By Christopher Stevens,Editor

Copyright dailymail

When BBC2 buys in shows from overseas, does anyone at Broadcasting House actually watch them before putting them on the air?

Either nobody bothered looking at the opening minutes of The Newsreader as it returned for a third series or, worse still, somebody did — and failed to see how grossly offensive it was.

This Australian romantic drama, set in the 1980s, charts the rivalry between current affairs presenters and on-off lovers Helen and Dale (Anna Torv and Sam Reid).

The show, which frequently verges on comedy, takes delight in dressing its characters in exaggerated fashions of the era, all big hair and Italian suits. And it weaves real news events into its storylines, such as the Challenger space shuttle explosion and the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown.

Previously, those headlines have been treated with decency. There’s no sentimentality about even the worst tragedies, but that’s how the news business works. At the same time, black humour is avoided, and grim disasters are not played for entertainment . . . until now.

The new episode opened in December 1988 with Helen, her cameraman and her producer bickering in a car as they struggled to read a map of Scotland at night. One of them was complaining about how long they’d been on the road, the other two were squabbling about directions.

‘When was the last time you knew where we were?’ demanded Helen.

‘Err . . . Gretna Green,’ came the reply.

When, almost too late, they spotted the turn-off they needed, they lurched up a track and scrambled out of the car in all directions like the Keystone Kops.

Flashing blue lights were lighting the sky, and distant sirens were wailing. Only then did it become clear why they were in a field in Dumfriesshire. In front of them lay the smouldering wreckage of Pan Am Flight 103.

To use the Lockerbie crash as a backdrop for light comedy is simply unforgivable. A terrorist bomb killed 270 people, 11 of them on the ground. The BBC does not even have the excuse that Australians might not understand how raw the tragedy still is. The production company that makes The Newsreader, Werner Film, is owned by the Beeb’s global arm, BBC Studios.

The show soon returned to base in Melbourne, with a gala awards night where Helen was nominated for her Lockerbie coverage, and Dale was up for Personality of the Year — opposite Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan, then at the height of their Neighbours fame. Archive footage made it seem as if they were there, with actor Bryan Brown making an appearance, too.

Later, bisexual Dale was surprised in his hotel room by a gang of his drunken colleagues who somehow failed to spot his boyfriend hiding in the bathroom.

Frothy fun like that is what The Newsreader does well. But its appalling lapse of judgment and taste is impossible to overlook.