John McGrath

Born in Birkenhead from Irish Catholic stock, John McGrath was a British playwright, screenwriter. producer, director and socialist who took up the cause of Scottish independence and the principles of a radical, popular theatre with the creation of the 7:84 theatre company alongside his wife, Elizabeth MacLennan, and brother-in-law, David MacLennan. His most famous plays are arguably The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil which was brought to television in 1974 by John Mackenzie for the Play for Today strand, and Events While Guarding The Bofors Gun which was made into the film The Bofors Gun in 1968. He also wrote the screenplays for films such as Billion Dollar Brain, The Virgin Soldiers, The Reckoning, The Dressmaker and 1991's Robin Hood, and produced films such as Carrington and Aberdeen.

Works

The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

In their songs, comedy and exuberant music, a travelling theatre company give a fiercely polemic account of Scottish history, from the aftermath of Culloden to the oil boom. Their production before a live audience is intercut with filmed reconstructions of the Highland Clearances and the Victorian obsession with hunting stags.

Release Date1974-06-06

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Charactersd Various

Vote Count1

imagine... The Factory: Made in Manchester

imagine... tells the story of Aviva Studios, Manchester’s colossal new cultural venue, and goes behind the scenes at the world premiere of its opening production, Free Your Mind.

Release Date2023-12-11

Charactersd Self - interviewed guest

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 Count2

Vote Count10

Screen Two

Series of single made-for-television dramas.

Release Date1985-01-06

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Episode Count2

Vote Count7

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 Count6

Vote Count7

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

Six

A six-part anthology of new television films produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2's Saturday nights between 12 December 1964 and 16 January 1965.

Release Date1964-12-12

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Episode Count2

Billion Dollar Brain

A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?

Release Date1967-11-16

DepartmentWriting

JobScreenplay

Vote Count119

Robin Hood

The Swashbuckling legend of Robin Hood unfolds in the 12th century when the mighty Normans ruled England with an iron fist.

Release Date1991-04-26

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count180

My Life in Pink

Ludovic is waiting for a miracle. With six-year-old certainty, she believes she was meant to be a little girl -- and that the mistake will soon be corrected. But where she expects the miraculous, Ludo finds only rejection, isolation, and guilt -- as the intense reactions of family, friends, and neighbors strip away every innocent lace and bauble.

Release Date1997-05-28

DepartmentProduction

JobCo-Producer

Vote Count111

The Reckoning

Michael Marler, a successful businessman in London, is about to make his way to the top. After 37 years, the death of his father brings him back to his hometown of Liverpool, where he’s confronted with his lost Irish roots. He finds out that his father died in a fight with some Anglo-Saxon teddy boys. It becomes a matter of honour for him to take his revenge without involving the police.

Release Date1970-01-31

DepartmentWriting

JobScreenplay

Vote Count17

Border Warfare

A three-episode mini-series chronicling the history of Scotland from ancient times through the union with England and culminating with the rise of Thatcherism and the introduction of the Poll Tax.

Release Date1990-02-10

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Episode Count3

Vote Count1

Diary of a Young Man

A six-part BBC drama series following two young men from northern England as they move to London in search of work and opportunity, encountering relationships, social challenges, and the realities of urban life in 1960s Britain.

Release Date1964-08-08

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Episode Count6

Vote Count1

The Dressmaker

In England during World War II, a repressed dressmaker and her sister struggle looking after their 17-year-old niece, who is having a delusional affair with an American soldier.

Release Date1988-12-16

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count5

Double Bill

In the first part, The Compartment, an insane man boards a quiet railway coach and starts to annoy a patient man trying to read a paper with incessant small talk in an increasingly menacing manner until he finally pulls out a gun and screaming class hatred bile, humiliates the man until his stop is reached. In part two, Playmates, he breaks into a lonely house and proceeds to terrorise a spinster woman who lives there.

