Channel 4 chief: 'Space Cadets' was "grim"

Kevin Lygo, Channel 4's director of programmes, has admitted that hoax reality show Space Cadets was a mistake.

The programme, in which a group of participants was led to believe that they were being sent into space, was considered by critics to be a one-joke show spread too thinly over too many episodes.

"Because it was so expensive to make, I think we lost sight of the fact that it was probably a four-day show," Lygo conceded at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. "But that would have been prohibitively expensive…and I wouldn't have commissioned it for four programmes."

While he stood by the strength of the premise, he admitted: "It was grim and we all knew it at the time immediately….[If it had been] much shorter it would have been fine."

He also denied that the show had been commissioned in order to keep up the channel's relationship with Endemol, which produces two of its hit shows, Big Brother and Deal Or No Deal.

However, Lygo said that the commission was brought about by the high esteem in which the broadcaster holds the independent production company. "They're so good at producing huge, live, complex events [so] we place a lot of faith and trust in them."