Shaun Sutton
Encyclopedia
Shaun Alfred Graham Sutton OBE
(14 October 1919 in Hammersmith
, London
– 14 May 2004 in Norfolk
) was an English
television
writer, director, producer and executive, who worked in the medium for nearly forty years from the 1950s to the 1990s. His most important role was as the Head of Drama
at BBC Television
from the late 1960s until 1981, a role he occupied for longer than anyone else.
, was a theatre critic and novelist as well as being a teacher at Latymer Upper School
, where Sutton himself was educated. His mother was an actress, and Sutton followed in her footsteps by enrolling in drama school after leaving Latymer. However, the coming of the Second World War interrupted his career and he joined the Royal Navy
, seeing action in the Mediterranean and attaining the rank of Lieutenant
.
Following the end of the war, Sutton returned to the theatre, but increasingly moved toward writing and producing rather than acting, apparently on the advice of his mother. Later in life, he would claim that this advice had saved him from becoming "an ageing, mediocre actor". In the late 1940s he met the actress Barbara Leslie, to whom he was married until his death.
, offered Sutton the job of producing Doctor Who
, but Sutton declined.
One of his reasons for declining the role was that by this stage Sutton was beginning to make a name for himself in more adult drama series, directing several early episodes of the highly-acclaimed police drama Z-Cars
from 1962. He worked as a director on other drama series such as The Last Man Out, The Troubleshooters and the Z-Cars spin-off
Softly, Softly
until 1966, when he moved into the upper echelons of the drama department by succeeding Gerald Savory
as Head of Serials.
In this position, Sutton commissioned and oversaw some of the most prestigious of all BBC drama productions of the era, including in 1967 the epic twenty-six episode adaptation of John Galsworthy
's The Forsyte Saga
, commonly held to be one of the most successful BBC drama productions of all time. After Sydney Newman left the BBC at the end of 1967, Sutton was appointed to succeed him as overall Head of Drama, initially on an acting basis combined with his Head of Serials role, and then from 1969 on a permanent basis.
He was to occupy the position for the next twelve years, until 1981, overseeing the entirety of the BBC's 1970s drama output. This era is commonly held to be one of the most successful in all BBC drama, described by The Guardian
in their obituary of Sutton as being when "the golden age of television drama reached its zenith" . Or in the words of the Royal Television Society
in their obituary, "Unmatched by any other television organisation, BBC Television drama, under Shaun, offered in its schedules every shape, style and form of drama. It was a theatrical spectrum of extraordinary width and choice" .
Sutton's reign saw success in many different styles and genres - there were continuing long-running successful and popular series such as Z-Cars and Doctor Who; the eclectic mix of styles and stories in the much-praised anthology strand Play for Today
; and prestige serials such as The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), I, Claudius
(1976) and Dennis Potter
's Pennies From Heaven (1978). There were, however, also low points, such as the embarrassing failure of Churchill's People
(1974), a twenty-six part series based on Winston Churchill
's A History of the English Speaking Peoples. Sutton deemed the production to be unbroadcastable upon seeing the result, but so much time, money and effort had been spent on making and publicising the series that he was left with little choice in the matter. There were also controversies surrounding the 'banning' by his superiors, against Sutton's wishes, of two entries into the Play for Today strand, Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle
in 1976 and Roy Minton
's Scum
in 1978.
Nonetheless, Sutton himself was seen as having been a great success in his role, and when he finally departed in 1981 he was not short of further work in the department. He returned to front-line producing duties, taking over the BBC's The Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare
series, which had been initiated by producer Cedric Messina
under Sutton's aegis in the late 1970s. Sutton produced all of the remaining works between 1982 and 1986, some thirteen plays in all, including some of the less frequently performed plays.
He continued to work as a producer following the end of this run and into the late 1980s, mostly of theatrical adaptations for BBC2
. His final work was as the producer of an adaptation of Mary Stewart
's novel Merlin of the Crystal Cave in 1991, after which he retired to the country cottage in Norfolk which he and his wife had bought in 1970.
(OBE), for his services to broadcasting, in 1979. In 1982, he published a book, The Largest Theatre in the World, about his experiences of working in the drama department of the BBC.
