Bill Hays (Director)
Little is known about Bill Hays, a figure with a modest footprint in Director. Stay tuned for updates as more details become available.
Works
EastEnders
The everyday lives of working-class residents of Albert Square, a traditional Victorian square of terrace houses surrounding a park in the East End of London's Walford borough.
Release Date1985-02-19
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count34
Vote Count228
Screen Two
Series of single made-for-television dramas.
Release Date1985-01-06
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Vote Count7
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. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
Release Date1970-10-15
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count10
BBC Play of the Month
A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.
Release Date1965-10-19
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count5
Vote Count8
Z-Cars
Z-Cars or 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, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
Release Date1962-01-02
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Vote Count7
Theatre 625
Theatre 625 is a British television drama anthology series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC2 from 1964 to 1968. It was one of the first regular programmes in the line-up of the channel, and the title referred to its production and transmission being in the higher-definition 625-line format, which only BBC2 used at the time.
Release Date1964-05-03
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Vote Count5
The Bill
The daily lives of the men and women at Sun Hill Police Station as they fight crime on the streets of London. From bomb threats to armed robbery and drug raids to the routine demands of policing this ground-breaking series focuses as much on crime as it does on the personal lives of its characters.
Release Date1984-10-16
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Vote Count46
Rumpole of the Bailey
Rumpole of the Bailey is a British television series created and written by the British writer and barrister John Mortimer. It stars Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an aging London barrister who defends any and all clients, and has been spun off into a series of short stories, novels, and radio programmes.
Release Date1975-12-17
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count24
Playhouse
A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.
Release Date1974-03-13
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count4
Vote Count1
The Wednesday Play
An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.
Release Date1964-09-30
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count5
Centre Play
Anthology series of half hour plays produced in BBC's Television Centre's studios.
Release Date1973-07-19
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
Lovejoy
The adventures of the eponymous Lovejoy, a likeable but roguish antiques dealer based in East Anglia. Within the trade, he has a reputation as a “divvie”, a person with an almost supernatural powers for recognising exceptional items as well as distinguishing genuine antique from clever fakes or forgeries.
Release Date1986-01-10
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Vote Count53
Thriller
Thriller is a British television series, originally broadcast in the UK from 1973 to 1976. It is an anthology series: each episode has a self-contained story and its own cast. As the title suggests, each story is a thriller of some variety, from tales of the supernatural to down-to-earth whodunits.
Release Date1973-04-14
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Vote Count11
The Ruth Rendell Mysteries
The Ruth Rendell mysteries is a British television series made by TVS and Meridian Television for ITV between 2 August 1987 and 11 October 2000.
Release Date1987-08-02
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Vote Count12
Dr. Finlay's Casebook
Dr Finlay's Casebook is a BBC television series that was broadcast from 1962 until 1971. Based on A. J. Cronin's novella Country Doctor, the storylines centred on a general medical practice in the fictional Scottish town of Tannochbrae during the late 1920s.
Release Date1962-08-16
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Vote Count3
Softly, Softly
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 area of England.
Release Date1966-01-05
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Vote Count2
Boon
Boon is a British television drama and modern-day western series starring Michael Elphick, David Daker, and later Neil Morrissey. It was created by Jim Hill and Bill Stair and filmed by Central Television for ITV. It revolved around the life of a modern-day Lone Ranger and ex-firefighter, Ken Boon.
Release Date1986-01-14
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count15
Detective
A BBC anthology series featuring adaptations of detective stories over 45 episodes in three seasons that ran from 1964 to 1969. As with many BBC programmes made before the early 1970s, many of its episodes no longer exist. Of the eighteen episodes from the first season only twelve are currently known to exist; likewise six of the sixteen editions from the second run are considered lost, and just one of the final ten survives in the archives.
Release Date1964-03-30
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
When the Boat Comes In
When the Boat Comes In is a British television period drama produced by the BBC between 8 January 1976 and 21 April 1981. Taking place between 1919 to 1937, Jack Ford is a veteran of The Great War who returns to his poverty-stricken (fictional) town of Gallowshield in the North East of England. It dramatises the interwar political struggles of the 1920s and 1930s, and explores the impact of national and international politics upon Ford and those around him.
Release Date1976-01-08
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count4
Vote Count3
Warship
Written and filmed to reflect the reality of life in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines in the 1970s, most stories focus on the Captain and his fellow officers, with subplots dealing with life on the lower decks. Episodes typically featured a variety of events at sea (the Cold War, smuggling, the evacuation of civilians from crisis-hit places, etc.), as well as the personal lives of officers and ratings and the impact their personal lives had on their professional lives and duties.
