Russell T. Davies
Encyclopedia
Stephen Russell Davies, OBE (born 27 April 1963), better known by his pen name
Russell T Davies, is a Welsh television producer
and screenwriter
whose works include Queer as Folk
, Bob & Rose, The Second Coming
, Casanova
, and the 2005 revival of the classic British science fiction
series Doctor Who
.
Born in Swansea, Davies aspired to work as a comic artist in his adult life, until a careers advisor at his school suggested that he study English literature; he consequently focused on a career of play- and screen-writing. After he graduated from Oxford University, Davies joined the BBC
's children's department on a part-time basis in 1985 and worked in varying positions, including writing and producing two series, Dark Season
and Century Falls
. He left the BBC in the early 1990s to work for Granada Television
and later became a freelance writer.
Davies moved into writing adult television dramas in 1994. His early scripts generally explored concepts of religion and sexuality among various backdrops: Revelations
was a soap opera about organised religion and featured a lesbian vicar; Springhill
was a soap drama about a Catholic family in contemporary Liverpool
; The Grand
explored society's opinion of subjects such as prostitution, abortion, and homosexuality during the interwar period
; and Queer as Folk, his first prolific series, recreated his experiences in the Manchester gay scene
. His later series include Bob & Rose, which portrayed a gay man who fell in love with a woman, The Second Coming, which focused on the second coming and deicide
of Jesus Christ, Mine All Mine
, a comedy about a family who discover they owned the entire city of Swansea, and Casanova, an adaptation of the Venetian lover's complete memoirs
.
His most notable achievement is reviving and running the science fiction series Doctor Who
after a sixteen year hiatus, with Christopher Eccleston
, and later David Tennant
, in the title role of the Doctor
. Davies' tenure as executive producer
of the show oversaw a surge in popularity that led to the production of two spin-off
series, Torchwood
and The Sarah Jane Adventures
, and the revival of the Saturday primetime dramas as a profitable venture for production companies. Davies was awarded an OBE in 2008 for services to drama, which coincided with his announcement that he would step down from as the show's executive producer with his final script, The End of Time
(2009–10). Davies moved to Los Angeles
, California in 2009, where he oversaw production of Torchwood: Miracle Day and the fifth and final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
. His parents, Barbara and Vivian Davies, were Classics teachers from the suburban area of Sketty
. Stephen was the youngest of three children and their only son. Because he was born by caesarean section
, his mother was placed on a morphine
drip; an overdose resulted in a psychotic episode and institutionalisation. He described his mother's experience as "literally ... like science fiction" and an early inspiration for his writing career.
As a child, Davies was almost exclusively referred to by his middle name. He grew up in a household that "never switched the TV off" until after closedown, and he subsequently became immersed in dramas such as I, Claudius
and Doctor Who
; one of his first memories, at the age of three, was the dénouement of the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Tenth Planet
. He was also an avid cartoonist and comics enthusiast and purchased series such as Asterix
and Peanuts
.
Davies attended the local Tycoch Primary School in Sketty and enrolled at Olchfa Comprehensive School
aged eleven. In his first year, the main school buildings were closed off for renovation after inspectors discovered the cement used in construction caused other public buildings to collapse. Lessons were held in portacabins instead, which influenced his imagination to create mystery, science-fiction, and conspiracy thriller stories about the main building. He also immersed himself in books such as Sons and Lovers
by D. H. Lawrence
and The Crystal Mouse by Babs H Deal; the latter influenced him so much he could "see it echoing in anything" he wrote.
At the age of fourteen, Davies auditioned for and joined the newly formed West Glamorgan
Youth Theatre (WGYT). The group's founder and director, Godfrey Evans, considered him to be "a total all-rounder" who was talented and popular with the other students. Working with the group allowed him to define his sexual identity: he embarked on a several-month relationship with fellow youth thespian Rhian Morgan, and later came out
as homosexual in his teenage years.
In 1979, Davies completed his O-Levels and stayed at Olchfa with the ambition to study English Literature
at an Oxbridge
university; he abandoned his aspirations of becoming a comic artist after a careers advisor convinced him his colour-blindness would make that path unlikely. During his studies, he participated in the WGYT's assignments to create Welsh language
drama to be performed at the National Eisteddfod of Wales
, including Pair Dadeni, a play based on the Mabinogion
myth cycle, and Perthyn, a drama about community belonging and identity in early-1980s West Glamorgan. In 1981, he was accepted by Worcester College, Oxford
to study English literature. At Oxford, he realised that he was enamoured with the narrative
aspect of fiction, especially nineteenth-century literature such as Charles Dickens
.
Davies continued to submit scripts to the WGYT during his studies at Oxford: Box, a play about the influence of television that Evans noted contained Davies' penchants for misdirecting the audience and mixing comedy and drama; In Her Element, which centred around the animation of still objects; and Hothouse, an Alan Bennett
-inspired piece about internal politics in an advertising office. In 1984, he made his final performance for the WGYT and signed up for a course in Theatre Studies at Cardiff University
after graduating from Oxford. He worked sporadically for the Sherman Theatre
's publicity department and claimed Jobseeker's Allowance
in the interim. In 1985, Davies began his professional television career after a friend suggested that he should talk to a television producer who was seeking a temporary graphic artist for the children's show Why Don't You...?.
Children's
department in 1985 and given one-day contracts and commissions, such as illustrating for Why Don't You...?. As he was only given three days of work per month by the BBC, he continued to freelance and volunteer for the Sherman Theatre. In 1986, he was approached by the Sunday Sport
before its launch to provide a football
-themed daily strip; he declined because he was concerned about the pornographic content of the newspaper. He also submitted a script for Crossroads in response to an appeal for new writers; it was not used because the show was cancelled in 1987. He ultimately abandoned his graphic art career entirely when he realised in his early twenties that he enjoyed writing the dialogue of a comic more than creating the art.
On 1 June 1987, Davies made his first and only appearance as a television presenter on Play School alongside regular presenter Chloë Ashcroft
. Why Don't You...? line producer Peter Charlton suggested that he would "be good on camera" and advised him to take his career public. Davies was granted the opportunity for sporadic appearances over a period of six months; he hosted only one episode as a storytelling illustrator before he walked off the set and commented he "[was] not doing that again". The appearance remains an in-joke in the industry, and the recordings were invariably requested for wrap parties Davies attended.
On Why Don't You...?, Davies took on varying jobs, including researcher, director, illustrator, assistant floor manager, and unofficial publicist for fan-mail. He was offered his first professional scriptwriting job in 1986 by show producer Dave Evans; he had entered Evans' office to collect his wages and was offered an extra £100 to write a replacement script. Davies' script was positively reviewed in the department and led to increasingly larger roles that culminated in a six-month contract to write for the show after it relocated to Manchester in 1988. He worked for the show for two more years and eventually became the show's producer. He oversaw an increase in drama which tripled its audience—despite the fact BBC Manchester was not permitted to create children's dramas—which reached its climax with his last episode: a drama where the Why Don't You...? protagonists, led by the show's longest running presenter Ben Slade
, were trapped in a café by a supercomputer that tried to kill them.
While he was producing Why Don't You...?, Davies branched out within the children's department at BBC Manchester
: he attended directors' courses; wrote for older audiences with his contributions to DEF II
and On the Waterfront
; and accompanied Keith Chegwin
to Norway to assist in the production of a children's documentary about politics. The head of the children's department, Ed Pugh, offered him the chance to produce Breakfast Serials
, a new series scheduled for an 8:00 am slot. Breakfast Serials incorporated elements of non-sequitur comedy and popular culture references aimed at older students, such as a parody of Land of the Giants
. Davies would make the decision to leave the children's department and the BBC during the production of Breakfast Serials: a friend called him after the first episode was transmitted and observed that he had "broadcast a joke about the juvenilia of Emily Brontë
at eight o'clock in the morning"; the conversation caused him to reflect that he was writing for the wrong audience. However, Davies would produce three more children's series while he pursued an adult drama career: Dark Season
, Century Falls
, and Children's Ward
.
During his tenure on Why Don't You...?, Davies oversaw the production of a story that took place in Loch Ness
. The story was the precursor for his first freelance children's project: Dark Season
. The show, originally called The Adventuresome Three, would feature the Why Don't You...? characters in a purely dramatic setting that was influenced by his childhood. He submitted the script to the head of the BBC's Children's department, Anna Home, and Granada Television
. Both companies were interested in producing the show with minor changes: Granada wished to produce it as one six-part serial, as opposed to Davies' plan of two three-part serials; and Home was interested in accepting the show on the condition it included a new cast of characters. He accepted Home's offer, and the show was allocated the budget and timeslot of Maid Marian and her Merry Men
, which had been put on hiatus the year before.
The first three episodes of Dark Season feature three young teenagers in a contemporary secondary school, Reet (Kate Winslet
), Marcie (Victoria Lambert), and Tom (Ben Chandler), who discover a plot by the villain Mr Eldritch (Grant Parsons) to take over the world using school computers. Eldritch is eventually defeated by Marcie and the computer expert Professor Polzinsky (Rosalie Crutchley
). The next three episodes focus on a new villain: the archaeologist Miss Pendragon (Jacqueline Pearce
), later described by Davies as a "devil worshipping Nazi lesbian", who becomes a part of the ancient supercomputer Behemoth. The two distinct plot elements converge at the end of the fifth episode, when Pendragon crashes through the school stage as Eldritch walks into the auditorium.
Dark Season uses concepts seen in his tenure as executive producer of Doctor Who: "School Reunion
", written by Toby Whithouse
, shares its concept of the antagonist using computers in a comprehensive school
to take over the world; "Army of Ghosts
" unexpectedly brings together the series' two major villains for the final episode; and the characters of Marcie and her friends are similar, albeit unintentionally, to the structure of the Doctor
and his companion
s. Dark Season was the first series that he was credited as "Russell T Davies"—the initial arbitrarily chosen to distinguish himself from the BBC Radio 4 presenter
—and the first series that he was commissioned to write a novelisation: it features a more ambiguous climax and foreshadows a sequel set in an arcade similar to the one featured in The Sarah Jane Adventures
serial Warriors of Kudlak
.
Davies started planning a second series for Dark Season that followed a similar structure. The first half of the series would take part in the arcade mentioned in the novelisation, and the second would feature the appearance of psychic twins and the re-emergence of the villain Eldritch. The concepts were transferred to its spiritual successor, Century Falls
, which was produced in 1993 at the request of Dark Season director Colin Cant
. The series primarily used the "psychic twins" concept and was set in an isolated village based on those in the Yorkshire Dales
and the North York Moors
.
The plot of Century Falls is driven by a legend that no children had been born in the eponymous village for over forty years. The lead protagonist, Tess Hunter (Catherine Sanderson), is an overweight teenager who moves to the village with her mother at the beginning of the serial. She quickly befriends the psychic Ben Naismith (Simon Fenton
) and his twin sister Carey (Emma Jane Lavin). The three teenagers examine the waterfall that gave Ben his powers and the disaster that caused the legendary infertility. The serial climaxes in a confrontation between Tess and the deity Century, who is attempting to fuse with Tess' unborn sister.
Century Falls is conceptually much darker than its predecessor Dark Season and his later work, which Davies attributed to a trend that inexperienced writers "get off on the dark stuff": in a BAFTA
interview with Davies, Home recalled that she "very nearly got into trouble because it did actually push at the boundaries which some of the powers-that-be would rather not have been pushed"; and a Daily Mail
review of the series considered the show's themes of arson, black magic, and communal fear as being "on a scale normally reserved for peak-time adult viewing". The series also offered a sense of realism in its protagonist, who is not heroic and aspirationial, has poor social skills, and is bluntly described by Ben as a "fat girl", a practice that the Daily Mail praised as "something that defies the Thought Police
". Century Falls was the last script he wrote for the BBC's children's department for fourteen years. He had begun to formulate another successor: The Heat of the Sun, a series set over Christmas 1999 and New Year's Day
2000 that would have included the concepts of psychic powers and world domination.
. On venture in 1991 led him to Granada Television
, where he edited scripts for the ITV children's medical drama Children's Ward
under the supervision of eventual Coronation Street
producer Tony Wood and his former boss Ed Pugh. By 1992, he had been promoted to producer and oversaw an increase in discussion of larger contemporary issues. In 1993, he wrote a script featuring a teenage boy who had been infected with HIV
via a blood transfusion, which challenged the prevalent assumption that only gay people contracted HIV:
Davies left the role of producer in 1994, but continue to write for the series on occasion. Notably, he was requested to write the 100th episode of the series, then called The Ward, which aired in October 1996. Instead of celebrating the milestone, he wrote a script about a recently emerging threat: paedophiles in online chat-rooms. The episode was about a The X-Files
fan who was drawn in by a paedophile's offer of a rare magazine. In the dénouement of the episode, the child recounts the tale of his near abduction and describes his attacker as "just a man like any other man". The episode earnt Davies his first BAFTA award: the 1997 Children's BAFTA for Best Drama.
s; his intention was to eventually work on the popular and long-running Granada soap Coronation Street. In pursuit of this career plan, he storylined soaps such as Families
and wrote scripts for shows such as Cluedo, a game show based on the board game of the same name
, and Do the Right Thing, a localised version of the Brazilian panel show Você Decide with Terry Wogan
as presenter and Frank Skinner
as a regular panellist. One writing job, for The House of Windsor, a soap opera about footmen in Buckingham Palace
, was so poorly received that his other scripts for the show would be written under the pseudonym Leo Vaughn.
In 1994, Davies quit all of his producing jobs, and was offered a scriptwriting role on the late-night soap opera Revelations
, created by him, Tony Wood, and Brian B. Thompson
. The series was a tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of organised religion, and featured his first overtly LGBT character: a lesbian vicar portrayed by Sue Holderness
, who came out of the closet in a two-hander
episode with Carole Nimmons. Davies attributes the revelation about Holderness's character as a consequence of both the "pressure cooker nature" of the show and the recent ordination of female vicars in the Church of England
. He let his contract with Granada expire and pitched a new early-evening soap opera to Channel 4
, RU, created by Bill Moffat, father of Press Gang
co-creator Steven Moffat
, and co-written by him and Paul Cornell
. Although the slot was eventually taken by Hollyoaks
, he and Cornell mutually benefited from the pitch: Davies introduced Cornell to the Children's Ward producers, and Cornell introduced Davies to Virgin Publishing. Davies wrote one Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures
novel, Damaged Goods, in which the Doctor
tracks a Class A drug across several galaxies. A sub-plot in the book was in turn the inspiration for The Mother War, a never-produced thriller for Granada about a woman, Eva Jericho, and a calcified
fetus in her uterus.
Davies continued to propose dramas to Channel 4, including Springhill, an apocalyptic soap-opera co-created by his colleagues Frank Cottrell Boyce
and Paul Abbott
that aired simultaneously on Sky One
and Channel 4 in 1996–97. Set in suburban Liverpool, the series focuses on the pious Catholic
Freeman family and their encounter and internal conflict with Eva Morrigan (Katharine Rogers). He storylined for the second series, but submitted fewer scripts; Granada had commissioned him to write for their soap The Grand, temporarily storyline for Coronation Street, and write the straight-to-video special Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas!
. The second series of Springhill continued his penchant for symbolism; in particular, it depicted Marion Freeman (Judy Holt
) and Eva as personifications of good and evil, and climaxed with a finale set in an ultra-liberal dystopian future where premarital sex and homosexuality are embraced by the Church. Boyce later commented that without Davies' input, the show would have been a "dry run" for Abbott's hit show Shameless
.
Davies' next project was The Grand
, a period soap drama set in a Manchester hotel during the interwar period
. It was designed to be a valuable show in a ratings war with the BBC and was scheduled at 9 pm on a Friday night. After the original writer abandoned the series, Granada approached him to write the entire show. His scripts for the first series reflect the pessimism of the period; each episode added its own emotional trauma on the staff, including a soldier's execution for desertion, a destitute maid who threatened to illegally abort her unborn child to survive, and a multi-episode storyline centred on the chambermaid Monica Jones (Jane Danson
) as she kills her lover in self-defence, is arrested, and eventually executed for murder. The show was renewed for a second series despite the first's dark tone.
The second series had a lighter tone and greater emphasis on character development, which Davies attributed to his friend Sally, who had previously warned him of the adult humour in Breakfast Serials; she told him that his show was too bleak to be compared to real life. Davies highlighted the sixth and eighth episodes of the second series as a time of maturity as a writer: for the sixth, he utilised then-unconventional narrative devices such as flashback
s to explore the hotel barman's closeted homosexuality and the societal attitudes towards sexuality in the 1920s; and he highlighted the eighth as when he allowed the series to "take on its own life" by deliberately inserting plot devices such as McGuffins to enhance the comic relief of the series. Although it was well received, the series' ratings were not high enough to warrant a third series. After its cancellation in September 1997, Davies had an existential crisis and almost died from an overdose; the experience persuaded him to detoxify and make a name for himself by producing a series that celebrated his homosexuality.
which reflected the "hedonistic lifestyle" of the gay quarter of Manchester he was leaving behind. Encouraged by ex-Granada executives Catriona MacKenzie and Gub Neil to "go gay", the series focused on a group of friends in Manchester's gay scene, tentatively titled The Other End of the Ballroom, and later, Queer as Fuck. By February 1998, when he completed the first draft for the series première, the series was known under its eventual title Queer as Folk. The series emulates dramas such as Band of Gold
in presenting realistic discussion on sexuality, as opposed to "one-sided" gay characters in soap operas such as Eastenders
, and eschews "heavy-handed discussion" of issues such as HIV, instead focusing on the party scene on Canal Street
.
After he wrote the pilot, he approached actors for the main characters. Christopher Eccleston
was Davies' first choice for the role of Stuart Jones; Eccleston declined because of his age and suggested his friend Aidan Gillen
instead. The roles of Vince Tyler and Nathan Maloney were quickly given to Craig Kelly
and Charlie Hunnam
, and the secondary character Alexander Perry, originally written for the television producer Phil Collinson
during his brief acting career, was portrayed by Anthony Cotton, who later portrayed the gay character Sean Tully
in Coronation Street
. The series was allocated a £3,000,000 budget, and was produced by Red Productions, owned by his friend and former colleague Nicola Shindler
, and filmed by Cracker
and Hillsborough director Charles McDougall
and The Grand director Sarah Hardin on location in Manchester. The eight forty-minute episodes emulated experiences from his social life and includes an episode where the minor character Phil Delaney (Jason Merrells
) succumbs to his excesses and dies unnoticed by his social circle.
The series was transmitted in early 1999, when Parliament
were discussing LGBT equality; the series première aired on the day the House of Lords was discussing the Sexual Offences Bill 1999
, which eventually reduced the age of consent
for homosexual couples to 16. The première was controversial, in particular because it depicted the character Nathan, aged fifteen, in sexual intercourse with an older man; the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom
received 136 complaints and the series received criticism from his parents and conservative activist Mary Whitehouse
. The controversy was amplified when the sponsor Beck's
withdrew after several episodes and homosexual activists complained that the series was not representative of gay culture. Nevertheless, the show garnered 3.5 million per episode and a generally positive reaction from fans, and was renewed for a two-episode special due for the following year.
Queer as Folk 2 was broadcast in February 2000 and was driven by the plot element of Vince's half-sister's wedding. The specials place emphasis on Vince and Stuart's relationship, and ends with their departure for another gay scene in a pastiche of Grease
, as Nathan took the role as the leader of the Manchester scene's next generation. On the heels of the special, Davies pitched the spin-off Misfits, a late-night soap opera set in a boarding house
owned by Vince's mother, Hazel, and The Second Coming, a series that depicted the Second Coming of Christ in contemporary Manchester. Misfits was rejected in December 2000 and The Second Coming was initially approved by Channel 4 but later rejected after a change of executive personnel. Instead of contesting the cancellation of The Second Coming, he left Channel 4 and vowed to not work with them again.
, and instead focused on telling a traditional love story and gave the couple the traditionally British names of Bob Gossage and Rose Cooper.
To simulate a classic love story, the plot required antagonists, in the form of Bob's best friend Holly Vance and Rose's boyfriend Andy Lewis (Daniel Ryan
). While Andy, named after Davies' boyfriend Andrew Smith, was a minor character and departed in the third episode, Holly featured throughout the entirety of the series. Bob & Rose thus followed a similar format to Queer as Folk, in particular, the triumvirate of main characters composed of a couple and an outsider who lived in contemporary Manchester, and inverted the traditional "coming out
" story by focusing on Bob's uncharacteristic attraction to Rose; Bob describes his sexual life by simply speaking the line "I fancy men. And her.". The series was similar to the Kevin Smith
film Chasing Amy
(1997), as they both portrayed a romance between a straight character and gay character and the resulting ostracism from the couple's social circles, much like The Second Coming shared its concept with Smith's 1999 film Dogma
.
After successfully pitching the show to ITV
, Red Productions joined Davies in casting the show and initially approached Jonathan Creek
star Alan Davies
to portray Bob. Despite being heterosexual, he heartily accepted the role and spent several weeks researching first-hand Manchester's gay scene with series director Joe Wright
. His only objection to the role was Bob being a fan of Manchester United F.C.
, the team Shindler had named Red Productions for, because of his prolific support of Arsenal F.C.
. The part of Rose was given to Lesley Sharp
, her first leading role after her portrayal of secondary characters in past Red shows Playing the Field
and Clocking Off
, and Jessica Stevenson
was cast as Holly by ITV Head of Drama Nick Elliott on the basis of her performance in the Channel 4 comedy Spaced
.
The series was filmed in the southern suburbs of Manchester between March and June 2001 and often used Davies' own home as a green room
. The series was the only Red–Davies collaboration not to be scored by future Doctor Who composer Murray Gold
; the soundtrack was a Martin Phipps
composition inspired by Hans Zimmer
's work on the 1993 film True Romance
. It aired on Monday nights in September and October 2001. Although it was critically acclaimed, and eventually won two British Comedy Awards
and a British Academy Television Award nomination, the series had lower viewing figures than expected and was moved to a later timeslot for the final two episodes. Although the series was not as successful as he hoped, the show helped Davies rekindle his relationship with his mother shortly before her death, just after the transmission of the fourth episode, which he sees as "possibly the best thing [he has] ever written".
. He accepted the offer and wrote an episode where the titular character (portrayed by Liza Tarbuck
) and her friends attend a schoolmate's funeral and become psychologically haunted by the deceased woman's solitary life. His first work for the BBC in eight years prompted them to continuously approach him with concepts for period dramas; he invariably declined because his only intention was to revive Doctor Who, which had then been on hiatus for over a decade. In 2002, he met with the BBC to discuss the revival of the show and producing The Second Coming; the BBC were unable to commit to either, and he again declined to work for them. After the BBC rejected The Second Coming, Shindler proposed that the series should be pitched to ITV. Despite the story's controversial message, the critical success of Bob & Rose encouraged the channel to commission the series for broadcast.
The Second Coming had been several years in the making and endured many rewrites from the first draft presented to Channel 4 in 2000, but retained its key concept of a realistic depiction of the Second Coming of Christ with a humanity-centred deity. A major removals from the script, due to time constraints, was a long sequence titled "Night of the Demons": the main character, a shop assistant named Stephen Baxter who discovers his divine lineage, takes over a hotel with his disciples and eventually encounters several of the hotel's employees that have been possessed by the Devil
. Several similar sequences were removed to create a thriller set in the days before Judgement Day
.
An experienced actor was required to portray Stephen; Davies approached Christopher Eccleston
, who had previously been approached for the role of Stuart in Queer as Folk, based on his performance as Nicky Hutchinson in the drama Our Friends in the North
. Eccleston accepted the role and helped Davies make the character more human after he observed that "Baxter was getting lost amid his loftier pronouncements". The character of Judith, who would represent the fall of God, was given to Lesley Sharp after her performance in Bob & Rose, and the role of the Devil was given to Mark Benton
.
