The Best TV Shows on STV

Malcolm Jamieson travels through Scotland's most breathtaking landscapes as he uncovers the spectacular North Coast 500.

Murder City is a British police drama that centres on two mismatched detectives who scour London solving complex cases.

Comedy series following the Eager Beavers, the worst cleaning company in town.

D.C. Rachel Bailey and D.C. Janet Scott have a robust and engaging friendship which enables them to draw upon each other’s strengths and investigate murders for the Manchester Metropolitan Police.

Fortysomething is a 2003 British comedy-drama series, starring and directed by Hugh Laurie as Paul Slippery, a doctor facing a mid-life crisis. His wife Estelle is starting a new career as a headhunter. His three sons, Rory, a student at the fictitious University of Reigate, Daniel and Edwin, are sex-obsessed. Meanwhile, Paul appears to hear the inner thoughts of others. Other important characters include Paul's colleague and nemesis, Dr. Ronnie Pilfrey, and Estelle's new employer, Gwendolen Hartley. The series was written by Nigel Williams based on his 1999 novel of the same name. The six episodes of the series were broadcast on ITV. Although a ratings failure on first transmission, leading to it being moved to an off-peak timeslot midway through the run, the appearance of several actors who went on to greater fame has subsequently led the series to sell well on DVD.

Monroe is a brilliant and unusual neurosurgeon. A flawed genius who never lets anyone forget his flaws or his genius. Each episode will feature one compelling story of the week about life or death situations. The drama will focus on the way in which a serious injury or disease cuts across the lives of everyone involved, from hospital staff to patients to relatives. And how that group become, in an intense few days, a reluctant dysfunctional family united by hopes, fears and grief. At the centre of this stands Monroe, his trainees, his anaesthetist and his poker school - and his female colleague, heart surgeon, Jenny Bremner, who has contempt for his cockiness. The series will tell heightened emotional stories and be shot through with dark humour and portray the pressures and pleasures of high-end surgery in a modern urban hospital.

High Times is a Scottish comedy drama on STV, based around the lives of two flatmates and their neighbours in a high-rise tower block in Glasgow, in the last weeks before its closure for renovation. There are six episodes of stories interlinking the lives of a number of families. The first series of High Times won a BAFTA Scotland award in 2004 for Best Scottish television drama and was shortlisted for the 2005 Rose d'Or and Prix Italia television awards. In the same year it also won the award for Best Drama Series at the Celtic Film and Television Festival. Series 2 was nominated for a Royal Television Society award. In June 2010 it was announced that High Times would be one of the STV archive programmes to be made available on YouTube on the STV Player channel.

The Hour was a lifestyle magazine programme broadcast on STV, the ITV franchise in Northern and Central Scotland. Originally broadcast each weekday afternoon at 5pm, the programme was presented for much of its run by Michelle McManus and Stephen Jardine and broadcast from STV's Pacific Quay studios in Glasgow. The programme later moved to a weekly peak time slot but was axed after four weeks.

Hardware is a British sitcom that aired on ITV from 2003 to 2004. Starring Martin Freeman, it was written and created by Simon Nye, the creator of Men Behaving Badly. The show's opening theme was A Taste of Honey by Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass.

Countrywise is a British television series on ITV, in which broadcaster Paul Heiney and the team of reporters look at the best of Britain's coast and country, with contributions from the ITV regions. Quite often, the classical historian Bettany Hughes appears on the programme, when she is introduced as the "Countrywise Historian". The programme began a new series in December 2010 - Countrywise Kitchen, about foraging for food and food connected with different parts of the country. For example, the edition broadcast on 10 December 2010 mentioned gathering mushrooms, and mentioned the cep mushroom. Celebrities who have appeared on the programme include Rachel de Thame, who appeared on the programme on 5 July 2011. The most recent series of the programme began broadcast on 25 June 2012, when it came from the Isle of Man and mentioned the Manx cat. A more recent edition of the programme has come from Ireland.This edition of the programme mentioned how the newest member of the Countrywise team has been the programme's scientist, Charlotte Uhlenbroek, who discussed Finn MacCool when the programme was in Ireland. In late July 2012, the programme was broadcast in Pembrokeshire, Wales, where it visited the smallest city in the United Kingdom, that of St. David's.

