Doctor Who stars Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper back on BBC

Back in time: Christopher Eccleston will play John Lennon in a late Sixties drama
12 April 2012

Former Doctor Who stars Christopher Eccleston and Billie Piper and The Wire's Idris Elba are among names appearing in forthcoming BBC dramas.

Eccleston will play John Lennon in BBC4's Lennon Naked, which looks at the singer's relationship with Yoko Ono and his life as the Beatles fell apart.

Elba will star in a BBC1 police drama called Luther, in which the murderer's identity is known from the start, and Piper will appear in Kay Mellor drama A Passionate Woman with Royal Family actress Sue Johnston.

The shows are part of the corporation's winter/spring drama season, which will also see the return of Doctor Who, with new Doctor Matt Smith, and the final series of Eighties police show Ashes to Ashes.

BBC2 is to run a season dedicated to the decade, in which see Martin Amis's novel Money, the darkly comic tale of greed and excess, will be brought to TV starring Hot Fuzz actor Nick Frost.

It will also feature a drama called Royal Wedding, about life in a Welsh village set against the backdrop of the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer.

BBC1 plans to air a drama based on the prostitute victims of Suffolk serial killer Steve Wright. The BBC said Five Daughters has been made with the co-operation of Suffolk Police and would follow the inside story of the investigation.

The channel will also show The Deep, a five-part thriller set thousands of feet below the Arctic ice. James Nesbitt, Minnie Driver and ER's Goran Visnjic will star in the story, which follows the crew of a submarine as they search the final frontiers of Earth for unknown life forms.

BBC2 is also releasing a two-part drama by Boys From The Blackstuff writer Alan Bleasdale, based on accounts of the sinking of British vessel RMS Laconia by a U-boat in September 1942.

The drama tells the story of how German Lieutenant Commander Werner Hartenstein acted against orders to undertake a daring rescue when he discovered the ship he had sunk was carrying civilians and thousands of Italian prisoners of war.

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