Folk music is to get a boost on Channel Five with a series of documentaries about four famous artists.
Five Culture, the partnership between Five and Arts Council England, has commissioned four hour-long shows under the My Music brand.
Tom Ravenscroft, son of the late John Peel, will narrate the programmes, which will explore the influences of Seth Lakeman, Kate Rusby, Eliza Carthy and Athena in each episode.
High profile contributors include Billy Bragg, Jennifer Saunders, Stewart Lee and Willy Russell.
Folk music proved popular for Five last year, when one-off documentary Kathryn Tickell's Northumbria drew around 750,000 viewers.
This compares with an average of between 300,000 and 350,000 for Tim Marlow's art gallery tours, which have recently been axed from Five's 7pm-8pm hour.
The folk series launches on Five in the Spring and is the latest in the Five Culture initiative - which aims to encourage viewers to "engage in the arts".
Produced by the Proudfoot Company, executive producer Michael Proudfoot has secured the access to all artists to be profiled.
Proudfoot said: "We wanted to get under the creative skins of these artists. The songs they write and the music they make are products of the places in England that they live in, so the My Music documentaries are not just music shows, they are about the English landscape, or in Athena's case the Greek landscape."
Five Culture consultant, Kim Peat, added: "This series is superb. The quality of the music, the passion that is projected, the testimonies from so many people make it a joy to watch.
"My Music will not only give people within the scene a reason to celebrate what they love about modern folk music, but also introduce a new audience to a diverse and influential part of our culture."
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