Joe Ahearne is a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
televisionTelevision is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
writerScreenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....
and
directorA television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
, best known for his work on several fantasy-based programmes including
UltravioletUltraviolet is a 1998 British television serial written and directed by Joe Ahearne and starring Jack Davenport, Susannah Harker, Idris Elba and Philip Quast. It was produced by World Productions for Channel 4.-Synopsis:...
and
Doctor WhoDoctor 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...
. By coincidence, he was born on 23rd November 1963, the day that the first ever Doctor Who story (An Unearthly Child) aired
Joe Ahearne is a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
televisionTelevision is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
writerScreenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....
and
directorA television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
, best known for his work on several fantasy-based programmes including
UltravioletUltraviolet is a 1998 British television serial written and directed by Joe Ahearne and starring Jack Davenport, Susannah Harker, Idris Elba and Philip Quast. It was produced by World Productions for Channel 4.-Synopsis:...
and
Doctor WhoDoctor 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...
. By coincidence, he was born on 23rd November 1963, the day that the first ever Doctor Who story (An Unearthly Child) aired
Joe Ahearne is a
BritishThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
televisionTelevision is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
writerScreenwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is a freelance profession....
and
directorA television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
, best known for his work on several fantasy-based programmes including
UltravioletUltraviolet is a 1998 British television serial written and directed by Joe Ahearne and starring Jack Davenport, Susannah Harker, Idris Elba and Philip Quast. It was produced by World Productions for Channel 4.-Synopsis:...
and
Doctor WhoDoctor 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...
. By coincidence, he was born on 23rd November 1963, the day that the first ever Doctor Who story (An Unearthly Child) aired
[http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0013878/ ].
Career
Ahearne's career began when the short film
Latin for a Dark Room won an award at the
Edinburgh FestivalThe Edinburgh Festival is a collective term for many arts and cultural festivals that take place in Edinburgh, Scotland each summer, mostly in August...
in 1994, and shortly afterwards he began working for the independent television production company
World ProductionsWorld Productions is a British television production company, founded in the early 1990s by acclaimed producer Tony Garnett. The company's first major series was the police drama Between The Lines , and throughout the decade they went on to produce a succession of highly successful drama series...
. Among his work for World were episodes of the 1997 series the
BBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
drama
This LifeThis Life is a BBC television drama that was produced by World Productions and screened on BBC Two. Two series were broadcast in 1996 and 1997 and a reunion special in 2007....
, for which Ahearne wrote two and directed another three episodes, making him the only person to both write and direct episodes for the series.
His next major production for World was the six-episode Channel Four
vampireVampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...
series
UltravioletUltraviolet is a 1998 British television serial written and directed by Joe Ahearne and starring Jack Davenport, Susannah Harker, Idris Elba and Philip Quast. It was produced by World Productions for Channel 4.-Synopsis:...
, which Ahearne both wrote and directed.
Ultraviolet was broadcast in 1998 to high critical acclaim, and has subsequently been released on both
VHSThe Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
and DVD. The series also ran on the
Sci-Fi ChannelSyfy , formerly known as the Sci-Fi Channel and SCI FI, is an American cable television channel featuring science fiction, supernatural, fantasy, reality, paranormal, wrestling, and horror programming. Launched on September 24, 1992, it is part of the entertainment conglomerate NBCUniversal, a...
in the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and the Fox Network in that country produced a pilot for their own version in 2001, although this did not lead to a series.
In 2002 Ahearne directed the pilot for the Big Bear Productions horror-fantasy drama
Strange, written by
Andrew MarshallAndrew Marshall is an English comedy screenwriter, most noted for the domestic sitcom 2point4 children. He was also the inspiration for Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy...
and broadcast on
BBC OneBBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
. The pilot was successful enough for a series to be commissioned the following year, with Ahearne helming three of the six episodes, although the series was not a success and a second did not follow.
Ahearne both wrote and directed the two-part drama-documentary series
Space Odyssey: Voyage To The PlanetsSpace Odyssey: Voyage To The Planets is a mockumentary about a manned voyage through the solar system. Space Odyssey premiered in 2004 and was made by the BBC...
for the
BBCThe British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
and the
Discovery ChannelDiscovery Channel is an American satellite and cable specialty channel , founded by John Hendricks and distributed by Discovery Communications. It is a publicly traded company run by CEO David Zaslav...
in 2004. He was the director of five episodes of the 2005 series of the BBC's
Doctor WhoDoctor 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...
, for which Ahearne was nominated for his first
BAFTAThe British Academy Television Awards are presented in an annual award show hosted by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts . They have been awarded annually since 1954, and are analogous to the Emmy Awards in the United States.-Background:...
.
In December 2006 his drama
Perfect ParentsPerfect Parents is a 2006 film written and directed by Joe Ahearne for ITV. It stars Christopher Eccleston and Susannah Harker as Stuart and Alison, who try to get their daughter Lucy into a Catholic school after she witnesses a knife fight at her old school.To improve their chances, they fake...
, starring
Doctor Who lead
Christopher EcclestonChristopher Eccleston is an English stage, film and television actor. His films include Let Him Have It, Shallow Grave, Elizabeth, 28 Days Later, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Others, and G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra...
, was aired on ITV1.
The following month, Ahearne returned to
This Life to direct the one-off reunion episode "This Life +10", shown on
BBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
on 2 January 2007.
Current projects
Ahearne's latest project is
ApparitionsApparitions is a BBC drama about a priest, played by Martin Shaw, who examines evidence of miracles to be used in canonisation but also carries out exorcisms.The series is written by Joe Ahearne.- Episode 1 :...
, a supernatural series for the BBC which he has again written and directed. It began on
BBC OneBBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
in November 2008.
He also wrote the four-issue
Fantastic ForceFantastic Force was a superhero team in the Marvel Universe, a spin-off of the Fantastic Four. The team had its own title, which lasted for eighteen issues from November 1994 to April 1996...
mini-series for
Marvel ComicsMarvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
in 2009 and Fantastic Four Annual 32 in 2010.
[http://marvel.com/news/comicstories.7452.fantastic_force~colon~_nu_world_order]
External links