Married to Barbara Leslie from 1948 until his death, they had four children, all of whom survived him. He died following a short illness in May 2004.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(14 October 1919 in Hammersmith
Hammersmith
Hammersmith is an urban centre in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in west London, England, in the United Kingdom, approximately five miles west of Charing Cross on the north bank of the River Thames...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
– 14 May 2004 in Norfolk
Norfolk
Norfolk is a low-lying county in the East of England. It has borders with Lincolnshire to the west, Cambridgeshire to the west and southwest and Suffolk to the south. Its northern and eastern boundaries are the North Sea coast and to the north-west the county is bordered by The Wash. The county...
) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
writer, director, producer and executive, who worked in the medium for nearly forty years from the 1950s to the 1990s. His most important role was as the Head of Drama
BBC television drama
BBC television dramas have been produced and broadcast since even before the public service company had an officially established television broadcasting network in the United Kingdom...
at BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
from the late 1960s until 1981, a role he occupied for longer than anyone else.
Early life
Sutton's father, Graham SuttonGraham Sutton
Sir Graham Sutton CBE FRS was a British mathematician and meteorologist.He was educated at Pontywaun Grammar School, the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth, and at Jesus College, Oxford .He was Professor of Mathematics at the Royal Military College of Science, Shrivenham,...
, was a theatre critic and novelist as well as being a teacher at Latymer Upper School
Latymer Upper School
Latymer Upper School, founded by Edward Latymer in 1624, is a selective independent school in Hammersmith, West London, England, lying between King Street and the Thames. It is a day school for 1,130 pupils – boys and girls aged 11–18; there is also the Latymer Preparatory School for boys and girls...
, where Sutton himself was educated. His mother was an actress, and Sutton followed in her footsteps by enrolling in drama school after leaving Latymer. However, the coming of the Second World War interrupted his career and he joined the Royal Navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
, seeing action in the Mediterranean and attaining the rank of Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
.
Following the end of the war, Sutton returned to the theatre, but increasingly moved toward writing and producing rather than acting, apparently on the advice of his mother. Later in life, he would claim that this advice had saved him from becoming "an ageing, mediocre actor". In the late 1940s he met the actress Barbara Leslie, to whom he was married until his death.
Television career
Sutton moved into television, the medium with which he was to become most closely associated, in 1952, joining the staff of the BBC's drama department. He found particular success in children's serials, writing and directing the likes of Queen's Champion (1958) and Bonehead (1960). In 1963, the new Head of Drama at the BBC, Sydney NewmanSydney Newman
Sydney Cecil Newman, OC was a Canadian film and television producer, who played a pioneering role in British television drama from the late 1950s to the late 1960s...
, offered Sutton the job of producing 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...
, but Sutton declined.
One of his reasons for declining the role was that by this stage Sutton was beginning to make a name for himself in more adult drama series, directing several early episodes of the highly-acclaimed police drama Z-Cars
Z-Cars
Z-Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby in the outskirts of Liverpool in Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.-Origins:The series was developed by...
from 1962. He worked as a director on other drama series such as The Last Man Out, The Troubleshooters and the Z-Cars 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...
Softly, Softly
Softly, Softly (TV series)
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern - supposedly in the Bristol and Chepstow area of the UK...
until 1966, when he moved into the upper echelons of the drama department by succeeding Gerald Savory
Gerald Savory
Gerald Savory was an English playwright and screenwriter specialising in comedies.The son of actress Grace Lane , he was educated at Bradfield College and worked as a stockbroker's clerk before turning to the stage , first as an actor then a writer.His first work for movies was writing dialogue for...
as Head of Serials.
In this position, Sutton commissioned and oversaw some of the most prestigious of all BBC drama productions of the era, including in 1967 the epic twenty-six episode adaptation of John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
's The Forsyte Saga
The Forsyte Saga (1967 series)
The Forsyte Saga is a 1967 BBC television adaptation of John Galsworthy's series of The Forsyte Saga novels, and its sequel trilogy A Modern Comedy...
, commonly held to be one of the most successful BBC drama productions of all time. After Sydney Newman left the BBC at the end of 1967, Sutton was appointed to succeed him as overall Head of Drama, initially on an acting basis combined with his Head of Serials role, and then from 1969 on a permanent basis.
