Tony Williamson | |
---|---|
Born | 18 December 1932 |
Died | 19 June 1991 58) | (aged
Occupation | Television screenwriter |
Tony Williamson (18 December 1932 in Manchester – 19 June 1991) was a prolific British television writer, most active from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. He wrote primarily for the action-adventure and espionage genres. Perhaps because of his early involvement in The Avengers , he often found work on shows that featured fantasy adventure, rather than the kitchen sink realism that had arisen in Britain at the start of his career. Series with extraordinary lead characters in unusual circumstances, such as Department S , Jason King , Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and The Adventurer , dominated his output.
He has been credited with creating the short-lived dramas Intrigue [1] and Counterstrike , as well as being a key player in the development of Adam Adamant Lives!
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Williamson's writing career has its roots in his obligatory national service as a young man. Whilst in the Royal Air Force, he began a lifelong association with fellow airman Dennis Spooner by writing some amateur efforts. After the war, he accepted a position as a news correspondent for CBS in Canada. On the side, he wrote at least twenty stage plays that were later produced on various anthological television programmes. [2]
When he returned to Britain, he flirted with soap operas such as Coronation Street [3] and Compact . However, by the mid-1960s he embarked upon his career of writing spy fiction with the sale of a script to The Mask of Janus . Though he also contributed to its spin-off, The Spies , Williamson swiftly moved on to a more fantastic espionage setting with his first sale to The Avengers in 1965. He wrote a few more scripts for the Emma Peel era before being hired by Sydney Newman to script-edit Adam Adamant Lives! When Newman cancelled that show, he returned to The Avengers, for which he was a dominant writer of the show's Peel-less final season.
Following the demise of The Avengers, he worked on a number of programmes on which Dennis Spooner held some measure of creative control as creator or story editor, for ITC Entertainment. Projects such as Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Champions , and Department S all came to accept his script submissions following Adamant. His initial sale to Department S was particularly significant in that it began a series of sales involving the character of Jason King, the lead in two programmes in the early 1970s. His final script using the spy, Jason King's "A Page Before Dying", would mark the end of Williamson's longest association with a single fictional character.
Aside from his work in television, Williamson wrote several Fontana published thrillers in the 1970s under his own name and at least one ('Slade's Marauder' Souvenir Press, 1980) under the pseudonym Steven Cade. At the same time he wrote for the big screen. Night Watch (1973) featured a Williamson screenplay and a cast including Elizabeth Taylor, Billie Whitelaw and Laurence Harvey. The less well-reviewed Breakthrough (1979), co-written with Peter Bernies, starred Richard Burton and Rod Steiger. The film was heavily indebted to Sam Peckinpah's classic Cross of Iron .
After heart surgery in 1980, Williamson deliberately slowed his output. However, he was the dominant contributor to the 1986 supernatural series Worlds Beyond . [4]
Williamson died during a second heart procedure in 1991, soon after his third film, a minor Roger Moore vehicle called Fire, Ice and Dynamite , opened in West Germany.
Adam Adamant Lives! is a British adventure television series that ran from 1966 to 1967 on BBC 1, starring Gerald Harper in the title role. The series was created and produced by several alumni from Doctor Who. The titular character was an adventurer born in 1867, who had been revived from hibernation in 1966, thus offering a satirical look at life in the 1960s through the eyes of an Victorian. In 2020, Big Finish Productions reimagined the series as an audio drama.
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) is a British private detective television series, starring Mike Pratt and Kenneth Cope respectively as the private detectives Jeff Randall and Marty Hopkirk. The series was created by Dennis Spooner and produced by Monty Berman, and was first broadcast in 1969 and 1970. In the United States, it was given the title My Partner the Ghost.
Kenneth Charles Cope is an English retired actor and scriptwriter. He is best known for his roles as Marty Hopkirk in Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), Jed Stone in Coronation Street, Ray Hilton in Brookside, Sid in The Damned and as a member of the Carry On Team.
Donald James was a British television writer, novelist and non-fiction writer.
Michael John Pratt was an English actor, musician, songwriter and screenwriter, known for his work on British television in the 1960s and 1970s.
Dennis Spooner was an English television writer and script editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s. He had long-lasting professional working relationships with a number of other British screenwriters and producers, notably Brian Clemens, Terry Nation, Monty Berman and Richard Harris, with whom he developed several programmes. Though he was a contributor to BBC programmes, his work made him one of the most prolific writers of televised output from ITC Entertainment.
Roy Ward Baker was an English film director.
"A Touch of Brimstone" is the twenty-first episode of the fourth series of the 1960s British spy television series The Avengers, starring Patrick Macnee as John Steed and Diana Rigg as Emma Peel. It was filmed c. December 1965, and was first broadcast on British television on 15 February 1966. The episode was directed by James Hill and written by Brian Clemens. The plot involves Steed and Peel infiltrating the Hellfire Club whilst investigating harmful pranks on high profile political and business figures.
Department S is a British spy-fi adventure series, produced by ITC Entertainment. It consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969 and 1970. It stars Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King, Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst. These three are agents for a fictional special department of Interpol. The head of Department S is Sir Curtis Seretse.
Annette Andre is an Australian actress best known for her work on British television throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
Juliet Linda Harmer is an English artist, children's author and actress who was best known in the role of Georgina Jones in the BBC TV series Adam Adamant Lives! (1966–67).
Brian Horace Clemens was an English screenwriter and television producer. He worked on the British TV series The Avengers and created The New Avengers and The Professionals.
Ivor Donald Dean was a British stage, film and television actor.
Miss Georgina Jones is a fictional character played by Juliet Harmer in the BBC television adventure series, Adam Adamant Lives! (1966-7).
Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) is a British television series, produced by Working Title Television for BBC One, written and produced by Charlie Higson. It is a revival of the 1960s television series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) and stars Vic Reeves as Marty Hopkirk and Bob Mortimer as Jeff Randall, two partner private detectives, Emilia Fox as Jeannie Hurst, Hopkirk's fiancée, and Tom Baker as Wyvern, a spirit mentor. Two series were commissioned and were broadcast in 2000 and 2001 with the pilot episode airing 18 March 2000.
"That's How Murder Snowballs" is the fifth episode of the 1969 ITC British television series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) starring Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope and Annette Andre. Directed by Paul Dickson and written by Ray Austin, the episode was first broadcast on 19 October 1969 on ITV.
Jeremy Summers was a British television director and film director, known for directing television series such as The Saint and films such as Five Golden Dragons, The House of 1,000 Dolls, and The Vengeance of Fu Manchu.
"For the Girl who Has Everything" is the twelfth episode of the 1969 ITC British television series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) starring Mike Pratt, Kenneth Cope and Annette Andre. The episode was first broadcast on 6 December 1969 on ITV. Directed by Cyril Frankel, it featured Lois Maxwell.
Richard Harris is a British screenwriter and playwright, most active from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. He wrote primarily for the crime and detective genres, having contributed episodes of series such as The Avengers, The Saint, The Sweeney, Armchair Mystery Theatre, and Target. He has helped to create several programmes of the genre, including Adam Adamant Lives!, Man in a Suitcase, and Shoestring.
Walter Leonard Sparrow was an English film and television actor best known for his appearance as Duncan in the 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves starring Kevin Costner.