The Second Coming was controversial from its conception. When it was a Channel 4 project, it was the subject of a Sunday Express article a year before its original projected transmission date of late-2001. The series would again receive criticism when it was rumoured it would be broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2003. The series was eventually broadcast over consecutive nights on 9–10 February 2003 to 6.3 million and 5.4 million viewers respectively, and received mixed reactions from the audience: Davies received death threats for its atheistic message and criticism for its anticlimactic ending, but he received two nominations for Television Awards and one for a Royal Television Society
Award.
and his descendants' claim to 77 acres (311,608.2 m²) of real estate in Lower Manhattan
, New York City. The series was a departure from his trend of experimental social commentary; it was instead designed to be a mainstream comedy that utilised Welsh actors: Davies and Red Productions even planned a cameo appearance by Swansea-born Hollywood actress Catherine Zeta Jones.
Because the series was centred on an entire family, Red Productions was given the task of casting eleven principal characters: the role of family patriarch Max Vivaldi was given to Griff Rhys Jones
, at the request of ITV for prolific actors; Rhian Morgan, Davies' ex-girlfriend from the WGYT, was cast as Max's wife Val; Sharon Morgan
as Max's sister Stella; Joanna Page
as Candy Vivaldi; Matthew Barry and Siwan Morris
as the Vivaldi siblings Loe and Maria; Hi-de-Hi!
actress Ruth Madoc
as Val's sister Myrtle Jones; and Jason Hughes
as Maria's boyfriend Gethin. The series, specifically the family's composition of two daughters and a gay son, mirrored his own upbringing to the point where Davies and his boyfriend referred to the show as "The Private Joke".
The series was originally written in six parts, but Davies excised a large portion of the fifth episode because the crew expressed concerns with its pacing. The series was filmed in late 2003 under the direction of Sheree Folkson and Tim Whitby, and utilised many areas of Swansea that Davies was familiar with since his childhood. It aired as four hour-long episodes and a ninety-minute finale on Thursday nights preceding Christmas 2003. Eventually, Mine All Mine would be his least successful series and ended its run with just over two million viewers, which he later blamed on the series' high eccentricity.
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
scandal, was cancelled after he accepted the Doctor Who job; and the second, a dramatisation of the life of the Venetian adventurer and lover Giacomo Casanova
, was his next show with Red Productions.
Davies' association with Casanova began when London Weekend Television
producers Julie Gardner
, Michele Buck, and Damien Timmer
approached him to write a 21st-century adaptation of Casanova's memoirs
. He accepted to script the series because it was "the best subject in the world" and, after reading the memoirs, sought to create a realistic depiction of Casanova instead of further perpetuating the stereotype of a hypersexual lover. The series was originally written for ITV, but was turned down after he could not agree on the length of the serial. Shortly after the ITV declined to produce Casanova, Gardner took up a position as Head of Drama at BBC Wales
and brought the concept with her. The BBC agreed to fund the series, but could only release the money required if a regionally based independent company produced the series. Davies turned to Shindler, who agreed to become the serial's fifth executive producer.
Davies' script takes place in two distinct time frames and required two different actors for the eponymous role: the older Casanova was portrayed by Golden Globe and Honorary Academy Award winner Peter O'Toole
, and the younger Casanova was portrayed by Olivier Award nominee and upcoming television actor David Tennant
. The serial takes place primarily during Casanova's early adulthood and depicts his life among three women: his mother (Dervla Kirwan
), his lover Henriette (Laura Fraser
), and his consort Bellino (Nina Sosanya
). The script takes a different approach to Dennis Potter's 1971 dramatisation
; instead of Potter's focus on sex and misogyny, the 2005 serial focuses on Casanova's compassion and respect for women.
Casanova was filmed alongside the first few episodes of the new series of Doctor Who, which meant producers common to both projects, including Davies and Gardner, made daily journeys between the former's production in Lancashire
and Cheshire
and the latter's production in Cardiff. Red Productions also filmed on location overseas in a stately home in Dubrovnik
, and alongside production of the identically titled 2005 Lasse Hallström film in Venice
. The two production teams shared resources and were given the unofficial names of "Little Casanova" and "Big Casanova" respectively. When it premièred on BBC Three
in March 2005, the first episode attracted 940,000 viewers, a record for a first-run drama on the channel, but was overshadowed on BBC One
by the return of Doctor Who in the same month.
's (William Hartnell
) regeneration
into the Second Doctor
(Patrick Troughton
) at the end of the 1966 serial The Tenth Planet
, Davies had "fallen in love" with the show and, by the mid-1970s, he was regularly writing reviews of broadcast serials in his diary. His favourite writer and childhood hero was Robert Holmes; during his career, he has complimented the creative use of BBC studios to create "terror and claustrophobia" for Holmes' 1975 script The Ark in Space
and has opined that the first episode of The Talons of Weng-Chiang
(1977) featured "the best dialogue ever written; it's up there with Dennis Potter
". His screenwriting career also began with a Doctor Who submission; in 1987, he submitted a spec script
set on an intergalactic news aggregator and broadcaster, which was rejected by script editor Andrew Cartmel
, who suggested that he should write a more prosaic story about "a man who is worried about his mortgage, his marriage, [and] his dog".
During the late-1990s, Davies lobbied the BBC to revive the show from its hiatus and reached the discussion stages in late 1998 and early 2002. His proposals would update the show to be better suited for a 21st-century audience: the series would be recorded on film instead of videotape; the length of each episode would double from twenty-five minutes to fifty; episodes would primarily take place on Earth, in the style of the Third Doctor
(Jon Pertwee
) UNIT
episodes; and Davies would remove "excess baggage" from the mythology such as Gallifrey
and the Time Lord
s. His pitch competed against three others: Dan Freedman
's fantasy retelling, Matthew Graham
's Gothic
-styled pitch, and Mark Gatiss
' reboot, which made the Doctor the audience surrogate
character, instead of his companion
s. Davies also took cues from American fantasy television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville
, most notably Buffys concepts of series-long story arc
s and the "Big Bad
".
In August 2003, the BBC had resolved legal issues over production rights that had surfaced as a result of the jointly produced Universal Studios
–BBC–FOX
1996 Doctor Who film
, and the Controller of BBC One Lorraine Heggessey
and Controller of Drama Commissioning Jane Tranter
approached Gardner and Davies to create a revival of the series to air in a primetime slot on Saturday nights, as part of their plan to devolve production to its regional bases. By mid-September, they accepted the deal to produce the series alongside Casanova.
Davies' pitch for Doctor Who was the first one he wrote voluntarily; previously, he opted to outline concepts of shows to commissioning executives and offer to write the pilot episode because he felt that a pitch made him "feel like [he's] killing the work". The fifteen-page pitch outlined a Doctor
who was "your best friend; someone you want to be with all the time", the nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler
(Billie Piper
) as a "perfect match" for the new Doctor, avoidance of the forty-year back story "except for the good bits", the retention of the TARDIS
, sonic screwdriver
, and Dalek
s, removal of the Time Lords, and a greater focus on humanity. His pitch was submitted for the first production meeting in December 2003 and a series of thirteen episodes was obtained by pressure from BBC Worldwide
and a workable budget from Julie Gardner
.
The first new series of Doctor Who featured eight scripts by Davies;the remainder were allocated to experienced dramatists and writers for the show's ancillary releases
: Steven Moffat
penned a two-episode story, and Mark Gatiss
, Robert Shearman, and Paul Cornell
each wrote one script. Davies also approached his old friend Paul Abbott and Harry Potter
author J. K. Rowling
to write for the series; both declined due to existing commitments. Shortly after he secured writers for the show, Davies stated that he had no intention to approach writers for the old series; the only writer he would have wished to work with was Holmes, who died in May 1986.
By early 2004, the show had settled into a regular production cycle. Davies, Gardner, and BBC Controller of Drama Mal Young
took posts as executive producers, and Phil Collinson, his old colleague from Granada, took the role of producer. Davies' official role as head writer
and executive producer
, or "showrunner", consisted of laying a skeletal plot for the entire series, holding "tone meetings" to correctly identify the tone of an episode, often described in one word—for example, the "tone word" for Moffat's "The Empty Child
" was "romantic"—and overseeing all aspects of production.
The production team was also tasked with finding a suitable actor for the role of the Doctor. Most notably, they approached film actor Hugh Grant
and comedian Rowan Atkinson
for the role. By the time Young suggested The Second Coming and Our Friends in the North
actor Christopher Eccleston
to Davies, Eccleston was one of three left in the running for the role: the other candidates are rumoured in the industry to have been Alan Davies
and Bill Nighy
. Eccleston created his own characteristics of his rendition of the Doctor based on Davies' life, most notably, his catchphrase "Fantastic!":
Filming for the show started in July 2004 on location in Cardiff
for "Rose
". The start of filming created stress among the production team because of unseen circumstances: several scenes from the first block had to be re-shot because the original footage was unusable; the Slitheen
prosthetics for "Aliens of London
", "World War Three
", and "Boom Town
" were noticeably different from their computer-generated counterparts; and the BBC came to a gridlock in negotiations with the Terry Nation
estate to secure the Dalek
s for the sixth episode of the series
; Davies and episode writer Rob Shearman
were forced to rework the script to feature another race, until Gardner was able to secure the rights a month later. After the first production block, which he described as "hitting a brick wall", the show's production was markedly eased as the crew familiarised themselves.
The first episode of the revived Doctor Who, "Rose", aired on 26 March 2005 and received 10.8 million viewers and favourable critical reception. Four days after the transmission of "Rose", Tranter approved a Christmas special and a second series
. The press release was overshadowed by a leaked announcement that Christopher Eccleston would leave the role after one series; in response, David Tennant was announced as Eccleston's replacement.
Tennant had been offered the role when he was watching a pre-transmission copy of Casanova with Davies and Gardner. Tennant initially believed the offer was a joke, but after he realised they were serious, he accepted the role and made his first appearance in the dénouement of "The Parting of the Ways
", the final episode of the first series. Doctor Who continued to be one of BBC's flagship programmes throughout Davies' tenure, and resulted in record sales of the show's official magazine
, an increase in spin-off novels
, and the launch of the children's magazine Doctor Who Adventures
and toy sonic screwdriver
s and Daleks. The show's popularity ultimately led to a resurgence in family-orientated Saturday night drama; the ITV science-fiction series Primeval and the BBC historical dramas Robin Hood and Merlin
were specifically designed for an early Saturday evening timeslot. He was also approached by the BBC to produce several spin-off series, eventually creating two: Torchwood
and The Sarah Jane Adventures
.
Doctor Who spin-off in the wake of the parent series' popularity. Torchwood
—named after a anagram
matic title ruse used to prevent leaks of Doctor Whos first series—incorporated elements from an abandoned Davies project titled Excalibur and featured the pansexual 51st century time-traveller Jack Harkness
(John Barrowman
) and a team of alien hunters in Cardiff. The show began production in April 2006 and was marketed through foreshadowing in the main story arc of Doctor Who's second series, which portrayed Torchwood as a covert quasi-governmental organisation that monitors, exploits, and suppresses the existence of extraterrestrial life and technology. Upon its transmission, Torchwood was one of BBC Three's most popular shows; however, it received criticism for "adolescent" use of sexual and violent themes. This led the production team to alter the format to be subtler in its portrayal of adult themes.
Concurrently, he was approached to produce a CBBC
show which was described as Young Doctor Who. Davies was reluctant to diminish the mystery of the Doctor's character and instead pitched a show with Elisabeth Sladen
as the once-popular companion Sarah Jane Smith
: The Sarah Jane Adventures
, which follows Sarah Jane and local schoolchildren as they investigate extraterrestrial events in the London Borough of Ealing
. The show was given a backdoor pilot as the Doctor Who episode "School Reunion
" and premièred in its own right with "Invasion of the Bane
" on 1 January 2007. The show was more successful than its 1981 predecessor K-9 and Company
; it received more favourable reviews than Torchwood and a significant periphery demographic that compared the show to 1970s Doctor Who episodes.
The workload of managing three separate shows prompted Davies to delegate writing tasks for Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures to other writers so he could focus on writing Doctor Who. After Billie Piper
's departure as Rose Tyler in the second series finale "Doomsday
", he suggested a third spin-off, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence, a compilation of annual Bank Holiday
specials featuring Rose in a parallel universe version of Torchwood. He later reneged on his idea, as he believed that Rose should stay off screen, and abandoned the idea even though it had been budgeted.
, an imprint of Random House Publishing, published The Writer's Tale, a collection of emails between Davies and Radio Times
and Doctor Who Magazine
journalist Benjamin Cook
. Dubbed the "Great Correspondence" by Davies and Cook, The Writer's Tale covers a period between February 2007 and March 2008 and explores his writing processes and the development of his scripts for the fourth series
of Doctor Who: "Voyage of the Damned
", "Partners in Crime
", "Midnight
", "Turn Left
", "The Stolen Earth
", and "Journey's End
". The book's first chapter focuses on Cook's "big questions" on Davies' writing style, character development—using the Doctor Who character Donna Noble
(Catherine Tate
) and the Skins
character Tony Stonem
(Nicholas Hoult
) as contrasting examples—, how he formulated ideas for stories, and the question "why do you write?". After several weeks, Cook assumes an unofficial advisory role to the scriptwriting and the development of the series. The book's epilogue consists of a short exchange between Davies and Cook: Cook changes from his role as "Invisible Ben" to "Visible Ben" and strongly advises to vastly alter the denouement to "Journey's End" from a cliffhanger that led into "The Next Doctor"—which had occurred in the previous three series finales, "The Parting of the Ways
", "Doomsday
", and "Last of the Time Lords
"—to a melancholy ending that showed the Doctor alone in the TARDIS. After three days of deliberation, Davies accepts Cook's suggestion and thanks him for improving both episodes.
After its release, the pair embarked on a five-stop signing tour to promote the book in October 2008 at Waterstone's
branches in London, Birmingham
, Manchester, Bristol
, and Cardiff. The book received positive reviews: Veronica Horwell of The Guardian
wrote that Davies was the "Scheherazade of Cardiff Bay
" and opined that the book should have been twice the published length; Ian Berriman of science fiction magazine SFX gave the book five stars and wrote that it was the only book necessary to gain a knowledge of the show's production and secrets; television critic Charlie Brooker
was inspired by the book to devote an entire episode of his BBC Four
show Screenwipe
to interviewing television writers; and chat show couple Richard and Judy
selected the book as a recommended Christmas present in the "Serious Non-Fiction" category of their book club. A second edition of the book, The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter, was released in January 2010 by BBC Books. The second edition added 350 pages of correspondence—before excising draft scripts included in the first edition—and covered Davies' final months as executive producer of Doctor Who as he co-wrote the five-part BBC One
Torchwood
miniseries Children of Earth, planned David Tennant
's departure and Matt Smith's arrival as the Doctor, and moved to the United States.
as his successor. His role in late 2008 was split between writing the 2009 specials and preparing for the transition between his and Moffat's production team; one chapter of The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter discusses plans between him, Gardner, and Tennant to announce Tennant's departure live during ITV's National Television Awards
in October 2008. His final full script for Doctor Who was finished in the early morning of 4 March 2009, and filming of the episode closed on 20 May 2009.
Davies' next project is Cucumber, a BBC Worldwide
series about gay men that will air on the American cable network Showtime. Davies also planned to return to art by writing a graphic novel, and was unsuccessfully approached by Lucasfilm
to write for the proposed Star Wars live-action television series
. Davies moved with Gardner and Jane Tranter
to the United States in June 2009, and resides in Los Angeles
, California. He continues to oversee production of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures; he wrote one story for the 2010 series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Death of the Doctor
, which included Matt Smith as the Doctor and Katy Manning
as the Doctor's former companion Jo Grant
, and is the executive producer and author of the premiere ("The New World") and finale ("The Blood Line") of Torchwood: Miracle Day, the fourth series of Torchwood. He gave informal assistance to and later served as creative consultant of ex-Doctor Who script editor Helen Raynor
's and playwright Gary Owen
's BBC Cymru Wales drama Baker Boys
.
and often waits hours or days for concepts to form before he commits them to the script. In The Writer's Tale, he describes his procrastination by discussing his early career. His early method of dealing with the pressures of delivering a script was to "go out drinking" instead. On one occasion in the mid-1990s, he was at the Manchester gay club Cruz 101
when he thought of the climax to the first series of The Grand. As his career progressed, he instead spent entire nights "just thinking of plot, character, pace, etc" and waited until 2:00 am, "when the clubs used to shut", to overcome the urge of procrastination. Davies described the sense of anxiety he experiences in an email to Cook in April 2007, in response to Cook's question of "how do you know when to start writing?":
He expanded on his email two weeks later in response to Cook's query about the supposed link between major depressive disorder and creativity. He explained that his anxiety and melancholy during the scriptwriting period still allowed him to keep on top of his work; on the other hand, he thought "Depression with a capital D [didn't have] any such luxury".
Davies explained in length his writing process to Cook in The Writer's Tale. When he creates characters, he initially assigns a character a name and fits attributes around it. In the case of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) in his inaugural series of Doctor Who, he chose the name because he considered it a "good luck charm" after he used it for Lesley Sharp's character in Bob & Rose. He presented his desire to make the show "essentially British" as another justification: he considered Rose
to be "the most British name in the world" and feminine enough to subvert the then-current trend of female companions and their "boyish" names, such as Benny
, Charley
, and Ace
. While he was writing for The Grand, the executive producer requested that he change the female lead character's name, a decision that led to the "character never [feeling] right from that moment on". The surname "Harkness", most notably given to Torchwood lead Captain Jack Harkness, is a similar charm, first used in 1993 for the Harkness family in Century Falls, and ultimately derived from the Marvel Universe
hero Agatha Harkness
, and the surname "Tyler
" is similarly used because of his affection for how the surname is spelled and pronounced.
Davies also attempts to channel his writing by using music that fits the theme of the series as a source of inspiration: Doctor Who was typically written while he listened to action
-adventure film
score
s; Queer as Folk was written to Hi-NRG
music "to catch [the] sheer clubland drive"; Bob & Rose was written to the Moby
album Play
, because the two works shared a "urban, sexy, full of lonely hearts at night" image; and The Second Coming shared the concepts of "experimental[ity], anguish, dark[ness], [and] pain" of Radiohead
albums. More specifically, he wrote the early drafts of the fourth series Doctor Who episode "Partners in Crime
" while he was listening to Mika
's Life in Cartoon Motion
, and singled out the song "Any Other World" as a "Doctor Who companion song" with lyrics that matched Penny, the planned companion for the fourth series.
When he creates new scripts, Davies considers the dénouement of a story to be representative of the work. He often formulates both the scene and its emotional impact early in the process, but writes the scenes last due to his belief that "[later scenes] can't exist if they aren't informed by where they've come from". Davies is a strong advocate for the continued use of the cliffhanger ending and opposes advertising that sacrifices the impact of storytelling. In pursuit of his quest, he instructs editors to remove scenes from press copies of episodes he writes; cliffhangers were removed from the review copies of the Doctor Who episodes "Army of Ghosts
", "The Stolen Earth
", and the first part of The End of Time
, and Rose Tyler's unadvertised appearance in "Partners in Crime
" was excised. His most prolific cliffhanger was in the script of "The Stolen Earth", which created an unprecedented amount of interest in the show. In an interview with BBC News shortly after the episode's transmission, he argued that the success of a popular television series is linked to how well producers can keep secrets and create a "live experience":
Davies attempts to both create imagery and to provide a social commentary in his scripts; for example, he uses camera directions in his scripts more frequently than newer screenwriters to ensure that anyone who reads the script, especially the director, is able to "feel... the pace, the speed, the atmosphere, the mood, the gags, [and] the dread". His stage directions also create an atmosphere by their formatting and avoidance of the first person. Although the basis of several of his scripts derive from previous concepts, he claims that most concepts for storytelling have been already used, and instead tries to tell a relatively new and entertaining plot; for example, the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left
" shares its concept most notably with the 1998 film Sliding Doors
. Like how Sliding Doors examines two timelines based on whether Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow
) catches a London Underground
train, Davies uses the choice of the Doctor's companion to turn left or right at a road intersection to depict either a world with the Doctor, as seen throughout the rest of the fourth series, or an alternate world
without the Doctor, examined in its entirety within the episode. The world without the Doctor creates a dystopia which he uses to provide a commentary on Nazi-esque fascism. Davies generally tries to make his scripts "detailed, but quite succinct", and eschews the practice of long character and set descriptions; instead, he limits himself to only three adjectives to describe a character and two lines to describe a set to allow the dialogue to describe the story instead.
Davies also uses his scripts to examine and debate on large issues such as sexuality and religion, especially from a homosexual or atheist perspective. He refrains from a dependence on "cheap, easy lines" that provide little deeper insight; his mantra during his early adult drama career was "no boring issues". Queer as Folk is the primary vehicle for his social commentary of homosexuality and advocation of greater acceptance. He used the series to challenge the "primal ... gut instinct" of homophobia by introducing homosexual imagery in contrast to the heterosexual "fundamental image of life, of family, of childhood, [and] of survival". Torchwood also tackles LGBT themes by subverting stereotypes and exploring the characters' sexualities, and Bob & Rose examines the issue of a gay man who falls in love with a woman. His most notable commentaries of religion and atheism are The Second Coming and his 2007 Doctor Who episode "Gridlock
". The Second Comings depiction of a contemporary and realistic Second Coming
of Jesus Christ eschews the use of religious iconography in favour of a love story underlined by the male lead's "awakening as the Son of God". In contrast, "Gridlock" takes a more pro-active role in debating religion: the episode depicts the unity of the supporting cast in singing the Christian hymns "Abide with Me
" and "The Old Rugged Cross
" as a positive aspect of faith, but depicts the Doctor as an atheistic hero which shows the faith as misguided because "there is no higher authority". He also includes his commentary as an undertone in other stories; he described the sub-plot of the differing belief systems of the Doctor and Queen Victoria
in "Tooth and Claw
" as a conflict between "Rational Man versus Head of the Church".
for Best Comedy Drama and Writer of the Year. The Second Coming was nominated for the same Television Award in 2003. His work on The Second Coming also earned him a nomination for a Royal Television Society
award.
Most of Davies' recognition came as a result of his work on Doctor Who. In 2005, Doctor Who won two Television Awards—Best Drama Series and the Pioneer Audience Award—and he was awarded the honorary Dennis Potter Award for writing. BAFTA Cymru
also gave him that years' Siân Phillips
Award for Outstanding Contribution to Network Television. In 2006, he was awarded the accolade of "Industry Player of the Year" at the Edinburgh International Television Festival
. In 2007, he was nominated for the "Best Soap/Series" Writers' Guild of Great Britain
Award—along with Chris Chibnall
, Paul Cornell
, Stephen Greenhorn
, Steven Moffat
, Helen Raynor
, and Gareth Roberts
—for their work on the third series of Doctor Who
. He was again nominated for two BAFTA Awards in 2008: a Television Award for his work on Doctor Who, and the Television Craft Award for Best Writer, for the episode "Midnight
". Under his tenure, Doctor Who won five consecutive National Television Awards
between 2005 and 2010. He has also been nominated for three Hugo Awards, all in the category of "Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form": in 2007, the story comprising "Army of Ghosts
" and "Doomsday
" was defeated by Steven Moffat's "The Girl in the Fireplace
"; in 2009, the episode "Turn Left
" was defeated by Joss Whedon
's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
; and in 2010, all three of his scripts which were eligible for the award, "The Next Doctor", the Davies–Roberts
collaboration "Planet of the Dead
", and the Davies–Ford
collaboration "The Waters of Mars
", were nominated: the award was won by "The Waters of Mars" and the other episodes took second and third place.
