BBC1 Autumn season

Adaptations will play a major part in the BBC 1 schedules this autumn, with Shakespeare and Dickens to the fore.

Bleak House, adapted by Andrew Davies, will be shown twice a week in half-hour episodes - "giving today's viewers all the pace, multiple storylines and gripping cliff hanger endings of the original text."

David Nicholls has adapted Much Ado About Nothing, Peter Bowker has re-imagined A Midsummer Night's Dream as a surreal weekend away at a holiday park, Peter Moffat has tackled Macbeth, while Sally Wainwright has written a version of The Taming Of The Shrew where Kate is a scheming MP.

However, Media Guardian (free registration required), says that the schedule is open to criticism for being overwhelmingly white and middle class, just days after the
BBC governors' criticism of BBC1 for being "too focused on middle-class suburbia".