Let us pray – for better TV

ATHEISTS and liberals love nuns – that is, they love sex-mad nuns who go crazy, or who have been forced to take the veil, or who abandon their vows, or all three. Since Denis Diderot’s 1792 novel Memoirs Of A Nun, they have rejoiced in such stories.

I can think of no other explanation for the BBC’s weird drama Black Narcissus, starring Gemma Arterton, pictured right – a TV remake of an extremely peculiar cult nun movie of the 1940s. Can anyone possibly have watched this for pleasure? It is expensively filmed with lots of music to tell you how to feel. But why bother?

Meanwhile, mysteriously, the BBC will not explain why it will not make available its brilliant 1970 drama series Roads To Freedom, which we know still exists. Perhaps the Corporation doesn’t want to be reminded of the days when it did its job properly.