Release Date1973-06-07
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count3
W. Somerset Maugham
An anthology series based on the varied stories by W. Somerset Maugham divided into three categories: "Rule Britannia" about colonial life, "Women of the World" which focus on female characters, and "Victims of Fate".
Release Date1969-06-03
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Fall of Eagles
"Fall of Eagles" is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series portrays historical events from 1848 to 1918, dealing with the collapse of the ruling dynasties of Austria-Hungary (the Habsburgs), Germany (the Hohenzollerns) and Russia (the Romanovs).
Release Date1974-03-15
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Vote Count10
Summer Season
A series of Plays for BBC2
Release Date1985-06-11
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Horror stories by Edgar Allen Poe dramatized and introduced by horror actor Sir Christopher Lee.
Release Date1995-09-07
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Vote Count4
R3
R3 is a British television series produced by the BBC between 1964 and 1965. Full title was Ministry of Research Centre No.3. It was a 50-minute show, and the series starred John Robinson as Sir Michael Gerrard, Jeremy Young as Wilson, David Blake Kelly as Captain Rogers, and was set in a scientific research facility at the Ministry of Research. R3 is also notable for providing early TV exposure for a young Oliver Reed, cast as one of the scientists on the ministry staff, Dr. Richard Franklin. In "Experiment in Death", written by N J Crisp, Undersea exploration becomes an experiment in survival in a bathysphere. That show starred Edward Judd as Peters, Brigit Forsyth as a secretary, Donald Hoath as Turner and Stephen John as a meteorologist. It was produced by John Robins and directed by Paul Bernard.
Release Date1964-11-20
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count6
Vote Count1
Love Story
Love Story is a 60-minute British anthology television series produced by Associated Television (ATV). A total of 128 episodes aired on ITV from 1963 to 1974. Its guest stars included Vanessa Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave, Stephanie Beacham, James Bolam, Dudley Moore, Wendy Hiller, Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Macnee, John Hurt, Geoffrey Palmer, Judy Cornwell, Leo McKern, David Hemmings, Judy Parfitt, Anna Massey, Felicity Kendal, Edward Fox, Sam Wanamaker, Ian McShane, Michael Kitchen, George Maharis and Margaret Whiting.
Release Date1963-06-03
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Moonstrike
An anthology of self-contained stories about acts of resistance in occupied Europe during the Second World War. Producer Gerard Glaister drew upon his own wartime experiences, having served as a pilot in the RAF.
Release Date1963-02-21
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
Hothouse
A medical drama set in a New England psychiatric clinic includes father-and-son discord between the head of the facility and its business manager.
Release Date1988-06-30
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Vote Count2
Wish Me Luck
A secret organisation called The Outfit recruits and trains civilians, sending them undercover to aid in the war effort, or placing them in administrative tasks to aid the group. Each person arrives at The Outfit by a different route: Mathilde ('Matty') escaped to London from France and wants desperately to contribute to the war effort; Liz, whose husband is serving overseas and whose brother has just died in the war, stumbles into the group almost by accident. Former actor Colin Beale also trains for undercover work. Vivien's husband was executed when his work with The Outfit was uncovered. But they all come together against the common enemy.
Release Date1988-01-17
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count15
Vote Count6
Boy Meets Girl
Anthology series of love stories.
Release Date1967-08-04
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Codename
Codename, which premiered in April 1970, was about the secretive MI17 Spy Organisation of the same name based in the residential hall of a Cambridge College. Eventually the series attained a more international flavour, although its base was always in Great Britain. Primarily Codename dealt with the themes of espionage and counter-espionage at the time of the Cold War of the sixties. Its cast contained many of Great Britain's most versatile and talented actors.
Release Date1970-04-07
DepartmentCreator
JobCreator
Vote Count1
Catch Hand
Drama series about the adventures of two building workers (i.e. "catch hands") and their efforts to find odd jobs around the country.
Release Date1964-07-01
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
The Wide World of Mystery
A 90 minute late-night mystery and suspense anthology series.
Release Date1973-01-15
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count3
The Bretts
1920s family of actors deals with the day to day of the theatre business.
Release Date1987-10-16
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
The Good Companions
Discontent with his home, his work and his football team, Jess Oakroyd tears up his insurance card and disappears into the night. Intent on going to Nuneaton, he instead finds himself on the ragged edges of showbusiness. We share with him the trials and tribulations of the Good Companions as they tour seaside towns, industrial cities and rural backwaters in their search for success and stardom.
Release Date1980-11-14
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count5
Vote Count1
The Great Detective
The Great Detective is a Canadian television drama, which aired on CBC from 1979 to 1982. It starred Douglas Campbell and James Dugan.
