Best, a 90-minute factual drama to be screened on BBC Two in Spring 2009, is a frank account of how alcoholism destroyed the career of one of the UK’s most celebrated footballers, George Best, and how the same illness afflicted his mother.

Award-winning writer Terry Caffola creates a fictional account based on real life events to chart the once tee-total Anne Best’s descent into alcoholism at the same time as her son’s meteoric rise to football fame.

The film, carefully crafted, is a sensitive study of the impact of alcoholism.

It will be aired with the support of the BBC Headroom initiative – an ongoing offering of programmes and online content raising awareness about mental health issues.

Set in the Sixties and early Seventies in Belfast and in Manchester, George Best will be played by Tom Payne, 26, recently tipped as one of Screen International’s Stars of Tomorrow.

Payne has appeared in Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, Waterloo Road (BBC One) and He Kills Coppers (ITV1).

Tom Payne says: “I’m excited and honoured to be playing the role of footballing hero and British icon George Best.”

Playing the role of Anne Best (George Best’s mother) is Michelle Fairley who has previously starred in feature film The Others, The Street (BBC One) and Ahead Of The Class (ITV).

Lorcan Cranitch takes on the role of Dickie Best (George’s father). His credits include Cracker (ITV1), Rome (BBC One) and Omagh (Channel 4).

The film has been written by one of Northern Ireland’s leading dramatists, Terry Cafolla, nominated for a BAFTA for Holy Cross (BBC One).

The producer/director is Colin Barr (Emmy Award-winning Maxwell, The Secretary Who Stole £4million, 10 Days To War).

The Executive Producers are Nick Mirsky (Wonderland, Louis Theroux, The Armstrongs), Hilary Salmon (Criminal Justice, The Passion, Five Days) and Dermot Lavery (George Best’s Body, Making The Monkees, From Belfast To Dachau – RTS award winner).

Nick Mirsky says: “George Best is the most charismatic footballer the UK has ever produced, but he’s also our most famous victim of alcoholism.

“Belfast-based Terry Cafolla, a leading TV dramatist, has written a deeply sympathetic script through which you can really understand the effect of alcohol, not only on George, but also on his mother, and indirectly the rest of their family.”