Why bother?

ETTL notes the dramatisation of Anne Frank and her diary on the Beeb tonight. Did anyone actually demand it? Surely this has been transferred to the screen on many occasions, and so what does this new version add?

ETTL should confess he never got very far into the source diary. I found Ms Frank to be an extremely irritating teenage girl who needed a good slapping. By the time I gave up on it I was practically gagging for the Nazis to gas her, such was her preciousness. I simply couldn't give a toss which of the boys fancied her and found JD Salinger a much better narrator of what it means to be an adolescent.

But that said the book is thought to be only just behind the Bible in sales and readership. So its adaptation is of cultural importance - at least the first time. But TV seems obsessed with new versions of everything, especially old favourites like the Dickens canon or anything with "costume" in the genre description. One wonders what the cash could have been spent on that is truly original. How many Twin Peaks does it cost to make the latest A Christmas Carol? Licence-fee payers deserve better...