ITV Series - The Lakes - My view on 1st Episode

On Monday at 8pm saw the return on ITV of The Lakes above people living and working in Cumbria (yes they're very loose with The Lakes).  Locals who are watching this series have love/hate relationship with this programme, mainly due to the over exposure of hotelier Thomas The Gladiator Noblett and his right hand man Andrew The Admiral Tighe repeating the same thing in each episode / series, and also how the series is presented in that the peoples stories are limited to sound bites across many episodes.  Following is an overview of the first episode, yes I was abit anal in working out the timings:-

ITV have put the programme in a prime time half hour slot at 8pm between Monday nights two Coronation Street episodes.  The runtime of the show is 22mins 55secs, excluding a 2min 23secs break in the middle  (Although it finished around 8:25pm the end break was short as Corrie started around 8:27pm).  So what did we get in the way of juicy content, well....

• 3mins 7secs - Starting titles and preview of what was coming up in the rest of the series
• 3mins 29secs - Sailing instructor Joe Pester and his wife Lindy who are preparing for their perfect lakeside wedding 
• 4mins 31secs - Rob Rose and his micro pigs
• 0mins 13secs - Short preview of Thomas The Gladiator Noblett then into a break
• 2mins 23secs - Commercial break
• 0mins 58secs - Preview of whats coming up in rest of the series
• 2mins 54secs - Another preview of what Thomas The Gladiator Noblett will be doing in the rest of the series including why he's now laughs at being refered to as The Gladiator
• 3mins 23secs - Back to this episode with Rob Rose's micro pigs
• 2mins 50secs - Joe Pester and his Lindy Wedding
• 1min 30secs - Preview of what's coming up in the next episode and end credits including Joe and Lindy's Honeymoon

So in summary the 22mins 55secs episode was broken down into 8mins 42secs of titles/previews/fillers that will get repeated from episode to episode and just 14mins 13secs of actually watchable content.

This series could be a whole lot better if they didn't keep stringing us along and gave us more of a characters story in an episode.

Recommendation is to record the the show but to fast forward through the soundbites.