Alice Troughton | |
---|---|
Born | Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, England |
Nationality | British |
Alma mater | University of Kent |
Occupations | |
Years active | 2002–present |
Alice Troughton is a British film and television director known for her work on Merlin, Doctor Who and its spin-offs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures . In 2023, she made her feature film debut with The Lesson .
Troughton studied drama at the University of Kent, where in her second year she directed Hamlet . [1] She realised she wanted to be a television director when she was 32 years old, having worked as a fringe-theatre director, writer, personal driver at ICM and BBC Films and care worker. [1] In 2002, she enrolled in the Doctors directing course. [1] The same year in India, Troughton filmed her first short film called Refuge, based on the diary of a young Tibetan woman. [1] [2] It was later followed by another short film, Doris the Builder, starring Tom Ellis and based on a true story from her hometown, Aylesbury, about a builder who took a load of breast-enhancing hormones for a dare. [1]
From 2006 to 2010, Troughton directed episodes of each of Torchwood , The Sarah Jane Adventures , and Doctor Who . She was only the second person (after Colin Teague) to direct episodes of all three shows, which are set in a shared universe. [3] Despite their shared surname and common association with Doctor Who, Troughton is not related to actor Patrick Troughton, who played the Second Doctor in the 1960s. [4] Her directing in the franchise received overwhelmingly positive reviews, particularly for the Doctor Who episode "Midnight". [5] [6] Since then, she has gone on to become a leading director, working on acclaimed award-winning British shows such as BBC Three's In the Flesh and Channel 4's Cucumber and Baghdad Central . [7] For her work on Cucumber, she was nominated for Best Director: Fiction at the 2015 Royal Television Society Craft & Design Awards. [8] In the US, she worked on The CW's superhero series The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow and Netflix's science fiction series Lost in Space. [7]
For Doctor Who, she cast Colin Morgan in his second television role as the conflicted teenager Jethro Cane, which contributed to him being cast in Merlin , [9] [10] where Troughton became one of the regular directors from the second series onwards. The two later collaborated on the BBC supernatural horror drama The Living and the Dead . [11]
Her debut feature film The Lesson , starring Richard E. Grant, Julie Delpy and Daryl McCormack, premiered at the 2023 Tribeca Festival. [12] [13]
Year | Title | Notes | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|
2002 | Refuge | Short film | [1] |
2004 | Doris the Builder | Short film; also writer | [1] |
2023 | The Lesson | [12] |
Year | Title | Notes | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|
2002–2004 | Doctors | 23 episodes | [1] |
2004–2005 | Holby City | 6 episodes | [1] |
2004–2006 | EastEnders | 20 episodes:
| [1] |
2006 | No Angels | 3 episodes | [1] |
Torchwood | 2 episodes: | [9] | |
2007–2010 | The Sarah Jane Adventures | 10 episodes | [6] |
2008 | Doctor Who | 3 episodes:
| [3] |
2009 | Casualty | 2 episodes | [14] |
Tonight's the Night | Doctor Who sketch | [15] | |
2009–2012 | Merlin | 13 episodes | [16] |
2012 | Silk | 2 episodes | [1] |
2013 | Frankie | 2 episodes | [1] |
Atlantis | 5 episodes | [16] | |
2014 | In the Flesh | 2 episodes | [17] |
2015 | Cucumber | 3 episodes | [18] |
Teen Wolf | Episode: "Required Reading" | [7] | |
2016 | The Flash | Episode: "Flash Back" | [7] |
The Living and the Dead | 3 episodes | [11] | |
2016–2017 | Legends of Tomorrow | 2 episodes | [7] |
2017–2020 | Tin Star | 3 episodes | [7] |
2018 | Lost in Space | Episode: "The Robinsons Were Here" | [7] |
A Discovery of Witches | 3 episodes | [19] | |
Lore | 3 episodes | [7] | |
2020 | Baghdad Central | 3 episodes | [20] |
2022 | The Midwich Cuckoos | 2 episodes; also executive producer | [21] |
2023 | Boat Story | 2 episodes | [22] |