Peter Flannery (born 12 October 1951) is an English playwright and screenwriter. He was born in Jarrow, County Durham and educated at the University of Manchester. He is best known for his work while a resident playwright at the Royal Shakespeare Company in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Notable plays during his tenure include: Savage Amusement (1978), Awful Knawful (1978), and Our Friends in the North (1982). Other theatre work has included Singer (1989).
He is perhaps best known to a wider audience for his highly-acclaimed television adaptation of Our Friends in the North , produced by the BBC and screened on BBC2 in 1996. The epic nine-part serial, charting the course of the lives of four friends from Newcastle from 1964 to 1995, was voted by the British Film Institute in 2000 as one of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes of the 20th century. Flannery's other television work has included Blind Justice (1988), a series about the work of radical lawyers. At the 1997 British Academy Television Awards, Flannery was given the honorary Dennis Potter Award for outstanding achievement in television writing.
In January 2007, he scripted an adaptation of Alan Hunter's Inspector Gently novels, entitled George Gently, for BBC One to be broadcast later in the year. Flannery changed the setting of the stories from Suffolk to the North East in the 1960s and created new characters who had not featured in the novels. George Gently is produced by Company Pictures, reuniting Flannery with Our Friends in the North producer Charles Pattinson, who co-runs Company and is an executive producer on the series alongside Flannery. [1] The drama was eventually shown on 8 April 2007. The seventh series – now titled Inspector George Gently – was screened in the spring of 2015.
Flannery has also worked in film, although with less success than in other media. He wrote the screenplays for films such as Funny Bones (1995) and The One and Only (2002).
In 2008, Channel 4 transmitted Flannery's mini-series about the English Civil War, The Devil's Whore , on which he had worked for more than a decade. [2] In 2014, the channel released a four-part continuation, titled New Worlds. This series was set in England and America in the 1680s and was co-written by Martine Brandt. It featured various characters of a new generation, played by Jamie Dornan, Freya Mavor, Joe Dempsie, Eve Best, Jeremy Northam, and Alice Englert.
Flannery's stage adaptation of Nikita Mikhalkov's film Burnt by the Sun opened at the National Theatre, London, in March 2009. [3] The cast included Irish actor Ciarán Hinds as General Kotov, Rory Kinnear as Mitya, and Michelle Dockery as Maroussia. [4]
Flannery lives in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
Reginald "Leo" McKern, AO was an Australian actor who appeared in numerous British, Australian and American television programmes and films, and in more than 200 stage roles. His notable roles include Clang in Help! (1965), Thomas Cromwell in A Man for All Seasons (1966), Tom Ryan in Ryan's Daughter (1970), Paddy Button in The Blue Lagoon (1980), Dr. Grogan in The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Father Imperius in Ladyhawke (1985), and the role that made him a household name as an actor, Horace Rumpole, whom he played in the British television series Rumpole of the Bailey. He also portrayed Carl Bugenhagen in the first and second instalments of The Omen series and Number Two in the TV series The Prisoner.
Our Friends in the North is a British television drama serial produced by the BBC. It was originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC2 in early 1996. Written by Peter Flannery, it tells the story of four friends from Newcastle upon Tyne over a period of 31 years, from 1964 to 1995. The story makes reference to certain political and social events which occurred during the era portrayed, some specific to Newcastle and others which affected Britain as a whole. These include general elections, police and local government corruption, the UK miners' strike (1984–85), and the Great Storm of 1987.
Michael Wearing was a British television producer, who spent much of his career working on drama productions for the BBC. He is best known as the producer of the well received serials Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) and Edge of Darkness (1985), which created for him a reputation as one of British television's foremost drama producers.
Neil John Pearson is a British actor, known for his work on television. He was nominated for the 1994 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor for Between the Lines (1992–1994). His other television roles include Drop the Dead Donkey (1990–1998), All the Small Things (2009), Waterloo Road (2014–2015), and In the Club (2014–2016). His film appearances include all three of the Bridget Jones films. He is also an antiquarian book dealer who specialises in the expatriate literary movement of Paris between the World Wars.