He was to occupy the position for the next twelve years, until 1981, overseeing the entirety of the BBC's 1970s drama output. This era is commonly held to be one of the most successful in all BBC drama, described by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
in their obituary of Sutton as being when "the golden age of television drama reached its zenith" . Or in the words of the 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...
in their obituary, "Unmatched by any other television organisation, BBC Television drama, under Shaun, offered in its schedules every shape, style and form of drama. It was a theatrical spectrum of extraordinary width and choice" .
Sutton's reign saw success in many different styles and genres - there were continuing long-running successful and popular series such as Z-Cars and Doctor Who; the eclectic mix of styles and stories in the much-praised anthology strand Play for Today
Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted...
; and prestige serials such as The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1970), I, Claudius
I, Claudius (TV series)
I, Claudius is a 1976 BBC Television adaptation of Robert Graves' I, Claudius and Claudius the God. Written by Jack Pulman, it proved one of the corporation's most successful drama serials of all time...
(1976) and 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...
's Pennies From Heaven (1978). There were, however, also low points, such as the embarrassing failure of Churchill's People
Churchill's People
Churchill's People is series of 26 historical dramas produced by the BBC, based on Winston Churchill's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples. They were first broadcast on BBC1 in 1974 and 1975....
(1974), a twenty-six part series based on Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, was a predominantly Conservative British politician and statesman known for his leadership of the United Kingdom during the Second World War. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest wartime leaders of the century and served as Prime Minister twice...
's A History of the English Speaking Peoples. Sutton deemed the production to be unbroadcastable upon seeing the result, but so much time, money and effort had been spent on making and publicising the series that he was left with little choice in the matter. There were also controversies surrounding the 'banning' by his superiors, against Sutton's wishes, of two entries into the Play for Today strand, Dennis Potter's Brimstone and Treacle
Brimstone and Treacle
-Potter on Brimstone and Treacle:In 1978, Potter said:I had written Brimstone and Treacle in difficult personal circumstances. Years of acute psoriatic arthropathy—unpleasantly affecting skin and joints—had not only taken their toll in physical damage but had also, and perhaps inevitably, mediated...
in 1976 and Roy Minton
Roy Minton
Roy Minton is an English playwright best known for Scum and his other work with Alan Clarke. He is notable for having written over 30 one-off scripts for London Weekend Television, Rediffusion, BBC, ATV, Granada, Thames Television and Yorkshire Television, including Sling Your Hook, Horace, Funny...
's Scum
Scum (film)
Scum is a 1979 British crime drama film directed by Alan Clarke, portraying the brutality of life inside a British borstal. The story was originally made for the BBC's Play for Today strand in 1977, however due to the violence depicted in the film, it was withdrawn from broadcast...
in 1978.
Nonetheless, Sutton himself was seen as having been a great success in his role, and when he finally departed in 1981 he was not short of further work in the department. He returned to front-line producing duties, taking over the BBC's The Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare
BBC Television Shakespeare
The BBC Television Shakespeare was a set of television adaptations of the plays of William Shakespeare, produced by the BBC between 1978 and 1985.-Origins:...
series, which had been initiated by producer Cedric Messina
Cedric Messina
Cedric Messina was a South African born British television producer and director for the BBC of mainly classic drama...
under Sutton's aegis in the late 1970s. Sutton produced all of the remaining works between 1982 and 1986, some thirteen plays in all, including some of the less frequently performed plays.
He continued to work as a producer following the end of this run and into the late 1980s, mostly of theatrical adaptations for BBC2
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
. His final work was as the producer of an adaptation of Mary Stewart
Mary Stewart
Mary Florence Elinor Stewart is a popular English novelist, best known for her Merlin series, which straddles the boundary between the historical novel and the fantasy genre.-Career:...
's novel Merlin of the Crystal Cave in 1991, after which he retired to the country cottage in Norfolk which he and his wife had bought in 1970.
Honours and private life
Sutton was made an Officer of the Order of the British EmpireOrder of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
(OBE), for his services to broadcasting, in 1979. In 1982, he published a book, The Largest Theatre in the World, about his experiences of working in the drama department of the BBC.
Married to Barbara Leslie from 1948 until his death, they had four children, all of whom survived him. He died following a short illness in May 2004.
External links
- Online version of The Guardian obituary
- Obituary at the Royal Television Society website
- Shaun Sutton at the Internet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...