Robin Hood rides to BBC1's rescue rescue

Peter Fincham, the new controller of BBC1, let slip yesterday that plans were under way to create a new long-running drama series on Robin for screening next year. The series is being written by Dominic Minghella, the brother of the Oscar-winning film director Anthony and the writer of the ITV drama series Doc Martin.

Mr Fincham unveiled an autumn season with some notably high-brow offerings including a new drama on the life of Queen Elizabeth I, The Virgin Queen, starring Anne Marie Duff, and a dramatisation by Andrew Davies of Charles Dickens's Bleak House.