Drama chief: It is our duty to update classics

THE BBC’S head of drama has insisted that “woke” is not a dirty word as he argued that the corporation must “repurpose” classic novels by giving them female, black and Asian characters.

Period dramas based on stories written 100 or more years ago have to be made more diverse for a 21st-century British audience, said Piers Wenger, otherwise the BBC would be “in dereliction of our duty”.

He was responding to criticism of two recent BBC One adaptations – The War of the Worlds, in which a minor female character from the original HG Wells novel was turned into the heroine of the piece, and A Christmas Carol, in which Bob Cratchit had a mixedraced family and Ebenezer Scrooge blackmailed Mrs Cratchit for sex.

“I really object when I hear the word ‘woke’ used in a pejorative way because what does ‘woke’ really mean?

“If it means quality being important and fair representation being important then, yes, absolutely that’s important to me,” Wenger said.

The BBC’S long-running Doctor Who series has also been accused of falling victim to political correctness, with storylines about the environment, civil rights and Indian partition. Ratings have fallen since Jodie Whittaker was cast as the new Time Lord, and there have been calls for it to be suspended.

However, speaking at the launch of the corporation’s new drama season, Wenger said: “I worked on Doctor Who myself and produced it for many years and I can honestly say I don’t think it has been in better health editorially.”