Davies' work on Doctor Who has similarly been recognised by the public. During his tenure as executive producer, only Steven Moffat's "Silence in the Library
", which was scheduled against the final of the second series of Britain's Got Talent
, failed to win in its timeslot. The show's viewing figures were consistently high enough that the only broadcasts to have consistently rivaled Doctor Who for viewers in the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board's weekly charts were EastEnders
, Coronation Street
, Britain's Got Talent
, and international football
matches. Two of his scripts, "Voyage of the Damned
" and "The Stolen Earth
", broke audience records for the show by being declared the second most viewed broadcasts of their respective weeks, and "Journey's End
" became the first episode to be the most viewed broadcast of the week. The show currently enjoys consistently high Appreciation Index
ratings: "Love & Monsters
", regarded by Doctor Who fans as his worst script, gained a rating of 76, just short of the 2006 average rating of 77; and the episodes "The Stolen Earth
" and "Journey's End
" share the highest rating Doctor Who has received, at 91.
Among Doctor Who fans, his contribution to the show ranks as high as the show's co-creator Verity Lambert
: in a 2009 poll of 6,700 Doctor Who Magazine
readers, he won the "Greatest Contribution" award with 22.62% of the votes against Lambert's 22.49% share, in addition to winning the magazine's 2005, 2006, and 2008 awards for the best writer of each series. Ian Farrington, who commented on the 2009 "Greatest Contribution" poll, attributed Davies' popularity to his range of writing styles, from the epic "Doomsday
" to the minimalistic "Midnight", and his ability to market the show to appeal to a wide audience.
Davies' work on Doctor Who has led to accolades out of the television industry. Between 2005 and 2008, he was included in The Guardian
s "Media 100": in 2005, he was ranked the 14th most influential man in the media; in 2006, the 28th; in 2007, the 15th; and in 2008, the 31st. The Independent on Sunday also recognised his contributions to the public by including him on consecutive Pink Lists, which chronicle the achievements of gay and lesbian personalities: in 2005, he was ranked the 73rd most influential gay person; in 2006, the 18th; in 2007, the most influential gay person; in 2008, the 2nd; and in 2009, the 14th. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen's 2008 Birthday Honours list for services to drama, and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University
in July 2008.
Pen name
A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...
Russell T Davies, is a Welsh television producer
Television producer
The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking...
and screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
whose works include Queer as Folk
Queer as Folk (UK TV series)
Queer as Folk is a 1999 British television series that chronicles the lives of three gay men living in Manchester's gay village around Canal Street. Both Queer as Folk and Queer as Folk 2 were written by Russell T Davies...
, Bob & Rose, The Second Coming
The Second Coming (TV serial)
The Second Coming is a two-part British television drama first screened on ITV in the UK in February 2003. It concerns the realisation of Steve Baxter that he is in fact the Son of God, and has just a few days to find the human race's Third Testament and thus avert the Apocalypse.It was written...
, Casanova
Casanova (2005 TV serial)
Casanova is a 2005 British television comedy drama serial, written by television scriptwriter Russell T Davies and directed by Sheree Folkson...
, and the 2005 revival of the classic British science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
.
Born in Swansea, Davies aspired to work as a comic artist in his adult life, until a careers advisor at his school suggested that he study English literature; he consequently focused on a career of play- and screen-writing. After he graduated from Oxford University, Davies joined the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
's children's department on a part-time basis in 1985 and worked in varying positions, including writing and producing two series, Dark Season
Dark Season
Dark Season is a British science-fiction television serial for adolescents, screened on BBC1 in late 1991. Comprising six twenty-five minute episodes, the two linked three-part stories tell the adventures of three teenagers and their battle to save their school and their classmates from the actions...
and Century Falls
Century Falls
Century Falls is a British cross-genre series broadcast in six twenty-five minute episodes on BBC One in early 1993. Written by Russell T Davies, it tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides...
. He left the BBC in the early 1990s to work for Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
and later became a freelance writer.
Davies moved into writing adult television dramas in 1994. His early scripts generally explored concepts of religion and sexuality among various backdrops: Revelations
Revelations (1994 TV series)
Revelations was a late-night soap opera created by Russell T Davies, Brian B. Thompson, and Tony Wood and starring Judy Loe and Paul Shelley, and aired in a limited number of ITV regions between 1994 and 1996. The series is family drama about the family of the priest Edward Rattigan and his wife...
was a soap opera about organised religion and featured a lesbian vicar; Springhill
Springhill (TV series)
Springhill was a British soap opera/drama, produced by Granada and broadcast in 1996/1997 on the Sky One satellite channel, and later on Channel 4. It consisted of 2 series, each containing 26 episodes...
was a soap drama about a Catholic family in contemporary Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
; The Grand
The Grand (TV series)
The Grand was a British television drama series first broadcast on ITV in 1997-1998. It was written by Russell T Davies and set in a hotel in Manchester in the 1920s....
explored society's opinion of subjects such as prostitution, abortion, and homosexuality during the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
; and Queer as Folk, his first prolific series, recreated his experiences in the Manchester gay scene
Canal Street (Manchester)
Canal Street, the centre of the Manchester Gay Village, is a street in Manchester city centre in North West England. The pedestrianised street, which runs along the west side of the Rochdale Canal, is lined with gay bars and restaurants...
. His later series include Bob & Rose, which portrayed a gay man who fell in love with a woman, The Second Coming, which focused on the second coming and deicide
Deicide
Deicide is the killing of a god. The term deicide was coined in the 17th century from medieval Latin *deicidium, from de-us "god" and -cidium "cutting, killing")...
of Jesus Christ, Mine All Mine
Mine All Mine
Mine All Mine is a British television series produced by Red Production Company for ITV. It was written by Russell T Davies and starred Griff Rhys Jones...
, a comedy about a family who discover they owned the entire city of Swansea, and Casanova, an adaptation of the Venetian lover's complete memoirs
Histoire de ma vie
Histoire de ma vie is both the memoir and autobiography of Giacomo Casanova, a famous 18th century Italian adventurer...
.
His most notable achievement is reviving and running the science fiction series Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
after a sixteen year hiatus, with Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston is an English stage, film and television actor. His films include Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, 28 Days Later, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra...
, and later David Tennant
David Tennant
David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...
, in the title role of the Doctor
Doctor (Doctor Who)
The Doctor is the central character in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, and has also featured in two cinema feature films, a vast range of spin-off novels, audio dramas and comic strips connected to the series....
. Davies' tenure as executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
of the show oversaw a surge in popularity that led to the production of two spin-off
Spin-off (media)
In media, a spin-off is a radio program, television program, video game, or any narrative work, derived from one or more already existing works, that focuses, in particular, in more detail on one aspect of that original work...
series, Torchwood
Torchwood
Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from Davies's 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. The show has shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from...
and The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...
, and the revival of the Saturday primetime dramas as a profitable venture for production companies. Davies was awarded an OBE in 2008 for services to drama, which coincided with his announcement that he would step down from as the show's executive producer with his final script, The End of Time
The End of Time
The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the Universe, also sold with the alternate subtitle The Next Revolution in Physics, is a 1999 science book in which the author Julian Barbour argues that time exists merely as an illusion.-Auto-biography:The book begins by describing how...
(2009–10). Davies moved to Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California in 2009, where he oversaw production of Torchwood: Miracle Day and the fifth and final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
Early life and youth career
Stephen Russell Davies was born on 27 April 1963 in Mount Pleasant Hospital, SwanseaSwansea
Swansea is a coastal city and county in Wales. Swansea is in the historic county boundaries of Glamorgan. Situated on the sandy South West Wales coast, the county area includes the Gower Peninsula and the Lliw uplands...
. His parents, Barbara and Vivian Davies, were Classics teachers from the suburban area of Sketty
Sketty
Sketty is the name of an electoral ward, a community and a suburb in the City and County of Swansea, Wales, UK. The community is coterminous with the electoral ward....
. Stephen was the youngest of three children and their only son. Because he was born by caesarean section
Caesarean section
A Caesarean section, is a surgical procedure in which one or more incisions are made through a mother's abdomen and uterus to deliver one or more babies, or, rarely, to remove a dead fetus...
, his mother was placed on a morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
drip; an overdose resulted in a psychotic episode and institutionalisation. He described his mother's experience as "literally ... like science fiction" and an early inspiration for his writing career.
As a child, Davies was almost exclusively referred to by his middle name. He grew up in a household that "never switched the TV off" until after closedown, and he subsequently became immersed in dramas such as I, Claudius
I, Claudius
I, Claudius is a novel by English writer Robert Graves, written in the form of an autobiography of the Roman Emperor Claudius. As such, it includes history of the Julio-Claudian Dynasty and Roman Empire, from Julius Caesar's assassination in 44 BC to Caligula's assassination in AD 41...
and Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
; one of his first memories, at the age of three, was the dénouement of the 1966 Doctor Who serial The Tenth Planet
The Tenth Planet
The Tenth Planet is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 8 October to 29 October 1966. It was William Hartnell's last regular appearance as the First Doctor, and the first story to feature the Cybermen...
. He was also an avid cartoonist and comics enthusiast and purchased series such as Asterix
Asterix
Asterix or The Adventures of Asterix is a series of French comic books written by René Goscinny and illustrated by Albert Uderzo . The series first appeared in French in the magazine Pilote on October 29, 1959...
and Peanuts
Peanuts
Peanuts is a syndicated daily and Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000, continuing in reruns afterward...
.
Davies attended the local Tycoch Primary School in Sketty and enrolled at Olchfa Comprehensive School
Olchfa School
Olchfa School is the largest comprehensive school in Swansea, South Wales, with approximately 2000 pupils. It provides secondary education for GCSE and tertiary education leading to A-Level qualifications...
aged eleven. In his first year, the main school buildings were closed off for renovation after inspectors discovered the cement used in construction caused other public buildings to collapse. Lessons were held in portacabins instead, which influenced his imagination to create mystery, science-fiction, and conspiracy thriller stories about the main building. He also immersed himself in books such as Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers
Sons and Lovers is a 1913 novel by the English writer D. H. Lawrence. The Modern Library placed it ninth on their list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.-Plot introduction and history:...
by D. H. Lawrence
D. H. Lawrence
David Herbert Richards Lawrence was an English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter who published as D. H. Lawrence. His collected works represent an extended reflection upon the dehumanising effects of modernity and industrialisation...
and The Crystal Mouse by Babs H Deal; the latter influenced him so much he could "see it echoing in anything" he wrote.
At the age of fourteen, Davies auditioned for and joined the newly formed West Glamorgan
West Glamorgan
West Glamorgan is a preserved county and former administrative county of Wales, one of the divisions of the ancient county of Glamorgan.West Glamorgan was created on 1 April 1974, by the Local Government Act 1972 from the county borough of Swansea, the municipal boroughs of Neath and Port Talbot,...
Youth Theatre (WGYT). The group's founder and director, Godfrey Evans, considered him to be "a total all-rounder" who was talented and popular with the other students. Working with the group allowed him to define his sexual identity: he embarked on a several-month relationship with fellow youth thespian Rhian Morgan, and later came out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
as homosexual in his teenage years.
In 1979, Davies completed his O-Levels and stayed at Olchfa with the ambition to study English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
at an Oxbridge
Oxbridge
Oxbridge is a portmanteau of the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge in England, and the term is now used to refer to them collectively, often with implications of perceived superior social status...
university; he abandoned his aspirations of becoming a comic artist after a careers advisor convinced him his colour-blindness would make that path unlikely. During his studies, he participated in the WGYT's assignments to create Welsh language
Welsh language
Welsh is a member of the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages spoken natively in Wales, by some along the Welsh border in England, and in Y Wladfa...
drama to be performed at the National Eisteddfod of Wales
National Eisteddfod of Wales
The National Eisteddfod of Wales is the most important of several eisteddfodau that are held annually, mostly in Wales.- Organisation :...
, including Pair Dadeni, a play based on the Mabinogion
Mabinogion
The Mabinogion is the title given to a collection of eleven prose stories collated from medieval Welsh manuscripts. The tales draw on pre-Christian Celtic mythology, international folktale motifs, and early medieval historical traditions...
myth cycle, and Perthyn, a drama about community belonging and identity in early-1980s West Glamorgan. In 1981, he was accepted by Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College, Oxford
Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in the eighteenth century, but its predecessor on the same site had been an institution of learning since the late thirteenth century...
to study English literature. At Oxford, he realised that he was enamoured with the narrative
Narrative
A narrative is a constructive format that describes a sequence of non-fictional or fictional events. The word derives from the Latin verb narrare, "to recount", and is related to the adjective gnarus, "knowing" or "skilled"...
aspect of fiction, especially nineteenth-century literature such as Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English novelist, generally considered the greatest of the Victorian period. Dickens enjoyed a wider popularity and fame than had any previous author during his lifetime, and he remains popular, having been responsible for some of English literature's most iconic...
.
Davies continued to submit scripts to the WGYT during his studies at Oxford: Box, a play about the influence of television that Evans noted contained Davies' penchants for misdirecting the audience and mixing comedy and drama; In Her Element, which centred around the animation of still objects; and Hothouse, an Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. Born in Leeds, he attended Oxford University where he studied history and performed with The Oxford Revue. He stayed to teach and research mediaeval history at the university for several years...
-inspired piece about internal politics in an advertising office. In 1984, he made his final performance for the WGYT and signed up for a course in Theatre Studies at Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
after graduating from Oxford. He worked sporadically for the Sherman Theatre
Sherman Theatre
Sherman Cymru, also known by its previous name Sherman Theatre, is a performing arts venue in the Cathays district of Cardiff. It was built as a twin-auditorium venue in 1973 with financial support from University College, Cardiff....
's publicity department and claimed Jobseeker's Allowance
Jobseeker's Allowance
Jobseeker's Allowance is a United Kingdom benefit, colloquially known as the dole . It is a form of unemployment benefit paid by the government to people who are unemployed and seeking work. It is part of the social security benefits system and is intended to cover living expenses while the...
in the interim. In 1985, Davies began his professional television career after a friend suggested that he should talk to a television producer who was seeking a temporary graphic artist for the children's show Why Don't You...?.
Children's television career
Davies was taken on as a member of the BBC WalesBBC Wales
BBC Cymru Wales is a division of the British Broadcasting Corporation for Wales. Based at Broadcasting House in the Llandaff area of Cardiff, it directly employs over 1200 people, and produces a broad range of television, radio and online services in both the Welsh and English languages.Outside...
Children's
CBBC
CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
department in 1985 and given one-day contracts and commissions, such as illustrating for Why Don't You...?. As he was only given three days of work per month by the BBC, he continued to freelance and volunteer for the Sherman Theatre. In 1986, he was approached by the Sunday Sport
Sunday Sport
Sunday Sport is a British tabloid newspaper, published by Sport Newspapers, which was established in 1986. It prints plainly ludicrous stories, such as a double-decker London bus being found frozen in the Antarctic ice, or a World War II bomber found on the moon. Defenders of the paper pointed out...
before its launch to provide a football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
-themed daily strip; he declined because he was concerned about the pornographic content of the newspaper. He also submitted a script for Crossroads in response to an appeal for new writers; it was not used because the show was cancelled in 1987. He ultimately abandoned his graphic art career entirely when he realised in his early twenties that he enjoyed writing the dialogue of a comic more than creating the art.
On 1 June 1987, Davies made his first and only appearance as a television presenter on Play School alongside regular presenter Chloë Ashcroft
Chloe Ashcroft
Chloe Ashcroft was a presenter on several BBC children's TV programmes, including Play School, Play Away, Hokey-Cokey and Pie in the Sky. She also appeared in the Doctor Who story Resurrection of the Daleks playing Professor Laird...
. Why Don't You...? line producer Peter Charlton suggested that he would "be good on camera" and advised him to take his career public. Davies was granted the opportunity for sporadic appearances over a period of six months; he hosted only one episode as a storytelling illustrator before he walked off the set and commented he "[was] not doing that again". The appearance remains an in-joke in the industry, and the recordings were invariably requested for wrap parties Davies attended.
On Why Don't You...?, Davies took on varying jobs, including researcher, director, illustrator, assistant floor manager, and unofficial publicist for fan-mail. He was offered his first professional scriptwriting job in 1986 by show producer Dave Evans; he had entered Evans' office to collect his wages and was offered an extra £100 to write a replacement script. Davies' script was positively reviewed in the department and led to increasingly larger roles that culminated in a six-month contract to write for the show after it relocated to Manchester in 1988. He worked for the show for two more years and eventually became the show's producer. He oversaw an increase in drama which tripled its audience—despite the fact BBC Manchester was not permitted to create children's dramas—which reached its climax with his last episode: a drama where the Why Don't You...? protagonists, led by the show's longest running presenter Ben Slade
Ben Slade
Ben Slade - full name Benjamin Rory Slade - was a lead presenter of the cult BBC Network children's magazine programme, Why Don't You? He joined the series in 1988 as a member of the Cardiff presenting team wearing his trademark flat cap...
, were trapped in a café by a supercomputer that tried to kill them.
While he was producing Why Don't You...?, Davies branched out within the children's department at BBC Manchester
BBC North West
BBC North West is the BBC English Region serving Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside, Cheshire, Walsden in West Yorkshire, the Isle of Man , north-west Derbyshire, the Yorkshire Dales including Settle and Ribblesdale, and southern Cumbria.BBC North West television output is also broadcast in...
: he attended directors' courses; wrote for older audiences with his contributions to DEF II
DEF II
DEF II was a programming strand on BBC Two, which aired at 6pm on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9 May 1988 to 23 May 1994, to serve the teenage market. It was produced by Janet Street-Porter, and followed on from her influential youth TV show Network 7, on Channel 4...
and On the Waterfront
On The Waterfront (TV Series)
On the Waterfront was a BBC Saturday morning children's programme, filmed at Brunswick Dock, Liverpool. It was hosted by Andrew O'Connor, Kate Copstick, Bernadette Nolan and Terry Randall...
; and accompanied Keith Chegwin
Keith Chegwin
Keith Chegwin is an English television presenter, former child actor and singer.-Early career:Chegwin's early roles were in works of the Children's Film Foundation, appearing as Egghead Wentworth in The Troublesome Double Egghead's Robot . He also appeared as a stowaway in Doomwatch episode...
to Norway to assist in the production of a children's documentary about politics. The head of the children's department, Ed Pugh, offered him the chance to produce Breakfast Serials
Breakfast Serials
Breakfast Serials was a twenty-five minute anthology series for children that aired on BBC ONE for one series in 1990. It was produced and co-written by Russell T Davies, and edited by Edward Pugh...
, a new series scheduled for an 8:00 am slot. Breakfast Serials incorporated elements of non-sequitur comedy and popular culture references aimed at older students, such as a parody of Land of the Giants
Land of the Giants
Land of the Giants was an hour-long American science fiction television program lasting two seasons beginning on September 22, 1968 and ending on March 22, 1970. The show was created and produced by Irwin Allen. Land of the Giants was the fourth of Allen's science fiction TV series. The show was...
. Davies would make the decision to leave the children's department and the BBC during the production of Breakfast Serials: a friend called him after the first episode was transmitted and observed that he had "broadcast a joke about the juvenilia of Emily Brontë
Emily Brontë
Emily Jane Brontë 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet, best remembered for her only novel, Wuthering Heights, now considered a classic of English literature. Emily was the third eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother...
at eight o'clock in the morning"; the conversation caused him to reflect that he was writing for the wrong audience. However, Davies would produce three more children's series while he pursued an adult drama career: Dark Season
Dark Season
Dark Season is a British science-fiction television serial for adolescents, screened on BBC1 in late 1991. Comprising six twenty-five minute episodes, the two linked three-part stories tell the adventures of three teenagers and their battle to save their school and their classmates from the actions...
, Century Falls
Century Falls
Century Falls is a British cross-genre series broadcast in six twenty-five minute episodes on BBC One in early 1993. Written by Russell T Davies, it tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides...
, and Children's Ward
Children's Ward
Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons...
.
Dark Season and Century Falls
Loch Ness
Loch Ness is a large, deep, freshwater loch in the Scottish Highlands extending for approximately southwest of Inverness. Its surface is above sea level. Loch Ness is best known for the alleged sightings of the cryptozoological Loch Ness Monster, also known affectionately as "Nessie"...
. The story was the precursor for his first freelance children's project: Dark Season
Dark Season
Dark Season is a British science-fiction television serial for adolescents, screened on BBC1 in late 1991. Comprising six twenty-five minute episodes, the two linked three-part stories tell the adventures of three teenagers and their battle to save their school and their classmates from the actions...
. The show, originally called The Adventuresome Three, would feature the Why Don't You...? characters in a purely dramatic setting that was influenced by his childhood. He submitted the script to the head of the BBC's Children's department, Anna Home, and Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
. Both companies were interested in producing the show with minor changes: Granada wished to produce it as one six-part serial, as opposed to Davies' plan of two three-part serials; and Home was interested in accepting the show on the condition it included a new cast of characters. He accepted Home's offer, and the show was allocated the budget and timeslot of Maid Marian and her Merry Men
Maid Marian and her Merry Men
Maid Marian and her Merry Men is a British children's sitcom created and written by Tony Robinson and directed by David Bell. It began in 1989 on BBC One and ran for four series, with the last episode shown in 1994...
, which had been put on hiatus the year before.
The first three episodes of Dark Season feature three young teenagers in a contemporary secondary school, Reet (Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet
Kate Elizabeth Winslet is an English actress and occasional singer. She has received multiple awards and nominations. She was the youngest person to accrue six Academy Award nominations, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Reader...
), Marcie (Victoria Lambert), and Tom (Ben Chandler), who discover a plot by the villain Mr Eldritch (Grant Parsons) to take over the world using school computers. Eldritch is eventually defeated by Marcie and the computer expert Professor Polzinsky (Rosalie Crutchley
Rosalie Crutchley
Rosalie Crutchley was an English actress. Trained at the Royal Academy of Music, Crutchley was best known for her television performances, but had a long and successful career in the theatre and in films, making her stage debut at least as early as 1932 and her screen debut in 1947...
). The next three episodes focus on a new villain: the archaeologist Miss Pendragon (Jacqueline Pearce
Jacqueline Pearce
Jacqueline Pearce is a British actress.-Career:Jacqueline Pearce trained at the British stage school RADA and at Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio in Los Angeles....
), later described by Davies as a "devil worshipping Nazi lesbian", who becomes a part of the ancient supercomputer Behemoth. The two distinct plot elements converge at the end of the fifth episode, when Pendragon crashes through the school stage as Eldritch walks into the auditorium.
Dark Season uses concepts seen in his tenure as executive producer of Doctor Who: "School Reunion
School Reunion (Doctor Who)
"School Reunion" is the third episode in the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It first aired on 29 April 2006. The episode's narrative takes place some time after the events of "The Christmas Invasion"...
", written by Toby Whithouse
Toby Whithouse
Toby Whithouse is an English actor, stand-up comedian and screenwriter. His highest-profile work has been the creation of the BBC Three supernatural television series Being Human. He also created the Channel 4 television drama series No Angels , and has written for BBC One's Hotel Babylon and...
, shares its concept of the antagonist using computers in a comprehensive school
Comprehensive school
A comprehensive school is a state school that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude. This is in contrast to the selective school system, where admission is restricted on the basis of a selection criteria. The term is commonly used in relation to the United...
to take over the world; "Army of Ghosts
Army of Ghosts
"Army of Ghosts" is the twelfth and penultimate episode in the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who which was first broadcast on 1 July 2006...
" unexpectedly brings together the series' two major villains for the final episode; and the characters of Marcie and her friends are similar, albeit unintentionally, to the structure of the Doctor
Doctor (Doctor Who)
The Doctor is the central character in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, and has also featured in two cinema feature films, a vast range of spin-off novels, audio dramas and comic strips connected to the series....
and his companion
Companion (Doctor Who)
In the long-running BBC television science fiction programme Doctor Who and related works, the term "companion" refers to a character who travels with, and shares the adventures of the Doctor. In most Doctor Who stories, the primary companion acts as both deuteragonist and audience surrogate...
s. Dark Season was the first series that he was credited as "Russell T Davies"—the initial arbitrarily chosen to distinguish himself from the BBC Radio 4 presenter
Russell Davies
Robert Russell Davies , known as Russell Davies, is a British journalist and broadcaster. He presents a Sunday radio programme on BBC Radio 2 which spotlights popular song, as well as Brain of Britain on Radio 4.-Background:...
—and the first series that he was commissioned to write a novelisation: it features a more ambiguous climax and foreshadows a sequel set in an arcade similar to the one featured in The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...
serial Warriors of Kudlak
Warriors of Kudlak
Warriors of Kudlak is the fourth story of the British science fiction television series The Sarah Jane Adventures. It forms the fifth and sixth episodes of the show's first series...
.
Davies started planning a second series for Dark Season that followed a similar structure. The first half of the series would take part in the arcade mentioned in the novelisation, and the second would feature the appearance of psychic twins and the re-emergence of the villain Eldritch. The concepts were transferred to its spiritual successor, Century Falls
Century Falls
Century Falls is a British cross-genre series broadcast in six twenty-five minute episodes on BBC One in early 1993. Written by Russell T Davies, it tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides...
, which was produced in 1993 at the request of Dark Season director Colin Cant
Colin Cant
Colin Cant is a British television producer and director, best known for his work in the children's department of BBC Television. Within that department, he was for many years involved as both a director and producer of the long-running children's drama series Grange Hill, and also directed...
. The series primarily used the "psychic twins" concept and was set in an isolated village based on those in the Yorkshire Dales
Yorkshire Dales
The Yorkshire Dales is the name given to an upland area in Northern England.The area lies within the historic county boundaries of Yorkshire, though it spans the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire and Cumbria...
and the North York Moors
North York Moors
The North York Moors is a national park in North Yorkshire, England. The moors are one of the largest expanses of heather moorland in the United Kingdom. It covers an area of , and it has a population of about 25,000...
.
The plot of Century Falls is driven by a legend that no children had been born in the eponymous village for over forty years. The lead protagonist, Tess Hunter (Catherine Sanderson), is an overweight teenager who moves to the village with her mother at the beginning of the serial. She quickly befriends the psychic Ben Naismith (Simon Fenton
Simon Fenton
Simon Fenton is a British actor who has appeared in several different television roles.One of his earliest roles was in Tom's Midnight Garden, and he also appeared in the ITV children's series T-Bag and the Sunstones of Montezuma, Through The Dragon's Eye, and the Russell T Davies series Century...
) and his twin sister Carey (Emma Jane Lavin). The three teenagers examine the waterfall that gave Ben his powers and the disaster that caused the legendary infertility. The serial climaxes in a confrontation between Tess and the deity Century, who is attempting to fuse with Tess' unborn sister.
Century Falls is conceptually much darker than its predecessor Dark Season and his later work, which Davies attributed to a trend that inexperienced writers "get off on the dark stuff": in a BAFTA
British Academy of Film and Television Arts
The British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
interview with Davies, Home recalled that she "very nearly got into trouble because it did actually push at the boundaries which some of the powers-that-be would rather not have been pushed"; and a Daily Mail
Daily Mail
The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...
review of the series considered the show's themes of arson, black magic, and communal fear as being "on a scale normally reserved for peak-time adult viewing". The series also offered a sense of realism in its protagonist, who is not heroic and aspirationial, has poor social skills, and is bluntly described by Ben as a "fat girl", a practice that the Daily Mail praised as "something that defies the Thought Police
Thought Police
The Thought Police is the secret police of Oceania in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.It is the job of the Thought Police to uncover and punish thoughtcrime and thought-criminals, using psychology and omnipresent surveillance from telescreens to monitor, search, find and kill...
". Century Falls was the last script he wrote for the BBC's children's department for fourteen years. He had begun to formulate another successor: The Heat of the Sun, a series set over Christmas 1999 and New Year's Day
New Year's Day
New Year's Day is observed on January 1, the first day of the year on the modern Gregorian calendar as well as the Julian calendar used in ancient Rome...
2000 that would have included the concepts of psychic powers and world domination.
Children's Ward
While he was writing Dark Season and Century Falls, Davies sought freelance projects elsewhere, including three scripts for the BBC children's comedy ChuckleVisionChuckleVision
ChuckleVision is a popular British television series shown mainly on CBBC. New episodes are always first aired on BBC One, and occasionally episodes are shown on BBC Two. The first episode was shown on 26 September 1987. It follows the adventures of the Chuckle Brothers & the Patton Brothers, who...
. On venture in 1991 led him to Granada Television
Granada Television
Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....
, where he edited scripts for the ITV children's medical drama Children's Ward
Children's Ward
Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons...
under the supervision of eventual Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
producer Tony Wood and his former boss Ed Pugh. By 1992, he had been promoted to producer and oversaw an increase in discussion of larger contemporary issues. In 1993, he wrote a script featuring a teenage boy who had been infected with HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...
via a blood transfusion, which challenged the prevalent assumption that only gay people contracted HIV:
Davies left the role of producer in 1994, but continue to write for the series on occasion. Notably, he was requested to write the 100th episode of the series, then called The Ward, which aired in October 1996. Instead of celebrating the milestone, he wrote a script about a recently emerging threat: paedophiles in online chat-rooms. The episode was about a The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...
fan who was drawn in by a paedophile's offer of a rare magazine. In the dénouement of the episode, the child recounts the tale of his near abduction and describes his attacker as "just a man like any other man". The episode earnt Davies his first BAFTA award: the 1997 Children's BAFTA for Best Drama.
Adult television career (1994–2004)
During his production tenure on Children's Ward, Davies continued to seek other freelance writing jobs, particularly for soap operaSoap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
s; his intention was to eventually work on the popular and long-running Granada soap Coronation Street. In pursuit of this career plan, he storylined soaps such as Families
Families (TV series)
Families was a daytime soap opera produced by Granada Television and created by Kay Mellor. It followed two families; the Thompsons, based in Cheshire, England , and the Stevens, living in Sydney, Australia....
and wrote scripts for shows such as Cluedo, a game show based on the board game of the same name
Cluedo
Cluedo is a popular murder/mystery-themed deduction board game originally published by Waddingtons in Leeds, England in 1949. It was devised by Anthony E. Pratt, a solicitor's clerk from Birmingham, England. It is now published by the United States game and toy company Hasbro, which acquired its U.S...
, and Do the Right Thing, a localised version of the Brazilian panel show Você Decide with Terry Wogan
Terry Wogan
Sir Michael Terence Wogan, KBE, DL , or also known as Terry Wogan, is a veteran Irish radio and television broadcaster who holds dual Irish and British citizenship. Wogan has worked for the BBC in the United Kingdom for most of his career...
as presenter and Frank Skinner
Frank Skinner
Frank Skinner is a British writer, comedian and actor. He is best known for his television presenting, often alongside David Baddiel, with whom he also collaborated for the football song "Three Lions."He is a radio presenter on the Saturday morning slot on Absolute Radio.-Youth and early career...
as a regular panellist. One writing job, for The House of Windsor, a soap opera about footmen in Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace
Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...
, was so poorly received that his other scripts for the show would be written under the pseudonym Leo Vaughn.
In 1994, Davies quit all of his producing jobs, and was offered a scriptwriting role on the late-night soap opera Revelations
Revelations (1994 TV series)
Revelations was a late-night soap opera created by Russell T Davies, Brian B. Thompson, and Tony Wood and starring Judy Loe and Paul Shelley, and aired in a limited number of ITV regions between 1994 and 1996. The series is family drama about the family of the priest Edward Rattigan and his wife...
, created by him, Tony Wood, and Brian B. Thompson
Brian B. Thompson
Brian B. Thompson is a British television and radio writer whose work includes BBC1 children's show Byker Grove, for which he penned over 50 episodes. He also created the continuing detective series Trueman and Riley, broadcast on BBC7 and BBC Radio 4...
. The series was a tongue-in-cheek deconstruction of organised religion, and featured his first overtly LGBT character: a lesbian vicar portrayed by Sue Holderness
Sue Holderness
Sue Holderness is an English actress. Since 1985 she has played the role of Marlene Boyce in the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses and its spin-off The Green Green Grass .-Career:...
, who came out of the closet in a two-hander
Two-hander
Two-hander is a term for a play, movie, or television programme with only two main characters. The two characters in question often display differences in social standing or experiences, differences that are explored and possibly overcome as the story unfolds....
episode with Carole Nimmons. Davies attributes the revelation about Holderness's character as a consequence of both the "pressure cooker nature" of the show and the recent ordination of female vicars in the Church of England
Ordination of women in the Anglican communion
The ordination of women in the Anglican Communion has become increasingly accepted in recent years.-Introduction:Some provinces within the Anglican Communion, such as the Episcopal Church in the United States of America , the Anglican Church of New Zealand, the Anglican Church of Canada and the...
. He let his contract with Granada expire and pitched a new early-evening soap opera to Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
, RU, created by Bill Moffat, father of Press Gang
Press Gang
Press Gang is a British children's television comedy-drama consisting of forty-three episodes across five series that were broadcast from 1989 to 1993...
co-creator Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat is a Scottish television writer and producer.Moffat's first television work was the teen drama series Press Gang. His first sitcom, Joking Apart, was inspired by the breakdown of his first marriage; conversely, his later sitcom Coupling was based upon the development of his...
, and co-written by him and Paul Cornell
Paul Cornell
Paul Cornell is a British writer best known for his work in television drama as well as Doctor Who fiction, and as the creator of one of the Doctor's spin-off companions, Bernice Summerfield....
. Although the slot was eventually taken by Hollyoaks
Hollyoaks
Hollyoaks is a long-running British television soap opera, first broadcast on Channel 4 on 23 October 1995. It was originally devised by Phil Redmond, who has also devised shows including Brookside and Grange Hill...
, he and Cornell mutually benefited from the pitch: Davies introduced Cornell to the Children's Ward producers, and Cornell introduced Davies to Virgin Publishing. Davies wrote one Doctor Who Virgin New Adventures
Virgin New Adventures
The Virgin New Adventures were a series of novels from Virgin Publishing based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who...
novel, Damaged Goods, in which the Doctor
Doctor (Doctor Who)
The Doctor is the central character in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, and has also featured in two cinema feature films, a vast range of spin-off novels, audio dramas and comic strips connected to the series....
tracks a Class A drug across several galaxies. A sub-plot in the book was in turn the inspiration for The Mother War, a never-produced thriller for Granada about a woman, Eva Jericho, and a calcified
Calcification
Calcification is the process in which calcium salts build up in soft tissue, causing it to harden. Calcifications may be classified on whether there is mineral balance or not, and the location of the calcification.-Causes:...
fetus in her uterus.
Davies continued to propose dramas to Channel 4, including Springhill, an apocalyptic soap-opera co-created by his colleagues Frank Cottrell Boyce
Frank Cottrell Boyce
-Awards:*2004: Buch des Monats des Instituts für Jugendliteratur/Book of the Month by the Institute for Youth Literature , Millions*2004: Carnegie Medal, Millions*2004: Luchs des Jahres , Millions...
and Paul Abbott
Paul Abbott
Paul Abbott is a BAFTA award-winning English television screenwriter and producer. Abbott has become one of the most critically and commercially successful television writers working in Britain today, following his work on many popular series, including Coronation Street, Cracker and Shameless,...
that aired simultaneously on Sky One
Sky One
Sky1 is the flagship BSkyB entertainment channel available in the United Kingdom and Ireland.The channel first launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, and is the fourth-oldest TV channel in the United Kingdom, behind BBC One , ITV and BBC Two...
and Channel 4 in 1996–97. Set in suburban Liverpool, the series focuses on the pious Catholic
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
Freeman family and their encounter and internal conflict with Eva Morrigan (Katharine Rogers). He storylined for the second series, but submitted fewer scripts; Granada had commissioned him to write for their soap The Grand, temporarily storyline for Coronation Street, and write the straight-to-video special Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas!
Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas!
Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas! was a direct-to-video spin off from the British soap opera Coronation Street. It followed Jack, Vera, Fiona and Maxine on their trip to Las Vegas. It was released on VHS in 1997.-Cast:- External links :...
. The second series of Springhill continued his penchant for symbolism; in particular, it depicted Marion Freeman (Judy Holt
Judy Holt
Judy Holt is a British television actress, most famous for her role as Elaine Fishwick in At Home with the Braithwaites.-Filmography:- External links :...
) and Eva as personifications of good and evil, and climaxed with a finale set in an ultra-liberal dystopian future where premarital sex and homosexuality are embraced by the Church. Boyce later commented that without Davies' input, the show would have been a "dry run" for Abbott's hit show Shameless
Shameless
Shameless is a British television drama series set in Manchester on the fictional Chatsworth council estate. Produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4, the first seven-episode series aired weekly on Tuesday nights at 10pm from 13 January 2004...
.
Davies' next project was The Grand
The Grand (TV series)
The Grand was a British television drama series first broadcast on ITV in 1997-1998. It was written by Russell T Davies and set in a hotel in Manchester in the 1920s....
, a period soap drama set in a Manchester hotel during the interwar period
Interwar period
Interwar period can refer to any period between two wars. The Interbellum is understood to be the period between the end of the Great War or First World War and the beginning of the Second World War in Europe....
. It was designed to be a valuable show in a ratings war with the BBC and was scheduled at 9 pm on a Friday night. After the original writer abandoned the series, Granada approached him to write the entire show. His scripts for the first series reflect the pessimism of the period; each episode added its own emotional trauma on the staff, including a soldier's execution for desertion, a destitute maid who threatened to illegally abort her unborn child to survive, and a multi-episode storyline centred on the chambermaid Monica Jones (Jane Danson
Jane Danson
Jane Danson is an English actress, most famous for playing the role of Leanne Battersby in Coronation Street.-Acting:...
) as she kills her lover in self-defence, is arrested, and eventually executed for murder. The show was renewed for a second series despite the first's dark tone.
The second series had a lighter tone and greater emphasis on character development, which Davies attributed to his friend Sally, who had previously warned him of the adult humour in Breakfast Serials; she told him that his show was too bleak to be compared to real life. Davies highlighted the sixth and eighth episodes of the second series as a time of maturity as a writer: for the sixth, he utilised then-unconventional narrative devices such as flashback
Flashback (narrative)
Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...
s to explore the hotel barman's closeted homosexuality and the societal attitudes towards sexuality in the 1920s; and he highlighted the eighth as when he allowed the series to "take on its own life" by deliberately inserting plot devices such as McGuffins to enhance the comic relief of the series. Although it was well received, the series' ratings were not high enough to warrant a third series. After its cancellation in September 1997, Davies had an existential crisis and almost died from an overdose; the experience persuaded him to detoxify and make a name for himself by producing a series that celebrated his homosexuality.
Queer as Folk
After his near-death experience, Davies started to develop a series for Channel 4Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
which reflected the "hedonistic lifestyle" of the gay quarter of Manchester he was leaving behind. Encouraged by ex-Granada executives Catriona MacKenzie and Gub Neil to "go gay", the series focused on a group of friends in Manchester's gay scene, tentatively titled The Other End of the Ballroom, and later, Queer as Fuck. By February 1998, when he completed the first draft for the series première, the series was known under its eventual title Queer as Folk. The series emulates dramas such as Band of Gold
Band of Gold (TV series)
Band of Gold is a television drama series written by Kay Mellor and produced by Granada Television. It wasoriginally shown on ITV between 1995 and 1997...
in presenting realistic discussion on sexuality, as opposed to "one-sided" gay characters in soap operas such as Eastenders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
, and eschews "heavy-handed discussion" of issues such as HIV, instead focusing on the party scene on Canal Street
Canal Street (Manchester)
Canal Street, the centre of the Manchester Gay Village, is a street in Manchester city centre in North West England. The pedestrianised street, which runs along the west side of the Rochdale Canal, is lined with gay bars and restaurants...
.
After he wrote the pilot, he approached actors for the main characters. Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston is an English stage, film and television actor. His films include Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, 28 Days Later, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra...
was Davies' first choice for the role of Stuart Jones; Eccleston declined because of his age and suggested his friend Aidan Gillen
Aidan Gillen
Aidan Gillen is an Irish stage and screen actor and television presenter. He is known in Ireland for his role in Love/Hate, in the UK for his role in Queer as Folk and in the US for his role in HBO's television series The Wire in which he plays Tommy Carcetti and for his role in Game of Thrones as...
instead. The roles of Vince Tyler and Nathan Maloney were quickly given to Craig Kelly
Craig Kelly (actor)
Craig Kelly is a British actor, best known for his role as Vince Tyler in the Channel 4 television series Queer as Folk and as Luke Strong in Coronation Street.-Biography:...
and Charlie Hunnam
Charlie Hunnam
Charles Matthew "Charlie" Hunnam is an English actor. He is perhaps best known to UK audiences as Pete Dunham in Green Street Hooligans and as Nathan Maloney in the Channel 4 hit drama Queer as Folk and to US audiences as Vice President of Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club Redwood Original Jackson...
, and the secondary character Alexander Perry, originally written for the television producer Phil Collinson
Phil Collinson
Philip "Phil" Collinson is a British television producer. He was initially an actor, before switching to working behind the cameras in the industry as a script editor and writer on programmes such as Springhill and Emmerdale, later becoming the producer of Peak Practice, Doctor Who and Coronation...
during his brief acting career, was portrayed by Anthony Cotton, who later portrayed the gay character Sean Tully
Sean Tully
Sean Tully, is a fictional character in the UK television ITV soap opera, Coronation Street. Portrayed by actor Antony Cotton, the character first appeared on screen during the episode airing on 13 July 2003. Sean works as a factory machinist, and as a part-time barman in the Rovers Return...
in Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
. The series was allocated a £3,000,000 budget, and was produced by Red Productions, owned by his friend and former colleague Nicola Shindler
Nicola Shindler
Nicola Shindler is a British television producer and executive, the founder of Red Production Company, one of the foremost independent television drama production companies working in the UK today....
, and filmed by Cracker
Cracker (UK TV series)
Cracker is a British crime drama series produced by Granada Television for ITV and created and principally written by Jimmy McGovern. The series is centered on a criminal psychologist , Eddie "Fitz" Fitzgerald, played by Robbie Coltrane. Set in Manchester, it consists of three series which were...
and Hillsborough director Charles McDougall
Charles McDougall
Charles McDougall is a British Emmy Award and BAFTA-winning director.-Biography:McDougall has directed for popular television series which include the pilot episode of ABC's Desperate Housewives . McDougall has also directed episodes of Queer as Folk on Channel 4 and Sex and the City on HBO...
and The Grand director Sarah Hardin on location in Manchester. The eight forty-minute episodes emulated experiences from his social life and includes an episode where the minor character Phil Delaney (Jason Merrells
Jason Merrells
Jason Merrells is an English actor, who received his big break when he starred in Casualty for three years as receptionist Matt Hawley...
) succumbs to his excesses and dies unnoticed by his social circle.
The series was transmitted in early 1999, when Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
were discussing LGBT equality; the series première aired on the day the House of Lords was discussing the Sexual Offences Bill 1999
Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000
The Sexual Offences Act 2000 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It changed the age of consent for male homosexual sexual activities from 18 to that for heterosexual and lesbian sexual activities at 16, or 17 in Northern Ireland...
, which eventually reduced the age of consent
Age of consent
While the phrase age of consent typically does not appear in legal statutes, when used in relation to sexual activity, the age of consent is the minimum age at which a person is considered to be legally competent to consent to sexual acts. The European Union calls it the legal age for sexual...
for homosexual couples to 16. The première was controversial, in particular because it depicted the character Nathan, aged fifteen, in sexual intercourse with an older man; the broadcasting watchdog Ofcom
Ofcom
Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...
received 136 complaints and the series received criticism from his parents and conservative activist Mary Whitehouse
Mary Whitehouse
Mary Whitehouse, CBE was a British campaigner against the permissive society particularly as the media portrayed and reflected it...
. The controversy was amplified when the sponsor Beck's
Beck's
Brauerei Beck & Co is a German brewery in the north German city of Bremen. Owned by local families until February 2002, it was then sold to Interbrew for 1.8 billion euros. The brewery was formed under the name Kaiserbrauerei Beck & May o.H.G. in 1873 by Lüder Rutenberg, Heinrich Beck and Thomas...
withdrew after several episodes and homosexual activists complained that the series was not representative of gay culture. Nevertheless, the show garnered 3.5 million per episode and a generally positive reaction from fans, and was renewed for a two-episode special due for the following year.
Queer as Folk 2 was broadcast in February 2000 and was driven by the plot element of Vince's half-sister's wedding. The specials place emphasis on Vince and Stuart's relationship, and ends with their departure for another gay scene in a pastiche of Grease
Grease (film)
Grease is a 1978 American musical film directed by Randal Kleiser and based on Warren Casey's and Jim Jacobs's 1971 musical of the same name about two lovers in a 1950s high school. The film stars John Travolta, Olivia Newton-John, Stockard Channing, and Jeff Conaway...
, as Nathan took the role as the leader of the Manchester scene's next generation. On the heels of the special, Davies pitched the spin-off Misfits, a late-night soap opera set in a boarding house
Boarding house
A boarding house, is a house in which lodgers rent one or more rooms for one or more nights, and sometimes for extended periods of weeks, months and years. The common parts of the house are maintained, and some services, such as laundry and cleaning, may be supplied. They normally provide "bed...
owned by Vince's mother, Hazel, and The Second Coming, a series that depicted the Second Coming of Christ in contemporary Manchester. Misfits was rejected in December 2000 and The Second Coming was initially approved by Channel 4 but later rejected after a change of executive personnel. Instead of contesting the cancellation of The Second Coming, he left Channel 4 and vowed to not work with them again.
Bob & Rose
Shindler continued to pitch The Second Coming to other television networks while Davies sought other ventures. His next series was based on a gay friend who married a woman and fathered a child. He saw the relationship as a promising concept for an unconventional love story and asked the couple about their relationship to develop the show. After developing the series around the prejudice that he and his gay friends had shown, he realised he was creating caricatures for the purpose of exposing themStraw man
A straw man is a component of an argument and is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position, twisting his words or by means of [false] assumptions...
, and instead focused on telling a traditional love story and gave the couple the traditionally British names of Bob Gossage and Rose Cooper.
To simulate a classic love story, the plot required antagonists, in the form of Bob's best friend Holly Vance and Rose's boyfriend Andy Lewis (Daniel Ryan
Daniel Ryan (actor)
Daniel Ryan is an English actor and writer.He is known for starring as Darren Alexander in the BBC drama comedy Linda Green, Andrew Gilligan in The Government Inspector, Andy Coulson in Steel River Blues and Kenny Reed in The Whistleblowers...
). While Andy, named after Davies' boyfriend Andrew Smith, was a minor character and departed in the third episode, Holly featured throughout the entirety of the series. Bob & Rose thus followed a similar format to Queer as Folk, in particular, the triumvirate of main characters composed of a couple and an outsider who lived in contemporary Manchester, and inverted the traditional "coming out
Coming out
Coming out is a figure of speech for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people's disclosure of their sexual orientation and/or gender identity....
" story by focusing on Bob's uncharacteristic attraction to Rose; Bob describes his sexual life by simply speaking the line "I fancy men. And her.". The series was similar to the Kevin Smith
Kevin Smith
Kevin Patrick Smith is an American screenwriter, actor, film producer, and director, as well as a popular comic book writer, author, comedian/raconteur, and internet radio personality best recognized by viewers as Silent Bob...
film Chasing Amy
Chasing Amy
Chasing Amy is a 1997 romantic comedy film written and directed by Kevin Smith. The central tension revolves around sexuality, sexual history, and evolving friendships. It is the third film in Smith's View Askewniverse series....
(1997), as they both portrayed a romance between a straight character and gay character and the resulting ostracism from the couple's social circles, much like The Second Coming shared its concept with Smith's 1999 film Dogma
Dogma (film)
Dogma is a 1999 American adventure fantasy comedy film written and directed by Kevin Smith, who also stars in the film along with an ensemble cast that includes Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Linda Fiorentino, Alan Rickman, Bud Cort, Salma Hayek, Chris Rock, Jason Lee, George Carlin, Janeane Garofalo,...
.
After successfully pitching the show to ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
, Red Productions joined Davies in casting the show and initially approached Jonathan Creek
Jonathan Creek
Jonathan Creek is a British mystery series produced by the BBC and written by David Renwick. Primarily a crime drama, the show is also peppered with broadly comic touches...
star Alan Davies
Alan Davies
Alan Davies is an English comedian, writer and actor best known for starring in the TV mystery series Jonathan Creek and as the permanent panellist on the TV panel show QI.- Early life :...
to portray Bob. Despite being heterosexual, he heartily accepted the role and spent several weeks researching first-hand Manchester's gay scene with series director Joe Wright
Joe Wright
Joe Wright is an English film director best known for Pride and Prejudice, Atonement and Hanna.-Early life and career:...
. His only objection to the role was Bob being a fan of Manchester United F.C.
Manchester United F.C.
Manchester United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, that plays in the Premier League. Founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Club in 1878, the club changed its name to Manchester United in 1902 and moved to Old Trafford in 1910.The 1958...
, the team Shindler had named Red Productions for, because of his prolific support of Arsenal F.C.
Arsenal F.C.
Arsenal Football Club is a professional English Premier League football club based in North London. One of the most successful clubs in English football, it has won 13 First Division and Premier League titles and 10 FA Cups...
. The part of Rose was given to Lesley Sharp
Lesley Sharp
Lesley Sharp is an English stage, film and television actress, particularly well known for her variety of British television roles including Clocking Off, Bob & Rose and afterlife.-Early life:...
, her first leading role after her portrayal of secondary characters in past Red shows Playing the Field
Playing the Field
Playing the Field is a BBC television drama series following the lives of the Castlefield Blues, a fictitious female football team from South Yorkshire.-Outline:...
and Clocking Off
Clocking Off
Clocking Off is a British television drama series which ran on the BBC One network for four series from 2000 to 2003. It was produced for the BBC by the independent Red Production Company, and created by Paul Abbott...
, and Jessica Stevenson
Jessica Stevenson
Jessica Hynes is an English actress and writer. She was known professionally as Jessica Stevenson until 2007.She is possibly best known as one of the creators, writers and stars of the British sitcom Spaced....
was cast as Holly by ITV Head of Drama Nick Elliott on the basis of her performance in the Channel 4 comedy Spaced
Spaced
Spaced is a British television sitcom written by and starring Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, and directed by Edgar Wright. It is noted for its rapid-fire editing, frequent pop culture references and jokes, eclectic music, and occasional displays of surrealism and non-sequitur humour...
.
The series was filmed in the southern suburbs of Manchester between March and June 2001 and often used Davies' own home as a green room
Green room
In British English and American English show business lexicon, the green room is that space in a theatre, a studio, or a similar venue, which accommodates performers or speakers not yet required on stage...
. The series was the only Red–Davies collaboration not to be scored by future Doctor Who composer Murray Gold
Murray Gold
Murray Gold is an English composer for stage, film, and television and a dramatist for both theatre and radio.-Television:Gold has been nominated for a BAFTA four times in the category Best Original Television Music, for Vanity Fair , Queer as Folk , Casanova and Doctor Who...
; the soundtrack was a Martin Phipps
Martin Phipps
Martin Phipps is an award-winning British composer, who has garnered critical acclaim for his work on numerous film and television projects.- Career :...
composition inspired by Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer
Hans Florian Zimmer is a German film composer and music producer. He has composed music for over 100 films, including critically acclaimed film scores for The Lion King , Crimson Tide , The Thin Red Line , Gladiator , The Dark Knight and Inception .Zimmer spent the early part of his career in the...
's work on the 1993 film True Romance
True Romance
True Romance is a 1993 American romance crime film written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Tony Scott. The film stars Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette with an ensemble cast consisting of Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Gary Oldman, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Samuel L. Jackson, Kevin...
. It aired on Monday nights in September and October 2001. Although it was critically acclaimed, and eventually won two British Comedy Awards
British Comedy Awards
The British Comedy Awards is an annual awards ceremony in the United Kingdom celebrating notable comedians and entertainment performances of the previous year.-History:...
and a British Academy Television Award nomination, the series had lower viewing figures than expected and was moved to a later timeslot for the final two episodes. Although the series was not as successful as he hoped, the show helped Davies rekindle his relationship with his mother shortly before her death, just after the transmission of the fourth episode, which he sees as "possibly the best thing [he has] ever written".
The Second Coming
Shortly after the transmission of Bob & Rose, Davies was approached by Abbott to write for his new BBC show Linda GreenLinda Green
Linda Green is a British television comedy-drama series that lasted for two series, screened in 2001 and 2002. The twenty half-hour episodes were broadcast on BBC One and produced for the BBC by the independent Red Production Company....
. He accepted the offer and wrote an episode where the titular character (portrayed by Liza Tarbuck
Liza Tarbuck
Liza Tarbuck is an English actress and television and radio presenter, and daughter of comedian Jimmy Tarbuck.She trained at the National Youth Theatre and RADA graduating in 1986 alongside Clive Owen, Rebecca Pidgeon and Serena Harragin.-Acting:...
) and her friends attend a schoolmate's funeral and become psychologically haunted by the deceased woman's solitary life. His first work for the BBC in eight years prompted them to continuously approach him with concepts for period dramas; he invariably declined because his only intention was to revive Doctor Who, which had then been on hiatus for over a decade. In 2002, he met with the BBC to discuss the revival of the show and producing The Second Coming; the BBC were unable to commit to either, and he again declined to work for them. After the BBC rejected The Second Coming, Shindler proposed that the series should be pitched to ITV. Despite the story's controversial message, the critical success of Bob & Rose encouraged the channel to commission the series for broadcast.
The Second Coming had been several years in the making and endured many rewrites from the first draft presented to Channel 4 in 2000, but retained its key concept of a realistic depiction of the Second Coming of Christ with a humanity-centred deity. A major removals from the script, due to time constraints, was a long sequence titled "Night of the Demons": the main character, a shop assistant named Stephen Baxter who discovers his divine lineage, takes over a hotel with his disciples and eventually encounters several of the hotel's employees that have been possessed by the Devil
Demonic possession
Demonic possession is held by many belief systems to be the control of an individual by a malevolent supernatural being. Descriptions of demonic possessions often include erased memories or personalities, convulsions, “fits” and fainting as if one were dying...
. Several similar sequences were removed to create a thriller set in the days before Judgement Day
Last Judgment
The Last Judgment, Final Judgment, Day of Judgment, Judgment Day, or The Day of the Lord in Christian theology, is the final and eternal judgment by God of every nation. The concept is found in all the Canonical gospels, particularly the Gospel of Matthew. It will purportedly take place after the...
.
An experienced actor was required to portray Stephen; Davies approached Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston is an English stage, film and television actor. His films include Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, 28 Days Later, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra...
, who had previously been approached for the role of Stuart in Queer as Folk, based on his performance as Nicky Hutchinson in the drama Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North is a British television drama serial, produced by the BBC and originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC Two in early 1996...
. Eccleston accepted the role and helped Davies make the character more human after he observed that "Baxter was getting lost amid his loftier pronouncements". The character of Judith, who would represent the fall of God, was given to Lesley Sharp after her performance in Bob & Rose, and the role of the Devil was given to Mark Benton
Mark Benton
Mark Benton is an English actor, perhaps most famous for his roles as Eddie in Early Doors and Howard in Northern Lights.-Life and career:Benton was born in Guisborough, in the North Riding of Yorkshire, England....
.
The Second Coming was controversial from its conception. When it was a Channel 4 project, it was the subject of a Sunday Express article a year before its original projected transmission date of late-2001. The series would again receive criticism when it was rumoured it would be broadcast over the Easter weekend of 2003. The series was eventually broadcast over consecutive nights on 9–10 February 2003 to 6.3 million and 5.4 million viewers respectively, and received mixed reactions from the audience: Davies received death threats for its atheistic message and criticism for its anticlimactic ending, but he received two nominations for Television Awards and one for a Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
Award.
Mine All Mine
In the time near his mother's death, Davies returned to Swansea several times and reflected on the role of family. During one visit, he realised that he had not yet written a series set in Wales; hence, he started creating a series about a family who discovers that they own the entire city of Swansea. The Vivaldi Inheritance, later renamed Mine All Mine, was based on the tale of the Welsh pirate Robert EdwardsRobert Edwards (pirate)
Robert Edwards was a Welsh buccaneer given of largely unsettled Manhattan by Queen Anne of the Kingdom of Great Britain for his services in disrupting Spanish sea lanes. From Edwards, who died in 1762, the property passed in 1877, via a 99-year lease to the brothers John and George Cruger, with...
and his descendants' claim to 77 acres (311,608.2 m²) of real estate in Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan
Lower Manhattan is the southernmost part of the island of Manhattan, the main island and center of business and government of the City of New York...
, New York City. The series was a departure from his trend of experimental social commentary; it was instead designed to be a mainstream comedy that utilised Welsh actors: Davies and Red Productions even planned a cameo appearance by Swansea-born Hollywood actress Catherine Zeta Jones.
Because the series was centred on an entire family, Red Productions was given the task of casting eleven principal characters: the role of family patriarch Max Vivaldi was given to Griff Rhys Jones
Griff Rhys Jones
Griffith "Griff" Rhys Jones is a Welsh comedian, writer, actor, television presenter and personality. Jones came to national attention in the early 1980s for his work in the BBC television comedy sketch shows Not the Nine O'Clock News and Alas Smith and Jones along with his comedy partner Mel Smith...
, at the request of ITV for prolific actors; Rhian Morgan, Davies' ex-girlfriend from the WGYT, was cast as Max's wife Val; Sharon Morgan
Sharon Morgan
Sharon Morgan is a Welsh actress of stage and screen, currently based in Cardiff. She was brought up in the village of Llandyfaelog...
as Max's sister Stella; Joanna Page
Joanna Page
Joanna Louise Page is a Welsh actress, best known for playing Stacey in the television series, Gavin and Stacey.-Early and personal life:...
as Candy Vivaldi; Matthew Barry and Siwan Morris
Siwan Morris
Siwan Morris is a Welsh actress.After an education in South Wales, she graduated from Manchester Metropolitan University....
as the Vivaldi siblings Loe and Maria; Hi-de-Hi!
Hi-de-Hi!
Hi-de-Hi! is a British sitcom that aired on the BBC from 1980-1988. It was set in a holiday camp during the 1950s and 1960s and was written by Jimmy Perry and David Croft, who had written Dad's Army and It Ain't Half Hot Mum. The title was the phrase used to greet the campers and in early episodes...
actress Ruth Madoc
Ruth Madoc
Ruth Madoc is a British actress and singer. She is best known for her roles as Gladys Pugh in the 1980s BBC television comedy Hi-de-Hi!, and as Daffyd Thomas's mother in the second series of Little Britain.-Early life:...
as Val's sister Myrtle Jones; and Jason Hughes
Jason Hughes (actor)
Jason Hughes is a Welsh actor born in Porthcawl, Wales in 1971 best known for playing lawyer Warren Jones in the BBC TV series This Life from 1996 to 1997 , and as Detective Sergeant Ben Jones in Midsomer Murders since 2005.Hughes was a very good rugby player, but was persuaded to take up acting...
as Maria's boyfriend Gethin. The series, specifically the family's composition of two daughters and a gay son, mirrored his own upbringing to the point where Davies and his boyfriend referred to the show as "The Private Joke".
The series was originally written in six parts, but Davies excised a large portion of the fifth episode because the crew expressed concerns with its pacing. The series was filmed in late 2003 under the direction of Sheree Folkson and Tim Whitby, and utilised many areas of Swansea that Davies was familiar with since his childhood. It aired as four hour-long episodes and a ninety-minute finale on Thursday nights preceding Christmas 2003. Eventually, Mine All Mine would be his least successful series and ended its run with just over two million viewers, which he later blamed on the series' high eccentricity.
Casanova
Shortly after the transmission of Mine All Mine, the BBC commissioned Davies to produce the revival of Doctor Who, which completed his decade-long quest to return the series to the airwaves. At the time, he was developing two scripts: the first, a cinematic adaptation of the Charles IngramCharles Ingram
Charles Ingram is a former British Army major who made headlines worldwide after he was accused of cheating in the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? in 2001. He was convicted of deception, although he maintains that he did not cheat...
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? is a television game show which offers large cash prizes for correctly answering a series of multiple-choice questions of increasing difficulty. The format is owned and licensed by Sony Pictures Television International. The maximum cash prize is one million pounds...
scandal, was cancelled after he accepted the Doctor Who job; and the second, a dramatisation of the life of the Venetian adventurer and lover Giacomo Casanova
Giacomo Casanova
Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt was an Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice. His autobiography, Histoire de ma vie , is regarded as one of the most authentic sources of the customs and norms of European social life during the 18th century...
, was his next show with Red Productions.
Davies' association with Casanova began when London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television
London Weekend Television was the name of the ITV network franchise holder for Greater London and the Home Counties including south Suffolk, middle and east Hampshire, Oxfordshire, south Bedfordshire, south Northamptonshire, parts of Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Warwickshire, east Dorset and...
producers Julie Gardner
Julie Gardner
Julie Gardner is a Welsh television producer. Her most prominent work has been serving as executive producer on the 2005 revival of Doctor Who and its spin-off shows Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures...
, Michele Buck, and Damien Timmer
Damien Timmer
Damien Timmer is Joint-Managing Director of British independent production company Mammoth Screen, which was established in 2007. He has Executive Produced Lost in Austen, Wuthering Heights and Bouquet of Barbed Wire for ITV, and Margot and Christopher and his Kind for the BBC. Monroe is a new...
approached him to write a 21st-century adaptation of Casanova's memoirs
Histoire de ma vie
Histoire de ma vie is both the memoir and autobiography of Giacomo Casanova, a famous 18th century Italian adventurer...
. He accepted to script the series because it was "the best subject in the world" and, after reading the memoirs, sought to create a realistic depiction of Casanova instead of further perpetuating the stereotype of a hypersexual lover. The series was originally written for ITV, but was turned down after he could not agree on the length of the serial. Shortly after the ITV declined to produce Casanova, Gardner took up a position as Head of Drama at BBC Wales
BBC Wales
BBC Cymru Wales is a division of the British Broadcasting Corporation for Wales. Based at Broadcasting House in the Llandaff area of Cardiff, it directly employs over 1200 people, and produces a broad range of television, radio and online services in both the Welsh and English languages.Outside...
and brought the concept with her. The BBC agreed to fund the series, but could only release the money required if a regionally based independent company produced the series. Davies turned to Shindler, who agreed to become the serial's fifth executive producer.
Davies' script takes place in two distinct time frames and required two different actors for the eponymous role: the older Casanova was portrayed by Golden Globe and Honorary Academy Award winner Peter O'Toole
Peter O'Toole
Peter Seamus Lorcan O'Toole is an Irish actor of stage and screen. O'Toole achieved stardom in 1962 playing T. E. Lawrence in Lawrence of Arabia, and then went on to become a highly-honoured film and stage actor. He has been nominated for eight Academy Awards, and holds the record for most...
, and the younger Casanova was portrayed by Olivier Award nominee and upcoming television actor David Tennant
David Tennant
David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...
. The serial takes place primarily during Casanova's early adulthood and depicts his life among three women: his mother (Dervla Kirwan
Dervla Kirwan
Dervla Kirwan is an Irish actress famous for roles in British television shows such as Ballykissangel and Goodnight Sweetheart...
), his lover Henriette (Laura Fraser
Laura Fraser
Laura Fraser is a Scottish actress.-Early life:Fraser is the daughter of Rose, a college lecturer and nurse, and Alister Fraser, a scriptwriter who also worked in business. She attended Hillhead High School and is a former member of the Scottish Youth Theatre...
), and his consort Bellino (Nina Sosanya
Nina Sosanya
Nina Sosanya is an English actress. She was born in London and her father is Nigerian. She trained at the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, gaining A-Levels in Performing Arts....
). The script takes a different approach to Dennis Potter's 1971 dramatisation
Casanova (1971 TV serial)
Casanova is a British television drama serial, written by television playwright Dennis Potter. Directed by Mark Cullingham and John Glenister, the serial was made by the BBC and screened on the BBC2 network in November and December 1971. It is loosely based on Italian adventurer Giacomo Casanova's...
; instead of Potter's focus on sex and misogyny, the 2005 serial focuses on Casanova's compassion and respect for women.
Casanova was filmed alongside the first few episodes of the new series of Doctor Who, which meant producers common to both projects, including Davies and Gardner, made daily journeys between the former's production in Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
and Cheshire
Cheshire
Cheshire is a ceremonial county in North West England. Cheshire's county town is the city of Chester, although its largest town is Warrington. Other major towns include Widnes, Congleton, Crewe, Ellesmere Port, Runcorn, Macclesfield, Winsford, Northwich, and Wilmslow...
and the latter's production in Cardiff. Red Productions also filmed on location overseas in a stately home in Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik
Dubrovnik is a Croatian city on the Adriatic Sea coast, positioned at the terminal end of the Isthmus of Dubrovnik. It is one of the most prominent tourist destinations on the Adriatic, a seaport and the centre of Dubrovnik-Neretva county. Its total population is 42,641...
, and alongside production of the identically titled 2005 Lasse Hallström film in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
. The two production teams shared resources and were given the unofficial names of "Little Casanova" and "Big Casanova" respectively. When it premièred on BBC Three
BBC Three
BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent...
in March 2005, the first episode attracted 940,000 viewers, a record for a first-run drama on the channel, but was overshadowed on BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
by the return of Doctor Who in the same month.
Doctor Who (2005–2010) and beyond
Since he watched the First DoctorFirst Doctor
The First Doctor is the initial incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by the actor William Hartnell from 1963 to 1966. Hartnell reprised the role in the tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors in 1973 - albeit in a...
's (William Hartnell
William Hartnell
William Henry Hartnell was an English actor. During 1963-66, he was the first actor to play the Doctor in the long-running BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who.-Early life:...
) regeneration
Regeneration (Doctor Who)
Regeneration, in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, is a biological ability exhibited by Time Lords, a race of fictional humanoids originating on the planet Gallifrey. This process allows a Time Lord who is old or mortally wounded to undergo a transformation into a new...
into the Second Doctor
Second Doctor
The Second Doctor is the second incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by character actor Patrick Troughton....
(Patrick Troughton
Patrick Troughton
Patrick George Troughton was an English actor most widely known for his roles in fantasy, science fiction and horror films, particularly in his role as the second incarnation of the Doctor in the long-running British science-fiction television series Doctor Who, which he played from 1966 to 1969,...
) at the end of the 1966 serial The Tenth Planet
The Tenth Planet
The Tenth Planet is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 8 October to 29 October 1966. It was William Hartnell's last regular appearance as the First Doctor, and the first story to feature the Cybermen...
, Davies had "fallen in love" with the show and, by the mid-1970s, he was regularly writing reviews of broadcast serials in his diary. His favourite writer and childhood hero was Robert Holmes; during his career, he has complimented the creative use of BBC studios to create "terror and claustrophobia" for Holmes' 1975 script The Ark in Space
The Ark in Space
The Ark in Space is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 25 January to 15 February 1975.-Plot:The TARDIS materialises in a darkened room on board the station...
and has opined that the first episode of The Talons of Weng-Chiang
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
The Talons of Weng-Chiang is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in six weekly parts from 26 February to 2 April 1977.-Synopsis:...
(1977) featured "the best dialogue ever written; it's up there with Dennis Potter
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
". His screenwriting career also began with a Doctor Who submission; in 1987, he submitted a spec script
Spec script
A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or studio....
set on an intergalactic news aggregator and broadcaster, which was rejected by script editor Andrew Cartmel
Andrew Cartmel
Andrew Cartmel is a British science fiction writer and journalist, and former script editor of Doctor Who. He has also worked as a script editor on other television series, as a magazine editor, a film studies lecturer and as a novelist.-Biography:...
, who suggested that he should write a more prosaic story about "a man who is worried about his mortgage, his marriage, [and] his dog".
During the late-1990s, Davies lobbied the BBC to revive the show from its hiatus and reached the discussion stages in late 1998 and early 2002. His proposals would update the show to be better suited for a 21st-century audience: the series would be recorded on film instead of videotape; the length of each episode would double from twenty-five minutes to fifty; episodes would primarily take place on Earth, in the style of the Third Doctor
Third Doctor
The Third Doctor is the third incarnation of the protagonist of the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by actor Jon Pertwee....
(Jon Pertwee
Jon Pertwee
John Devon Roland Pertwee , was an English actor. Pertwee is best known for his role in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who, in which he played the third incarnation of the Doctor from 1970 to 1974, and as the title character in the series Worzel Gummidge...
) UNIT
UNIT
UNIT is a fictional military organisation from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures...
episodes; and Davies would remove "excess baggage" from the mythology such as Gallifrey
Gallifrey
Gallifrey is a fictional planet in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and is the homeworld of the Doctor and the Time Lords...
and the Time Lord
Time Lord
The Time Lords are an ancient extraterrestrial race and civilization of humanoids in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, of which the series' eponymous protagonist, the Doctor, is a member...
s. His pitch competed against three others: Dan Freedman
Death Comes to Time
Death Comes to Time is a webcast audio drama based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, produced by the BBC and first broadcast in five episodes on the BBCi Cult website from 12 July 2001, accompanied by limited animation.-Synopsis:When two Time Lords are...
's fantasy retelling, Matthew Graham
Matthew Graham
Matthew Graham is a British television writer, and the co-creator of the BBC/Kudos Film and Television science fiction series Life on Mars, which debuted in 2006 on BBC One and has received international critical acclaim....
's Gothic
Gothic fiction
Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...
-styled pitch, and Mark Gatiss
Mark Gatiss
Mark Gatiss is an English actor, screenwriter and novelist. He is best known as a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and has both written for and acted in the TV series Doctor Who and Sherlock....
' reboot, which made the Doctor the audience surrogate
Audience surrogate
In the study of literature, an audience surrogate is a fictional character with whom the audience can identify, or who expresses the questions and confusion of the audience...
character, instead of his companion
Companion (Doctor Who)
In the long-running BBC television science fiction programme Doctor Who and related works, the term "companion" refers to a character who travels with, and shares the adventures of the Doctor. In most Doctor Who stories, the primary companion acts as both deuteragonist and audience surrogate...
s. Davies also took cues from American fantasy television series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Smallville
Smallville (TV series)
Smallville is an American television series developed by writers/producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar based on the DC Comics character Superman, originally created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. The television series was initially broadcast by The WB Television Network , premiering on October...
, most notably Buffys concepts of series-long story arc
Story arc
A story arc is an extended or continuing storyline in episodic storytelling media such as television, comic books, comic strips, boardgames, video games, and in some cases, films. On a television program, for example, the story would unfold over many episodes. In television, the use of the story...
s and the "Big Bad
Big Bad
Big Bad is a term originally used by the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television series to describe a major recurring adversary, usually the chief villain or antagonist in a particular broadcast season...
".
In August 2003, the BBC had resolved legal issues over production rights that had surfaced as a result of the jointly produced Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
–BBC–FOX
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
1996 Doctor Who film
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
, and the Controller of BBC One Lorraine Heggessey
Lorraine Heggessey
Lorraine Heggessey is a British television producer and former Chief Executive of the production company Talkback Thames...
and Controller of Drama Commissioning Jane Tranter
Jane Tranter
Jane Tranter is an English television executive who has been the executive vice-president of programming and production at BBC Worldwide's Los Angeles base since January 2009...
approached Gardner and Davies to create a revival of the series to air in a primetime slot on Saturday nights, as part of their plan to devolve production to its regional bases. By mid-September, they accepted the deal to produce the series alongside Casanova.
Davies' pitch for Doctor Who was the first one he wrote voluntarily; previously, he opted to outline concepts of shows to commissioning executives and offer to write the pilot episode because he felt that a pitch made him "feel like [he's] killing the work". The fifteen-page pitch outlined a Doctor
Doctor (Doctor Who)
The Doctor is the central character in the long-running BBC television science-fiction series Doctor Who, and has also featured in two cinema feature films, a vast range of spin-off novels, audio dramas and comic strips connected to the series....
who was "your best friend; someone you want to be with all the time", the nineteen-year-old Rose Tyler
Rose Tyler
Rose Marion Tyler is a fictional character portrayed by Billie Piper in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, and was created by series producer Russell T Davies...
(Billie Piper
Billie Piper
Billie Paul Piper is an English singer and actress.She began her career in the late 1990s as a pop singer and then switched to acting. She started in acting and dancing and was talent spotted at the Sylvia Young stage school by Smash Hits magazine who wanted a "face" for their magazine...
) as a "perfect match" for the new Doctor, avoidance of the forty-year back story "except for the good bits", the retention of the TARDIS
TARDIS
The TARDISGenerally, TARDIS is written in all upper case letters—this convention was popularised by the Target novelisations of the 1970s...
, sonic screwdriver
Sonic screwdriver
The sonic screwdriver is a fictional tool in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its spinoffs. It is a multifunctional tool used by The Doctor. Its most common function is that of a lockpick, but can be used to perform other operations such as performing medical scans,...
, and Dalek
Dalek
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Within the series, Daleks are cyborgs from the planet Skaro, created by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war against the Thals...
s, removal of the Time Lords, and a greater focus on humanity. His pitch was submitted for the first production meeting in December 2003 and a series of thirteen episodes was obtained by pressure from BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in 1995. In the year to 31 March 2010 it made a profit of £145m on a turnover of £1.074bn. The company had made a profit of £106m...
and a workable budget from Julie Gardner
Julie Gardner
Julie Gardner is a Welsh television producer. Her most prominent work has been serving as executive producer on the 2005 revival of Doctor Who and its spin-off shows Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures...
.
The first new series of Doctor Who featured eight scripts by Davies;the remainder were allocated to experienced dramatists and writers for the show's ancillary releases
Doctor Who spin-offs
Doctor Who spin-offs refers to material created outside of, but related to, the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who....
: Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat is a Scottish television writer and producer.Moffat's first television work was the teen drama series Press Gang. His first sitcom, Joking Apart, was inspired by the breakdown of his first marriage; conversely, his later sitcom Coupling was based upon the development of his...
penned a two-episode story, and Mark Gatiss
Mark Gatiss
Mark Gatiss is an English actor, screenwriter and novelist. He is best known as a member of the comedy team The League of Gentlemen, and has both written for and acted in the TV series Doctor Who and Sherlock....
, Robert Shearman, and Paul Cornell
Paul Cornell
Paul Cornell is a British writer best known for his work in television drama as well as Doctor Who fiction, and as the creator of one of the Doctor's spin-off companions, Bernice Summerfield....
each wrote one script. Davies also approached his old friend Paul Abbott and Harry Potter
Harry Potter
Harry Potter is a series of seven fantasy novels written by the British author J. K. Rowling. The books chronicle the adventures of the adolescent wizard Harry Potter and his best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, all of whom are students at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...
author J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling
Joanne "Jo" Rowling, OBE , better known as J. K. Rowling, is the British author of the Harry Potter fantasy series...
to write for the series; both declined due to existing commitments. Shortly after he secured writers for the show, Davies stated that he had no intention to approach writers for the old series; the only writer he would have wished to work with was Holmes, who died in May 1986.
By early 2004, the show had settled into a regular production cycle. Davies, Gardner, and BBC Controller of Drama Mal Young
Mal Young
Mal Young is a British television producer and executive producer.-Background:His initial career was in the Graphic Design industry, and it was not until the age of 27 that he began working in television, on the acclaimed Channel 4 soap opera Brookside.Working on the show for nearly a decade, he...
took posts as executive producers, and Phil Collinson, his old colleague from Granada, took the role of producer. Davies' official role as head writer
Head writer
A head writer is a person who oversees the team of writers on a television or radio series. The title is common in the soap opera genre, as well as with sketch comedies and talk shows that feature monologues and comedy skits, but in prime time series this function is generally performed by an...
and executive producer
Executive producer
An executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
, or "showrunner", consisted of laying a skeletal plot for the entire series, holding "tone meetings" to correctly identify the tone of an episode, often described in one word—for example, the "tone word" for Moffat's "The Empty Child
The Empty Child
"The Empty Child" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 21 May 2005. It is the first of a two-part story. The concluding episode, "The Doctor Dances", was broadcast on 28 May...
" was "romantic"—and overseeing all aspects of production.
The production team was also tasked with finding a suitable actor for the role of the Doctor. Most notably, they approached film actor Hugh Grant
Hugh Grant
Hugh John Mungo Grant is an English actor and film producer. He has received a Golden Globe Award, a BAFTA, and an Honorary César. His films have earned more than $2.4 billion from 25 theatrical releases worldwide. Grant achieved international stardom after appearing in Richard Curtis's...
and comedian Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Atkinson
Rowan Sebastian Atkinson is a British actor, comedian, and screenwriter. He is most famous for his work on the satirical sketch comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News, and the sitcoms Blackadder, Mr. Bean and The Thin Blue Line...
for the role. By the time Young suggested The Second Coming and Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North
Our Friends in the North is a British television drama serial, produced by the BBC and originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC Two in early 1996...
actor Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston
Christopher Eccleston is an English stage, film and television actor. His films include Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, 28 Days Later, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra...
to Davies, Eccleston was one of three left in the running for the role: the other candidates are rumoured in the industry to have been Alan Davies
Alan Davies
Alan Davies is an English comedian, writer and actor best known for starring in the TV mystery series Jonathan Creek and as the permanent panellist on the TV panel show QI.- Early life :...
and Bill Nighy
Bill Nighy
William Francis "Bill" Nighy is an English actor and comedian. He worked in theatre and television before his first cinema role in 1981, and made his name in television with The Men's Room in 1991, in which he played the womanizer Prof...
. Eccleston created his own characteristics of his rendition of the Doctor based on Davies' life, most notably, his catchphrase "Fantastic!":
Filming for the show started in July 2004 on location in Cardiff
Cardiff
Cardiff is the capital, largest city and most populous county of Wales and the 10th largest city in the United Kingdom. The city is Wales' chief commercial centre, the base for most national cultural and sporting institutions, the Welsh national media, and the seat of the National Assembly for...
for "Rose
Rose (Doctor Who)
"Rose" is the first episode of Series One of the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by show runner Russell T Davies and directed by Keith Boak, the episode was first broadcast on 26 March 2005....
". The start of filming created stress among the production team because of unseen circumstances: several scenes from the first block had to be re-shot because the original footage was unusable; the Slitheen
Slitheen
The Slitheen are a family of massive, bipedal extraterrestrials from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and they are adversaries of the Doctor. They first appeared in the 2005 series episodes "Aliens of London" and "World War Three", and subsequently recur in later episodes of...
prosthetics for "Aliens of London
Aliens of London
"Aliens of London" is the fourth episode of the first series of the British science fiction television show Doctor Who that was first broadcast on 16 April 2005. The Doctor takes Rose back to 21st century London, just in time to witness a spaceship crashing into the River Thames, triggering a...
", "World War Three
World War Three (Doctor Who)
"World War Three" is the fifth episode of the first series in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was first broadcast on 23 April 2005. It is the second of a two-part story. The first part, "Aliens of London", was broadcast on 16 April...
", and "Boom Town
Boom Town (Doctor Who)
"Boom Town" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 4 June 2005. The Doctor, Rose and Jack travel to modern-day Cardiff and meet up with Rose's boyfriend, Mickey...
" were noticeably different from their computer-generated counterparts; and the BBC came to a gridlock in negotiations with the Terry Nation
Terry Nation
Terry Nation was a Welsh screenwriter and novelist.He is probably best known for creating the villainous Daleks in the long-running science fiction television series Doctor Who...
estate to secure the Dalek
Dalek
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Within the series, Daleks are cyborgs from the planet Skaro, created by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war against the Thals...
s for the sixth episode of the series
Dalek (Doctor Who episode)
"Dalek" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was first broadcast on 30 April 2005. It should not be confused with the first Dalek serial, The Daleks...
; Davies and episode writer Rob Shearman
Rob Shearman
Robert Shearman is currently best known as a writer for Doctor Who and for his ongoing association with Jarvis & Ayres Productions which has resulted in six plays for BBC Radio 4 broadcast in the station's regular weekday Afternoon Play slot, and one classic...
were forced to rework the script to feature another race, until Gardner was able to secure the rights a month later. After the first production block, which he described as "hitting a brick wall", the show's production was markedly eased as the crew familiarised themselves.
The first episode of the revived Doctor Who, "Rose", aired on 26 March 2005 and received 10.8 million viewers and favourable critical reception. Four days after the transmission of "Rose", Tranter approved a Christmas special and a second series
Doctor Who (series 2)
The second series of British science fiction series Doctor Who began on 25 December 2005 with the Christmas special "The Christmas Invasion". Following the special, a regular series of thirteen episodes was broadcast, starting with "New Earth" on 15 April 2006...
. The press release was overshadowed by a leaked announcement that Christopher Eccleston would leave the role after one series; in response, David Tennant was announced as Eccleston's replacement.
Tennant had been offered the role when he was watching a pre-transmission copy of Casanova with Davies and Gardner. Tennant initially believed the offer was a joke, but after he realised they were serious, he accepted the role and made his first appearance in the dénouement of "The Parting of the Ways
The Parting of the Ways
"The Parting of the Ways" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 18 June 2005. It was the second episode of the two-part story that featured Christopher Eccleston making his last appearance as the Ninth Doctor...
", the final episode of the first series. Doctor Who continued to be one of BBC's flagship programmes throughout Davies' tenure, and resulted in record sales of the show's official magazine
Doctor Who Magazine
Doctor Who Magazine is a magazine devoted to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
, an increase in spin-off novels
Doctor Who spin-offs
Doctor Who spin-offs refers to material created outside of, but related to, the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who....
, and the launch of the children's magazine Doctor Who Adventures
Doctor Who Adventures
Doctor Who Adventures is a magazine based on the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. It is published by BBC Magazines and aimed at 6–13 year-olds, a different demographic from the Doctor Who Magazine readership...
and toy sonic screwdriver
Sonic screwdriver
The sonic screwdriver is a fictional tool in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its spinoffs. It is a multifunctional tool used by The Doctor. Its most common function is that of a lockpick, but can be used to perform other operations such as performing medical scans,...
s and Daleks. The show's popularity ultimately led to a resurgence in family-orientated Saturday night drama; the ITV science-fiction series Primeval and the BBC historical dramas Robin Hood and Merlin
Merlin (TV series)
Merlin is a British fantasy-adventure television programme by Julian Jones, Jake Michie, Julian Murphy and Johnny Capps. It began broadcasting on BBC One on 20 September 2008. The show is based on the Arthurian legends of the wizard Merlin and his relationship with Prince Arthur but differs from...
were specifically designed for an early Saturday evening timeslot. He was also approached by the BBC to produce several spin-off series, eventually creating two: Torchwood
Torchwood
Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from Davies's 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. The show has shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from...
and The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...
.
Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures
In October 2005, BBC Three Controller Stuart Murphy invited Davies to create a post-watershedWatershed (television)
In television, the term watershed denotes the time period in a television schedule during which programs with adult content can air....
Doctor Who spin-off in the wake of the parent series' popularity. Torchwood
Torchwood
Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from Davies's 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. The show has shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from...
—named after a anagram
Anagram
An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once; e.g., orchestra = carthorse, A decimal point = I'm a dot in place, Tom Marvolo Riddle = I am Lord Voldemort. Someone who...
matic title ruse used to prevent leaks of Doctor Whos first series—incorporated elements from an abandoned Davies project titled Excalibur and featured the pansexual 51st century time-traveller Jack Harkness
Jack Harkness
Captain Jack Harkness is a fictional character played by John Barrowman in Doctor Who and its spin-off series, Torchwood. He first appeared in the 2005 Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child" and reappeared in the remaining episodes of the 2005 series as a companion of the ninth incarnation of the...
(John Barrowman
John Barrowman
John Scot Barrowman is a Scottish-American singer, actor, dancer, musical theatre performer and media personality. Born in Glasgow yet growing up in Illinois after his family emigrated to the United States when he was eight years old, Barrowman was encouraged to further his love for music and...
) and a team of alien hunters in Cardiff. The show began production in April 2006 and was marketed through foreshadowing in the main story arc of Doctor Who's second series, which portrayed Torchwood as a covert quasi-governmental organisation that monitors, exploits, and suppresses the existence of extraterrestrial life and technology. Upon its transmission, Torchwood was one of BBC Three's most popular shows; however, it received criticism for "adolescent" use of sexual and violent themes. This led the production team to alter the format to be subtler in its portrayal of adult themes.
Concurrently, he was approached to produce a CBBC
CBBC
CBBC is one of two brand names used for the BBC's children's television strands. Between 1985 and 2002, CBBC was the name given to all the BBC's programmes on TV for children aged under 14...
show which was described as Young Doctor Who. Davies was reluctant to diminish the mystery of the Doctor's character and instead pitched a show with Elisabeth Sladen
Elisabeth Sladen
Elisabeth Clara Heath-Sladen was an English actress best known for her role as Sarah Jane Smith in the British television series Doctor Who. She was a regular cast member from 1973 to 1976, alongside both Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, and reprised the role many times in subsequent decades, both on...
as the once-popular companion Sarah Jane Smith
Sarah Jane Smith
Sarah Jane Smith is a fictional character played by Elisabeth Sladen in the long-running British BBC Television science-fiction series Doctor Who and its spin-offs K-9 and Company and The Sarah Jane Adventures....
: The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...
, which follows Sarah Jane and local schoolchildren as they investigate extraterrestrial events in the London Borough of Ealing
London Borough of Ealing
The London Borough of Ealing is a borough in west London.-Location:The London Borough of Ealing borders the London Borough of Hillingdon to the west, the London Borough of Harrow and the London Borough of Brent to the north, the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham to the east and the London...
. The show was given a backdoor pilot as the Doctor Who episode "School Reunion
School Reunion (Doctor Who)
"School Reunion" is the third episode in the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It first aired on 29 April 2006. The episode's narrative takes place some time after the events of "The Christmas Invasion"...
" and premièred in its own right with "Invasion of the Bane
Invasion of the Bane
-Sladen and Doctor Who:Elisabeth Sladen, who previously played Sarah Jane between 1973 and 1976. In 1981, she was offered the role again to ease the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, which she declined, but agreed to star in the pilot for the spin-off series K-9 and Company, which...
" on 1 January 2007. The show was more successful than its 1981 predecessor K-9 and Company
K-9 and Company
K-9 and Company was a proposed television spin-off of the original programme run of Doctor Who . It was to feature former series regulars Sarah Jane Smith, an investigative journalist played by Elisabeth Sladen, and K-9, a robotic dog. Both characters had been companions of the Fourth Doctor, but...
; it received more favourable reviews than Torchwood and a significant periphery demographic that compared the show to 1970s Doctor Who episodes.
The workload of managing three separate shows prompted Davies to delegate writing tasks for Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures to other writers so he could focus on writing Doctor Who. After Billie Piper
Billie Piper
Billie Paul Piper is an English singer and actress.She began her career in the late 1990s as a pop singer and then switched to acting. She started in acting and dancing and was talent spotted at the Sylvia Young stage school by Smash Hits magazine who wanted a "face" for their magazine...
's departure as Rose Tyler in the second series finale "Doomsday
Doomsday (Doctor Who)
"Doomsday" is the thirteenth and final episode in the second series of the revival of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 8 July 2006 and is the conclusion of a two-part story; the first part, "Army of Ghosts", was broadcast on 1 July 2006...
", he suggested a third spin-off, Rose Tyler: Earth Defence, a compilation of annual Bank Holiday
Bank Holiday
A bank holiday is a public holiday in the United Kingdom or a colloquialism for public holiday in Ireland. There is no automatic right to time off on these days, although the majority of the population is granted time off work or extra pay for working on these days, depending on their contract...
specials featuring Rose in a parallel universe version of Torchwood. He later reneged on his idea, as he believed that Rose should stay off screen, and abandoned the idea even though it had been budgeted.
The Writer's Tale, and writing the fourth series
In September 2008, BBC BooksBBC Books
BBC Books is an imprint majority owned and managed by Random House. The minority shareholder is BBC Worldwide, the commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation...
, an imprint of Random House Publishing, published The Writer's Tale, a collection of emails between Davies and Radio Times
Radio Times
Radio Times is a UK weekly television and radio programme listings magazine, owned by the BBC. It has been published since 1923 by BBC Magazines, which also provides an on-line listings service under the same title...
and Doctor Who Magazine
Doctor Who Magazine
Doctor Who Magazine is a magazine devoted to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
journalist Benjamin Cook
Benjamin Cook
Benjamin Cook is an English journalist, writer and regular contributor to Radio Times and Doctor Who Magazine. He has also been published in The Telegraph, TV Times, Filmstar, Cult Times, TV Zone and The Stage, and is the author of Doctor Who: The New Audio Adventures – The Inside Story...
. Dubbed the "Great Correspondence" by Davies and Cook, The Writer's Tale covers a period between February 2007 and March 2008 and explores his writing processes and the development of his scripts for the fourth series
Doctor Who (series 4)
The fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 25 December 2007 with the Christmas special "Voyage of the Damned". Following the special, a regular series of thirteen episodes aired, starting with "Partners in Crime" on 5 April 2008 and ending with "Journey's End"...
of Doctor Who: "Voyage of the Damned
Voyage of the Damned (Doctor Who)
"Voyage of the Damned" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. First broadcast on 25 December 2007, it is 72 minutes long and the third Christmas special since the show's revival in 2005...
", "Partners in Crime
Partners in Crime (Doctor Who)
"Partners in Crime" is the first episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 5 April 2008. The episode reintroduced comedienne Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, who previously appeared in "The Runaway Bride"...
", "Midnight
Midnight (Doctor Who)
"Midnight" is the tenth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 14 June 2008. The episode placed much more emphasis on the role of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor than in the rest of the fourth series, with the...
", "Turn Left
Turn Left (Doctor Who)
"Turn Left" is the eleventh episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was written by showrunner Russell T Davies and broadcast on BBC One on 21 June 2008....
", "The Stolen Earth
The Stolen Earth
"The Stolen Earth" is the twelfth episode of the fourth series and the 750th overall episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The episode was written by show runner and head writer Russell T Davies and is the first of a two-part crossover story; the concluding episode is...
", and "Journey's End
Journey's End (Doctor Who)
"Journey's End" is the thirteenth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who first broadcast on BBC One on 5 July 2008. It is the second episode of a two-part crossover story featuring the characters of spin-off shows Torchwood and The Sarah Jane...
". The book's first chapter focuses on Cook's "big questions" on Davies' writing style, character development—using the Doctor Who character Donna Noble
Donna Noble
Donna Noble is a fictional character played by Catherine Tate in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A secretary from Chiswick, London, she is a companion of the Tenth Doctor, appearing in one scene at the end of the final episode of the 2006 series,...
(Catherine Tate
Catherine Tate
Catherine Tate is an English actress, writer, and comedian. She has won numerous awards for her work on the sketch comedy series The Catherine Tate Show as well as being nominated for an International Emmy Award and four BAFTA Awards...
) and the Skins
Skins (TV series)
Skins is a BAFTA award-winning British teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England, through the two years of college. The controversial plot line explores issues such as dysfunctional families, mental illness , adolescent sexuality, substance abuse and death...
character Tony Stonem
Tony Stonem
Anthony "Tony" Stonem is a fictional character from the British television series Skins. Portrayed by Nicholas Hoult, the character was created by Bryan Elsley; Tony was the series' central character in its first and second series, from 2007-2008...
(Nicholas Hoult
Nicholas Hoult
Nicholas Caradoc Hoult is an English actor, best known for playing Marcus Brewer in the 2002 film About a Boy, Tony Stonem in the E4, BAFTA-winning television series Skins, and Beast in the X-Men prequel, X-Men: First Class.-Early life:Hoult was born in Wokingham, Berkshire, the third of four...
) as contrasting examples—, how he formulated ideas for stories, and the question "why do you write?". After several weeks, Cook assumes an unofficial advisory role to the scriptwriting and the development of the series. The book's epilogue consists of a short exchange between Davies and Cook: Cook changes from his role as "Invisible Ben" to "Visible Ben" and strongly advises to vastly alter the denouement to "Journey's End" from a cliffhanger that led into "The Next Doctor"—which had occurred in the previous three series finales, "The Parting of the Ways
The Parting of the Ways
"The Parting of the Ways" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 18 June 2005. It was the second episode of the two-part story that featured Christopher Eccleston making his last appearance as the Ninth Doctor...
", "Doomsday
Doomsday (Doctor Who)
"Doomsday" is the thirteenth and final episode in the second series of the revival of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 8 July 2006 and is the conclusion of a two-part story; the first part, "Army of Ghosts", was broadcast on 1 July 2006...
", and "Last of the Time Lords
Last of the Time Lords
"Last of the Time Lords" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 30 June 2007, and is the thirteenth and final episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series...
"—to a melancholy ending that showed the Doctor alone in the TARDIS. After three days of deliberation, Davies accepts Cook's suggestion and thanks him for improving both episodes.
After its release, the pair embarked on a five-stop signing tour to promote the book in October 2008 at Waterstone's
Waterstone's
Waterstone's is a British book specialist established in 1982 by Tim Waterstone that employs around 4,500 staff throughout the United Kingdom and Europe....
branches in London, Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
, Manchester, Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
, and Cardiff. The book received positive reviews: Veronica Horwell of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
wrote that Davies was the "Scheherazade of Cardiff Bay
Cardiff Bay
Cardiff Bay is the area created by the Cardiff Barrage in South Cardiff, the capital of Wales. The regeneration of Cardiff Bay is now widely regarded as one of the most successful regeneration projects in the United Kingdom. The Bay is supplied by two rivers to form a freshwater lake round the...
" and opined that the book should have been twice the published length; Ian Berriman of science fiction magazine SFX gave the book five stars and wrote that it was the only book necessary to gain a knowledge of the show's production and secrets; television critic Charlie Brooker
Charlie Brooker
Charlton "Charlie" Brooker is a British journalist, comic writer and broadcaster. His style of humour is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism...
was inspired by the book to devote an entire episode of his BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
show Screenwipe
Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe
Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is a British television review programme broadcast on BBC Four by Charlie Brooker. The programme contains reviews of current shows, as well as stories and commentary on how television is produced.-Format:...
to interviewing television writers; and chat show couple Richard and Judy
Richard and Judy
Richard and Judy is the name informally given to Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan, a married couple who are both British television presenters and columnists. Since their marriage, their television appearances have been largely made as a couple. They are best known for presenting This Morning and...
selected the book as a recommended Christmas present in the "Serious Non-Fiction" category of their book club. A second edition of the book, The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter, was released in January 2010 by BBC Books. The second edition added 350 pages of correspondence—before excising draft scripts included in the first edition—and covered Davies' final months as executive producer of Doctor Who as he co-wrote the five-part BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
Torchwood
Torchwood
Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from Davies's 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. The show has shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from...
miniseries Children of Earth, planned David Tennant
David Tennant
David Tennant is a Scottish actor. In addition to his work in theatre, including a widely praised Hamlet, Tennant is best known for his role as the tenth incarnation of the Doctor in Doctor Who, along with the title role in the 2005 TV serial Casanova and as Barty Crouch, Jr...
's departure and Matt Smith's arrival as the Doctor, and moved to the United States.
