Career
Born in Lowestoft, Marshall attended Fen Park School and then Lowestoft Grammar School, and afterwards Borough Road College where he studied mathematics and psychology. Around the same time, he worked regularly on Radio 4's Week Ending , together with David Renwick, Douglas Adams, Alistair Beaton, John Lloyd, Simon Brett and others. Shortly afterwards he began writing The Burkiss Way with David Renwick and John Mason (who later dropped out to go to acting school). Renwick and Marshall remained scriptwriting partners for many years.
Brought by Humphrey Barclay to London Weekend Television, originally to repeat his 'nursery slopes comedy' Do Not Adjust Your Set with End of Part One , Marshall and Renwick went on to write a series of television satires, including Whoops Apocalypse , Hot Metal and If You See God, Tell Him — the latter originally for Channel 4, but postponed for several years when the channel refused to let them direct it, and finally ending up at the BBC later.
They also experimented with a type of neo-Vaudeville style in The Steam Video Company for Thames Television, ultimately ending up at the BBC, writing, with Alexei Sayle, Alexei Sayle's Stuff . Along the way they also wrote the screenplay for a film version of Whoops Apocalypse and adapted Tom Sharpe's novel Wilt for a film of the same title.
After a tentative and unsuccessful attempt at solo writing with Sob Sisters at Central Television, Marshall found long-lasting success BBC One's 2point4 children , adding to it Health and Efficiency and later, Dad . He also found time to adapt Alexei Sayle's short story "Lose Weight, Ask Me How" for the series Spinechillers , in which Sayle also starred.
Having also contributed to Agatha Christie's Poirot on ITV, he next wrote drama with the telefantasy series Strange for Saturday nights on BBC One. However, due to scheduling issues, a one-year gap between the pilot episode and the series and the BBC's decision not to repeat the pilot before the series began, the series failed to find a large audience in its Saturday night slot and was not recommissioned for a second run.
Until recently Marshall has avoided publicity of any kind, explaining that "it's very bad for you", and cites his major influences as "Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney... which explains a lot." In 2005, he had a small cameo appearance on-screen in an episode of David Renwick's comedy-drama Love Soup on BBC One, alongside Renwick himself, as members of a sitcom scriptwriting team. He also appeared as a member of the Critics Panel on several editions of BBC 7's "Serious About Comedy" in 2006–7.
More recently he began a new collaboration with Rob Grant, producing directing and writing the Radio 4 Series "The Quanderhorn Xperimentations" - and also the novel version published by Gollancz. In a further unexpected turn, he and Rob Grant launched a Radio 4 sketch Series "The Nether Regions" as writer/performers in October 2019. Grant and Marshall are working together on other projects as well.
London Weekend Television (LWT) was the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties at weekends, broadcasting from Fridays at 5.15 pm to Monday mornings at 6:00. From 1968 until 1992, when LWT's weekday counterpart was Thames Television, there was an on-screen handover to LWT on Friday nights. From 1993 to 2002, when LWT's weekday counterpart was Carlton Television, the transfer usually occurred invisibly during a commercial break, for Carlton and LWT shared studio and transmission facilities.
The Comic Strip are a group of British comedians who came to prominence in the 1980s. They are known for their television series The Comic Strip Presents..., which was labelled as a pioneering example of the alternative comedy scene. The core members are Adrian Edmondson, Dawn French, Rik Mayall, Nigel Planer, Peter Richardson and Jennifer Saunders, with appearances by Keith Allen, Robbie Coltrane, Alexei Sayle and others.
Janet "Jan" Ravens is an English actress and impressionist, known for her voice work on Spitting Image and Dead Ringers.
Alexei David Sayle is an English actor, author, stand-up comedian, television presenter and former recording artist. He was a leading figure in the British alternative comedy movement in the 1980s. He was voted the 18th greatest stand-up comic of all time on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-ups in 2007. In an updated 2010 poll he came 72nd.
Robert Grant is an English comedy writer, television producer and co-creator of Red Dwarf. Since Red Dwarf, Grant has written two television series, The Strangerers and Dark Ages, and four solo novels, his most recent being Fat. During his career Grant has been involved in two distinct writing partnerships: the first with Doug Naylor, and the second and most recent with Andrew Marshall.
