Helena Bonham-Carter and Dominic West to play Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton

Lindsay Lohan played the troubled Cleopatra actress last year in a TV movie for a US cable channel

Helena Bonham-Carter and Lindsay Lohan will both have played the actress Elizabeth Taylor in TV dramas (Getty Images/AP)

Move over Lindsay Lohan, Helena Bonham-Carter has been cast as Elizabeth Taylor in a one-off television drama.

The actress, 46, who recently played Miss Havisham in Great Expectations and was Bellatrix Lestrange in the Harry Potter movies, will follow Lohan's portrayal of Taylor in 2012 TV movie Liz & Dick which was widely panned by the critics.

Bonham-Carter will appear alongside The Hour's Dominic West as Richard Burton in a 90-minute drama about the film stars' tempestuous relationship.

The BBC4 drama Burton and Taylor is set in 1983 when the divorcees are starring in a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives, a play about a divorced couple who find themselves, and their new spouses, in neighbouring rooms on their honeymoon.

The BBC last night revealed that Call The Midwife had been recommissioned for a third series and Christmas special. Cop drama Murder in Paradise will also return for a third season.

And a new 13-part Saturday night series made by the team behind Merlin, called Atlantis, is set to hit screens later this year.

Other upcoming one-off dramas include an adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn.