Troy Kennedy Martin | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1932-02-15)15 February 1932 |
| Died | 15 September 2009(2009-09-15) (aged 77) |
| Occupation | Screenwriter |
| Relatives | Ian Kennedy Martin (brother) |
Troy Kennedy Martin (15 February 1932 – 15 September 2009) was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter. He created the long-runningBBC TV police seriesZ-Cars (1962–1978), and the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear dramaEdge of Darkness. He also wrote the screenplay for the original version ofThe Italian Job (1969). His last film wasFerrari (2023), which was posthumously released.
He was born inRothesay,Isle of Bute, and educated atFinchley Catholic Grammar School andTrinity College, Dublin. He had a younger brotherIan, who is also a television writer best known for creatingThe Sweeney.[1]
He began writing forBBC Television in 1958, beginning with the playIncident at Echo Six, and he wrote four further plays for the BBC over the following three years, before in 1961 creating his first series,Storyboard, a six-part anthology series that consisted both of original scripts and adaptations. The same year, he wrote the police dramaThe Interrogator. He wrote an important manifesto about new television drama in 1964, calling for a more mobile style of camera work and less emphasis on dialogue.[2][3]
In 1962, Martin co-created the drama seriesZ-Cars. Set in "Newtown", based onKirkby near Liverpool,Z-Cars was revolutionary in that it depicted a hard-edged, grittier and much more realistic vision of the police force than had been seen on British television – as a result, it was initially very unpopular with the real police.[4] Although he left the programme after the first two series, the series ran until 1978, and he returned to write the final episode.[citation needed]
In 1965, Martin scripted a television adaptation ofFrederik Pohl's short storyThe Midas Plague, which was shown as an episode for the first series ofOut of the Unknown, a science-fiction anthology series shown onBBC2. One of the more light-hearted stories of the otherwise dark and dramatic show, it is one of only 20 (and a half) episodes of the original 48 known to have surviveddestruction, and is available on DVD.
Over the following decade he contributed to various television programmes, and made his first foray into feature films when he wroteThe Italian Job,[5] which was released in 1969 and starredNoël Coward andMichael Caine. The following year he wroteKelly's Heroes, and he scripted two more films during the 1970s –The Jerusalem File (1971) andSweeney 2 (1978).
Sweeney 2 was the second cinematic spin-off from the television seriesThe Sweeney, which had been created by his brotherIan Kennedy Martin, and for which he had written several episodes. He is less well known for writing a little-seen television sitcom based in the British Civil Service,If It Moves, File It (1970), featuring amongst othersJohn Bird, who later co-starred in the satiricalBremner, Bird and Fortune.[citation needed]
In the early 1980s he was no less successful, with two highly popular series on different networks in 1983.The Old Men at the Zoo was an adaptation of the novel byAngus Wilson and screened onBBC One; the second was the hugely popularReilly, Ace of Spies onITV, based on the book byRobin Bruce Lockhart and starringSam Neill.
Greatly influenced by the political landscape of the early 1980s, he had drafted a script for apolitical thriller-cum-science fiction drama serial entitledMagnox, which becameEdge of Darkness.[6][7] He was interviewed about the genesis of the series forMagnox: The Secrets of Edge of Darkness documentary, an extra on the show's 2003 DVD release:
We had theCold War. TheFalklands. The Nuclear State. The prospect of a miners' strike.Greenham Common. It was Thatcher's Britain. At the BBC, there was no political dimension in their popular drama whatsoever. And I was really depressed about it, as indeed were other writers that I knew. And so, I said to my closest colleagues: 'The only thing one can do is actually write stuff that one knows is not going to get made, but at least we'll get it out of our system'. And that's how I started to writeEdge Of Darkness. I didn't really think that it stood much of a chance of being produced.
The concept attracted little interest from television executives until incomingBBC Head of Drama Series & SerialsJonathan Powell picked it up in 1983, assigning experienced producerMichael Wearing to the project.Edge of Darkness was eventually screened onBBC2 in late 1985. Although Kennedy Martin had many creative differences with directorMartin Campbell and starBob Peck (who is reported to have vetoed the scripted ending with the remark "I'm not turning into a fucking tree!"), the drama was a resounding success, picking up several awards and being remembered as one of the best British television drama productions of the 1980s.[8] FollowingEdge of Darkness he wrote another feature film screenplay,Red Heat (1988, co-written with director Walter Hill), which starredArnold Schwarzenegger andJames Belushi.
Kennedy Martin did not return to television scriptwriting until the one-offBBC Two dramaHostile Waters in 1997. Other later work includedBravo Two Zero forBBC One in 1999, co-written withAndy McNab and starringSean Bean.
He died oflung cancer on 15 September 2009 aged 77, inDitchling, East Sussex.
{{cite book}}:|work= ignored (help)