Bradley Walsh says there was ‘nothing wrong’ with The Larkins’ viewing stats as he denies cancellation reports

Actor said he simply didn’t have time for the 14-week shoot this year

Bradley Walsh has denied reports that The Larkins has been cancelled by ITV.

The Chase host stars opposite Joanna Scanlan as Pop Larkin in the channel’s adaptation of H E Bates’ novel The Darling Buds of May.

The series, which follows a family in rural Kent in the 1950s, made its debut in 2021. At the time, it divided critics, with The Independent’s Sean O’Grady calling it “a Brexit television abomination”.

Last week, reports emerged in The Sun claiming that the show was being axed after losing two million viewers between series one and two and alleged “cast disagreements” on set.

However, appearing on This Morning on Tuesday (10 January), Walsh vehemently denied the claims.

Walsh said that he’d “had a few calls” about the rumours which he said were attributed to “some problem with the viewing figures”.

“The viewing figures were absolutely fine, there was nothing wrong with the viewing figures,” he told hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield. “They were fantastic. They actually, in comparison to the first series, all went well.”

Walsh explained: “It’s a 14-week shoot and I haven’t got time to do that this year. I actually don’t have 14 weeks, so it’s down to me, not anything else, that we may not be able [to do it].”

The cast of ‘The Larkins’ season one (ITV)

He also said that he and writer Simon Nye were working to see if it would be possible to make a special in the near future instead.

“The Larkins is a fantastic show… I just loved it,” he concluded. “It was just fantastic and it’s purely down to the fact that I just don’t have time to do it right now.”

In his original one-star review, The Independent’s O’Grady wrote that The Larkins was “precisely the kind of opioid atavistic tosh Nadine Dorries churns out in her novels… set in a post-war green and pleasant England that never was and never will be”.

The Larkins returned for a second series in October 2022.