Women on top at the BBC

Jana Bennett and Lorraine Heggessey, director of television at the BBC and controller of BBC1 respectively, are profiled in Media Guardian (free registration required).

Heggessey mounts a passionate defence of BBC drama.

"Of course nothing's perfect but if you take drama, did nobody see May 33rd, a highly authored piece about an extremely rare psychiatric condition; didn't they see England Expects, which was about a man who'd belonged to the far right? Didn't they see Holy Cross, about the school in Belfast; didn't they see Dirty War? We've done a lot of hard-hitting single dramas and we've also done some successful popular drama. And everybody acts as if successful popular drama is easy, it's actually the most difficult thing to do, to get people coming back week after week after week after week. To actually have a renaissance of drama on BBC1 in such a crowded market has been a tremendous achievement."