Familiar faces

SIR – Steve Cattell (Letters, December 13) asks why we always see the same actors in television drama.

Surely that is the charm of it. Televised drama, especially on the BBC, has all the appeal of village amateur dramatics.

When an actress makes a hash of a serious part, we smile indulgently, as though she were the vicar’s wife whose performance in a comic role we recall from the preceding production. Philip Roe

St Albans, Hertfordshire