Radio head: Schedule changing

On the day after Derrick Bird shot 12 people dead in Cumbria, Radio 4 broadcast Six Impossible Things in the Afternoon Play slot. The drama, based on the true story of a double murderer, featured the killer yelling: "I'll put a bullet in your brain." The network received 66 complaints and admitted that it had been wrong to transmit it. This admission, and subsequent changes to the station's schedule over the following d ays, raises interesting issues about broadcasting, sensitivity and responsibility after such extraordinary events. There is, of course, a hefty irony that this censure should target the Afternoon Play, a strand often denigrated for having little to do with real life, and being on the safe and snoozy side of things dramatically. Sunday's edition of Desert Island Discs, with forensic psychiatrist Dr Gwen Adshead, was replaced with a repeat of the edition featuring opera director John Copley. A repeat of the drama Last Days of Grace replaced yesterday's Afternoon Play, SE8, in which a teenage girl is shot in south London. The planned Saturday Play, Bloody Sunday, made way for a repeat of Simon Bovey's play, The Iceman. We can all probably agree that in the immediate aftermath of events in Cumbria, Six Impossible Things should have been pulled. But beyond 24 hours, the decisions can look like an over-reaction – Six Impossible Things is not available on the iPlayer – or plain weird. The Iceman is a murder mystery featuring a serial killer who freezes his female victims to death and a line, to rationalise the murders, observing that "a type of man, a wilful man, will exercise control over what he can". Perhaps its historical setting in 1860 and its fictional basis let it through. But this policing of drama and entertainment programmes felt increasingly odd as the dust settled, especially with news networks still seemingly transfixed by every horrific detail of the case itself and bringing them to the fore.