Release Date1979-01-17
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count4
Vote Count1
Rock Follies
Rock Follies, and its sequel, Rock Follies of '77, was a musical drama shown on British television in the 1970s. The storyline, over 12 episodes and two series, followed the ups and downs of a fictional female rock band called the "Little Ladies" as they struggled for recognition and success. The series starred Rula Lenska, Charlotte Cornwell and Julie Covington as the Little Ladies, with support from Emlyn Price, Beth Porter, Sue Jones-Davies, Stephen Moore and Little Nell among others. The series was made with a very low budget for Thames Television, with a style inspired by fringe theatre. The series was a success, winning three BAFTA Awards and the soundtrack album reaching No.1 in the UK Charts.
Release Date1976-02-24
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Vote Count5
Parkin's Patch
Parkin's Patch is a Yorkshire Television production that aired on ITV from 1969 to 1970. PC Moss Parkin played the lead role of a police constable in the North York Moors. The series was filmed in the North York Moors as well as certain scenes being shot in Leeds, including parts around the Farm Hill estate in Meanwood.
Release Date1969-09-19
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count2
Good Behaviour
Behaving properly at all times--that's what people expect of a gentlewoman. Isn't it?
Release Date1983-10-28
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Codename: Portcullis
The USA have created a deadly gas known as Omega. Britain have countered with it's antidote Omega Minor. Lawyer Philip Skelton is recruited to join a secret Cell called Gauntlet and they must stop Dr. Maurice Owen before he passes it on.
Release Date1969-08-07
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Looking for Clancy
Frank Clancy goes from penniless working-class idealist in the 1930s to superstar journalist and editor in the London of the swinging '60s — but at what cost to his integrity?
Release Date1975-05-24
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count5
Time After Time
'Oh I was naughty. And I'm still naughty so take care.' And so Leda was, all those years ago when she was the childhood friend of Jasper and his three sisters April, May and June. Now she returns to add a little spice to life in their crumbling Irish country house.
Release Date1986-01-26
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count1
Dig This Rhubarb
Dig This Rhubarb first aired on BBC1 on 6 October 1963. The live-to-air Sunday night series was originally titled The Company of Six but was quickly – and radically – renamed. Alternating with Monitor, the show commented in an amusing way on items that were not necessarily in the news but with which people were preoccupied. Four or five topics were covered in each programme, including subjects such as attitude to royalty, capital punishment and the iniquities of the younger generation. The series initially featured Clive Swift, Robin Ray, Tony Beckley, Terence Brady, John Gower and Anne Jameson.
Release Date1963-10-06
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count7
Cakes and Ale
The life of a famous writer and his two wives is slowly revealed.
Release Date1976-04-04
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Vote Count1
The Diary of a Nobody
The comic tale of Charles Pooter and his wife Caroline, a middle-class couple living in London towards the end of the 19th Century.
Release Date1979-09-02
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count9
Vote Count2
Honky Tonk Heroes
This three-part comedy series was set in the Blue Moon of Kentucky Club, a country and western venue in South London catering for the sort of clients obsessed by the Wild West. The club is owned by Big Hal (James Grout), who lives out his whole life as a modern-day cowboy – much to the consternation of his wife, Betty (Sheila Steafel).
Release Date1981-01-21
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Shine A Light
The six-episode comedy series chronicled the humorous, isolated lives of two lighthouse keepers stationed on Bachelor Rock, though all of the original episodes are now believed to be lost.
Release Date1970-04-01
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count6
Play for Tomorrow
Play for Tomorrow is a British television anthology science fiction series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 in 1982. It spun off from the anthology drama series Play for Today after the success of The Flipside of Dominick Hide on that strand. Each of the six episodes paints a vision of life in a future year, near the end of the 20th Century or at the beginning of the 21st.
Release Date1982-04-13
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count2
A Month in the Country
Ivan Turgenev's comedy features an attractive woman approaching middle age. At her husband's country estate, with an admirer in constant attendance, she loses her heart (and her common sense) to her ward's handsome tutor.
Release Date1985-04-14
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Flights
'Imagine. The whole sky filled with silent sportsmen.' Henry is a teacher, and a very good one, but his dream of man-powered flight, and his habit of destroying the odd greenhouse on his test runs, threatens his career. Also there's his daughter Ruth, who would dearly love to retrieve her bicycle wheels from his flying machine.
Release Date1985-08-08
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
The Serpent Son
Adaptation of the Aeschylus trilogy by Frederic Raphael and Kenneth McLeish.
Release Date1979-03-07
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count3
Vote Count2
Long Live the Babe
Play about a pregnant cleaner in a North Country museum who becomes entranced by one of the exhibits, a baby's lace christening cap, and its dead maker.
