so isn't clear, as ITV bosses don't publish audience figures for individual shows. Occasionally, they will claim that a streaming series has 'performed well', though people said the same about Mae Muller, Britain's entry at Eurovision this year, and she came second-from-last.
