Jeremy Silberston
Encyclopedia
Early life
Silberston was the son of economist Professor Aubrey Silberston, and his mother, Dorothy, was a founder member of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. He attended The Perse School, CambridgeCambridge
The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...
.
After college, he traveled to France working on the Disney on Ice
Disney on Ice
Disney On Ice is a touring ice show produced by Feld Entertainment under agreement with The Walt Disney Company. Aimed primarily at children, the shows feature figure skaters dressed as Disney cartoon characters in performances that each derive their music and plot from elements collected from...
show. Returning to England he began to work in television production.
Career
After training at the BBC as a Production Director in the late 1970s (he was recruited for his ability to speak French) he worked in a range of TV popular drama programmes such as CasualtyCasualty (TV series)
Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...
and The Bill
The Bill
The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...
. He became a good friend of writer Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Craig Horowitz is an English novelist and screenwriter. He has written many children's novels, including The Power of Five, Alex Rider and The Diamond Brothers series and has written over fifty books. He has also written extensively for television, adapting many of Agatha Christie's...
and they jointly developed Midsomer Murders
Midsomer Murders
Midsomer Murders is a British television detective drama that has aired on ITV since 1997. The show is based on the books by Caroline Graham, as originally adapted by Anthony Horowitz. The lead character is DCI Tom Barnaby who works for Causton CID. When Nettles left the show in 2011 he was...
(1997) and Foyle's War
Foyle's War
Foyle's War is a British detective drama television series set during World War II, created by screenwriter and author Anthony Horowitz, and was commissioned by ITV after the long-running series Inspector Morse came to an end in 2000. It has aired on ITV since 2002...
(2002).
During the 1980s he was Production Manager of the Nanny
Nanny (TV series)
Nanny is a BBC television series that ran between 1981 and 1983. In this historical drama, Wendy Craig stars as nanny Barbara Gray, caring for children in 1930s England. When Barbara Gray leaves the divorce court she has no money, no job just an iron will and a love for children. The third series...
Series 1 (1980), Smiley's People
Smiley's People
Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy...
(mini TV Series) (1982), Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
The Five Doctors (1983), My Cousin Rachel
My Cousin Rachel
My Cousin Rachel is a novel by British author Daphne du Maurier, published in 1951. Like the earlier Rebecca, it is a mystery-romance, largely set on a large estate in Cornwall.-Plot overview:...
(mini TV Series) (1983), Bleak House
Bleak House
Bleak House is the ninth novel by Charles Dickens, published in twenty monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon...
(mini TV Series) (1985), two episodes of EastEnders
EastEnders
EastEnders is a British television soap opera, first broadcast in the United Kingdom on BBC One on 19 February 1985 and continuing to today. EastEnders storylines examine the domestic and professional lives of the people who live and work in the fictional London Borough of Walford in the East End...
(1986) and two episodes of Casualty
Casualty (TV series)
Casualty, stylised as Casual+y, is a British weekly television show broadcast on BBC One, and the longest-running emergency medical drama television series in the world. Created by Jeremy Brock and Paul Unwin, it was first broadcast on 6 September 1986, and transmitted in the UK on BBC One. The...
(1988-1989).
He directed episodes of a wide range of TV popular drama including Brookside
Brookside
Brookside is a defunct British soap opera set in Liverpool, England. The series began on the launch night of Channel 4 on 2 November 1982, and ran for 21 years until 4 November 2003...
(1982). The two episodes of Casualty were "Accidents Happen" (1989) and "Absolution" (1988); episodes of Coasting (1990); The House of Eliott
The House of Eliott
The House of Eliott is a British television series produced and broadcast by the BBC in three series between 1991 and 1994. The series starred Stella Gonet and Louise Lombard as two sisters in 1920s London who establish a dressmaking business and eventually their own haute couture fashion house...
(episodes 3, 4, 11 & 12 of series 1; 7 and, 8 of series 2 and 9 and 10 of series 3) (1991-93); episodes of Castles (1995); 12 episodes of The Bill: Return to Sender (1993), A Tangled Web (1997); Vacant Possession (1998), High Places, True Confessions, Saved, By the Book, The Scent of Compassion, Just For The Crack, Time to Kill, On the Wagon, True Lies, and Better the Devil; 10 episodes of Midsomer Murders
Midsomer Murders
Midsomer Murders is a British television detective drama that has aired on ITV since 1997. The show is based on the books by Caroline Graham, as originally adapted by Anthony Horowitz. The lead character is DCI Tom Barnaby who works for Causton CID. When Nettles left the show in 2011 he was...
: The Killings at Badger's Drift (1997), Written in Blood (1998), Death of a Hollow Man (1998), Death's Shadow (1999), Strangler's Wood (1999), Dead Man's Eleven (1999), Judgement Day (2000), Dark Autumn (2001), Birds of Prey (2003); 8 episodes of Foyle's War
Foyle's War
Foyle's War is a British detective drama television series set during World War II, created by screenwriter and author Anthony Horowitz, and was commissioned by ITV after the long-running series Inspector Morse came to an end in 2000. It has aired on ITV since 2002...
(2002-2006): The German Woman, The White Feather, Eagle Day, Among the Few, The Funk Hole, They Fought In The Fields, Enemy Fire and Bad Blood; and also The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries
The Inspector Lynley Mysteries is a series of BBC television programmes about Detective Inspector Thomas "Tommy" Lynley, 8th Earl of Asherton of Scotland Yard and Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers...
: The Seed of Cunning (2005).
Personal life
He was married to Catherine Napier, a correspondent for the BBC World ServiceBBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
. He had two sons, Theo and Toby.
Death
He died of cancer after seven months of illness. An episode of Foyle's WarFoyle's War
Foyle's War is a British detective drama television series set during World War II, created by screenwriter and author Anthony Horowitz, and was commissioned by ITV after the long-running series Inspector Morse came to an end in 2000. It has aired on ITV since 2002...
"Casualties of War", first broadcast in 2006, was dedicated to his memory.
External links
- Filmography at the BFIBritish Film InstituteThe British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
- http://www.tv.com/jeremy-silberston/person/83334/summary.html
- http://www.bafta.org/site/Jahia/cache/offonce/pid/309
- Tribute, ArielAriel (newspaper)Ariel is the in-house magazine/newspaper of the BBC, published weekly on Tuesdays, and named after the statue of Shakespeare's Prospero and Ariel by Eric Gill on the facade of the BBC's Broadcasting House, London....
, 5 April 2006. - Tribute, Old Perseans, 2007.
- Silberston on directing Foyles War, Series 1 press kit