The BBC is to broadcast its first TV adaptation of William Shakespeare's Henry V for more than 30 years as part of a season of his history plays to be overseen by Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes.

Working with Mendes on the BBC's "epic film versions" of Richard II, Henry IV part I and II, and Henry V will be some of British theatre's leading lights, including Sir Richard Eyre, Simon Russell Beale and Rupert Goold, director of Enron. Another Oscar-winning writer and director, Jane Campion, and Sir David Hare will also be writing major new dramas for the BBC.

The four plays have not been adapted by the corporation for TV since 1978 and 1979, during the BBC Television Shakespeare project, which brought the playwright's entire body of theatre work to screen over seven years. They will be broadcast on BBC2 and are part of a £10m season in 2012 to celebrate Shakespeare, which includes a live broadcast of another play, yet to be revealed.

Mendes will executive produce the four Shakespeare films, in what will be the American Beauty and Revolutionary Road director's first work for BBC TV. Mendes founded and ran the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London for 10 years and won five Academy Awards for his first film, American Beauty. "One of my earliest introductions to Shakespeare was watching the plays on TV, and it's terrific to have the opportunity to bring them to a new, wider audience," he said.

Russell Beale will be associate producer of the four plays, while the directors include Eyre and Goold – whose credits include the acclaimed play about one of the biggest frauds in corporate history, Enron. The BBC drama controller, Ben Stephenson, promised "epic film versions" of the four Shakespeare plays, "by some of the best directors in the country".

The BBC broadcast more than 60 TV productions of Shakespeare plays between 1945 and the late 1970s, according to the British Film Institute, culminating in the BBC Television Shakespeare season that ran from 1978 to 1985 and featured stars such as Laurence Olivier and Derek Jacobi.

But in the past three decades TV adaptations of Shakespeare have been less frequent. However, last Boxing Day the corporation returned to tradition and broadcast a reworking of a Royal Shakespeare Company production of Hamlet starring David Tennant which drew around 1 million viewers. It is following it up by screening Patrick Stewart in a film version of Macbeth on BBC4 next year.

BBC2 will also air Campion's series Top of the Lake. Campion, whose credits include The Piano and In the Cut, has written and will direct the thriller set in New Zealand about a 12-year-old girl who disappears when she is five months pregnant. Details of Hare's single play have yet to be revealed but he will write and direct it.

Despite contemporary hits such as The Silence and Five Daughters and period dramas such as Cranford, the BBC's critics have called for it to make more single plays.

The BBC has countered constant clamouring for the return of Play for Today with acclaimed BBC1 daytime series Moving On – a series of single plays which is returning for a second series with a star cast including Anna Massey, John Simm and the late Corin Redgrave.

Attracting some of the world's leading creative talents to make such high quality dramas is likely to help provide the corporation with critical ammunition and support as it enters negotiations with the government over the future level of the licence fee early next year.

The next four-year settlement will be in place until 2017 but the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has repeatedly stressed the need for the BBC to take account of the recession and "live on the same planet as everyone else".

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