David Darlow (film producer)

Last updated

David Walter Darlow (born January 1942) is a British film producer and director, who predominantly produced documentary films and series.

Contents

Life

Darlow was active as an producer of documentary films and series since the 1970s. He worked for the BBC. In 1972 he planned to produce a documentary for the BBC about the vanishing of Royal Navy frogman Lionel Crabb. This led to a conflict with the British Ministry of Defence and ultimately the BBC abandoned the project. [1] Darlow also directed some productions such as the documentary The Sword of Islam (1987) [2] [3] or the TV movie Coded Hostile (1989).

Together with John Smithson he co-founded the production company Darlow Smithson Productions in 1988. In June 2002 Smithson acquired full control and bought out Darlow's 50 % stake. [4] A month later Darlow left the company.

In 2000 Darlow won a News & Documentary Emmy Award in the category Outstanding Background/Analysis of a Single Current Story – Programs for the episode Decoding Nazi Secrets of the documentary series Nova . In the previous year he was nominated for the same award in the category Outstanding Investigative Journalism – Programs for an episode of Survival in the Sky .

Selected filmography

Producer

Executive Producer

Director

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desmond Llewelyn</span> Welsh actor (1914–1999)

Desmond Wilkinson Llewelyn was a Welsh actor. He was best known for his role as Q in 17 of the James Bond films between 1963 and 1999.

Nova is an American popular science television program produced by WGBH in Boston, Massachusetts, since 1974. It is broadcast on PBS in the United States, and in more than 100 other countries. The program has won many major television awards.

<i>World in Action</i> British investigative current affairs programme

World in Action is a British investigative current affairs programme made by Granada Television for ITV from 7 January 1963 until 7 December 1998. Its campaigning journalism frequently had a major impact on events of the day. Its production teams often took audacious risks, and the programme gained a solid reputation for its often-unorthodox approach. The series was sold around the world and won numerous awards. In its heyday, World in Action drew audiences of up to 23 million in Britain alone, equivalent to almost half the population.

Robin Spry was a Canadian film director, producer and writer. He was perhaps best known for his documentary films Action: The October Crisis of 1970 and Reaction: A Portrait of a Society in Crisis about Quebec's October Crisis. His 1970 film Prologue won the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miles O'Brien (journalist)</span> American science journalist

Miles O'Brien is an independent American broadcast news journalist specializing in science, technology, and aerospace who has been serving as national science correspondent for PBS NewsHour since 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nature documentary</span> Documentary film genre

A nature documentary or wildlife documentary is a genre of documentary film or series about animals, plants, or other non-human living creatures, usually concentrating on video taken in their natural habitat but also often including footage of trained and captive animals. Sometimes they are about wildlife or ecosystems in relationship to human beings. Such programmes are most frequently made for television, particularly for public broadcasting channels, but some are also made for the cinema medium. The proliferation of this genre occurred almost simultaneously alongside the production of similar television series which is distributed across the world.

Michael Tollin is an American film and television producer/director who served as executive producer of the Emmy award-winning The Last Dance, a 10-part documentary series on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls dynasty. The series received rave reviews and set numerous ratings records, being seen by nearly 15 million viewers per episode on ESPN and many million more on Netflix around the world. Tollin's other career highlights include Radio, Coach Carter, Hank Aaron: Chasing the Dream, and Varsity Blues. He has also produced and/or directed such movies and television shows as Arli$$, Smallville, One Tree Hill, All That, Kenan & Kel, Summer Catch, Wild Hogs, Dreamer , Good Burger, Big Fat Liar, and The Bronx is Burning. Tollin has also directed and/or produced documentaries, including The Comedy Store Documentary, Let Me Be Brave, Morningside Five, Iverson, Kareem: Minority of One, and Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?. He is currently the co-chairman of Mandalay Sports Media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Waldemar Januszczak</span> English journalist

Waldemar Januszczak is an English art critic and television documentary producer and presenter. Formerly the art critic of The Guardian, he took the same role at The Sunday Times in 1992, and has twice won the Critic of the Year award.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jon Cassar</span> Maltese-Canadian director and producer

John Francis "Jon" Cassar is a Maltese-Canadian television director and producer, known for his work on the first seven seasons of 24. In 2006, he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series for his work on the episode "Day 5: 7:00 a.m. – 8:00 a.m.". In 2011, he produced and directed all episodes of the Canadian-American miniseries The Kennedys, for which he won the Directors Guild of America Award for Outstanding Directing – Television Film and was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Miniseries or Movie.

