Tony Williamson was a prolific British television

British television

Public television broadcasting started in the United Kingdom in 1936, and now has a collection of free and subscription services over a variety of distribution media, through which there are over 480 channelsTaking the base Sky EPG TV Channels. A breakdown is impossible due to a) the number of...

 writer, most active from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s. He wrote primarily for the action/adventure

Adventure (genre)

The adventure genre, in the context of a narrative, is typically applied to works in which the protagonist or other major characters are consistently placed in dangerous situations...

 and espionage

Spy fiction

Spy fiction, literature concerning the forms of espionage, was a sub-genre derived from the novel during the nineteenth century, which then evolved into a discrete genre before the First World War , when governments established modern intelligence agencies in the early twentieth century...

 genres. Perhaps because of his early involvement inThe Avengers

The Avengers (TV series)

The Avengers is a spy-fi British television series set in the 1960s Britain. The Avengers initially focused on Dr. David Keel and his assistant John Steed . Hendry left after the first series and Steed became the main character, partnered with a succession of assistants...

, he often found work on shows that featured fantasy

Fantasy television

Fantasy television is a genre of television programming featuring elements of the fantastic, often including magic, supernatural forces, or exotic fantasy worlds. Fantasy television programs are often based on tales from mythology and folklore, or are adapted from fantasy stories in other media...

 adventure, rather than the kitchen sink realism

Kitchen sink realism

Kitchen sink realism is a term coined to describe a British cultural movement which developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose 'heroes' usually could be described as angry young men...

 that had arisen in Britain at the start of his career. Series with extraordinary lead characters in unusual circumstances, such as Department S

Department S

Department S is a United Kingdom spy-fi adventure series produced by ITC Entertainment. The series consists of 28 episodes which originally aired in 1969–1970. It starred Peter Wyngarde as author Jason King , Joel Fabiani as Stewart Sullivan, and Rosemary Nicols as computer expert Annabelle Hurst...

, Jason King

Jason King (TV series)

Jason King was a British television series produced from 1971 to 1972. Each episode was one hour in duration , and the series had a run of one season of 26 episodes. As well as its native UK, the series was also screened in countries as far afield as Australia, Norway, Argentina and Peru...

, Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)

Randall and Hopkirk , first transmitted during 1969-70, is a British private detective television series starring Mike Pratt and Kenneth Cope as the private detectives Jeff Randall and Marty Hopkirk, respectively. The series was originally created by Dennis Spooner and produced by Monty Berman...

 and The Adventurer, dominated his output.

He has been credited with creating the short-lived dramas Intrigue and Counterstrike

Counterstrike (TV series)

Counterstrike is a British science fiction television series produced by the BBC in 1969.The series starred Jon Finch as an alien living on Earth as a human named Simon King. He was assigned to live there to prevent an alien invasion of the planet....

, as well as being a key player in the development of Adam Adamant Lives!

Adam Adamant Lives!

Adam Adamant Lives! is a British television series which ran from 1966 to 1967 on the BBC. Proposing that an adventurer born in 1867 had been revived from hibernation in 1966, the show was a comedy adventure that took a satirical look at life in the 1960s through the eyes of an Edwardian .- Character...

.

Career

Williamson's writing career has its roots in his obligatory national service

National service

National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...

 as a young man. While in the Royal Air Force

Royal Air Force

The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

, he began a life-long association with fellow airman, Dennis Spooner

Dennis Spooner

Dennis Spooner was an English television screenwriter and story editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s...

, by writing some amateur efforts. After the war, he accepted a position as a news correspondent for CBS

CBS

CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...

 in Canada. On the side, he wrote at least twenty stage plays that were later produced on various anthological television programmes.

When he returned to Britain, he flirted with soap opera

Soap 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 like 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...

 and Compact

Compact (TV series)

Compact is a British television soap opera shown by the BBC between 1962 and 1965. The series was created by Hazel Adair and Peter Ling, who together went on to devise Crossroads....

. However, by the mid-1960s, he embarked upon his career of writing spy fiction with the sale of a script to The Mask of Janus

The Mask of Janus

The Mask of Janus is a British television series produced by the BBC in 1965.The series was set in the fictional European country of Amalia and dealt with the political interests of the British, American and Communist espionage communities within. Eschewing the action formula of its ITV...

. Though he also contributed to its 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...

, The Spies

The Spies (TV series)

The Spies is a British television series produced by the BBC in 1966.A spin-off or rebranding of the previous 1965 series The Mask of Janus, The Spies was a more conventional espionage thriller series than its predecessor, being more explicitly concerned with the actual operations of British secret...

