Our aim

BBC TWO strives to offer television of real substance - a modern, dynamic, and relevant programming mix that surprises, inspires and entertains.

We embrace all television genres, but it is our factual programming that has always been integral to the BBC TWO purpose. We aspire to be a place where viewers can expect to find the finest arts, history, science and human interest documentaries, as well as the best-loved formatted leisure programmes anywhere in British television - output that is intelligent and rich in content, yet thoroughly accessible and entertaining.

In comedy and entertainment, BBC TWO encourages creative risk-taking by commissioning series of real distinctiveness and originality. Likewise, we relish drama that chimes with the channel's core values: ambitious, stimulating, emotionally engaging single plays and series that are both powerfully expressive of our times and very enjoyable to watch.

Programme aspirations for BBC TWO

Popular Factual, Specialist Factual and Documentaries

Intelligent, authoritative, and imbued with an inveterate curiosity about our world, the best of BBC TWO's specialist factual programmes feature absorbing stories, compellingly told.

The channel's factual output has a variety of tones and flavours - but its accent is always accessible and entertaining. Our popular factual takes many forms: it includes series of irreverence, originality and wit, such as Top Gear, The Hairy Bakers, Dragons' Den, Victorian Farm and The Supersizers, as well as the quirky and endlessly-inventive Wonderland, and our highly enjoyable documentaries by Louis Theroux.

Many of these much-loved factual shows are presented with expertise and passion and produced with confidence and élan. In their different ways, Amazon with Bruce Parry, Tribal Wives, Long Way Round, Wild China and Yellowstone have presented viewers with awe-inspiring vistas and extraordinary encounters with distant cultures - bringing a real sense of scale and adventure to our schedules.

Of course, we also cherish our content-driven factual - the channel's thoughtful, propositional arts, history and science output that tackles big ideas with creativity and verve. These programmes range from strands like Horizon and The Culture Show, and major series such as Russia with Jonathan Dimbleby, Dr Alice Roberts: Don't Die Young, Simon Schama's The American Future: A History and Iran and the West, to outstanding single documentaries of substance and power, such as the RTS Award-winning The Fallen.

Many of our most successful shows reflect the private pursuits and enthusiasms of our audiences. BBC TWO's food programmes (ranging from Nigella and Delia to Chinese Food Made Easy) have supplied sumptuous recipes to generations of aspiring cooks, and we want to ensure that the sustained excellence of the channel's coverage of matters culinary retains its lustre, by commissioning clever, informative shows that rejoice in the pleasures of gastronomy and the creativity of cooking.

Drama

Recently, some of BBC TWO's most acclaimed singles and series (including House of Saddam, Einstein and Eddington, Five Minutes of Heaven and Margaret) have been inspired by real events, and the channel will continue to support factual drama. In future, we want to augment our offer in this genre by commissioning films of emotional depth and narrative power.

BBC TWO drama will put a premium on fine writing that is sharply contemporary in its depictions of life in Britain - and around the world. We want to commission scripts that demonstrate the intelligence, sophistication and creative ingenuity that our viewers have come to expect from the channel.

Comedy and Entertainment

As the original home of many classic comedies, including The Catherine Tate Show and The Office, as well as ground-breaking entertainment panel shows such as HIGNFY, QI, Never Mind the Buzzcocks and Mock the Week, BBC TWO has always welcomed adventurous, cutting-edge ideas and formats that become much-loved features of the TV landscape.

As a mainstream channel, we actively seek to commission programming that is appreciated by the widest possible audience, and hope to build on our long-standing strengths in situation comedy and studio-based entertainment shows by commissioning original, distinctive, yet irrepressibly enjoyable programmes that will become appointment-to-view TV in the heart of the peak-time schedules.

Recent programme highlights

The historian Ruth Goodman and archaeologists Peter Ginn and Alex Langlands experience the struggles and joys of agricultural life in the nineteenth century in Victorian Farm.

Set in Northern Ireland and partly based on a true story, the gripping drama Five Minutes of Heaven starred Liam Neeson as a murderer and James Nesbitt as the bereaved brother of his victim - both of whom are still struggling to come to terms with the legacy of the Troubles.

The extraordinarily moving, RTS Award-winning feature-length documentary The Fallen remembers all the British servicemen and women who have died during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq during the past seven years

Nine couples battled for culinary supremacy in a bid to impress the esteemed French chef Raymond Blanc in The Restaurant.

The tone of the channel

Central to the channel's ethos are programmes that are surprising, celebratory, witty, warm, adventurous, intelligent, playful, informative, and authoritative.

Our audience

BBC TWO is a broad-based mainstream channel that naturally skews to an older audience. However our key focus is to appeal to a heartland of viewers aged 35-54 and to reach out to a more culturally diverse audience.

A 35-54 year old audience is a very diverse group in terms of lifestyle and interests, but united by having come of age as consumers in the first age of multichannel and having clear expectations of TV as, first and foremost, a medium of entertainment. We want even more smart, stylish, intelligent shows that can become must-see viewing for this demanding generation.