Tony Grounds (born in East London) is a British playwright and screenwriter, who has worked extensively in television. [1] [2] [3] Grounds was described by The Independent (11 October 2002) as "the best TV writer of his generation".[ citation needed ]
He started writing for the theatre, winning the Verity Bargate Award for Made in Spain, which was subsequently performed in London and published by Methuen. It was then filmed for ITV and transmitted in their Screenplay slot. There then followed stints on EastEnders and The Bill before he penned episodes of 'Chancer', which starred Clive Owen.
Grounds created and wrote Gone to the Dogs starring Jim Broadbent, Alison Steadman, Warren Clarke and Harry Enfield. It was nominated for a Writers Guild Award. He wrote Gone to Seed , in which Peter Cook made his final dramatic appearance. The series was nominated for a Royal Television Society Award.
The single film Our Boy with Ray Winstone and Pauline Quirke won Tony International Acclaim winning the Munich International Drama Award.[ citation needed ]
Grounds wrote the series The Ghostbusters of East Finchley for BBC2 and First Sign of Madness for ITV. The latter won the WorldFest Charleston Gold Award.[ citation needed ] He wrote Sex and Chocolate for Dawn French before writing the award-winning and BAFTA nominated Births Marriages & Deaths, once again starring Ray Winstone.
Mel Gibson's Icon Films then commissioned him to write and direct The Martins starring Lee Evans and Kathy Burke, which was nominated for a Golden Hitchcock at the Dinard Film Festival.
Grounds teamed up with director Joe Wright, writing Bodily Harm for Channel Four, where Tim Spall, George Cole, Leslie Manville and Annette Crosby garnered acting nominations. It was described by The Daily Telegraph as "an outstanding work of art depicting a nightmarishly apocalyptic vision of suburbia..."
Grounds wrote BBC1's Family Business. He worked again with Ray Winstone for Channel Four's exposé on corruption in the Premier League with All in the Game, which also featured The Wire's Idris Elba. Grounds wrote one of BBC1's Canterbury Tales . His 2004 TV film When I'm 64 for BBC2 starring Alun Armstrong and Paul Freeman won the Prix Europa Award for the best drama on any channel across Europe. [4]
Grounds wrote single films for BBC1, A Class Apart and The Dinner Party which became the two most watched single films of the year.[ citation needed ] Grounds wrote one-off episode for BBC Drama, Our Girl that was broadcast 24 March 2013 on BBC One. Following the success of it, BBC commissioned 5 further episodes that were broadcast in 2014. [5] The series began airing on 21 September 2014. Apart from writing the series, Grounds was also executive producer of the series together with Caroline Skinner. The series got to the semi-finals of the Radio Times TV Champion in 2014 where it was against Sherlock. The series returned in September 2016 for a series two starring Michelle Keegan and has aired a further 3 series since then.
Grounds is special advisor for Save the Children and ran the London Marathon with Lee Evans in 2010. He is also a supporter of West Ham United F.C. and often refers to the East London club in his plays and works.
Raymond Andrew Winstone is an English television, stage and film actor with a career spanning five decades. Having worked with many prominent directors, including Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg, Winstone is perhaps best known for his "hard man" roles, usually delivered in his distinctive London accent. The first of these was That Summer! (1979) for which he received a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer. He rose to prominence starring as Will Scarlet in the series Robin of Sherwood from 1984 to 1986.
Reeson Wayne Shearsmith is an English actor, comedian, writer and magician. He was a member of The League of Gentlemen, with Steve Pemberton, Mark Gatiss and Jeremy Dyson. Jointly with Pemberton, created, wrote, and starred in the sitcom Psychoville and the dark comedy anthology series Inside No. 9. He had notable roles in Spaced and The World's End.
Graham Duff is an English writer, actor and producer. His work for television and radio is typified by intricate plotting, large casts, frequently dark subject matter and a love of wordplay and surrealism.
World Productions Limited is a British television production company, founded on 20 March 1990 by acclaimed producer Tony Garnett, and owned by ITV plc following a takeover in 2017.
Tony Marchant is a British playwright and television dramatist. In 1982 he won the London Critics' Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright for The Lucky Ones and Raspberry. In 1999 he won the British Academy Television Awards Dennis Potter Award for services to television. His television work includes the acclaimed Holding On (1997), Never, Never, starring John Simm and Take Me Home.
Sarah Quintrell is a BAFTA nominated writer, producer and actress, best known for her work on The Power (2023) and His Dark Materials.. Sarah's writing debut was the multi-award winning single drama Ellen, which she followed up with five-part crime drama The Trial: A Murder In The Family.
Ruth Alexandra Elisabeth Jones is a Welsh actress, comedian, writer, and producer. She co-wrote and co-starred in the award-winning BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey. She later co-wrote and starred in the Sky One comedy-drama Stella (2012–2017), for which she was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Female Comedy Performance and won the BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Screenwriter.
Ashley Pharoah is a British screenwriter and television producer. He is best known as the co-creator/writer of the successful drama series Life on Mars, which began on BBC One in 2006, and creator/writer of the family drama Wild at Heart, which aired on ITV1 from 2006 until 2012.
Charles Gerald Wood was an English playwright and scriptwriter for radio, television, and film.
Gerald Gary Mercurio is a British television writer, producer, director and novelist. A former hospital doctor and Royal Air Force officer, Mercurio has been ranked among UK television's leading writers. In 2017, Mercurio was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Television Society and the Baird Medal by RTS Midlands.
This is a list of British television-related events from 1996.
This is a list of British television related events from 1995.
This is a list of British television related events from 1991.
This is a list of British television related events from 1990.
This is a list of British television related events from 1986.
This is a list of British television related events from 1984.
This is a list of British television-related events from 1983.
Peter Bowker is a British playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for the television serials Blackpool (2004), a musical drama about a shady casino owner in the north of England; Occupation (2009), which follows three military servicemen adjusting to civilian life after a tour of duty in Iraq; Capital (2015), an Emmy award-winning drama about real-estate bubbles in South London; and The A Word (2016), an adaptation of Keren Margalit's Israeli drama Yellow Peppers about a family raising an autistic child. In 2007, he adapted Blackpool for CBS as Viva Laughlin.
Michael Wynne is an Olivier Award winning playwright and screenwriter.
Anthony John Basgallop is a British television screenwriter best known for writing Inside Men (2012), What Remains (2013), Servant (2019–2023), and the miniseries To the Ends of the Earth, an adaptation of William Golding's trilogy.
Ray Winstone rolls into his agent's office in Soho to meet me midafternoon, with his friend the writer Tony Grounds.
For about 88 of its 90 minutes, Tony Grounds's A Class Apart (BBC1) looked like the sort of fairy tale in which extremely unlikely people fall in love against the odds by way of heartfelt if overlong soliloquies, and you suddenly feel as though, hey, maybe it is a wonderful life after all.
Tony Grounds, writer of Birth, Marriages and Deaths, comments: "There's obviously a place for all these adaptations and historical dramas that are rife at the moment. To me, great writing is when dramatists stick their pens in their hearts and give us something magical."