TONY GARNETT

(3 April 1936 - 12 January 2020)

The British former actor and producer Tony Garnett, who has died at the age of 83 following a short illness, was one of the most creative and successful film and TV producers who always sought for the truth about love, relationships and social politics. He is best-known for the BBC’s Wednesday Play series, when he worked with director Ken Loach, starting with Cathy Come Home in 1966 and then In Two Minds, the David Mercer screenplay the following year. After that there were The Golden Vision and The Big Flame. All these television films broached social problems such as housing shortage, manic depression, football mania and redundancy. Garnett produced ten of the Wednesday Plays and five in the Play for Today series, working with writers such as Les Blair, Charles Wood, Jim Allen, Peter Nichols and Nemone Lethbridge, and directors including Roy Battersby, Roland Joffẻ and Jack Gold. He had been a script editor for Ken Loach on Up the Junction and for Gareth Davies on the two Dennis Potter Nigel Barton plays. Before his TV career started, he had studied psychology at University College, London, and then became an actor, working in rep, before breaking into TV in 1958. He was in An Age of Kings. Emergency – Ward 10, Z Cars, Compact, Dixon of Dock Green, The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre and other series until 1965. He played one of The Boys on trial in Sidney J. Furie’s courtroom drama. Turning producer he co-adapted with Loach and Barry Hines, the latter’s novel Kes, which became a huge hit, winning two Baftas and a nomination for Garnett. After that came the documentary The Body, Loach’s Family Life, Days of Hope, The Price of Coal and Black Jack. He directed his own films Prostitute and Handgun and produced Follow That Bird, a Sesame Street spin-off, Julien Temple’s Earth Girls Are Easy, with Geena Davis, Fat Man and Little Boy (aka Shadow Makers) with Paul Newman, The Turnaround with Clive Owen and Beautiful Thing, based on Jonathan Harvey’s gay play. He set up his own company, World Productions, and had great success with many TV series such as Cardiac Arrest, Between the Lines, Ballykissangel, This Life, The Cops and Rough Diamond, his last work in 2007. Tony Garnett married Topsy Jane Legge in 1963 but they later divorced. They have a son Will. His second marriage to Alex Ouroussoff, who has a son Michael, also ended in divorce. He is survived by his partner Victoria Childs.

MICHAEL DARVELL