C4 lines up sex fest for autumn

CHANNEL 4 went back to its roots yesterday and launched an autumn schedule based on large doses of sex.

This season's theme, stretching across the networks, is the "sexumentary", Channel 4's most prominent offering being Anatomy of Desire, a documentary series which "reveals everything we never knew about sex from the sexually arousing qualities of body odour to the real difference between male and female sex drives".

Sex Bomb comprises four programmes of "frank and intimate history of four decades of sexual revolution in Britain told through the experiences and memories of those who live through it". It will start with the Pill, says Channel 4 boss Michael Jackson, and end up with "Ibiza Uncovered".

Not to be outdone, Hooked is a six-parter investigating the pursuit of pleasure from 1900-1975. Sexual pleasures are to be explored with a range of illicit accompaniments including drugs, drink, smoking and chocolate.

Power is a second theme. The Power List will ask "where does power lie in Blair's new wonderland", and ask a panel of people including Roy Hattersley, Heather Rabbatts, Lambeth Council's chief executive, and social commentator Peter York to vote on the 300 most powerful people in Britain today.

The Clintons - A Marriage of Power manages to combine both sex and power in a three-part journey from Whitewater to Lewinsky. And Portillo's Progress provides the latest in a series of quests to determine whether the Tories will ever find their way back into power.

In the early days of Channel 4, the network met its remit to deliver a "distinctive" schedule mainly through delivering sex programmes such as the Red Light Zone. Expanding out of sex into other "distinctive" areas is plainly proving difficult - but Michael Jackson believes power, drugs and possibly death, have potential.

David Aaronovitch,

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