'Lady Chatterley' toned down

THE BBC will screen a four-part dramatisation of Lady Chatterley's Lover as part of its pounds 108m spring and summer schedules, but its version of the D H Lawrence novel has apparently been made suitable for mainstream BBC 1 adult audiences, writes Maggie Brown.

The word fuck makes only two appearances while the word cunt has been banished. The film, made by Ken Russell and starring Joely Richardson, is a 'transmittable version of the story and will go out after the 9pm watershed', Alan Yentob, controller of BBC 1, said yesterday.

Mr Yentob refused to be drawn on the future of Eldorado. A decision on the troubled soap opera is expected on Friday. He is also anxious that the new series of Casualty, BBC 1's Saturday night hospital drama, should be suitable for an 8pm family audience.

The problem for the BBC, where executives are under pressure over the introduction, on 1 April, of the BBC's version of the internal market, is what to put in Eldorado's place.

The new schedules are characterised by candid sex, crime, detective stories and the return of some successful drama series, one of the BBC's great weaknesses. Rides, about an all-woman mini-cab firm, starts a second run in May, as does Strathblair, the drama set on a Perthshire farm in the 1950s. Resnick, the unconventional detective, also returns.

There are also 10 new one-off Screenplays for BBC 2, including Love Lies Bleeding, a contemporary thriller set in Northern Ireland, which marks the screenwriting debut of the acclaimed novelist Ronan Bennett.