BBC ONE UNVEILS DRAMA DRIVEN £158M SEASON

NINE new drama titles headline an ambitious £158 million winter schedule as BBC One continues their drive to develop the originality of the new look channel.
The increased volume, amounting to more than 90 hours of drama this season, represents an extra £20 million being spent on the genre over the same period last year. The spend on drama for winter 2001 has increased by almost 50 per cent to £59 million.
Introducing the season, Lorraine Heggessey (pictured), the new Controller of BBC One, said: “The added investment in BBC One is already visible on the screen. We have been able to offer viewers 20 per cent more drama than last winter and, if you include the four dramas in the Christmas schedules, that means we are showing 13 brand new titles over the next three months. And it doesn’t stop there. The £100 million promised in Greg Dyke’s MacTaggart lecture is going through the production cycle now and will appear on screen increasingly over the next 12 months or so. We have achieved this and maintained the rich mix that the audience expects from BBC One.”
Heggessey added: “We take the viewers from Ronan Bennett’s ‘Rebel Heart’ and Nancy Mitford’s ‘Love in a Cold Climate’ to the award-winning modern realism of Paul Abbot’s ‘Clocking Off’ and his latest work, ‘Best of Both Worlds’.”
The winter season on BBC One promises an action-packed season of romance and revolution, edge and aspiration, as top name writers and star performers combine to deliver a range of original drama productions.
(CD)