What is the BBC spending its money on this summer

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Big hit: Pride and Prejudice

A.� The BBC has an extra �100 million for drama spread over the next two years to bridge the funding gap with its rival, ITV. The extra �100 million will be spent on every type of drama, says the BBC, from a fourth episode of EastEnders to big investment in two-parters, contemporary serials and costume dramas.

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Highlights for late summer and the autumn include a series called Linda Green, starring Lisa Tarbuck as a feisty, 30-something single woman.�While Cold Feet star Faye Ripley stars in a BBC thriller Green Eyed Monster, about a woman whose husband has apparently murdered their next-door neighbour. David Suchet is back on the BBC in a new adaptation of The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope's satire on green, power and speculation at the dawn of the railway age.

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The biggest budget show at the Beep will be�a Band of Brothers, a Steven Spielberg production made jointly with US cable channel HBO, following a US Army regiment through the explosive D-Day invasion of occupied France. Friends star David Schwimmer is the biggest name in�the Anglo-Amermican cast.

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One of the BBC's own big guns, EastEnders glamourpuss Tamsin Outhwaite (Mel Owen) should boost ratings with Redcap, a one-off film casting her as an investigator in the Army's own internal police force.

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BabyFather shows A&E star David Harewood in the story of four black friends finding their way through love and life in London, and former Peak Practice star Haydn Gwynne joins the BBC for Merseybeat, the channel's latest attempt to find a long-running cop show.

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The next series of Monarch of the Glen, being filmed in the Highlands this summer, has been one of the beneficiaries of the extra cash, and there are also extra episodes planned of Down to Earth with Warren Beatty and Pauline Quirke, and In Deep with Nick Berry.

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Q.� What about ITV

A.� ITV has a massive �279 million drama budget and has lined up big guns for its forthcoming schedule. There is a remake of the classic serial The Forsyte Saga with Gina McGee as the beautiful Irene, and Damian Lewis as her hated husband Soames. David Jason, one of the channel's biggest names, stars in Micawber, a four-part Dickens spin-off by the Only Fools and Horses creator John Sullivan.

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Casting for ITV's version of Doctor Zhivago is also under way with Corrs star Andrea Corr supposedly competing with Anna Friel and Kate Winslet for the role played by Julie Christie in the 1960s. Daniela Nardini will star in Sirens, a police drama from Scotland, and John Hannah is back as Rebus.

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Caroline Quentin and Paul McGann star in a controversial series called Blood Strangers, which tells the story of a woman who discovered her murdered 14-year-old daughter was a prostitute.

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Quentin alos heads a one-off film Hot Money, about three women who rob the Bank of England, and Eamonn Walker stars in an update of Othello as the first black police chief at the Met, with Christopher Eccleston as Jago, his fatally jealous right-hand man, and Keeley Hawes as Dessie, Commisioner Othetllo's beautiful but doomed wife.

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ITV rivals Michelle Collins and BBC's Clocking Off star Philip Glenister stars in Lloyd and Hill, two cops who are former lovers working together on a murder hunt, and Patricia Routledge gets a meaty role in Anybody's Nightmare, the true story of a middle-class piano teacher who served four years for the murder of her elderly aunt.

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By Katharine MacColl