Theatre stars line up for television season

SOME OF the biggest names in British theatre are among the stars who feature in the BBC's new season of drama. Here is a checklist:

Lauren Bacall, with Alec Guinness, Leo McKern and Jeanne Moreau, appear in Roy Clarke's A Foreign Field, a BBC 1 comedy about D-Day veterans going back to France.

Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland share the lead in Shelagh Delaney's The Railway Station Man on BBC 2.

Billy Connolly is in a Scottish thriller on BBC 1, Down Among the Big Boys.

Ben Elton stars in a drama tisation of his comic novel Stark, as a three-part serial on BBC 2.

Dawn French plays her first straight role as a nurse in Tender Loving Care on BBC 1.

James Fox is in Headhunters, a three-part BBC 1 serial about 'the high-powered cut-throat world of executive search'.

Michael Gambon plays Archie Rice - the part written for Laurence Olivier - in John Osborne's The Entertainer on BBC 2.

Bob Hoskins stars in Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling on BBC 2, his first television role for 10 years.

Antony Sher plays the ghost of a Jewish comedian who returns to haunt the SS officer who killed him, in Stanley Price's Genghis Cohn on BBC 2.

Maggie Smith, with an utterly convincing American accent, is in Tennessee Williams's Suddenly Last Summer on BBC 2, with Natasha Richardson.

Julie Walters is in Colin Welland's Bambino Mio and Jack Rosenthal's Wide Eyed and Legless, both on BBC 1.