Granada: 'Working closely with the family'

Casting is under way to find actors to play Stephen Lawrence, his mother Doreen and father Neville. Plans for the two-hour drama, to be screened next year, are under way as the inquiry into 18-year-old's unsolved racist murder continues.

ITV has just given the go-ahead for the drama, written by World In Action investigative journalist Paul Greengrass.

He also wrote The One That Got Away about SAS involvement in the Gulf War and was also the ghostwriter on Peter Wright's controversial Spycatcher.

"We are working very closely with the Lawrence family on this project," said a Granada drama spokeswoman. "It is really their story."

Controversial case

No one has ever been convicted of the murder, and an ongoing inquiry has already heard evidence of alleged incompetence and racism by police officers handling the case.

A private prosecution against five white youths brought by the Lawrence family failed, and the five later gave evidence to the public inquiry.

ITV will give the Stephen Lawrence drama-documentary top billing, with a mid-evening time-slot some time next year.

Granada's Who Bombed Birmingham? programme drama-documentary made in 1990 led to public pressure to free the men wrongfully convicted of the IRA terror attack on a pub in Guildford 15 years earlier.