BBC buys Spielberg war drama

BBC One will show the drama next year

The BBC is to buy the most expensive television drama ever made, Steven Spielberg's Band of Brothers.

The multi-million pound war drama will be shown on BBC One next year.

Band of Brothers is a ten part series which centres upon an elite United States corps fighting in World War II.

The scripts read really well. It was warm and moving.

Peter Salmon, BBC One controller

Many of those working on the new drama were involved in the making of the film Saving Private Ryan, which won Spielberg the Directors' Guild of America award for outstanding directorial achievement.

BBC One controller Peter Salmon said Band of Brothers was an expensive project.

"It was available to everybody," he said, "but we successfully bid for it."

"It's not something we went into lightly. We thought a lot about it.

"The scripts read really well. It was warm and moving. We've explained such a lot about the First World War already so we thought we should look at the second.

Many members of the Band of Brothers Team worked on Saving Private Ryan

"We're also doing something with the Battle of Britain as well as Band of Brothers."

Spielberg has been writing, producing, directing - even sometimes acting in - films since the late 1950s.

In that time he has won almost 30 awards, including two Oscars and three Emmys.

In February he was chosen to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Directors' Guild of America.