"My Name is Malcolm Tucker. I Was in a Casting Accident and Woke Up in AD 1"

Could be interesting: Life on Mars writer Tony Jordan is scripting a version of the Nativity story, to be broadcast in 4 half-hour episodes on the BBC this Christmas.

The production will focus on the love story between Mary and Joseph and their "emotional turmoil" over her pregnancy. says the blurb. Hopefully there'll be something about God in there too, given that He's right at the centre of what both Mary (Luke's gospel) and Joseph (Matthew) thought was going on.

Among the several 'names' in the cast is The Thick of It's Peter Capaldi, best remembered by some of us for Local Hero, as a wise man. I already have mental images of Balthasar barking into his mobile "Camels? Which ****** had the ********** to come up with that one?"

Ben Stephenson, controller, BBC drama commissioning, said: "We are proud to bring audiences this beautiful story retold for Christmas 2010 by a master storyteller.

"We hope our version of the nativity will give audiences all the wonder, magic and inspiration of the original while also telling a less familiar tale, that of ordinary people going about their lives with no sense of the enormous importance their story would hold for centuries to come."

I maintain that its impossible to retell this story with any integrity unless God is right at the centre of it, whether he's right at the centre for the writer, producers, broadcasters or not. So we'll see. The Easter serial starring Joseph Mawle a couple of years back did a decent job (though a strange ending), and I'm always hopeful....