IN REPLY to Keith Massey (Soap Box letter, January 1), please don’t encourage the programme planners at the BBC or all us licence payers will be lumped with another soap by stealth if Pemberley goes beyond its three-part series.

I do hope it doesn’t join the dreadful EastEnders and latterly Waterloo Road as prime-time viewing. Another period drama is not what we need. I think I would prefer watching the proverbial paint drying.

By the way, acting cannot and never should be classed as an industry.

JA Holroyd, Chaloners Road, Dringhouses, York.

 

• I ENDORSE Paul Baker’s praise of the BBC1 drama The 7.39 (Letters, January 10). When I read beforehand that this was written by David Nicholls, I knew it would be first class, and I was right.

This novelist/screenwriter has produced some fine work, including One Day and Starter for 10.

The TV play was done with great sensitivity; such a change from the often over sexually explicit stuff we see on our small screens.

Mr Baker says: “Well done BBC.” I follow that with: “Thank God for the BBC.”

Over the decades we have had such fine drama from the corporation, and also on BBC radio. I was reminded of the Play For Today dramas in the 1970s and early 1980s which featured original plays. They were a huge success, now sadly gone.

Elizabeth M Harris, Kirkwell, Bishopthorpe, York.