What"s on the box this summer?

It promises to be a full summer season on RTÉ with three new entertainment series, four new factual series, new music series, four new lifestyle series as well as up to 40 upcoming GAA fixtures. New entertainment programmes include a new reality show as well as new Saturday night gameshow. In 'Fáilte Towers", 12 well-known Irish personalities take over the running of a hotel for over two weeks while a brand new National Lottery gameshow, 'The Big Money Game", will be presented by Laura Woods. As well as these new entertainment series, there promises to be a wealth of new lifestyle and factual series. Dermot O"Neill presents the brand-new 'Super Garden", where five amateur garden designers compete for the opportunity to exhibit their own garden at Bord Bia"s Bloom in the Park 2009. Celebrity chefs Kevin Thornton and Kevin Dundon go head-to-head in 'Heat", in which their protégés are pitted against each other every week, battling it out in Ely HQ"s restaurant to become the Heat Champion. 'Use It Or Lose It" is a series of programmes for RTÉ that reunites former sports stars with the teams of their youth for one last game. With diet and fitness issues to the fore, old friendships and old rivalries are bound to reinstate themselves as everyone gets to know each other all over again. Following the recent successful run of 'Arts Lives" documentaries, RTÉ Factual pledges to continue to provide a wealth of documentary and factual programmes over the summer, including two new series from RTÉ"s Archive Unit - 'Disasters" and 'Hostage" - and three returning series - 'Consuming Passions", 'Corrigan Knows Food" and 'O"Gorman"s Summer". 'Heist", meanwhile, is a brand-new three part crime series for RTÉ One, while 'Customs" is a new four-parter going behind the scenes with customs officers nationwide. Following the success of 'Eden" and 'Bittersweet", RTÉ Drama will present 'Little White Lies", a new feature-length drama starring Andrew Scott as a down-on-his-luck actor whose life and career has fallen to bits since he was dumped by his high-flying girlfriend, played by Elaine Cassidy. 'Fair City" will continue throughout the summer on One, while series four of 'Grey"s Anatomy" has already taken up residence on Sunday nights alongside new spin-off drama 'Private Practice". The Olympic Games 2008 will have Bill O"Herlihy, Darragh Maloney, Peter Collins, Michael Lyster, Tracey Piggott and Joanne Cantwell as main anchors for the Beijing Olympics, which will showcase some of the greatest athletes in the world. RTÉ Sport will have up to 16 hours of coverage on every day of the Games. More than 10,500 athletes from over 200 countries will compete - among them Team Ireland, with some three dozen world-class contenders. Some of our runners, walkers, throwers, boxers, shooters, rowers, sailors and showjumpers will be potential medallists, either now, or in 2012. Others will make Olympic finals, break records or produce personal bests. 'Ireland"s Olympians" is a brand new five-part TV series, produced with the co-operation of the Olympic Council of Ireland and the Irish Sports Council. The series will feature in-depth interviews with leading Irish athletes and international experts across a wide range of sports, including Derval O"Rourke, David Gillick, Eileen O"Keeffe, Kenny Egan, Paul Hession, Joanne Cuddihy and Alistair Cragg. Meanwhile, Sky One recently announced that it has greenlit development on two scripts of the iconic British science fiction series 'Blake"s 7". The original series presented to the world a vision of the future, a future where the galaxy is ruled by the iron fist of a galactic federation, in which freedom and justice are things of the past. Into this vision creator Terry Nation cast a small band of outlaws who find themselves in control of the most powerful space vessel in the galaxy, the Liberator. Led by the enigmatic Roj Blake, the group of rebels would strike at the very heart of the Federation, and change the face of science fiction television. The series originally ran for four seasons between 1978 and 1981 and recently topped a British Film Institute poll to find the UK public"s favourite television show. The development comes in addition to the already announced slate of adaptations of works by best-selling authors including Chris Ryan ('Strike Back"), David Almond ('Skellig"), Terry Pratchett ('Going Postal") and Martina Cole ('The Take" and 'The Graft").