BBC chiefs have come under fire for cutting an award-winning new drama series, costing 70 Scottish jobs and wasting several hundred thousand pounds of licence-payers� money.

BBC chiefs have come under fire for cutting an award-winning new drama series, costing 70 Scottish jobs and wasting several hundred thousand pounds of licence-payers' money.

Cast and crew on Phoo Action, which was due to begin shooting later this month, were told yesterday that the series had been cancelled.

Furious staff said the show, featuring actress Jaime Winstone and former Rocky star Carl Weathers alongside ER's Eddie Shin, had been pulled with no warning.

A pilot of Phoo Action won the Scottish Bafta for Best TV Drama earlier this week, and the series was due to go out on BBC 3 in the next year.

A spokesman for the BBC last night confirmed that the series, which has already gone through nine months of pre-production in Dumbarton, had been decommissioned.

He said: "During the course of pre-production it became clear that, creatively, Phoo Action was struggling to fulfil its ambitions as a television drama so the decision was taken to cancel it.

"BBC 3 is still very interested in Phoo Action as a concept and is looking into whether or not it may come back in another form in the future."

The loss of the series is particularly embarrassing, as it was to count towards a target set by BBC Director-General Mark Thompson for Scotland to produce 9% of all the corporation's output.

Management at the BBC refused to reveal how much money had been lost on the project, but one source estimated the loss to be at least £500,000.

He said: "There's over £200,000 of manpower and set-building that's gone into it, and they'll have to pay compensation to those people whose contracts have been cut. The actors have turned down other roles, and even come over from America to shoot this."

He said sets would now be scrapped, including a mock-up of an underground train station and a city roof-top, while a stylish sports car was sitting unused in a garage at the studio.

Staff involved spoke of their shock at losing their jobs, with one adding that he was "appalled" by the way bosses had handled the situation.

Another angry staff member said many of his colleagues had relocated from around the country on the expectation that they would be employed until March.

Several, he said, had made arrangements for family to travel to the Dumbarton studios, and some are tied into six-month housing leases. Compensation claims are likely to follow.

Despite the Phoo Action pilot winning a Scottish Bafta last weekend, crew members said the series had been dogged by script problems and one said it was "a complete waste of time".

"It was absolutely rubbish anyway," he said, adding that the stars had frequently seemed embarrassed by the lines they were asked to read.

Though the project was funded by BBC Scotland and scheduled to be shot at the Dumbarton studio, the decision to axe it was taken by Ben Stephenson, controller of BBC Drama Commissioning, and Danny Cohen, controller of BBC 3.

The series was to blend kung-fu, comedy and car chases, according to promotional material, and was based on characters created by Jamie Hewlett - best-known as the man behind cartoon-band Gorillaz.

Glasgow-based comedian Sanjeev Kohli was to appear as a celebrity-obsessed news anchorman, alongside stars like Jaime Winstone, daughter of Ray Winstone, and Weathers, who played Apollo Creed in the Rocky films.

BBC Scotland said that despite the show's cancellation there were still several strong projects due for release in the near future, including Hope Springs and PAs, a comedy series about four "desperate workwives" trying to break through the glass ceiling in their office jobs.