Dramas portraying the lives of Lord Byron and King Charles II will lead a slate of historical plays coming up on BBC TV.

Jonny Lee Miller - a star of the movie Trainspotting - is set to play the poet Byron, the ultimate rebel whose overnight success brought him instant celebrity status.

Miller will explore Byron's wildly excessive lifestyle and how he became such a radical icon.

The two-parter on BBC Two is written by Nick Dear, whose credits include the award-winning adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion.

Miller is set to play the excessive Lord Byron

It will be directed by Julian Farino (Flesh And Blood, Our Mutual Friend, Bob And Rose).

Meanwhile, BBC One is home to a four-part series about the life of King Charles II, centring on his court, squabbling family and glamorous mistresses - from Nell Gwynne to French spy Louise de Keroualle.

Family

It is written by award-winning screenwriter Adrian Hodges, whose credits include David Copperfield and The Lost World.

Elsewhere, two family films of classic children's tales have been commissioned for BBC One.

Jim Broadbent is set to star as Alfred Salteena in Daisy Ashford's The Young Visitors, adapted by Patrick Barlow.

Pauline Quirke is in an adaptation of Nina Bawden's novel, Carrie's War, which tells the story of London evacuees in Wales during the Second World War.

Sir Michael Gambon stars in Stephen Poliakoff's The Lost Prince

The Hound of the Baskervilles, due later this year on BBC One, is a modern version of the classic Sherlock Holmes tale with Richard Roxburgh and Ian Hart as Holmes and Watson.

Servants by Lucy Gannon, set below stairs in an English country house in the 1850s, is in production for BBC One.

Momentous

It focuses on the hopes, dreams and ambitions of the servants who make a great household work.

Stephen Poliakoff's The Lost Prince, a major two-part drama to be shown on BBC One next year, stars Miranda Richardson, Sir Michael Gambon and Gina McKee.

It tells the little-known story of Edwardian royal, Prince John, the youngest child of George V and Queen Mary.

His short life spanned one of the most momentous periods in history - the political build-up to World War I and the machinations of European royalty in the early part of the 20th Century.