THE old adage, if it ain't broke, don't fix it immediately sprang to mind when I heard about ITV's new adaptation of Doctor Zhivago.

To be fair, I can barely remember the film version of the Russian Boris Pasternak classic, so I was happy to tune in to see whether the hype justified the end result.

At the risk of annoying the purists, I thoroughly enjoyed the first in the three-part series. But, even so, I had to groan in dismay when I heard that scriptwriter Andrew Davies had taken it upon himself to change the ending of the story.

I can only imagine the decision to invest a massive chunk out of ITV's budget in the remake of the story came about because modern day writers are unable to come up with anything remotely as interesting or clever as this Twentieth Century classic.

So why then meddle with it?

Fine, give a different perspective or interpretation of the story, but actually changing the ending seems ludicrous. No one would dream of allowing Romeo to waltz off into the sunset with Juliet, or killing off Oliver Twist to add to the drama, so why should Andrew Davies presume he can do a better job of finishing Doctor Zhivago than its actual author?

Still, despite lacking some of the subtleties of the original book, and subsequent film, this series is a cut above the rest of the rubbish spoon fed to us all on a daily basis, so I for one will carry on watching . . . but with one wary eye waiting to see what the ending has in store.