Release Date1969-09-26

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Carrington

Painter Dora Carrington develops an intimate but extremely complex bond with writer Lytton Strachey. Though Lytton is a homosexual, he is enchanted by the mysterious Dora and they begin a lifelong friendship that has strangely romantic undertones. Eventually, Lytton and Dora decide to live together, despite the fact that the latter has fallen in love with military man Ralph Partridge, whom she plans to marry.

Release Date1995-05-25

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Vote Count70

Aberdeen

Kaisa is a Scot, a successful London lawyer, who snorts coke and has one-night stands with strangers. Her mother calls from Aberdeen with some story begging her to fly to Norway and collect her alcoholic dad whom she hasn't seen in years.

Release Date2000-09-08

DepartmentProduction

JobCo-Producer

Vote Count39

The Bofors Gun

A national service NCO (David Warner) comes face to face with an embittered Irish Gunner (Nicol Williamson) who is determined to humiliate him.

Release Date1968-04-04

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count6

The Virgin Soldiers

The core of the plot is the romantic triangle formed by the protagonist, a conscripted soldier named Private Brigg, a worldly professional soldier named Sergeant Driscoll, and Phillipa Raskin, the daughter of the Regimental Sergeant Major. The location is a British army base in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency.

Release Date1969-10-14

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count14

The Long Roads

An elderly woman learns that she is dying of cancer. She and her husband leave their small farm on the Isle of Skye to visit their children to inform them of the news. During the journey, the couple rediscover their love for each other.

Release Date1993-01-31

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

Blood Red Roses

A woman looks back on her life as a political activist in Scotland from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Release Date1986-12-04

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Mairi Mhor

In 1871, 'tired of the speakers of English', Mairi Mhor began writing resistance songs in Gaelic, protesting at the displacement of the Scottish Highland and Island folk by the Southern landlords. Unjustly imprisoned in Inverness at the age of 51, she expresses her anger in song, discovering a talent for music; these songs became central to the identity of the region and are still sung today. The achingly beautiful landscape of Skye, and the music it inspired, provide a haunting canvas for this valuable piece of historical research.

Release Date1994-11-09

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

Shotgun

The story of a long love affair is told from three different viewpoints.

Release Date1966-07-11

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Orkney

Three stories reflecting life in the Orkney Islands, two set in the past, and one in the present.

Release Date1971-05-13

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

The Diary of a Nobody

Ken Russell's silent film treatment of the 19th century comic novel by the Brothers Grossmith - George and Weedon. Starring Bryan Pringle, Avril Elgar and Murray Melvin. Adapted by Ken Russell and John McGrath. First shown on BBC2 at 10.10pm on Saturday 12th December 1964 - as part of the 'Six' strand.

Release Date1964-12-12

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

The Adventures of Frank: Seeds of Ice

In his further adventures Frank finds success and unhappiness.

Release Date1980-11-11

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

The Day of Ragnarok

“Fantasy of the end of civilization. Lesbians commit mayhem during a nuclear war in a wood.” - BFI.

Release Date1965-01-02

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Exit 19

A frank dialogue on sexual likes and dislikes that place between a man and his mistress in bed together.

Release Date1966-08-08

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Half the Picture

A dramatized account of the Scott Inquiry about the sales of arms to Iraq.

Release Date1996-02-18

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Vote Count1

The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something

Frank, a young lad from Sheffield, leaves home to seek his fortune in London; he finds the big city not all what he had expected

Release Date1980-11-04

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Vote Count1

Fade to Black

FADE TO BLACK follows the history of movie theatres in and around Kansas City. From its humble beginnings as family-owned single screens in the early 20th century to the large multiplexes of today. Theatre owners have overcome technological advances in entertainment but can they overcome a pandemic and a wearing public.

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

The Bouncing Boy

A young couple have a baby boy. However, the new father doesn't take to his new position quite as well as expected.

Release Date1972-12-11

DepartmentWriting

JobWriter

Ende der Vorstellung 24 Uhr

Release Date1970-05-05

DepartmentWriting

JobNovel

Vote Count1