The plot centres on the disappearance of the eponymous Gemma after she goes backpacking with a friend in India. When the friend returns from the trip alone, she is haunted by the belief that Gemma's disappearance is her fault, but mystery surrounds what really happened.

A revolution in space technology is unfolding. New players in the launch industry are radically cutting the cost of access to space and understanding of the universe is growing exponentially thanks to space-based research.

Francie and Josie was a double act performed by Scottish comedians Jack Milroy as Francie and Rikki Fulton (of Scotch and Wry) as Josie. from 1958 - 1990's. In 1962 Scottish Television gave them their own show, The Adventures of Francie and Josie which also starred Clement Ashby, Glen Michael, and Ethel Scott (first wife of Rikki Fulton). The show became a hit, being broadcast by Anglia, Border Television, Grampian Television, Tyne Tees and UTV, and resulted in the pair appearing at the opening of many British Relay TV rental shops. The opening of their first shop, in Airdrie, caused such mayhem that crowds smashed the shop windows.

Tom Weir is regarded as one of Scotland's national treasures. His series 'Weir's Way' is one of the most popular and enduring programmes commisioned and broadcast about Scotland. Tom travels around Scotland exploring its landscape, natural history and meeting its people. In each half hour programme Tom delves into social history, physical geography and the life and times of people in the area - past and present. This is done with the charm and civility that Tom has become known for.

The Hot Rod Dogs and Cool Car Cats was a cartoon series which aired between 1995 and 1996 on ITV kids strand CITV, and was recently shown on Scottish children's programme wknd@stv. The series was about anthropomorphic automobiles that bore resemblances to cats and dogs. The main characters are freedom fighters trying to save their homeworld of Autopia from The Crusher. The show ran for two seasons, each consisting of 26 ten-minute episodes. Hot Rod is a bright red animal hybrid. He's part car, part canine, and he's just one of a collection of dog-cars and cat-cars found on the anthropomorphic automotive world of Autopia. And this place would be something of a car utopia, if it wasn't for the fact that Hot Rod has fallen foul of the Autopia police force, who come in the bulldogged shape of the Gridlockers. He's also caught the eye of the all-powerful, megalomaniac machine known as the Crusher, who has a variety of bounty hunters and mean machines at his disposal. And that's our cue for lots of freewheelin' action as Hot Rod and his miss-matched pals in the resistance attempt to dodge the constabulary and tackle the bad guys head-on in a bid to rid the land of tyranny for ever!

Unsolved was a regional television documentary series produced by Grampian Television.

Poor Little Rich Girls is a United Kingdom reality television program that allowed women from very different professions and classes to switch places to see how the other half lives. The six-part series, directed by Iain Thompson and produced by Simon Kerfoot and Helen Royle, first aired in 2004 on ITV. The premiere episode, in which model Natalie Denning trades places with trainee hairdresser Katie Wakefield, was "pick of the day" by The Sun for "Best Reality".

3@Three is a topical TV live debate show on ITV. In the programme three topics are discussed each day at three o'clock by three rotating panellists. The first series of ten episodes aired on Monday-Friday between 2 and 13 August 2010. The show was created by Karl Newton and Alison Sharman the duo responsible for Loose Women.

These engrossing tales of wealth and class, brutality and cruelty, could only happen in mysterious Scotland. This series combines glossy drama reconstruction and expert opinion coupled with legal insights and a wealth of supporting reference materials from police reports, medical records, personal letters and images ...

Cracked is a Scottish comedy drama, which was broadcast on STV. Created and written by Clare Hemphill and Kate Donnelly, the drama series is set in a Scottish countryside residential rehab clinic, a place where people with various mental and emotional problems check themselves in for some professional tender loving care. Over six episodes, the series deals with issues that are difficult and dark, but also more light hearted and comical situations. Cracked was produced by STV Productions in 2005, but due to the lack of appropriate regional time-slots, the series wasn't broadcast until 2008, where it was shown on Thursday nights at 10:40pm, taking the place of popular comedy-drama High Times.