Release Date1984-04-11
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Orde Wingate
The story of the military career of Orde Wingate, one of the most controversial and unorthodox Allied commanders of World War II. The guerrilla tactics he developed while in Palestine helped prepare the future leaders of the Israeli Defense Forces.
Release Date1976-07-16
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Waving to a Train
By chance a businessman changing trains at a busy railway junction overhears the station announcement for a local train to a beauty spot which he last visited when a child. On a whim he decides to take the local and revisit that spot where he, his sister and mother picnicked on an glorious summers day at the moment when the lives of both children were about to change for ever. The past, present and future combine in his memory of that day.
Release Date1984-03-09
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Just in Time for Christmas
43-year-old Janet Nottage tells her husband, pompous academic Leo, that she is having a baby. This throws him into turmoil. Later, on seeing Janet next to a freezing lake, he decides on a decisive course of action.
Release Date1972-12-23
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
London Belongs To Me
This drama focuses on London lodging house in the early days of World War Two. Stories ranged from within the house to the drama of Dunkirk.
Release Date1977-07-06
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count1
Vote Count2
Lady Killer
A shy, lonely American girl marries a charming man she meets while on vacation in England, unaware that he has sinister plans for her.
Release Date1973-01-18
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count5
Jumbo
"1975 was the year of the disaster movie, yeah? So what stops 1976 being the year of the disastrous disaster movie?"
Release Date1976-05-14
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Out of Step
A keen ballroom dancer begins to drink heavily when she discovers she's infertile
Release Date1982-02-05
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Bird Fancier
There's big money in pigeon racing if you've got a fast flyer, and Joe Desmond's blue-pied hen is a natural winner. But Joe's lucky streak with the birds has gone on a bit too long for the comfort of his competitors. It's time someone else had a turn. Mal Middleton's comedy was filmed on location in his home town of Sheffield.
Release Date1985-01-15
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Death Is Part of the Process
South Africa in the 60s. The campaign of sabotage is halted and the arrests continue. The Special Branch obviously have inside Information.
Release Date1986-01-01
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count1
The Tale of Beatrix Potter
Biography based on the life of the author Beatrix Potter.
Release Date1983-01-01
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Practical Experience
'I'm unusual. I really want to be an architect. Always have done. Always wanted to build fine buildings and fine cities where people can work and eat and sleep and be happy. But the rules of the game say before you can do that you've got to start a firm. Employ people. Turn it into a career. I like architecture. I hate careers. The minute you make it a career you build a ladder and people want to climb it. Sometimes they stand on your fingers. It's hard to draw with flattened fingers. Spoils your draughtsmanship.'
Release Date1976-04-16
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
If There Weren't Any Blacks You'd Have to Invent Them
Set in a cemetery, the film tells the story of a young man whom a blind man wrongly imagines to be black, and explores the nature of human prejudice.
Release Date1974-03-03
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count1
A Turn for the Worse
Simon Simpson runs an entertainment agency in Liverpool. At one of his regular auditions in The Bootle Railway Club he sees an aggressive young man fresh from the dole queue who dreams of becoming a professional comedian. Simpson believes the boy has talent and starts to groom him for 'stardom'.
Release Date1981-04-28
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Quartermaine's Terms
TV adaptation of the play set in a Cambridge School of English for Foreigners in 1962. St John Quartermaine is a rather ineffective but kindly teacher at the school who, becuase of his gentle character, has hardly any enemies - in fact, the rest of the staff confide in him or generally pplay on his good nature. Then Derek Meadle arrives on the scene. He is a new part-time teacher who really wants to be full-time, but people like Quartermaine are in the way.
Release Date1987-03-29
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count1
The Gingham Dog
A liberal white Southern man and a black woman from Harlem, a once happily married couple, are suffering through the first days of their separation. Will the couple separate for good or is there hope for reconciliation?
Release Date1970-07-04
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Random Moments in a May Garden
A middle-aged couple give a dinner party to their friends. In the room is a photograph of another group of people, taken in a garden in May.
Release Date1981-05-22
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Shades
1999: A tower block contains youths ‘bought off’ by the government, in a climate of microchip-created endless leisure, who experience (often pornographic) virtual reality-style fantasies by donning the titular ‘shades’, until a 1980s theme party (they predicted that right, at least) leads to ideology and political thought seeping in under the dazed lifestyle.
Release Date1982-05-11
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Trouble in Tahiti
Leonard Bernstein's 1952 opera is a biting satire on the emptiness of materialist values and the false promise of suburban comforts. This production, conducted by the composer himself, presents a live-action cast performing on an animated set. Inspired by jazz and American musical comedy, the score is a path-breaking fusion of lyric art with popular entertainment.
Release Date1973-12-23
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector