Matthew Sweet (writer)

Last updated

Sweet speaks to the British Library in 2021 Matthew Sweet on The British Library.jpg
Sweet speaks to the British Library in 2021

Matthew Sweet (born 2 December 1969) is an English journalist, broadcaster, author, and cultural historian. [1] A graduate of the University of Oxford, he has been interviewed on many documentaries about television for the BBC and Channel 4.

Contents

Early life

Born in Hull, Sweet received a doctorate from Oxford on Wilkie Collins. [2]

Career

Sweet was among the contributors to The Oxford Companion to English Literature [3] and was both film and television critic for The Independent on Sunday .

Sweet's book, Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema (2005) is a history of the British film business from the silent days, and includes interviews with surviving figures from the period. [4] A television documentary series was adapted from the book.

Sweet has written other television films and series, including Silent Britain, Checking into History, British Film Forever, The Rules of Film Noir , Truly, Madly, Cheaply!: British B Movies, and A Brief History of Fun. He presented a BBC Radio 4 programme The Philosopher's Arms, a show recorded in front of a live audience in which classic philosophical concerns were explored. [5] He is the host of the BBC Radio 3 programme Sound of Cinema, which is concerned with film scores and their composers, [6] and a regular presenter of Night Waves (now titled Free Thinking) on the same network.

Sweet is a fan of the science fiction television series Doctor Who and has written several Doctor Who audio plays and short stories. He has also presented several documentaries about the series for the DVD range, including Chain Reaction (about The Caves of Androzani ) and Nice or Nasty?: The Making of Vengeance on Varos , as well as conducting in-depth interviews with prominent cast and crew members for the Doctor Who: The Collection Blu-Ray box sets. He also presented the 50th-anniversary retrospective of the series for The Culture Show called Me, You and Doctor Who in 2013. Piers Morgan interviewed him on Good Morning Britain in 2017 about the casting of the first woman to play The Doctor. [7] [8]

Bibliography

Audio dramas

Short stories

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Armando Iannucci</span> Scottish comedian, film director and producer

Armando Giovanni Iannucci is a Scottish satirist, writer, director, producer, performer and panellist. Born in Glasgow to Italian parents, Iannucci studied at the University of Glasgow followed by the University of Oxford. Starting on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his early work with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour transferred to television as The Day Today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mabel Poulton</span> English actress

Mabel Lilian Poulton was an English film actress, popular in Britain during the era of silent films.

The Talons of Weng-Chiang is the sixth and final serial of the 14th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts on BBC1 from 26 February to 2 April 1977. In the serial, which is set in 19th-century London, the 51st century criminal Magnus Greel travels to the city and poses as an ancient Chinese god to find his missing time machine.

Christopher Benjamin is a retired English actor with many stage and television credits since the 1960s. His television roles include three appearances in Doctor Who, portraying Sir Keith Gold in Inferno (1970), Henry Gordon Jago in The Talons of Weng-Chiang (1977) and Colonel Hugh Curbishley in The Unicorn and the Wasp (2008). He also provided the voice of Rowf in the animated film The Plague Dogs (1982). His radio acting career included two BBC Radio adaptations of Christopher Lee's crime drama Colvil and Soames.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Andy Lane</span> British author and journalist

Andrew Lane, as Andy Lane, is a British author and journalist best known for the Young Sherlock Holmes series of Young Adult novels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sacha Dhawan</span> British actor

Sacha Dhawan is a British actor. He began his career in the ITV series Out of Sight (1997–98), The Last Train (1999), and Weirdsister College (2001–02). He originated the role of Akthar in the play The History Boys (2004–06) and reprised his role in its film adaptation (2006).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jodie Whittaker</span> English actress (born 1982)

Jodie Auckland Whittaker is an English actress. She is best known as the thirteenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who (2017–2022), Beth Latimer in Broadchurch (2013–2017) and Orla O’Riordan in Time (2023).

Thomas Bentley was a British film director. He directed 68 films between 1912 and 1941. He directed three films in the early DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, The Man in the Street (1926), The Antidote (1927), and Acci-Dental Treatment (1928).

Jago & Litefoot is a Big Finish Productions audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It stars Christopher Benjamin and Trevor Baxter as Henry Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot, their characters from the 1977 TV story The Talons of Weng-Chiang. The Mahogany Murderers was an entry in the Companion Chronicles range of audio plays and effectively acted as a pilot for this series. Justin Richards is the script editor.

<i>White Face</i> 1932 film

White Face is a 1932 British crime film directed by T. Hayes Hunter and starring Hugh Williams, Gordon Harker and Renee Gadd. The film is based on a play by Edgar Wallace.

Autumn Crocus is a 1931 play by the British writer Dodie Smith. It was Smith's first play written under the pseudonym of C.L. Anthony. It follows a single schoolteacher who goes on holiday to the Tyrol and falls in love with the married owner of the hotel in which she is staying.

