Sir Ian Murray McKellen is an English actor. With a career spanning over six decades, he is noted for his performances on the screen and stage in genres ranging from Shakespearean dramas and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction. Regarded as a British cultural icon, he has received various accolades, including a Tony Award, a Golden Globe Award and six Laurence Olivier Awards, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, five BAFTA Awards and five Primetime Emmy Awards.
Sir Derek George Jacobi is an English actor. Jacobi is known for his work at the Royal National Theatre and for his film and television roles. He has received numerous accolades including a BAFTA Award, two Olivier Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Tony Award. He was given a knighthood for his services to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1994.
Verity Ann Lambert was an English television and film producer.
An Unearthly Child is the first serial of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC TV in four weekly parts from 23 November to 14 December 1963. Scripted by Australian writer Anthony Coburn, the serial introduces William Hartnell as the First Doctor and his original companions: Carole Ann Ford as the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman, with Jacqueline Hill and William Russell as school teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton. The first episode deals with Ian and Barbara's discovery of the Doctor and his time-space ship, the TARDIS, in a junkyard in contemporary London. The remaining episodes are set amid a power struggle between warring Stone Age factions who have lost the secret of making fire.
Marco Polo is the fourth serial of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC TV in seven weekly parts from 22 February to 4 April 1964. It was written by John Lucarotti and directed largely by Waris Hussein; John Crockett directed the fourth episode. The story is set in Yuan-era China in the year 1289, where the Doctor, his granddaughter Susan Foreman, and her teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright meet the Italian merchant-explorer Marco Polo and Mongolian Emperor Kublai Khan.
Thomas Nigel Kneale was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay.
The Quatermass Experiment is a British science fiction serial broadcast by BBC Television during the summer of 1953 and re-staged by BBC Four in 2005. Set in the near future against the background of a British space programme, it tells the story of the first crewed flight into space, supervised by Professor Bernard Quatermass of the British Experimental Rocket Group.
Susan Foreman is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The granddaughter of the Doctor and original companion of their first incarnation, she was played by actress Carole Ann Ford from 1963 to 1964, in the show's first season and the first two stories of the second season. Ford reprised the role for the feature-length 20th anniversary episode The Five Doctors (1983) and the 30th anniversary charity special Dimensions in Time (1993).
Robert Peck was an English actor who played Ronald Craven in the television serial Edge of Darkness, for which he won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actor. He was also known for his role as game warden Robert Muldoon in the film Jurassic Park.
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a 1990 BBC television drama, directed by Beeban Kidron. Jeanette Winterson wrote the screenplay, adapting her semi-autobiographical first novel of the same name. The BBC produced and screened three episodes, running to a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes. The series was released on DVD in 2005.
Graeme Richard Harper is a British television director. He is best known for his work on the science-fiction series Doctor Who, for which he is the only person to have directed episodes of both the original run (1963–89) and revived run (2005–) of the programme. Doctor Who Magazine has described him as "the longest-serving crew member on Doctor Who."
Kazimierz Piotr "Peter" Brachacki was a production designer who worked for BBC Television in the 1960s. Although he worked on several programmes, he is best remembered as the first production designer for Doctor Who in 1963, making him responsible for the iconic design of the TARDIS interior.
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 role of Akthar in the play The History Boys (2004–06) and reprised his role in its film adaptation (2006).
Attia Hosain was a British-Indian novelist, author, writer, broadcaster, journalist and actor. She was a woman of letters and a diasporic writer. She wrote in English although her mother tongue was Urdu. She wrote the semi-autobiographical Sunlight on a Broken Column and a collection of short stories named Phoenix Fled. Her career began in England in semi-exile making a contribution to post-colonial literature. Anita Desai, Vikram Seth, Aamer Hussein and Kamila Shamsie have acknowledged her influence.
Dominic Mafham is an English stage, film and television actor. He trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Shoulder to Shoulder is a 1974 BBC television serial and book relating the history of the women's suffrage movement, both edited by Midge Mackenzie. The drama series grew out of discussions between Mackenzie and the actress and singer Georgia Brown, who was dissatisfied at the lack of decent roles for women in TV drama. Brown enlisted the producer Verity Lambert in the project she and Mackenzie were devising to dramatise the struggle for women's suffrage, and the three women presented the idea to the BBC, which gave approval for the series. Originally they had hoped to use only female script writers but this proved impracticable. Male writers were used and the three female originators of the project later said they needed to remove from their scripts a number of 'innuendoes, misconceptions and untruths' indicative of what Georgia Brown termed "the male point of view".
Moira Armstrong is a Scottish television director whose career has expanded over nearly fifty years.
Jim Goddard was an English film and TV director who was born in Battersea, London. He directed episodes of many UK TV series such as Public Eye, Callan, Special Branch, The Sweeney, The Ruth Rendell Mysteries, The Bell and Holby City. He may be best known outside England for the TV series Kennedy starring Martin Sheen or directing the film Shanghai Surprise as a vehicle for newlyweds Sean Penn and Madonna.
The first season of British science fiction television programme Doctor Who was originally broadcast on BBC TV between 1963 and 1964. The series began on 23 November 1963 with An Unearthly Child and ended with The Reign of Terror on 12 September 1964. The show was created by BBC Television head of drama Sydney Newman to fill the Saturday evening timeslot and appeal to both the younger and older audiences of the neighbouring programmes. Formatting of the programme was handled by Newman, head of serials Donald Wilson, writer C. E. Webber, and producer Rex Tucker. Production was overseen by the BBC's first female producer Verity Lambert and story editor David Whitaker, both of whom handled the scripts and stories.
An Adventure in Space and Time is a 2013 British biographical television film, starring David Bradley, Brian Cox, Jessica Raine and Sacha Dhawan. Directed by Terry McDonough, and written by regular Doctor Who writer Mark Gatiss, it premiered on BBC Two on 21 November 2013, to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the science fiction television series. Further, international broadcasts of the television film were made after its premiere on British television.
