ANOTHER week, I guess it must be time for another fictionalised fury against the BBC.

This time, one or two of the national papers (and a large number of internet commenters), are getting their collective knickers in twist over Auntie’s latest big-budget Saturday night drama - Troy: Fall Of A City.

Yes, it may be a cynical attempt to draw in the Game Of Thrones

audience in the off-season, but the Beeb’s £16 million for eight episodes can’t realistically compare with the colossal HBO drama’s estimated budget - which, if reports are to be believed, will cost £65 million for the final six episodes, due to screen next year.

Budgets aside, we’re living in a world of faux outrage, created - some might say - as a distraction from things which might actually affect an average member of the public, and Troy’s biggest controversy, according to some, was having the temerity to cast a black actor as Achilles.

Alright, so Homer may have described the legendary warrior as having blonde hair in his Iliad, but it’s fair to say that - since he’s the son of an immortal woman and a king - the colour of his locks may have been a literary way of giving him an air of nobility, or a golden crown, if you will.

The fictional character has previously been played on screen by a handful of white actors including Stanley Baker in the 1956 version of Helen Of Troy, and more famously - or infamously - by Brad Pitt in 2004’s Troy.

Pitt’s version certainly looked like a statue honouring the ancient Greek legend, but while the scale of

Wolfgang Petersen’s production was spectacular, it was undermined by certain performers displaying acting worthy of inanimate marble sculptures too.

The point of Homer’s tales was that they would be told by wandering storytellers to crowds of people, then shared and spread verbally - without them being written down, there was room for embellishment and changes to be made with every telling, so although the basic storyline remains pretty much the same, who’s to know how much artistic licence was taken in the early days that we now take for granted.

By accusing the BBC of pandering to political correctness by casting David Gyasi as Achilles, surely critics are missing that point - that every telling of the story should be different.

Arguments that you wouldn’t cast a person of colour as Winston Churchill or a white actor as Barack Obama don’t really hold water, but commenters can feel free to tie themselves up in knots beating around the bigot bush by claiming it’s not about race but geography/history/literature, because at the end of the day Achilles is a fictional character.

The point of these stories is that they are told, regardless of how or who by. Achilles has weathered more than two millennia through numerous adaptations - both good and bad - and inspired more than a couple of imitators (hello, Superman).

Likewise, the character tropes of tragic Hector, who - 2,000 year old spoiler alert - meets his end because of the actions of his young, impulsive brother Paris, can still be seen in modern literature and media of all kinds, typically in gangster stories, but almost always without acknowledging the source.

Whether the series ends up being any good is a different matter. The first episode felt rushed and derivative, and included other aspects which seemed unusual (Paris is introduced as the adopted son of a shepherd and Menelaus is a young man played by Robin Hood), but I’ll give it another hour or so and hopefully it’ll even out.

Obviously, the BBC isn’t perfect and they’ve got their share of skeletons in the closet, but whether you find their comedy funny or their output entertaining, they make thousands of hours of television and radio for 40p a day, and that’s not to be sniffed at.

What the BBC-bashers appear to have missed, amid all the fuss, is the announcement that a presenter who not only shot a man dead mid-interview but also punched the commissioning editor of the corporation live on air has just been given a new six-part series.

Personally, I can’t believe more fuss hasn’t been kicked up about his return, but I’ll hold off writing a strongly-worded letter until the new Alan Partridge show airs later this year.