Post-Doctor Who career
Davies planned to depart from producing the show in 2009 along with Gardner and Collinson, and finish his tenure with four special length episodes. His departure from the show was announced in May 2008, alongside a press release that named Steven MoffatSteven Moffat
Steven Moffat is a Scottish television writer and producer.Moffat's first television work was the teen drama series Press Gang. His first sitcom, Joking Apart, was inspired by the breakdown of his first marriage; conversely, his later sitcom Coupling was based upon the development of his...
as his successor. His role in late 2008 was split between writing the 2009 specials and preparing for the transition between his and Moffat's production team; one chapter of The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter discusses plans between him, Gardner, and Tennant to announce Tennant's departure live during ITV's National Television Awards
National Television Awards
The National Television Awards is a British television awards ceremony, broadcast by the ITV network and initiated in 1995. The National Television Awards are the most prominent ceremony for which the results are voted on by the general public. Because of the way the awards are decided, winners are...
in October 2008. His final full script for Doctor Who was finished in the early morning of 4 March 2009, and filming of the episode closed on 20 May 2009.
Davies' next project is Cucumber, a BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide
BBC Worldwide Limited is the wholly owned commercial subsidiary of the British Broadcasting Corporation, formed out of a restructuring of its predecessor BBC Enterprises in 1995. In the year to 31 March 2010 it made a profit of £145m on a turnover of £1.074bn. The company had made a profit of £106m...
series about gay men that will air on the American cable network Showtime. Davies also planned to return to art by writing a graphic novel, and was unsuccessfully approached by Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
to write for the proposed Star Wars live-action television series
Star Wars live-action TV series
The untitled Star Wars live-action TV series is a planned space opera television series, set between the events seen in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope....
. Davies moved with Gardner and Jane Tranter
Jane Tranter
Jane Tranter is an English television executive who has been the executive vice-president of programming and production at BBC Worldwide's Los Angeles base since January 2009...
to the United States in June 2009, and resides in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, California. He continues to oversee production of Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures; he wrote one story for the 2010 series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Death of the Doctor
Death of the Doctor
Death of the Doctor is a two-part story of The Sarah Jane Adventures which was broadcast on CBBC on 25 and 26 October 2010. It is the third story of the fourth series. This episode features the return of Katy Manning to the role of Jo Grant and a guest appearance by Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor...
, which included Matt Smith as the Doctor and Katy Manning
Katy Manning
Katy Manning is an English actress best known for her part as the companion Jo Grant in the BBC science fiction television series Doctor Who. She has also made many theatre appearances, and is now a citizen of Australia. She is myopic...
as the Doctor's former companion Jo Grant
Jo Grant
Josephine "Jo" Grant is a fictional character played by Katy Manning in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
, and is the executive producer and author of the premiere ("The New World") and finale ("The Blood Line") of Torchwood: Miracle Day, the fourth series of Torchwood. He gave informal assistance to and later served as creative consultant of ex-Doctor Who script editor Helen Raynor
Helen Raynor
Helen Raynor is a British television and theatre writer and script editor. From 2004 until 2007 she was one of the script editors of the revived version of the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, working on its first three series...
's and playwright Gary Owen
Gary Owen (playwright)
Gary Owen is a Welsh playwright and winner of the Arts Council England 2003 Meyer-Whitworth Award for new writing for the theatre....
's BBC Cymru Wales drama Baker Boys
Baker Boys (2011 TV series)
Baker Boys is an English-language Welsh television drama series, produced by BBC Wales and broadcast on BBC One Wales. The series was written by writing couple Helen Raynor and Gary Owen. Torchwood creator Russell T Davies also had a role as creative consultant, which he fulfilled from Los Angeles...
.
Writing style
Davies is a self-admitted procrastinatorProcrastination
In psychology, procrastination refers to the act of replacing high-priority actions with tasks of low-priority, and thus putting off important tasks to a later time...
and often waits hours or days for concepts to form before he commits them to the script. In The Writer's Tale, he describes his procrastination by discussing his early career. His early method of dealing with the pressures of delivering a script was to "go out drinking" instead. On one occasion in the mid-1990s, he was at the Manchester gay club Cruz 101
Cruz 101
Cruz 101 is a nightclub and music venue situated in Manchester's Gay Village which is centred around Canal Street, England...
when he thought of the climax to the first series of The Grand. As his career progressed, he instead spent entire nights "just thinking of plot, character, pace, etc" and waited until 2:00 am, "when the clubs used to shut", to overcome the urge of procrastination. Davies described the sense of anxiety he experiences in an email to Cook in April 2007, in response to Cook's question of "how do you know when to start writing?":
He expanded on his email two weeks later in response to Cook's query about the supposed link between major depressive disorder and creativity. He explained that his anxiety and melancholy during the scriptwriting period still allowed him to keep on top of his work; on the other hand, he thought "Depression with a capital D [didn't have] any such luxury".
Davies explained in length his writing process to Cook in The Writer's Tale. When he creates characters, he initially assigns a character a name and fits attributes around it. In the case of Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) in his inaugural series of Doctor Who, he chose the name because he considered it a "good luck charm" after he used it for Lesley Sharp's character in Bob & Rose. He presented his desire to make the show "essentially British" as another justification: he considered Rose
Rose (name)
Rose is a given name and surname. The surname Rose can be of English, Scottish, French, and German origin.Rose is a popular given name, it originally was a Norman form of a German name Hrodheid, composed of the words Hrod and Heid . It was originally spelt Roese or Rohese...
to be "the most British name in the world" and feminine enough to subvert the then-current trend of female companions and their "boyish" names, such as Benny
Bernice Summerfield
Bernice Surprise Summerfield is a fictional character created by author Paul Cornell as a new companion of the Seventh Doctor in Virgin Publishing's range of original full-length Doctor Who novels, the New Adventures...
, Charley
Charley Pollard
Charlotte Elspeth Pollard, or simply Charley, is a fictional character played by India Fisher in a series of audio plays produced by Big Finish Productions, many of which were broadcast on BBC Radio 7, based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A young woman...
, and Ace
Ace (Doctor Who)
Dorothy Gale McShane, better known by her nickname Ace, is a fictional character played by Sophie Aldred in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
. While he was writing for The Grand, the executive producer requested that he change the female lead character's name, a decision that led to the "character never [feeling] right from that moment on". The surname "Harkness", most notably given to Torchwood lead Captain Jack Harkness, is a similar charm, first used in 1993 for the Harkness family in Century Falls, and ultimately derived from the Marvel Universe
Marvel Universe
The Marvel Universe is the shared fictional universe where most comic book titles and other media published by Marvel Entertainment take place, including those featuring Marvel's most familiar characters, such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, and the Avengers.The Marvel Universe is further...
hero Agatha Harkness
Agatha Harkness
Agatha Harkness is a fictional character, a powerful witch in the Marvel Comics universe. Supposedly, she was one of the original witches from the Salem Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts. She somehow survived and later became a significant figure in Marvel continuity, protecting Franklin...
, and the surname "Tyler
Tyler
Tyler is an English word which means door keeper of an inn. It is also thought to be a derived occupational name derived from “tiler”, one who makes tiles. It is used both as a surname, and as given name for both genders...
" is similarly used because of his affection for how the surname is spelled and pronounced.
Davies also attempts to channel his writing by using music that fits the theme of the series as a source of inspiration: Doctor Who was typically written while he listened to action
Action film
Action film is a film genre where one or more heroes is thrust into a series of challenges that require physical feats, extended fights and frenetic chases...
-adventure film
Adventure film
Adventure films are a genre of film.Unlike pure, low-budget action films they often use their action scenes preferably to display and explore exotic locations in an energetic way....
score
Film score
A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film, forming part of the film's soundtrack, which also usually includes dialogue and sound effects...
s; Queer as Folk was written to Hi-NRG
Hi-NRG
Hi-NRG describes a form of high-tempo disco music as well as a genre of electronic dance music originating in the United States during the late 1970s...
music "to catch [the] sheer clubland drive"; Bob & Rose was written to the Moby
Moby
Richard Melville Hall , better known by his stage name Moby, is an American musician, DJ, and photographer. He is known mainly for his sample-based electronic music and his outspoken liberal political views, including his support of veganism and animal rights.Moby gained attention in the early...
album Play
Play (Moby album)
Play is the fifth studio album by American electronica musician Moby, released on May 17, 1999 on V2 Records. While some of Moby's earlier work garnered critical and commercial success within the electronic dance music scene, Play was both a critical success and a commercial phenomenon...
, because the two works shared a "urban, sexy, full of lonely hearts at night" image; and The Second Coming shared the concepts of "experimental[ity], anguish, dark[ness], [and] pain" of Radiohead
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, formed in 1985. The band consists of Thom Yorke , Jonny Greenwood , Ed O'Brien , Colin Greenwood and Phil Selway .Radiohead released their debut single "Creep" in 1992...
albums. More specifically, he wrote the early drafts of the fourth series Doctor Who episode "Partners in Crime
Partners in Crime (Doctor Who)
"Partners in Crime" is the first episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 5 April 2008. The episode reintroduced comedienne Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, who previously appeared in "The Runaway Bride"...
" while he was listening to Mika
Mika (singer)
Mika is a British singer-songwriter.After recording his first extended play, Dodgy Holiday EP, Mika released his first full-length studio album, Life in Cartoon Motion, on Island Records in 2007. Life in Cartoon Motion sold more than 5.6 million copies worldwide and helped Mika win a Brit...
's Life in Cartoon Motion
Life in Cartoon Motion
Life in Cartoon Motion is the debut album by singer Mika, produced by Greg Wells and Mika, mixed by Greg Wells, with co-production on two songs by Jodi Marr and John Merchant, released on Island Records on 5 February 2007 in the United Kingdom, and on Casablanca Records on 27 March 2007 in the U.S....
, and singled out the song "Any Other World" as a "Doctor Who companion song" with lyrics that matched Penny, the planned companion for the fourth series.
When he creates new scripts, Davies considers the dénouement of a story to be representative of the work. He often formulates both the scene and its emotional impact early in the process, but writes the scenes last due to his belief that "[later scenes] can't exist if they aren't informed by where they've come from". Davies is a strong advocate for the continued use of the cliffhanger ending and opposes advertising that sacrifices the impact of storytelling. In pursuit of his quest, he instructs editors to remove scenes from press copies of episodes he writes; cliffhangers were removed from the review copies of the Doctor Who episodes "Army of Ghosts
Army of Ghosts
"Army of Ghosts" is the twelfth and penultimate episode in the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who which was first broadcast on 1 July 2006...
", "The Stolen Earth
The Stolen Earth
"The Stolen Earth" is the twelfth episode of the fourth series and the 750th overall episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The episode was written by show runner and head writer Russell T Davies and is the first of a two-part crossover story; the concluding episode is...
", and the first part of The End of Time
The End of Time
The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the Universe, also sold with the alternate subtitle The Next Revolution in Physics, is a 1999 science book in which the author Julian Barbour argues that time exists merely as an illusion.-Auto-biography:The book begins by describing how...
, and Rose Tyler's unadvertised appearance in "Partners in Crime
Partners in Crime (Doctor Who)
"Partners in Crime" is the first episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 5 April 2008. The episode reintroduced comedienne Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, who previously appeared in "The Runaway Bride"...
" was excised. His most prolific cliffhanger was in the script of "The Stolen Earth", which created an unprecedented amount of interest in the show. In an interview with BBC News shortly after the episode's transmission, he argued that the success of a popular television series is linked to how well producers can keep secrets and create a "live experience":
Davies attempts to both create imagery and to provide a social commentary in his scripts; for example, he uses camera directions in his scripts more frequently than newer screenwriters to ensure that anyone who reads the script, especially the director, is able to "feel... the pace, the speed, the atmosphere, the mood, the gags, [and] the dread". His stage directions also create an atmosphere by their formatting and avoidance of the first person. Although the basis of several of his scripts derive from previous concepts, he claims that most concepts for storytelling have been already used, and instead tries to tell a relatively new and entertaining plot; for example, the Doctor Who episode "Turn Left
Turn Left (Doctor Who)
"Turn Left" is the eleventh episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was written by showrunner Russell T Davies and broadcast on BBC One on 21 June 2008....
" shares its concept most notably with the 1998 film Sliding Doors
Sliding Doors
Sliding Doors is a 1998 British-American romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Howitt and starring Gwyneth Paltrow and John Hannah, and featured John Lynch, Jeanne Tripplehorn and Virginia McKenna. The music was composed by David Hirschfelder...
. Like how Sliding Doors examines two timelines based on whether Helen Quilley (Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Paltrow
Gwyneth Kate Paltrow is an American actress and singer. She made her acting debut on stage in 1990 and started appearing in films in 1991. After appearing in several films throughout the decade, Paltrow gained early notice for her work in films such as Se7en and Emma...
) catches a London Underground
London Underground
The London Underground is a rapid transit system serving a large part of Greater London and some parts of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Essex in England...
train, Davies uses the choice of the Doctor's companion to turn left or right at a road intersection to depict either a world with the Doctor, as seen throughout the rest of the fourth series, or an alternate world
Parallel universe (fiction)
A parallel universe or alternative reality is a hypothetical self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a "multiverse", although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute reality...
without the Doctor, examined in its entirety within the episode. The world without the Doctor creates a dystopia which he uses to provide a commentary on Nazi-esque fascism. Davies generally tries to make his scripts "detailed, but quite succinct", and eschews the practice of long character and set descriptions; instead, he limits himself to only three adjectives to describe a character and two lines to describe a set to allow the dialogue to describe the story instead.
Davies also uses his scripts to examine and debate on large issues such as sexuality and religion, especially from a homosexual or atheist perspective. He refrains from a dependence on "cheap, easy lines" that provide little deeper insight; his mantra during his early adult drama career was "no boring issues". Queer as Folk is the primary vehicle for his social commentary of homosexuality and advocation of greater acceptance. He used the series to challenge the "primal ... gut instinct" of homophobia by introducing homosexual imagery in contrast to the heterosexual "fundamental image of life, of family, of childhood, [and] of survival". Torchwood also tackles LGBT themes by subverting stereotypes and exploring the characters' sexualities, and Bob & Rose examines the issue of a gay man who falls in love with a woman. His most notable commentaries of religion and atheism are The Second Coming and his 2007 Doctor Who episode "Gridlock
Gridlock (Doctor Who)
"Gridlock" is the third episode from the third series of the revived British science fiction television series Doctor Who which aired on 14 April 2007. The Doctor returns to a much grittier New Earth with Martha Jones and meets the Face of Boe one final time. But as New New York becomes a deadly...
". The Second Comings depiction of a contemporary and realistic Second Coming
Second Coming
In Christian doctrine, the Second Coming of Christ, the Second Advent, or the Parousia, is the anticipated return of Jesus Christ from Heaven, where he sits at the Right Hand of God, to Earth. This prophecy is found in the canonical gospels and in most Christian and Islamic eschatologies...
of Jesus Christ eschews the use of religious iconography in favour of a love story underlined by the male lead's "awakening as the Son of God". In contrast, "Gridlock" takes a more pro-active role in debating religion: the episode depicts the unity of the supporting cast in singing the Christian hymns "Abide with Me
Abide With Me
The hymn tune most often used with this hymn is "Eventide" composed by William Henry Monk in 1861.Alternate tunes include:* "Abide with Me," Henry Lyte, 1847* "Morecambe", Frederick C...
" and "The Old Rugged Cross
The Old Rugged Cross
"The Old Rugged Cross" is a popular Christian song written in 1912 by evangelist and song-leader George Bennard .George Bennard, was a native of Youngstown, Ohio but was reared in Iowa. After his conversion in a Salvation Army meeting, he and his wife became brigade leaders before leaving the...
" as a positive aspect of faith, but depicts the Doctor as an atheistic hero which shows the faith as misguided because "there is no higher authority". He also includes his commentary as an undertone in other stories; he described the sub-plot of the differing belief systems of the Doctor and Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
in "Tooth and Claw
Tooth and Claw (Doctor Who)
"Tooth and Claw" is the second episode in the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and was first broadcast on 22 April 2006. In 1879 Scotland, the Doctor and Rose meet Queen Victoria...
" as a conflict between "Rational Man versus Head of the Church".
Recognition
Davies has received recognition for his work since his career as a children's television writer. Davies' first BAFTA award nominations came in 1992 when he was nominated for the "Best Children's Programme (Fiction)" Television Award for his work on Children's Ward. Children's Ward was nominated for the Children's Drama award in 1996 and won the same award 1997. His next critically successful series was Bob & Rose; it was nominated for a Television Award for Best Drama Serial and won two British Comedy AwardsBritish Comedy Awards
The British Comedy Awards is an annual awards ceremony in the United Kingdom celebrating notable comedians and entertainment performances of the previous year.-History:...
for Best Comedy Drama and Writer of the Year. The Second Coming was nominated for the same Television Award in 2003. His work on The Second Coming also earned him a nomination for a Royal Television Society
Royal Television Society
The Royal Television Society is a British-based educational charity for the discussion, and analysis of television in all its forms, past, present and future. It is the oldest television society in the world...
award.
Most of Davies' recognition came as a result of his work on Doctor Who. In 2005, Doctor Who won two Television Awards—Best Drama Series and the Pioneer Audience Award—and he was awarded the honorary Dennis Potter Award for writing. BAFTA Cymru
BAFTA Cymru
BAFTA Cymru is the Welsh branch of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.Formed in 1991, they hold an annual awards ceremony to recognise achievement by performers and production staff in Welsh-made films and television programmes...
also gave him that years' Siân Phillips
Siân Phillips
Jane Elizabeth Ailwên "Siân" Phillips, CBE, is a Welsh actress.-Early life:Phillips was born in Gwaun-Cae-Gurwen, Neath Port Talbot, Wales, the daughter of Sally , a teacher, and David Phillips, a steelworker-turned-policeman...
Award for Outstanding Contribution to Network Television. In 2006, he was awarded the accolade of "Industry Player of the Year" at the Edinburgh International Television Festival
Edinburgh International Television Festival
The Edinburgh International Television Festival, founded in 1976, is held annually over the British August bank holiday weekend at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre....
. In 2007, he was nominated for the "Best Soap/Series" Writers' Guild of Great Britain
Writers' Guild of Great Britain
The Writers' Guild of Great Britain, established in 1959, is a trade union for professional writers. It is affiliated with both the Trades Union Congress and the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds .-Activities:...
Award—along with Chris Chibnall
Chris Chibnall
Chris Chibnall is a British playwright, television writer and producer. He is best known for his work on the science-fiction series Torchwood....
, Paul Cornell
Paul Cornell
Paul Cornell is a British writer best known for his work in television drama as well as Doctor Who fiction, and as the creator of one of the Doctor's spin-off companions, Bernice Summerfield....
, Stephen Greenhorn
Stephen Greenhorn
Stephen Greenhorn is a Scottish playwright, television writer and novelist.He is the creator of the BBC Scotland soap opera River City....
, Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat is a Scottish television writer and producer.Moffat's first television work was the teen drama series Press Gang. His first sitcom, Joking Apart, was inspired by the breakdown of his first marriage; conversely, his later sitcom Coupling was based upon the development of his...
, Helen Raynor
Helen Raynor
Helen Raynor is a British television and theatre writer and script editor. From 2004 until 2007 she was one of the script editors of the revived version of the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who, working on its first three series...
, and Gareth Roberts
Gareth Roberts (writer)
Gareth John Pritchard Roberts is a British television screenwriter and novelist, best known for his work related to the science-fiction television series Doctor Who...
—for their work on the third series of Doctor Who
Doctor Who (series 3)
The third series of British science fiction series Doctor Who was preceded by the 2006 Christmas special "The Runaway Bride". Following the special, a regular series of thirteen episodes was broadcast, starting with "Smith and Jones" on 31 March 2007...
. He was again nominated for two BAFTA Awards in 2008: a Television Award for his work on Doctor Who, and the Television Craft Award for Best Writer, for the episode "Midnight
Midnight (Doctor Who)
"Midnight" is the tenth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 14 June 2008. The episode placed much more emphasis on the role of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor than in the rest of the fourth series, with the...
". Under his tenure, Doctor Who won five consecutive National Television Awards
National Television Awards
The National Television Awards is a British television awards ceremony, broadcast by the ITV network and initiated in 1995. The National Television Awards are the most prominent ceremony for which the results are voted on by the general public. Because of the way the awards are decided, winners are...
between 2005 and 2010. He has also been nominated for three Hugo Awards, all in the category of "Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form": in 2007, the story comprising "Army of Ghosts
Army of Ghosts
"Army of Ghosts" is the twelfth and penultimate episode in the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who which was first broadcast on 1 July 2006...
" and "Doomsday
Doomsday (Doctor Who)
"Doomsday" is the thirteenth and final episode in the second series of the revival of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 8 July 2006 and is the conclusion of a two-part story; the first part, "Army of Ghosts", was broadcast on 1 July 2006...
" was defeated by Steven Moffat's "The Girl in the Fireplace
The Girl in the Fireplace
"The Girl in the Fireplace" is the fourth episode of the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 6 May 2006, and is the only episode in the 2006 series written by Steven Moffat...
"; in 2009, the episode "Turn Left
Turn Left (Doctor Who)
"Turn Left" is the eleventh episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was written by showrunner Russell T Davies and broadcast on BBC One on 21 June 2008....
" was defeated by Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is a 2008 musical tragicomedy miniseries in three acts, produced exclusively for Internet distribution. Filmed and set in Los Angeles, the show tells the story of Dr...
; and in 2010, all three of his scripts which were eligible for the award, "The Next Doctor", the Davies–Roberts
Gareth Roberts (writer)
Gareth John Pritchard Roberts is a British television screenwriter and novelist, best known for his work related to the science-fiction television series Doctor Who...
collaboration "Planet of the Dead
Planet of the Dead
"Planet of the Dead" is the first 2009 special of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It was the second of five special episodes broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which served as lead actor...
", and the Davies–Ford
Phil Ford (writer)
Phil Ford is a British television writer. He was the head writer for the second series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, broadcast in 2008, and wrote "The Waters of Mars", one of the 2009 special episodes of Doctor Who, with Russell T Davies.-Television:...
collaboration "The Waters of Mars
The Waters of Mars
"The Waters of Mars" is the second 2009 special of British science fiction television series Doctor Who, broadcast on BBC One on 15 November 2009. It aired on BBC America on 19 December 2009 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on 11 January 2010 and in the US on 2 February 2010...
", were nominated: the award was won by "The Waters of Mars" and the other episodes took second and third place.
Davies' work on Doctor Who has similarly been recognised by the public. During his tenure as executive producer, only Steven Moffat's "Silence in the Library
Silence in the Library
"Silence in the Library" is the eighth episode of the fourth series of the revived British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first broadcast on 31 May 2008. It is the first of a two-part story, followed by "Forest of the Dead", and is the second two-parter Steven Moffat contributed to...
", which was scheduled against the final of the second series of Britain's Got Talent
Britain's Got Talent (Series 2)
The 2008 series of Britain's Got Talent was the second series of the show. Notable differences from the 2007 series the included the fact that the auditions visited Scotland and that there were 40 in the live semi-finals...
, failed to win in its timeslot. The show's viewing figures were consistently high enough that the only broadcasts to have consistently rivaled Doctor Who for viewers in the Broadcasters' Audience Research Board's weekly charts were EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
, Coronation Street
Coronation Street
Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...
, Britain's Got Talent
Britain's Got Talent
Britain's Got Talent is a British television talent show competition which started in June 2007 and originated from the Got Talent series. The show is produced by FremantleMedia's TalkbackThames and Simon Cowell's production company SYCOtv. The show is broadcast on ITV in Britain and TV3 in Ireland...
, and international football
Football (soccer)
Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a sport played between two teams of eleven players with a spherical ball...
matches. Two of his scripts, "Voyage of the Damned
Voyage of the Damned (Doctor Who)
"Voyage of the Damned" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. First broadcast on 25 December 2007, it is 72 minutes long and the third Christmas special since the show's revival in 2005...