, Williamson swiftly moved on to a more fantastic espionage setting with his first sale to The Avengers in 1965. He wrote a few more scripts for the Emma Peel

Emma Peel

Emma Peel was a fictional spy played by Diana Rigg in the British 1960s adventure television series The Avengers. She was born Emma Knight, the daughter of an industrialist, Sir John Knight.-Casting:...

 era before being tapped by Sydney Newman

Sydney 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...

 to script edit

Script editor

A script editor is a member of the production team of scripted television programmes, usually dramas and comedies. The script editor has many responsibilities including finding new script writers, developing storyline and series ideas with writers, ensuring that scripts are suitable for production...

 Adam Adamant Lives! When Newman cancelled that show, he returned to The Avengers, for which he was a dominant writer of the show's Peel-less final season.

Following the demise of The Avengers, he worked on a number of programmes on which Dennis Spooner held some measure of creative control as creator or story editor, for ITC Entertainment

ITC Entertainment

The Incorporated Television Company was a British television company largely involved in production and distribution. It was founded by Lew Grade.-History:...

. Projects like Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased), The Champions

The Champions

The Champions is a British espionage/science fiction/occult detective fiction adventure series consisting of 30 episodes broadcast on the UK network ITV during 1968–1969, produced by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment production company...

, and Department S all came to accept his script submissions following Adamant!. His initial sale to Department S was particularly significant in that it began a series of sales involving the character of Jason King, the lead in two programmes in the early 1970s. His final script using the spy, Jason Kings "A Page Before Dying", would mark the passage of Williamson's longest association with a single fictional character.

Aside from his work in television, Williamson wrote several Fontana published thrillers in the 1970s under his own name and at least one ('Slade's Marauder' Souvenir Press, 1980) under the pseudonym Steven Cade. At the same time he wrote for the big screen. 'Night Watch

Night Watch (1973 film)

-Plot:Based on a still-frequently-performed play by Lucille Fletcher, it is the story of a woman who claims she has witnessed a murder from her window at night. Unfortunately she is not able to prove this. The film reunited Taylor with co-star Laurence Harvey from their 1960 film BUtterfield 8...

' (1973) featured a Williamson screenplay and a cast including Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond "Liz" Taylor, DBE was a British-American actress. From her early years as a child star with MGM, she became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood's Golden Age...

, Billie Whitelaw

Billie Whitelaw

Billie Honor Whitelaw, CBE is an English actress. She worked in close collaboration with Irish playwright Samuel Beckett for 25 years and is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of his works...

 and Laurence Harvey

Laurence Harvey

Laurence Harvey was a Lithuanian-born actor who achieved fame in British and American films.- Early life :Harvey maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne. However, his legal name was Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ber "Boris" and...

. The less well reviewed 'Breakthrough

Breakthrough (film)

Breakthrough is a 1979 war film set on the Western Front. It is a sequel to Sam Peckinpah's Cross of Iron, and borrows several characters from that film.The film starred several big names including Richard Burton and Rod Steiger...

' (1979) co-written with Peter Bernies starred Richard Burton

Richard Burton

Richard Burton, CBE was a Welsh actor. He was nominated seven times for an Academy Award, six of which were for Best Actor in a Leading Role , and was a recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony Awards for Best Actor. Although never trained as an actor, Burton was, at one time, the highest-paid...

 and Rod Steiger

Rod Steiger

Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the...

. The film came heavily indebted to Sam Peckinpah

Sam Peckinpah

David Samuel "Sam" Peckinpah was an American filmmaker and screenwriter who achieved prominence following the release of the Western epic The Wild Bunch...

's classic 'Cross of Iron

Cross of Iron

Cross of Iron is a 1977 war film directed by Sam Peckinpah, featuring James Coburn, Maximilian Schell, James Mason and David Warner. The film is set on the Eastern Front in World War II during the Soviet's Caucasus operations that forced the Wehrmacht to retreat from the Taman Peninsula on the...

'.

After heart surgery in 1980, Williamson deliberately slowed his output. However, he was the dominant contributor to the 1986 supernatural

Supernatural

The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...

 series, Worlds Beyond

Worlds Beyond

Worlds Beyond was a British television anthology series of supernatural fiction. ITV broadcast 13 episodes from 1986 to 1988. The stories were based on real-life experiences described in archival documents from the Society for Psychical Research. A book was also released to accompany the...

.

Williamson died during a second heart procedure in 1991, soon after his third film, a minor Roger Moore

Roger Moore

Sir Roger George Moore KBE , is an English actor, perhaps best known for portraying British secret agent James Bond in seven films from 1973 to 1985. He also portrayed Simon Templar in the long-running British television series The Saint.-Early life:Moore was born in Stockwell, London...

 vehicle called Fire, Ice and Dynamite

Fire, Ice and Dynamite

Fire, Ice and Dynamite is a German feature length sports film directed by Willy Bogner in 1990. It a sequel to Fire and Ice...

, opened in West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

.