LIVERPOOL’S Bafta- award winning writer, Jimmy McGovern, last night defended his latest drama after a Gulf War veteran criticised an episode of a BBC1 drama.

Colonel Tim Collins said Accused, set on the front line, was irresponsible and a “desperate” attempt to “shock”.

Accused features six prime-time dramas about crime and punishment. The second episode, which stars Mackenzie Crook, sees two friends join the British Army and discover in Afghanistan that not obeying orders has deadly consequences.

Col Collins criticised the episode, to be broadcast next Monday, for its “generous lashings of gratuitous violence” and “use of foul and abusive language”.

He said the drama “fails the soldiers on the front line”, adding: “At this very moment, we have men laying down their lives in Afghanistan so that Jimmy McGovern retains his freedom to attack them from behind his pen.”

He said the writer had “stabbed” the Army “in the back”, but added: “They won’t care, they’re far above that.”

But McGovern defended his work in Accused.

He said: “This episode is a work of fiction and as a dramatist I was interested in exploring how soldiers have to be at a certain mindset to kill. It is not my intention to slur British soldiers, for whom I have the greatest respect.

“At the heart of the drama is my belief in the sanctity of life.”