Ronald Chesney and Ronald Wolfe were British television comedy scriptwriters, best known for their 1960s and 1970s sitcoms The Rag Trade, Meet the Wife (1963–66), On the Buses (1969–73) and Romany Jones (1972–75). When their partnership began in the mid-1950s, Chesney was already known to the public as a harmonica player.
Norman Richard Collins was a British writer, and later a radio and television executive, who became one of the major figures behind the establishment of the Independent Television (ITV) network in the UK. This was the first organisation to break the BBC's broadcasting monopoly when it began transmitting in 1955.
The Burkiss Way is a BBC Radio 4 sketch comedy series, originally broadcast between August 1976 and November 1980. It was written by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, with additional material in seasons 1 and 2 by John Mason, Colin Bostock-Smith, Douglas Adams, John Lloyd, Tom Magee Englefield and Liz Pollock.
David Peter Renwick is an English author, television writer, actor, director and executive producer, best known for creation of the sitcom One Foot in the Grave and the mystery series Jonathan Creek. He was awarded the Writers Guild Ronnie Barker Award at the 2008 British Comedy Awards.
Whoops Apocalypse is a six-part 1982 television sitcom by Andrew Marshall and David Renwick, made by London Weekend Television for ITV. Marshall and Renwick later reworked the concept as a 1986 film of the same name from ITC Entertainment, with almost completely different characters and plot, although one or two of the original actors returned in different roles.
Stanley Livingstone Baxter is a Scottish actor, comedian, impressionist and author. Baxter began his career as a child actor on BBC Scotland and later became known for his British television comedy shows The Stanley Baxter Show, The Stanley Baxter Picture Show, The Stanley Baxter Series and Mr Majeika.
John Sparkes is a Welsh actor and comedian. He portrayed Barry Welsh, presenter of the HTV Wales series Barry Welsh Is Coming. He has also had major roles in Naked Video, Absolutely, Fireman Sam, Shaun the Sheep, and Jeff Global's Global Probe, and is the narrator of the children's television show Peppa Pig.
Carnival Films is a British production company based in London, UK, founded in 1978. It has produced television series for all the major UK networks including the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky, as well as international broadcasters including PBS, A&E, HBO and NBC. Productions include single dramas, long-running television dramas, feature films, and stage productions.
Alexei Sayle's Stuff is a British television comedy sketch show which ran on BBC2 for a total of 18 episodes over 3 series from 1988 to 1991.
Caroline Milmoe is an English stage, film and television actress best known for playing Julie in the first two series of Carla Lane's Liverpool-based BBC sit-com Bread and Lisa Duckworth in ITV's long-running soap opera Coronation Street.
Owen Brenman is an English actor best known for his role as next-door neighbour Nick Swainey in the multi-award-winning BBC sitcom One Foot in the Grave, which ran for ten years (1990–2000) and was written by David Renwick. He subsequently played Heston Carter in the BBC drama series Doctors from 2008 to 2018.
End of Part One is a British television comedy sketch show written by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall; it was made by London Weekend Television. It ran for two series on ITV, from 1979 to 1980 and was an attempt at a TV version of The Burkiss Way. The first series concerned the lives of Norman and Vera Straightman, who had their lives interrupted by various television personalities of the day. The second series was mainly a straight succession of parodies of TV shows of the time, including Larry Grayson's Generation Game and Nationwide.
Sid Colin was an English scriptwriter, working for radio, television and the cinema. He is best remembered for the television comedies The Army Game (1957–59), Up Pompeii! (1969–1970), and films including Carry On Spying and Percy's Progress. He occasionally collaborated with regular Carry On series writer Talbot Rothwell. Earlier in his career, he was a musician and occasional lyricist.
Peter Geoffrey Francis Jones was an English actor, screenwriter and broadcaster.
Quanderhorn is a science fiction comedy radio series written by Andrew Marshall and Rob Grant. The first series was originally broadcast in the United Kingdom by BBC Radio 4 in 2018, and a second in 2020. The series has elements that pastiche Nigel Kneale's Professor Bernard Quatermass.
