In the 1960s, Lane wrote various short stories and radio screenplays. Her first successes came in collaboration with
Myra Taylor, whom she had met at a writers' workshop in Liverpool, Lane and Taylor submitted some
comedy sketch scripts to the BBC, where they were seen by head of comedy
Michael Mills. He encouraged them to write a half-hour script, which was broadcast as a pilot episode of
The Liver Birds in April 1969. A short first series followed to little acclaim, leading Mills to abandon plans for a second series, though he changed his mind when he read Lane and Taylor's new scripts. The series soon became one of the most popular of its time, characterised by Lane's "ability to conjure laughs out of
pathos and life's little tragedies". Mills left his position as the BBC's head of comedy in 1972, leaving Lane to take sole responsibility for writing the show's scripts the following year.
Butterflies star
Wendy Craig said of Lane, "Her greatest gift was that she understood women and wrote the truth about them ... she spoke about what others didn't. In the case of [my character], it was all about what was going on inside herand many other women at the time." With
Bread, which ran for seven series, Lane was said to have become "the first woman to mine television comedy from sexual and personal relationships through a galère of expertly-etched contemporary characters, developed against a backdrop of social issues such as divorce, adultery, and alcoholism". In the late 1980s,
Bread had the third-highest viewing figures on British television, beaten only by
EastEnders and
Neighbours. an opinion Lane rejected. ==Personal life ==