Details of the 2010 Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards Season including the shortlists for the Crime Writer’s Association (CWA) Daggers were announced yesterday at Harrogate Crime Writing Festival. A six-week season of documentaries on ITV3 will showcase the CWA shortlisted books and twelve celebrated fictional television detectives will be profiled in a six-part series The People’s Detective.

The axeing of the channels, which featured popular programmes such as Poirot, Inspector Wexford and live football, has led to a storm of protest.

The Crime Writers Association (CWA), Cactus TV, ITV3 and opticians Specsavers have teamed up to celebrate the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards 2009, which will take place on 21st October 2009.

Philip Glenister presents a celebration of TV's 50 greatest detectives, as voted for by ITV3 viewers.

A three hour ITV3 countdown of the greatest TV crime fighters, Top of The Cops is now in production in Shiver's Leeds office.

Falling just a little short of 600,000 was ITV3's Inspector Wexford with a strong 572,000 (2.83%) for just over two hours.

PD James, Val McDermid, Ruth Rendell, Lynda La Plante, Ian Rankin and Colin Dexter are battling it out, but, just in case you weren’t excited enough, Dame Agatha Christie, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and PD herself have to be initiated into the International Crimewriting Hall of Fame first, before . . . eventually . . . Dame Helen announces that the winner is . . . Colin Dexter. Colin, of course, can’t be there, so relays his delight by video, ensuring the whole thing ends up as dead as a Morse character played by a bit-part actor.

The winners of the inaugural ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards were revealed at a ceremony on Friday night (3rd October), with authors including P D James and Ian Rankin winning prizes.

This seems dangerously close to lèse-majesté, but I might as well admit that I never liked Inspector Morse. Hard though I tried, I could never quite believe in the characters, nor in the way that the Thames Valley was made to look more like the South Bronx. By the end of the final episode, 91 people had snuffed it in suspicious fashion.

Twelve novels have been shortlisted for three fiction prizes at ITV3’s inaugural Crime Thriller Awards: Breakthrough Author Award, International Author of the Year and Author of the Year. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony on 3rd October which will be broadcast on ITV3 on the 6th.