" and "The Stolen Earth
The Stolen Earth
"The Stolen Earth" is the twelfth episode of the fourth series and the 750th overall episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The episode was written by show runner and head writer Russell T Davies and is the first of a two-part crossover story; the concluding episode is...
", broke audience records for the show by being declared the second most viewed broadcasts of their respective weeks, and "Journey's End
Journey's End (Doctor Who)
"Journey's End" is the thirteenth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who first broadcast on BBC One on 5 July 2008. It is the second episode of a two-part crossover story featuring the characters of spin-off shows Torchwood and The Sarah Jane...
" became the first episode to be the most viewed broadcast of the week. The show currently enjoys consistently high Appreciation Index
Appreciation Index
The Audience Appreciation Index is a score out of 100 which is used as an indicator of the public's appreciation for a television or radio programme, or broadcast service, in the United Kingdom. Until 2002, the AI of a programme was calculated by BARB, the organisation that compiles television...
ratings: "Love & Monsters
Love & Monsters
"Love & Monsters" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. In this episode, an ordinary man named Elton Pope becomes obsessed with a man called the Doctor and his strange blue box, and joins a group of like-minded people in hopes of finding him...
", regarded by Doctor Who fans as his worst script, gained a rating of 76, just short of the 2006 average rating of 77; and the episodes "The Stolen Earth
The Stolen Earth
"The Stolen Earth" is the twelfth episode of the fourth series and the 750th overall episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The episode was written by show runner and head writer Russell T Davies and is the first of a two-part crossover story; the concluding episode is...
" and "Journey's End
Journey's End (Doctor Who)
"Journey's End" is the thirteenth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who first broadcast on BBC One on 5 July 2008. It is the second episode of a two-part crossover story featuring the characters of spin-off shows Torchwood and The Sarah Jane...
" share the highest rating Doctor Who has received, at 91.
Among Doctor Who fans, his contribution to the show ranks as high as the show's co-creator Verity Lambert
Verity Lambert
Verity Ann Lambert, OBE was an English television and film producer. She is best known as the founding producer of the science-fiction series Doctor Who, a programme which has become a part of British popular culture, and for her association with Thames Television...
: in a 2009 poll of 6,700 Doctor Who Magazine
Doctor Who Magazine
Doctor Who Magazine is a magazine devoted to the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who...
readers, he won the "Greatest Contribution" award with 22.62% of the votes against Lambert's 22.49% share, in addition to winning the magazine's 2005, 2006, and 2008 awards for the best writer of each series. Ian Farrington, who commented on the 2009 "Greatest Contribution" poll, attributed Davies' popularity to his range of writing styles, from the epic "Doomsday
Doomsday (Doctor Who)
"Doomsday" is the thirteenth and final episode in the second series of the revival of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 8 July 2006 and is the conclusion of a two-part story; the first part, "Army of Ghosts", was broadcast on 1 July 2006...
" to the minimalistic "Midnight", and his ability to market the show to appeal to a wide audience.
Davies' work on Doctor Who has led to accolades out of the television industry. Between 2005 and 2008, he was included in The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
s "Media 100": in 2005, he was ranked the 14th most influential man in the media; in 2006, the 28th; in 2007, the 15th; and in 2008, the 31st. The Independent on Sunday also recognised his contributions to the public by including him on consecutive Pink Lists, which chronicle the achievements of gay and lesbian personalities: in 2005, he was ranked the 73rd most influential gay person; in 2006, the 18th; in 2007, the most influential gay person; in 2008, the 2nd; and in 2009, the 14th. He was awarded an OBE in the Queen's 2008 Birthday Honours list for services to drama, and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University
Cardiff University
Cardiff University is a leading research university located in the Cathays Park area of Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom. It received its Royal charter in 1883 and is a member of the Russell Group of Universities. The university is consistently recognised as providing high quality research-based...
in July 2008.
Production credits
| Series | Channels | Years | Functioned as | Notes | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Writer Screenwriter Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:... |
Producer Television producer The primary role of a television Producer is to allow all aspects of video production, ranging from show idea development and cast hiring to shoot supervision and fact-checking... |
Other roles | ||||
| Why Don't You...? | BBC1 | 1985–90 | Director, assistant floor manager, and publicist | Various episodes | ||
| Play School | BBC1 | 1987 | Presenter | One episode | ||
| On the Waterfront On The Waterfront (TV Series) On the Waterfront was a BBC Saturday morning children's programme, filmed at Brunswick Dock, Liverpool. It was hosted by Andrew O'Connor, Kate Copstick, Bernadette Nolan and Terry Randall... |
BBC1 | 1988–89 | Sketch writer and script editor | |||
| DEF II DEF II DEF II was a programming strand on BBC Two, which aired at 6pm on Mondays and Wednesdays from 9 May 1988 to 23 May 1994, to serve the teenage market. It was produced by Janet Street-Porter, and followed on from her influential youth TV show Network 7, on Channel 4... |
BBC1 | 1989 | Sketch writer | Various episodes, uncredited | ||
| Breakfast Serials Breakfast Serials Breakfast Serials was a twenty-five minute anthology series for children that aired on BBC ONE for one series in 1990. It was produced and co-written by Russell T Davies, and edited by Edward Pugh... |
BBC1 | 1990 | ||||
| Dark Season Dark Season Dark Season is a British science-fiction television serial for adolescents, screened on BBC1 in late 1991. Comprising six twenty-five minute episodes, the two linked three-part stories tell the adventures of three teenagers and their battle to save their school and their classmates from the actions... |
BBC1 | 1991 | Creator | |||
| Children's Ward Children's Ward Children's Ward is a British children's television drama series produced by Granada Television and broadcast on the ITV network as part of its Children's ITV strand on weekday afternoons... |
ITV ITV ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK... |
1992–96 | ||||
| Families Families (TV series) Families was a daytime soap opera produced by Granada Television and created by Kay Mellor. It followed two families; the Thompsons, based in Cheshire, England , and the Stevens, living in Sydney, Australia.... |
ITV | 1992–93 | Storyliner | |||
| ChuckleVision ChuckleVision ChuckleVision is a popular British television series shown mainly on CBBC. New episodes are always first aired on BBC One, and occasionally episodes are shown on BBC Two. The first episode was shown on 26 September 1987. It follows the adventures of the Chuckle Brothers & the Patton Brothers, who... |
BBC1 | 1992 | Three episodes | |||
| Century Falls Century Falls Century Falls is a British cross-genre series broadcast in six twenty-five minute episodes on BBC One in early 1993. Written by Russell T Davies, it tells the story of teenager Tess Hunter and her mother, who move to the seemingly idyllic rural village of Century Falls, only to find that it hides... |
BBC1 | 1993 | Creator | |||
| Cluedo | ITV | 1993 | One episode | |||
| Do the Right Thing | BBC1 | 1994–95 | Scriptwriter | Uncredited | ||
| The House of Windsor | ITV | 1994 | Various episodes, several uncredited | |||
| Revelations Revelations (1994 TV series) Revelations was a late-night soap opera created by Russell T Davies, Brian B. Thompson, and Tony Wood and starring Judy Loe and Paul Shelley, and aired in a limited number of ITV regions between 1994 and 1996. The series is family drama about the family of the priest Edward Rattigan and his wife... |
ITV | 1994–95 | Co-creator | Various episodes. Created with Brian B. Thompson Brian B. Thompson Brian B. Thompson is a British television and radio writer whose work includes BBC1 children's show Byker Grove, for which he penned over 50 episodes. He also created the continuing detective series Trueman and Riley, broadcast on BBC7 and BBC Radio 4... and Tony Wood. |
||
| Coronation Street Coronation Street Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960... |
ITV | 1996 | Storyliner | Two weeks; cover for permanent storyliner. | ||
| Springhill Springhill (TV series) Springhill was a British soap opera/drama, produced by Granada and broadcast in 1996/1997 on the Sky One satellite channel, and later on Channel 4. It consisted of 2 series, each containing 26 episodes... |
Channel 4 Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel... /Sky One Sky One Sky1 is the flagship BSkyB entertainment channel available in the United Kingdom and Ireland.The channel first launched on 26 April 1982 as Satellite Television, and is the fourth-oldest TV channel in the United Kingdom, behind BBC One , ITV and BBC Two... |
1996–97 | Co-creator and storyliner | Seven episodes. Created with Paul Abbott Paul Abbott Paul Abbott is a BAFTA award-winning English television screenwriter and producer. Abbott has become one of the most critically and commercially successful television writers working in Britain today, following his work on many popular series, including Coronation Street, Cracker and Shameless,... and Frank Cottrell Boyce Frank Cottrell Boyce -Awards:*2004: Buch des Monats des Instituts für Jugendliteratur/Book of the Month by the Institute for Youth Literature , Millions*2004: Carnegie Medal, Millions*2004: Luchs des Jahres , Millions... . |
||
| Damaged Goods | 1996 | Virgin New Adventures Virgin New Adventures The Virgin New Adventures were a series of novels from Virgin Publishing based on the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who... Doctor Who novel |
||||
| Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas! Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas! Coronation Street: Viva Las Vegas! was a direct-to-video spin off from the British soap opera Coronation Street. It followed Jack, Vera, Fiona and Maxine on their trip to Las Vegas. It was released on VHS in 1997.-Cast:- External links :... |
Straight-to-video | 1997 | ||||
| The Grand The Grand (TV series) The Grand was a British television drama series first broadcast on ITV in 1997-1998. It was written by Russell T Davies and set in a hotel in Manchester in the 1920s.... |
ITV | 1997–98 | 18 episodes, several uncredited | |||
| Touching Evil Touching Evil Touching Evil is a British television drama serial, which began airing in 1997. It was produced by United Productions for Anglia Television, and screened on the ITV network. The first series consisted of six fifty-minute episodes. It was created by Paul Abbott, and written by Abbott with Russell T... |
BBC1 | 1997 | One episode | |||
| Queer as Folk Queer as Folk (UK TV series) Queer as Folk is a 1999 British television series that chronicles the lives of three gay men living in Manchester's gay village around Canal Street. Both Queer as Folk and Queer as Folk 2 were written by Russell T Davies... |
Channel 4 | 1999–2000 | Creator | |||
| Bob & Rose | ITV1 | 2001 | Creator | |||
| Linda Green Linda Green Linda Green is a British television comedy-drama series that lasted for two series, screened in 2001 and 2002. The twenty half-hour episodes were broadcast on BBC One and produced for the BBC by the independent Red Production Company.... |
BBC One | 2001 | One episode | |||
| The Second Coming The Second Coming (TV serial) The Second Coming is a two-part British television drama first screened on ITV in the UK in February 2003. It concerns the realisation of Steve Baxter that he is in fact the Son of God, and has just a few days to find the human race's Third Testament and thus avert the Apocalypse.It was written... |
ITV1 | 2003 | Creator and executive producer | |||
| Mine All Mine Mine All Mine Mine All Mine is a British television series produced by Red Production Company for ITV. It was written by Russell T Davies and starred Griff Rhys Jones... |
ITV1 | 2004 | Creator and executive producer | |||
| Casanova Casanova (2005 TV serial) Casanova is a 2005 British television comedy drama serial, written by television scriptwriter Russell T Davies and directed by Sheree Folkson... |
BBC Three BBC Three BBC Three is a television network from the BBC broadcasting via digital cable, terrestrial, IPTV and satellite platforms. The channel's target audience includes those in the 16-34 year old age group, and has the purpose of providing "innovative" content to younger audiences, focusing on new talent... |
2005 | Creator and executive producer | |||
| Doctor Who Doctor Who Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior... |
BBC One | 2005–10 | Executive producer, showrunner, and head writer | 31 episodes and three mini-episodes. Simulcast on BBC HD BBC HD BBC HD is a high-definition television network provided by the BBC. The service was initially run as a trial from 15 May 2006 until becoming a full service on 1 December 2007... starting with "Planet of the Dead Planet of the Dead "Planet of the Dead" is the first 2009 special of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It was the second of five special episodes broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which served as lead actor... ". |
||
| Doctor Who Confidential Doctor Who Confidential Doctor Who Confidential is a documentary series created by the British Broadcasting Corporation to complement the revival of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Each episode was broadcast on BBC Three on Saturdays, immediately after the broadcast of the weekly... |
BBC Three | 2005–10 | Executive producer | |||
| Tardisode TARDISODE Tardisodes are mini-episodes of the television programme Doctor Who created to accompany the 2006 series of the programme. Made by Doctor Who producers BBC Wales, each Tardisode is approximately 60 seconds long and serves as an introduction to one of the actual 45-minute episodes... s |
BBC.co.uk Bbc.co.uk BBC Online is the brand name and home for the BBC's UK online service. It is a large network of websites including such high profile sites as BBC News and Sport, the on-demand video and radio services co-branded BBC iPlayer, the pre-school site Cbeebies, and learning services such as Bitesize... |
2006 | Executive producer | |||
| Torchwood Torchwood Torchwood is a British science fiction television programme created by Russell T Davies. The series is a spin-off from Davies's 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who. The show has shifted its broadcast channel each series to reflect its growing audience, moving from... |
|
2006– | Creator and executive producer | Six episodes | ||
| Torchwood Declassified Torchwood Declassified Torchwood Declassified is a documentary series created by the British Broadcasting Corporation to complement the British science fiction television series Torchwood. Each episode is broadcast on the same evening as the broadcast of the weekly television episode... |
BBC Three | 2006– | Executive producer | |||
| The Sarah Jane Adventures The Sarah Jane Adventures The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen... |
CBBC/BBC One BBC One BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution... |
2007–11 | Creator and executive producer | One special and one story | ||
| Baker Boys Baker Boys (2011 TV series) Baker Boys is an English-language Welsh television drama series, produced by BBC Wales and broadcast on BBC One Wales. The series was written by writing couple Helen Raynor and Gary Owen. Torchwood creator Russell T Davies also had a role as creative consultant, which he fulfilled from Los Angeles... |
BBC One Wales | 2011– | Creative consultant Creative consultant Creative consultant is a credit that has - particularly in the past - been given to screenwriters who have “doctored” a movie screenplay. It is often given by producers in lieu of official credit. Those given this credit in the television field work closely with an Executive Producer, Head... |
Doctor Who franchise writing credits
| Year | Show | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Doctor Who | "Rose Rose (Doctor Who) "Rose" is the first episode of Series One of the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by show runner Russell T Davies and directed by Keith Boak, the episode was first broadcast on 26 March 2005.... " |
| "The End of the World The End of the World (Doctor Who) "The End of the World" is the second episode of Series One of the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by show runner Russell T Davies and directed by Euros Lyn, the episode was first broadcast on 2 April 2005.... " |
||
| "Aliens of London Aliens of London "Aliens of London" is the fourth episode of the first series of the British science fiction television show Doctor Who that was first broadcast on 16 April 2005. The Doctor takes Rose back to 21st century London, just in time to witness a spaceship crashing into the River Thames, triggering a... " |
||
| "World War Three World War Three (Doctor Who) "World War Three" is the fifth episode of the first series in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was first broadcast on 23 April 2005. It is the second of a two-part story. The first part, "Aliens of London", was broadcast on 16 April... " |
||
| "The Long Game The Long Game "The Long Game" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was first broadcast on May 7, 2005. Along with new companion Adam, the TARDIS deposits the Doctor and Rose on Satellite 5, a space station that broadcasts across the entire human empire... " |
||
| "Boom Town Boom Town (Doctor Who) "Boom Town" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 4 June 2005. The Doctor, Rose and Jack travel to modern-day Cardiff and meet up with Rose's boyfriend, Mickey... " |
||
| "Bad Wolf Bad Wolf "Bad Wolf" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on June 11, 2005. The TARDIS crew find themselves trapped in the Gamestation, also known as Satellite 5, where they must battle to survive the cruel games... " |
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| "The Parting of the Ways The Parting of the Ways "The Parting of the Ways" is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 18 June 2005. It was the second episode of the two-part story that featured Christopher Eccleston making his last appearance as the Ninth Doctor... " |
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| "Doctor Who: Children in Need Doctor Who: Children in Need "Doctor Who: Children in Need", also known as "Born Again", is a 7-minute mini-episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who... " |
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| "The Christmas Invasion The Christmas Invasion "The Christmas Invasion" is a 60-minute special episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is Christmas, but there is little cause for celebration as planet Earth is invaded by aliens known as the Sycorax... " |
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| 2006 | "New Earth New Earth "New Earth" is the first episode of the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, first broadcast on 15 April 2006. It is a sequel to the first series episode "The End of the World", and brings back its villain who was thought to be destroyed, Lady Cassandra, as... " |
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| "Tooth and Claw Tooth and Claw (Doctor Who) "Tooth and Claw" is the second episode in the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who and was first broadcast on 22 April 2006. In 1879 Scotland, the Doctor and Rose meet Queen Victoria... " |
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| "Love & Monsters Love & Monsters "Love & Monsters" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. In this episode, an ordinary man named Elton Pope becomes obsessed with a man called the Doctor and his strange blue box, and joins a group of like-minded people in hopes of finding him... " |
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| "Army of Ghosts Army of Ghosts "Army of Ghosts" is the twelfth and penultimate episode in the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who which was first broadcast on 1 July 2006... " |
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| "Doomsday Doomsday (Doctor Who) "Doomsday" is the thirteenth and final episode in the second series of the revival of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on 8 July 2006 and is the conclusion of a two-part story; the first part, "Army of Ghosts", was broadcast on 1 July 2006... " |
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| Torchwood | "Everything Changes Everything Changes (Torchwood) "Everything Changes" is the first episode of the British science fiction television programme Torchwood, which was first broadcast on 22 October 2006.-Synopsis:Police constable Gwen Cooper comes across the mysterious organisation known as Torchwood... " |
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| Doctor Who | "The Runaway Bride The Runaway Bride (Doctor Who) "The Runaway Bride" is a special episode of the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who, starring David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor... " |
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| 2007 | The Sarah Jane Adventures | "Invasion of the Bane Invasion of the Bane -Sladen and Doctor Who:Elisabeth Sladen, who previously played Sarah Jane between 1973 and 1976. In 1981, she was offered the role again to ease the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, which she declined, but agreed to star in the pilot for the spin-off series K-9 and Company, which... " (co-written with Gareth Roberts Gareth Roberts (writer) Gareth John Pritchard Roberts is a British television screenwriter and novelist, best known for his work related to the science-fiction television series Doctor Who... ) |
| Doctor Who | "Smith and Jones Smith and Jones (Doctor Who) "Smith and Jones" is the first episode of the third series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 31 March 2007. It sees the debut of Freema Agyeman as new companion Martha Jones... " |
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| "Gridlock Gridlock (Doctor Who) "Gridlock" is the third episode from the third series of the revived British science fiction television series Doctor Who which aired on 14 April 2007. The Doctor returns to a much grittier New Earth with Martha Jones and meets the Face of Boe one final time. But as New New York becomes a deadly... " |
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| "Utopia Utopia (Doctor Who) "Utopia" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 16 June 2007 and is the eleventh episode of series three of the revived Doctor Who series... " |
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| "The Sound of Drums The Sound of Drums "The Sound of Drums" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 23 June 2007, and is the twelfth episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series... " |
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| "Last of the Time Lords Last of the Time Lords "Last of the Time Lords" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 30 June 2007, and is the thirteenth and final episode of Series 3 of the revived Doctor Who series... " |
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| "Voyage of the Damned Voyage of the Damned (Doctor Who) "Voyage of the Damned" is an episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. First broadcast on 25 December 2007, it is 72 minutes long and the third Christmas special since the show's revival in 2005... " |
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| 2008 | "Partners in Crime Partners in Crime (Doctor Who) "Partners in Crime" is the first episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 5 April 2008. The episode reintroduced comedienne Catherine Tate as Donna Noble, who previously appeared in "The Runaway Bride"... " |
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| "Midnight Midnight (Doctor Who) "Midnight" is the tenth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 14 June 2008. The episode placed much more emphasis on the role of David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor than in the rest of the fourth series, with the... " |
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| "Turn Left Turn Left (Doctor Who) "Turn Left" is the eleventh episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was written by showrunner Russell T Davies and broadcast on BBC One on 21 June 2008.... " |
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| "The Stolen Earth The Stolen Earth "The Stolen Earth" is the twelfth episode of the fourth series and the 750th overall episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The episode was written by show runner and head writer Russell T Davies and is the first of a two-part crossover story; the concluding episode is... " |
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| "Journey's End Journey's End (Doctor Who) "Journey's End" is the thirteenth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who first broadcast on BBC One on 5 July 2008. It is the second episode of a two-part crossover story featuring the characters of spin-off shows Torchwood and The Sarah Jane... " |
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| "Music of the Spheres Music of the Spheres (Doctor Who) "Music of the Spheres" is a mini-episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that premièred at the Royal Albert Hall in London before the Intermission of the Doctor Who Prom on 27 July 2008, for which it was especially made. The Doctor Who Prom, including the audio for... " |
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| "The Next Doctor" | ||
| 2009 | "Planet of the Dead Planet of the Dead "Planet of the Dead" is the first 2009 special of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who that was simultaneously broadcast on BBC One and BBC HD on 11 April 2009. It was the second of five special episodes broadcast throughout 2009 and early 2010, which served as lead actor... " (co-written with Gareth Roberts) |
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| "Doctor Who: Tonight's the Night" | ||
| Torchwood | Children of Earth, episodes 1, 3, and 5 (episode 3 co-written with James Moran James Moran (writer) James Moran is a British screenwriter for television and film, who wrote the horror-comedy Severance. He works in the horror, comedy, science-fiction, historical fiction and spy thriller genres.-Breaking in:... ) |
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| Doctor Who | "The Waters of Mars The Waters of Mars "The Waters of Mars" is the second 2009 special of British science fiction television series Doctor Who, broadcast on BBC One on 15 November 2009. It aired on BBC America on 19 December 2009 and was released on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK on 11 January 2010 and in the US on 2 February 2010... " (co-written with Phil Ford Phil Ford (writer) Phil Ford is a British television writer. He was the head writer for the second series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, broadcast in 2008, and wrote "The Waters of Mars", one of the 2009 special episodes of Doctor Who, with Russell T Davies.-Television:... ) |
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| 2009–10 | The End of Time The End of Time The End of Time: The Next Revolution in Our Understanding of the Universe, also sold with the alternate subtitle The Next Revolution in Physics, is a 1999 science book in which the author Julian Barbour argues that time exists merely as an illusion.-Auto-biography:The book begins by describing how... |
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| 2010 | The Sarah Jane Adventures | Death of the Doctor Death of the Doctor Death of the Doctor is a two-part story of The Sarah Jane Adventures which was broadcast on CBBC on 25 and 26 October 2010. It is the third story of the fourth series. This episode features the return of Katy Manning to the role of Jo Grant and a guest appearance by Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor... |
| 2011 | Torchwood | Miracle Day, episodes 1 ("The New World The New World (Torchwood) "The New World" is the first episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Torchwood, and was broadcast in the United States on Starz on 8 July 2011, in Canada on Space on 9 July 2011, and in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 14 July 2011.-Synopsis:In Kentucky, convicted... ") and 10 ("The Blood Line The Blood Line "The Blood Line" is the tenth and final episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Torchwood, and was first broadcast in the United States on Starz on 9 September 2011.-Plot summary:... ", co-written with Jane Espenson Jane Espenson Jane Espenson is an American script writer and television producer who has worked on both situation comedies and serial dramas. She had a five-year stint as a writer and producer on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and shared a Hugo Award for her writing on the episode "Conversations with Dead People"... ) |
External links
- Russell T Davies in Conversation, 23 March 2009: Davies holds a BAFTABritish Academy of Film and Television ArtsThe British Academy of Film and Television Arts is a charity in the United Kingdom that hosts annual awards shows for excellence in film, television, television craft, video games and forms of animation.-Introduction:...
-sponsored talk on children's television.