Martin Shaw is an English actor. He came to national recognition as Doyle in ITV crime-action television drama series The Professionals (1977–1983). Further notable television parts include the title roles in The Chief (1993–1995), Judge John Deed (2001–2007) and Inspector George Gently (2007–2017). He has also acted on stage and in film, and has narrated numerous audiobooks and presented various television series.
David Haig Collum Ward is an English actor and playwright. He has appeared in West End productions and numerous television and film roles over a career spanning four decades.
Alan Edgar Stratford Johns, known as Stratford Johns, was a British stage, film and television actor who is best remembered for his starring role as Detective Inspector Charlie Barlow in the long-running BBC police series Z-Cars.
Eamonn Roderique Walker is an English film, television, and theatre actor. In the United States he is known for playing Kareem Saïd in the HBO television series Oz, for which he won a CableACE Award, and Chief Wallace Boden on Chicago Fire and other shows within the Chicago franchise. In the United Kingdom, his notable roles have included Winston in the 1980s BBC series In Sickness and in Health, PC Malcolm Haynes in The Bill and John Othello in the 2001 ITV1 production of Othello.
Peter Vaughan was an English character actor known for many supporting roles in British film and television productions. He also acted extensively on the stage.
Lee David Ingleby is an English film, television and stage actor.
Jack Shepherd is an English actor, playwright, theatre director, saxophone player and jazz pianist. He is known for his television roles, most notably the title role in Trevor Griffiths' series about a young Labour MP Bill Brand (1976), and the detective drama Wycliffe (1993–1998). His film appearances include All Neat in Black Stockings (1969), Wonderland (1999) and The Golden Compass (2007). He won the 1983 Olivier Award for Best Actor in a New Play for the original production of Glengarry Glen Ross.
Nicholas Woodeson is an English film, television and theatre actor, and Drama Desk and Olivier award nominee.
Michael John Abbensetts was a Guyana-born British writer who settled in England in the 1960s. He had been described as "the best Black playwright to emerge from his generation, and as having given "Caribbeans a real voice in Britain". He was the first black British playwright commissioned to write a television drama series, Empire Road, which the BBC aired from 1978 to 1979.
Biyi Bandele was a Nigerian novelist, playwright and filmmaker. He was the author of several novels, beginning with The Man Who Came in From the Back of Beyond (1991), as well as writing stage plays, before turning his focus to filmmaking. His directorial debut was in 2013 with Half of a Yellow Sun, based on the 2006 novel of the same name by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Christian Louis Cooke is an English actor. He is known for playing Luke Kirkwall in Where the Heart Is, Luke Rutherford in Demons, Dorian Gaudain in Trinity, Freddie Taylor in Cemetery Junction and Len Matthews in the Channel 4 mini series The Promise. Cooke's most recent roles include ex-soldier Graham Connor in Crackle's original drama The Art of More and Mickey Argyll in BBC's three-part adaptation of Agatha Christie novel Ordeal by Innocence.
Inspector George Gently is a 2008 British television crime drama series produced by Company Pictures for BBC One, set in the 1960s and loosely based on some of the Inspector Gently novels written by Alan Hunter. The series stars Martin Shaw as the eponymous inspector and Lee Ingleby as Detective Sergeant John Bacchus, with Simon Hubbard and Lisa McGrillis in supporting roles as police constables in the fictitious North East Constabulary.
Rory Michael Kinnear is an English actor and playwright who has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. In 2014, he won the Olivier Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of William Shakespeare's villain Iago in the National Theatre production of Othello.
George J. Costigan is an English actor who is best known for portraying Bob in the 1987 film Rita, Sue and Bob Too and for roles in TV series such as Happy Valley and So Haunt Me.
Michael Wilcox is a British playwright.
Errol John was a Trinidad and Tobago actor and playwright who emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1951.