BBC made drama about the far-right in secret  

THE BBC has made the first television drama in more than 20 years about Britain's far-right. It was so nervous about reprisals against the film-makers that it recorded the project in secret.

England Expects, which stars Steven Mackintosh as a security guard and family man who returns to his extreme-right past, was filmed under the neutral title Ray's Daze. Extra security guards were drafted in for the shooting of the drama in the East End of London.

The film, which took more than three years to make, was kept secret from all but a handful of BBC staff, and followed a series of meetings between far-right activists, the writer Frank Deasy and the creative producer Nick Ryan.

Mr Ryan, an award-winning writer, said: "We had to be very careful. Some of the people on the far-right don't take kindly to this type of thing."

England Expects is the first serious dramatisation about far-right activists since the early Eighties depictions of skinhead bootboys in the Trevor Griffiths play Oi for England and Alan Clarke's Made in Britain.

Mr Deasy said the central character in England Expects was far more complex than the stereotype of a right-wing thug. He said: "Ray Knight, played by Steven Mackintosh, is a control freak whose life is falling apart: he's estranged from his wife and daughter and his job is under threat. He blames other people ... foreigners, asylum-seekers, people he defines as other."

Jane Tranter, the BBC's head of drama, said the piece was not about any organisation but aimed to show the way that extremist politics had become increasingly subtle. She said: "It takes a look at modern racism, which in many ways is a lot more insidious than the 'No blacks, no Irish' notices that were put up in the Sixties."