BBC2 dot.com start-up drama Attachments is to return in a shorter 30-minute version for its second series this autumn.

Creator Tony Garnett and the BBC2 controller, Jane Root, took the decision to cut Attachments down from 50 to 30-minute episodes after disappointing ratings for the first run last autumn.

Attachments averaged just 1.2m and a 5% share - less than half BBC2's average share for 2000 of 10.8% - across 10 weeks on Tuesday night from late September.

"Attachments is going to be coming back in a 30-minute guise on BBC2 later this year," a BBC spokesman confirmed.

Ms Root ordered two 10-part series of the show when she originally commissioned it last year.

It was not yet decided whether Attachments would still return as a 10-parter, the spokesman said. "They are working on the scripts right now," he added.

Attachments followed the trials and tribulations of Mike, a young dot.com entrepreneur attempting to turn Seethru.co.uk, the cutting-edge music site he started in his bedroom, into a viable internet content business.

The show was commissioned while the dot.com bubble was still growing, but by the time it was broadcast last autumn the internet crash was well underway and the public's love affair with all things new media had turned sour.

Mr Garnett is a legendary drama producer with a track record running from Cathy Come Home in the 1960s to This Life and the Cops in the 1990s, through his company World Productions.

The real life Seethru.co.uk website was launched when the series was broadcast and year and has been maintained as an independently functioning content site since then.

But the site is to take a summer break while the Seethru.co.uk team prepare for the second series of Attachments.

"There will be less new material going up on the site over the summer as we get it ready for when the series returns in the autumn," the BBC spokesman said.

Useful link
Seethru.co.uk