A winter schedule focusing on "major event drama" has been unveiled today by acting BBC One controller Roly Keating.

Leading the lineup is a Richard Curtis and Anthony Minghella adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith's The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, a "poignant and amusing story" set in Botswana starring singer Jill Scott.

"Filmed entirely on location in Botswana, it's an entertaining and optimistic story, offering a very different insight to Africa than we are used to seeing in the news," said Keating.

Period dramas including a new adaptation of Sense and Sensibility, starring David Morrissey, Dominic Cooper, Janet McTeer and Mark Gatiss, have also been given top billing. Alongside Andrew Davies' retelling of Jane Austen's classic novel, Dawn French and Julia Sawalha are to star in Lark Rise to Candleford, which has been adapted from Flora Thompson's memoir of her childhoold at the end of the 19th century.

At the grittier end of the spectrum, Kiss of Death from Waking the Dead's Barbara Machin will tell a crime story using timeshifts and from various points of view - ranging from those investigating the crime to a murderer and his victims. It will star Danny Dyer and Louise Lombard.

The thriller genre will be served by The Last Enemy, in which a man searching for the truth about his brother's death is thrust into an international conspiracy, and Apparitions, which stars Martin Shaw as a Jesuit priest investigating miraculous happenings.