MEET allSTARS - the latest perfectly polished pop act to come off the television music show production line. Hopes are high for the three girl, two boy act, managed by the same company as A1 and Steps, whose debut single Best Friends has just been released.

The made-for-television group have just finished their first television series STARstreet on ITV Saturday morning show SM:TV Live and are now hoping to storm the pop charts.

The television show was a hybrid of S Club 7 meet Teletubbies meet Banana Splits and now allStars appear destined for chart glory.

On paper they seem to have all the right credentials to find a place in the crowded tweeny pop market. One television series under their belt, a schools tour behind them and songs written by the men who have composed hits for Westlife, Steps and Boyzone.

The quintet are Thaila Zucchi, 20, from west London, Ashley Taylor Dawson, 19, from Manchester, Becky Hunter, 19, from Northampton, Sam Bloom, 20, from Manchester and 23-year-old Sandi Lee Hughes, from Liverpool.

All five have followed the well-worn path of stage school, working in holiday camps with a couple having already appeared in other television shows - Taylor Dawson was in Channel 4's Hollyoaks and Hunter is an ex-Disney presenter.

They are all cute, smiley, pert and possess diplomas from the cheesy pop group dance academy.

Members of allStars make no bones about being a put-together band: "Of course we are manufactured," says Taylor Dawson. "STARstreet was a television programme and we were cast in the parts."

In fact the music industry seems to be relying on the How To Make A Pop Group handbook which suggests combining television and pop music for a winning formula.

We have only to cast our minds back to March and the birth of the ultimate made for television pop act - Hear'Say.

Plucked from 3,000 pop wannabes, the ITV series Popstars followed the trials and many tribulations of the band both before and after it was formed. Hear'say's debut single went straight to No 1 and has sold more than a million copies, while the album is the second best seller of 2001.

In every country where the programme has been produced the made-for-TV bands seem to have been guaranteed a No 1.

According to Taylor Dawson, allSTARS are different. "Popstars is good TV but it is just a TV show. Things just don't happen like that. You don't get to live in a mansion. You don't perform at the Brits. Thanks to the show they've been given a lot of things on a plate. When we get to the top it will be because we have worked at it."

Whatever he says, allSTARS have been given a bit of a gift - a prime slot on a top-rated children's show.

And it has not done S Club 7 any harm either. They were hand picked for stardom by former Spice Girls manager Simon Fuller. Two years ago S Club 7 were launched in their own BBC series, Miami 7, and their debut single Bring It All Back went straight to No 1. Their television show has been sold around the world and they have even reached no 10 in the Billboard Hot 100.

Before you start thinking that made-for-television pop acts means automatic success there are a couple of cautionary tales.

In 1997 boy band North And South were brought together for BBC series No Sweat. Their debut single I'm A Man Not A Boy reached No 7 but the three follow-ups charted at lower and lower positions. After a second series the show was cancelled and that was that.

The previous year another boy band had followed a similar route to Hear'Say - but with less success. A BBC documentary followed the creation of Upside Down. They enjoyed four Top 30 hits but then fell out of favour. Even a name change to Orange Orange failed to revive them.

And if you think TV bands must be a recent phenomenon - think again.

In 1970 a humorous series based around a family pop act aired in America. The Partridge Family followed the antics of a single mother and her five children - who happened to be a pop band.

When their debut single I Think I Love You was released it went to No 1 in the States and made the Top 20 in the UK. Although there were six Partridges only two, David Cassidy and his real life step-mother Shirley Jones, sang on the records. The group made four television series and enjoyed a string of hits.

More importantly it turned Cassidy into a star in his own right. He notched up nine Top 20 hits and became the pin-up on every teenage girl's bedroom wall.

And The Partridge Family was not the first. In the late Sixties the Monkees enjoyed fame on a global scale. The Anglo-American quartet were brought together for a US television series designed to cash in on the popularity of the Beatles.

Their single I'm A Believer went to No 1 in the States and in the UK. Their debut album became a million seller and they turned into the latest teenage phenomenon.

Initially comparisons were made to the Liverpudlian quartet but then it was discovered that the Monkees did not play any of the instruments on the records. In fact, their lead singer, Manchester-born Davy Jones, had only worked as an actor.

Although their star burned brightly it burnt quickly. They did manage to persuade television bosses that they should perform their own material but after a couple of years the fickle nature of pop saw them being spat out.

If you are wondering whatever happens to old made-for-TV groups you can catch three of the original Monkees when they visit the UK on tour later this year.

Updated: 09:04 Saturday, June 16, 2001