Our round-up of what's going on in the arts
Could English National Opera be sacrificed to boost the Olympic coffers? ENO bosses fear that rumoured plans to hold a small-scale ENO show at the Young Vic could be the thin end of the wedge. Could the government soon sell off the Coliseum and turn the great company into a slimline touring rep outfit? The company's supporters argue that this would net barely £100m over five years.
Fury at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) over ideas from ITV's chairman, Michael Grade, about holding an ITV awards ceremony for excellence in television and film to rival the academy's own. Grade thinks Bafta is too elitist, and that ITV doesn't get enough gongs. The Bafta luminary and former chair Duncan Kenworthy is "apoplectic" about the plans - especially as Grade is Bafta's vice-president!
Andrew Davies, king of the costume drama and writer of screenplays for Pride and Prejudice, Vanity Fair and Middlemarch, is turning his attention to the state of the nation for his next BBC adaptation - James Hawes's novel Speak for England, in which modern-day Englishness is compared to the 1950s version based on The Book of Common Prayer and old Eagle annuals.
Signs of a yuppie comeback at the young artist Natasha Archdale's show next month at The Gallery on the Charing Cross Road in London. Two City bigwigs have commissioned portraits of nude women made out of Financial Times articles about themselves. Loadsamoney!
Fancy watching a sitcom about a flat shared by a vampire, a zombie and a werewolf? Well, it's being developed by (who else?) Channel 4.
bendowell@btinternet.com
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