Now this is brave. Just a few months after poor old Lindsay Lohan crashed and burned in Liz and Dick, the BBC has announced that it is set to cast Dominic West and Helena Bonham Carter in its own take on the romance between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

As is so often the case these days – think Lincoln, The Queen, Frost/Nixon – the piece will reject the full biopic treatment for a tight focus on one representative event. Burton and Taylor deals with the couple’s time appearing in a production of Noël Coward’s Private Lives during the early 1980s.

Though they are both playing beautiful people, Helena and Dominic are to be commended for lack of vanity. Both are a fair bit younger than the legends were at the time.

Burton and Taylor looks to be the last drama production to screen on the heavily cut, consistently excellent BBC4 network. Boo!