The Diana effect

THE BBC is making a new film looking at the effect Princess Diana’s death in 1997 had on society.

Diana and I will star Tamsin Greig, Neil Morrissey and Game Of Thrones star Charlotte Hope, and traces the fictional stories of their characters, whose lives are in parallel but at times inter-linked.

The drama will concentrate on an extraordinary week, covering the tumultuous events that followed the Sunday Diana died in a car crash up to her funeral at Westminster Abbey.

The characters’ stories concern death, love, grief, greed, relationships and marriage, and will explore the role chance plays in life.

Writer Jeremy Brock said: “I was compelled by the impact that incredible week had on all of us who remember it, whether royalist or not.

“I wanted to explore the lives of four ordinary people and how they internalised their memories of Diana in the aftermath of her death. The week following her fatal car crash was a week like no other.

“It catapulted many of us into emotional states we rarely visit, leaving us open to new insights and new experiences. Diana and I is categorically not a film written in memoriam. It’s a celebration of what it’s like to be human – good and bad – in the unexpurgated and improvisatory shock of real life.”

The 90-minute film will be on BBC2 later in the year. LIFE CHANGING Star Tamsin Greig