Thomas Patrick O'Brien has been an American actor since the age of sixteen, having first trained at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where he appeared in ACT's mainstage productions of The Holdup; and A Midsummer Night's Dream as Puck, opposite Annette Bening.

Christopher Riley is a British writer, broadcaster and film maker specialising in the history of science. He has a PhD from Imperial College, University of London where he pioneered the use of digital elevation models in the study of mountain range geomorphology and evolution. He makes frequent appearances on British television and radio, broadcasting mainly on space flight, astronomy and planetary science and was Visiting Professor of science and media at the University of Lincoln between 2011 and 2021.

Survival in the Sky, known as Black Box in the United Kingdom, is a British documentary series of six one-hour episodes produced by Darlow Smithson Productions for The Learning Channel and Channel 4. The series was narrated by Will Lyman in the United States and Sean Barrett in the United Kingdom. The series primarily concentrated on commercial aviation accidents and the investigations related to them. They were first aired as a series of only four episodes in late 1996, with two additional episodes produced and aired in 1998.

<i>BBC Wildlife Specials</i> British TV series or programme

The BBC Wildlife Specials are a series of nature documentary programmes commissioned by BBC Television. The series premiered in 1995, and 22 specials have been produced to date, with most of the more recent ones consisting of multiple episodes. The earlier programmes were produced in-house by the BBC's Natural History Unit, but the more recent Spy in the ... titles were made by the independent John Downer Productions. The first 18 specials, through 2008, were narrated by David Attenborough. Polar Bear: Spy on the Ice (2010), Penguins: Spy in the Huddle (2013) and Dolphins: Spy in the Pod (2014) were narrated by David Tennant.

Michael Darlow is a British television producer, director and writer. After starting as an actor, his first short film was seen by documentary film maker John Grierson and shown on TV and at the 1960 Edinburgh Film Festival. Darlow's documentary, drama and arts programmes have won international awards including BAFTAs, an Emmy, and Gold at the New York Television Festival. His works include The World At War episode Genocide, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Johnny Cash at San Quentin and Bomber Harris. He is a Fellow of the Royal Television Society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Smithson</span> British film and television producer

John Smithson is a British film and television producer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip J Day</span>

Philip J Day is a British film producer, screenwriter, showrunner and author.

<i>Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking</i> 2010 science documentary mini-series

Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking is a 2010 science documentary television mini-series written by British physicist Stephen Hawking. The series was created for Discovery Channel by Darlow Smithson Productions and features computer generated imagery of the universe created by Red Vision. The series premiered on 25 April 2010 in the United States and started on 9 May 2010 in the United Kingdom with a modified title, Stephen Hawking's Universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicola Shindler</span> British television producer and executive

Nicola Shindler is a British television producer and executive, and founder of the independent television drama production company Quay Street Productions, having founded and run Red Production Company from 1998 to 2020. She has won eleven BAFTA TV Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Chinn</span> British film producer

Simon Chinn is a British film producer, founder of Red Box Films and co-founder of Lightbox. He produced a number of feature documentaries, including Man on Wire and Searching for Sugar Man, both winners of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film.

References

  1. Mike und Jacqui Welham: The Crabb Enigma. Matador, 2010, ISBN   978-1848763821. p. 205 ff.
  2. John Corry: TV Review; 'Sword of Islam,' on 13. In: The New York Times, 13 January 1988.
  3. The Sword of Islam . In: bfi.org.uk, access date 23 February 2021.
  4. RDF producer heads to Darlow Smithson . In: c21media.net, 27 July 2004.