The Stage

BBC2 to screen more stage adaptations

Published Thursday 10 July 2008 at 17:40 by Matthew Hemley

BBC2 is planning to adapt more stage plays for the screen, its controller Roly Keating has revealed.

The news comes as the channel unveiled its autumn line-up, which includes adaptations of David Hare’s My Zinc Bed, starring Uma Thurman and Jonathan Pryce, and A Number, based on a stage play by Caryl Churchill.

Keating said the Corporation’s drama production team has decided to adapt the plays because it “had not been done for a bit”.

He added that adapting plays allowed the BBC to work with “exceptional writing”, and that some pieces included parts that have the power to “attract remarkable performers”, whom he said might otherwise only been seen in feature films.

He said: “We might well do it again - in fact, we have other things. We are trying to keep a mix of made-for-TV singles and occasionally, like this, pulling in pieces that have been seen elsewhere. This was about the drama team thinking about how to keep ringing the changes.”

BBC2’s autumn line up also includes the drama Einstein and Eddington, about Albert Einstein and astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, starring David Tennant and Andy Serkis.

Comedies include The Cup, a new series shot in mockumentary style about a Bolton-based football club and its quest to win the North and Midlands Under 11s Cup in Birmingham.

Meanwhile, Beautiful People is a new comedy based on the memoirs of Simon Doonan, creative director of Barneys in New York, which has been adapted by Gimme Gimme Gimme writer Jonathan Harvey.

The series stars Meera Syal and Peep Show’s Olivia Colman.