Peter Flannery 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...
playwrightA playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...
and
screenwriterScreenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
. He was educated at
Bath Spa UniversityBath Spa University is a university based in, and around, Bath, England. The institution was previously known as Bath College of Higher Education, and later Bath Spa University College...
and is best known for his work while a resident playwright at the
Royal Shakespeare CompanyThe Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs 700 staff and produces around 20 productions a year from its home in Stratford-upon-Avon and plays regularly in London, Newcastle-upon-Tyne and on tour across...
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Notable plays during his tenure include:
Savage Amusement (1978),
Awful Knawful (1978), and
Our Friends in the NorthOur Friends in the North is a British television drama serial, produced by the BBC and originally broadcast in nine episodes on BBC Two in early 1996...
(1982). Other theatre work has included
Singer (1989).
He is perhaps best known to a wider audience for his highly-acclaimed
televisionTelevision is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
adaptation of
Our Friends in the North, produced by 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 screened on
BBC2BBC 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...
in 1996. The epic nine-part serial, charting the course of the lives of four friends from
NewcastleNewcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
from 1964 to 1995, was in 2000 voted by the
British 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...
as one of the
100 Greatest British Television ProgrammesThe BFI TV 100 is a list compiled in 2000 by the British Film Institute , chosen by a poll of industry professionals, to determine what were the greatest British television programmes of any genre ever to have been screened....
of the 20th century. Flannery's other television work has included
Blind Justice (1988), a series about the work of radical lawyers. At the 1997
British Academy Television AwardsThe 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:...
, Flannery was given the honorary
Dennis PotterDennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...
Award for outstanding achievement in television writing.
In January 2007, he scripted an adaptation of Alan Hunter's Inspector Gently novels, entitled
George Gently, for BBC One to be broadcast later in the year.
George Gently is produced by
Company PicturesCompany Pictures is an independent British television production company which has produced drama programming for many broadcasters. Their productions have included:*drama series Wild at Heart for ITV1, written by Ashley Pharoah....
, reuniting Flannery with
Our Friends in the North producer
Charles PattinsonCharles Pattinson is a British television producer. His initial career was in the theatre, where he was an assistant director at the Royal Court Theatre in the mid-1980s...
, who co-runs Company and is an
executive producerAn executive producer is a producer who is not involved in any technical aspects of the film making or music process, but who is still responsible for the overall production...
on the series alongside Flannery. The drama was eventually shown on 8 April 2007.
Flannery has also worked in
filmA film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, although with less success than in other media. He wrote the
screenplayA screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
s for films such as
Funny BonesFunny Bones is a 1995 comedy-drama film from Disney's Hollywood Pictures. It was written, directed and produced by Peter Chelsom, co-produced by Simon Fields, and co-written by Peter Flannery. The music score was by John Altman and the cinematography by Eduardo Serra...
(1995) and
The One and Only (2002).
In 2008 Channel 4 transmitted Flannery's most recent project, on which he worked for more than a decade. This was
The Devil's WhoreThe Devil's Whore is a four-part television series set during the English Civil War, produced by Company Pictures for Channel 4 in 2008. It centres on the adventures of the fictional Angelica Fanshawe, and the historical Leveller soldier Edward Sexby...
, about the
English Civil WarThe English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
.
Flannery's stage adaptation of
Nikita MikhalkovNikita Sergeyevich Mikhalkov is a Soviet and Russian filmmaker, actor, and head of the Russian Cinematographers' Union.Mikhalkov was born in Moscow into the distinguished, artistic Mikhalkov family. His great grandfather was the imperial governor of Yaroslavl, whose mother was a Galitzine princess...
's film
Burnt by the SunBurnt by the Sun is a 1994 film by Russian director and actor Nikita Mikhalkov. The film depicts the story of a senior Red Army officer and his family during the Great Purge of the late 1930s in the Stalinist Soviet Union...
opened at the
National TheatreThe Royal National Theatre in London is one of the United Kingdom's two most prominent publicly funded theatre companies, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company...
, London, in March 2009. The cast included
IrishThe Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...
actor
Ciarán HindsCiarán Hinds is an Irish film, television and stage actor. He has built up a reputation as a versatile character actor appearing in such high profile films as Road to Perdition, The Phantom of the Opera, Munich, There Will Be Blood and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. His television roles include...
as General Kotov,
Rory KinnearRory Kinnear is an award-winning English actor who has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre.-Early life:...
as Mitya, and
Michelle DockeryMichelle Dockery is an English actress of stage and screen. She has become best known for her role as Lady Mary Crawley in the ITV drama series Downton Abbey...
as Maroussia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO5Ou0u9kBE.
Flannery lives in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
External links