Walters bags Whitehouse drama role

3:46pm Friday 16th May 2008

Crusading campaigner Mary Whitehouse, who embarked on a one-woman mission to clean up British television, will be played by Julie Walters in a new BBC drama, it has been revealed.

Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story will bring to life the battle for morals that raged in the 1960s, the BBC said.

Hugh Bonneville will star as Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, director general of the BBC, whom Whitehouse held mainly responsible for the moral collapse of the country.

The animosity between the two culminated in a bitter fight to broadcast the word "knickers" in the Beatles song I Am The Walrus.

Whitehouse was an unknown housewife and teacher from the Midlands when she began campaigning in 1963.

Despite being in the middle of such a liberal decade, an era that spawned Carnaby Street and the Beatles, Whitehouse was the voice of a large number of people who had no desire to join the permissive age.

Backed by her loyal husband Ernest (Alun Armstrong), Whitehouse set out to fight a war to stop "filth" entering family homes via the television.

Bafta-award winning Walters said she is "very excited" to slip into the new role. She said: "I am very excited to be playing Mary Whitehouse, and to be looking at the time when she attacked the BBC and started to make her name."

One of Britain's best-loved actresses, Walters has won a Bafta for her role in Billy Elliot and was nominated for an Oscar for Educating Rita.

The 90-minute drama was penned by Shameless writer Amanda Coe and directed by The Canterbury Tales' Andy de Emmony. Filth: The Mary Whitehouse Story will be broadcast on BBC Two at 9pm on May 28.

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