DR THOMAS BOWDLER would have approved. The latest film versions of Pride and Prejudice and Oliver Twist contain nothing that might give offence or create an inappropriate stirring of the blood. Jane Austen’s novel has been robbed of repressed passion and social criticism and turned into a relentlessly pretty romance of which Barbara Cartland might have been proud. And Oliver Twist, though directed by Roman Polanski, who assuredly knows a thing or two about humanity’s dark side, utterly lacks terror and poverty-induced psychosis.

While both provide a couple of pleasant, if unmemorable hours, of entertainment, they are symptomatic of an attitude towards culture that is deeply worrying. We appear to have slipped almost unnoticed into an era of New Victorianism, and now find ourselves subject to the same obsession with denial that once led to the excision or covering up of anything that might be considered offensive or over stimulating, such as a naked table leg. It is as if the interpreters of these whey-faced revisions assume that the raw meat of the original is so unpalatable to a modern audience that it must be pre-chewed and half digested before being fed to a hungry audience in a bolus of pap. This is Wonderloaf culture; white bread that is as close to the real thing as Jordan is to Primo Levi.

The hand of the nanny state reaches far beyond the realm of politics. These milksop interpretations of full-blooded literary classics have been around for some time but rarely has it been more evident.

The recent film version of Vanity Fair performed a similar disservice to Thackeray’s original and in particular to his spiky, ambitious, gold-digging heroine Becky Sharp. As played by Reese Witherspoon she was far too likeable to make her passage through society credible. And both Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre have been rendered impotent by their recent big-screen versions.

The film industry is not exclusively responsible for this white-breading of literature. Andrew Lloyd Webber achieved the impossible by turning one of the most complex and terrifying Victorian thrillers, The Woman in White, into a musical of ineffable blandness.

The distressing thing is that this process is entirely unnecessary. Musical versions of literary classics, especially Dickens, can retain the atmosphere, potency and passion of the original without recourse to censorship. I have seen school productions of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! that had more authentic brutality and sex than Polanski’s cleaned-up, non-musical version. And I have seen episodes of The Muppet Show that had more repressed sexual passion than the current Pride & Prejudice.

Clearly, one of the contributing factors to this culture of milksoppery is the economics of entertainment. Films and big theatrical productions are expensive to mount and the producers have to design their projects with profit in mind. But it may also be result of the technological age, when everything bows to the god of speed. It has always been that the bottom line is the buck. Now it is not just the buck but the speed with which it is made that is affecting the content of popular entertainment.

One of the prime considerations is the US market — both for films and theatre — which clearly has a bearing on the material. The irony is that in spite of our feeble attempts to tailor our literary adaptations for the US market, the Americans are beating us at our own game. Their teen-genre movies based on Eng Lit classics from Austen to Shakespeare — Clueless, 10 Things I Hate About You — mostly retain the spikiness, wit and social relevance of the originals.

The excuse that these productions are for general viewing — from children to grandparents — also butters no parsnips. Children today, accustomed to playing Grand Theft Auto San Andreas on their game consoles, are unlikely to be fooled by the anodyne antics of the Artful Dodger and his pals. Children love to be scared, need to be terrified from time to time. The older generation will remember earlier movie versions in which Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson smouldered with adult passion or Alec Guinness and Robert Newton (not to mention Oliver Reed) delivered a genuine chill of terror.

Has society changed so much that it has to be protected from the dark matter of classic literature? In an age that seems to embrace and celebrate the anodyne, from Katie Melua to James Blunt, we are in danger of allowing ourselves to be coddled into a coma. With so many escape routes available to the chill-out zone — banal music, the thumb-sucking movies of Richard Curtis, chick and chap lit — it is wholly unnecessary to mess with classic literature which, after all, has become classic literature precisely because it explores and exposes the human condition without the corrupting lever of sentimentality.

To remove Austen’s critique of her society as well as leave out the more offensive elements such as Wickham’s mercenary manipulation of women through irresistible sexuality (not to mention reducing Elizabeth Bennet from a fiercely intelligent witty woman to a slightly bewildered girl) is a travesty.

But now, it seems, the Wonderloaf culture is spreading into other arenas. The weather forecast is now to be bowdlerised by good-news spin-doctoring. As if we aren’t mature enough to stomach the appalling facts of rain, frequent showers, cloudy at first.

Personally, I can’t wait for the next real storm. As long as they don’t remove the thunder and lightning.

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