Stars Sign Up For Cathy Come Home Anniversary Drama

Actors Colin Firth and Robert Carlyle will star in a BBC drama marking the 40th anniversary of Ken Loach's film Cathy Come Home.  Nighty Night's Julia Davis and Anne-Marie Duff of Shameless also star. The drama will present the stories of several characters who find themselves living in temporary housing.

The drama was commissioned for the anniversary of Loach's powerful 1966 TV film, Cathy Come Home, which showed how an average family became homeless. Provisionally called London, the drama has been written and directed by Dominic Savage, who made the 2002 youth offenders' drama Out of Control.

Firth will play the lead role as a wealthy city worker trying to help people less fortunate than himself but inevitably becoming drawn into their lives.

Loach's drama sparked a national debate, whilst at the same time, the homeless charity Shelter was established. A poll conducted by the British Film Institute in 2000 found Cathy Come Home was the second favourite programme of all time for UK TV industry figures

The film will not be a remake or update of Cathy Come Home, said a BBC spokesperson.

"This is a film about social inequalities, people in desperate circumstances and their intertwining different lives," he said.

"It's ultimately about people's relationships and the difficulties, dilemmas and moral issues they face."