U.K. Adaptation of 'Professor T' Breaks Record with Season 5

When the executives behind Walter Presents, Jo McGrath and Walter Iuzzolino, decided to start a production company to remake their most popular foreign language hits in English, choosing Professor T was a no-brainer. The original three-season Belgian version was a hit in the U.S. and the U.K., plus there had already been multiple European adaptations, including French, Czech, and German, the last of which outlasted the Belgian one with four seasons. However, no one could have known that the U.K. version, starring Ben Miller, would be so popular that it would outlast all of them, nabbing a Season 5 commission with little sign of ending soon.

However, if there's one thing that PBS viewers love, it's a show that improves with age. Some of the biggest hits are the ones that took a season or two to find their feet, from Unforgotten to Vienna Blood. Professor T was one of the earliest shows for the production studios, and you can see it grow from an almost line-for-line, move-for-move remake into its own conception of what the series should be over the first three seasons.

With that have come casting changes, including the addition of Juliet Stevenson (Emma) as psychologist Dr Helena Goldberg along the way and the exit of the series' original central heroine, DS Lisa Donckers (Emma Naomi), who was killed off at the end of Season 3. While we have not yet seen any of Season 4 (it will debut in the U.K. before the U.S.), Season 5 will apparently introduce the great Zoe Wanamaker (Agatha Christie's Poirot) as Professor T’s Aunt Zelda.