Mr. Wu is a 1919 British drama film directed by Maurice Elvey and starring Matheson Lang, Roy Royston, Lillah McCarthy and Meggie Albanesi. It was based on a 1913 play Mr. Wu by Maurice Vernon and Harold Owen. During the filming Albanesi became infatuated with Lang. The picture was made by Stoll Pictures, and was one of their first major successes. Lon Chaney played the title role in a 1927 remake. The screenplay concerns a Chinese Mandarin who murders his daughter.

<i>Cocaine</i> (film) 1922 film by Graham Cutts

Cocaine is a 1922 British crime film directed by Graham Cutts and starring Hilda Bayley, Flora Le Breton, Ward McAllister and Cyril Raymond. It depicts the distribution of cocaine by gangsters through a series of London nightclubs and the revenge a man seeks after his daughter's death.

Rachael Low was a British film historian, best known as the author of the seven-volume The History of the British Film.

<i>Film Weekly</i> Defunct British film magazine

Film Weekly was one of the leading popular film magazines published in the United Kingdom during the late 1920s and 1930s.

<i>Doctor Who</i> (series 11) 2018 series of Doctor Who

The eleventh series of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who premiered on 7 October 2018 and concluded on 9 December 2018. The series is the first to be led by Chris Chibnall as head writer and executive producer, alongside executive producers Matt Strevens and Sam Hoyle, after Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin stepped down after the tenth series. This series is the eleventh to air following the programme's revival in 2005 and is the thirty-seventh season overall. It also marks the beginning of the third production era of the revived series, following Russell T Davies' original run from 2005 to 2010, and Moffat's from 2010 to 2017. The eleventh series was broadcast on Sundays, a first in the programme's history; regular episodes of the revived era were previously broadcast on Saturdays. The series was followed by a New Year's Day special episode, "Resolution", instead of the traditional annual Christmas Day special.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thirteenth Doctor</span> Fictional character from Doctor Who

The Thirteenth Doctor is an incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. She is played by Jodie Whittaker, the first woman to portray the character, in three series as well as five specials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Woman Who Fell to Earth</span> 2018 Doctor Who episode

"The Woman Who Fell to Earth" is the first episode of the eleventh series and the 845th episode overall of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. It was written by new head writer and executive producer Chris Chibnall, directed by Jamie Childs, and was first broadcast on BBC One on 7 October 2018. It stars Jodie Whittaker in her first full appearance as the Thirteenth Doctor, and introduces the Doctor's new companions – Bradley Walsh as Graham O'Brien, Tosin Cole as Ryan Sinclair, and Mandip Gill as Yasmin Khan. The episode also guest stars Sharon D. Clarke, Johnny Dixon, and Samuel Oatley.

<i>Doctor Who</i> (2022 specials) 2022 special episodes of Doctor Who

The 2022 specials of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who are three additional episodes that follow the programme's thirteenth series, and were first announced in July 2021. The first special aired on 1 January 2022, with the additional specials airing on 17 April and 23 October. They are the final episodes to feature Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor and Chris Chibnall as showrunner. The specials also star Mandip Gill and John Bishop as the Doctor's travelling companions, Yasmin Khan and Dan Lewis, respectively, with "The Power of the Doctor" featuring the return of Sacha Dhawan as the Master and the debut of David Tennant as the Fourteenth Doctor, who would star in the following 2023 specials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">The Power of the Doctor</span> 2022 Doctor Who episode

"The Power of the Doctor" is the third and final of the 2022 specials of the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who, and was broadcast on BBC One on 23 October 2022. The episode was ordered for the centenary of the BBC's launch, airing five days after. It was written by Chris Chibnall, and directed by Jamie Magnus Stone.

References

  1. Holdsworth, Nadine, ed. (2014). Theatre and National Identity: Re-Imagining Conceptions of Nation. Routledge. ISBN   978-0415822992 . Retrieved 27 June 2020.
  2. "Free Thinking | Matthew Sweet". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 1 June 2020.
  3. "Oxford Companion to English Literature" | Contributors. Archived 29 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine
  4. Bracewell, Michael (2 April 2005). "Ah, Shepperton ..." The Guardian .
  5. The Philosopher's Arms page, BBC Radio 4.
  6. "BBC Radio 3 - Sound of Cinema - Available now". BBC.
  7. Sweet, Matthew [@DrMatthewSweet] (17 July 2017). "Just went on Good Morning Britain to talk Jodie Whittaker. Told by presenters that Twitter is ablaze with angry female fans. Eh? Really?" (Tweet). Retrieved 6 February 2022 via Twitter.
  8. Daly, Helen (17 July 2017). "Piers Morgan likens Alan Sugar to genderless Doctor Who villain amid Jodie Whittaker chat". Daily Express . Retrieved 6 February 2022.