Lucy Gannon
Lucy Gannon (born 1948) is a British playwright and television writer, and producer. She was the recipient of the 1989-90 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize.
Life
Lucy Gannon once worked as a military policewoman, a residential social worker, and a nurse, and lived in a concrete council house with no central heating. She later moved to a converted barn in Derbyshire and now lives near Cardigan, in Wales.
She started, in 1987, to enter the Richard Burton Award for New Playwrights. Her play, Keeping Tom Nice, about a disabled boy whose father commits suicide, earned her the award and a six-month writer-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1988 Keeping Tom Nice was shown at the Almeida Theatre in London, and in 1989 shown as a BBC TV Screenplay starring Linus Roache.[1]
Gannon has written several single or short run dramas, including Dad, Tender Loving Care, Trip Trap, The Gift, Big Cat, Pure Wickedness, The Best Of Men, The Children.
In 2008 Lucy Gannon criticised the BBC, saying that delays in commissioning programmes threaten writers and producers.[2]
In 1996 she was awarded the MBE for services to Drama, and among her awards are The Eileen Anderson Award, The Richard Burton Drama Award, The Susan Smith Blackburn Award, The BAFTA Cymru, and the Contribution To The Media Award (Women in Film and Television) and, most recently, the RTS Award (South West England) for Best Writer for her film The Best Of Men.
In 2012 Gannon wrote the one-off BBC2 drama The Best of Men which told the story of the first Paralympic Games and starred Eddie Marsan and Rob Brydon. She is the lead writer and creator of the 2013 BBC One drama series Frankie.[3]
Works
Plays
- Broken Hearted, 2010
- Keeping Tom Nice. Josef Weinberger Plays. 15 Jun 1990. ISBN 978-0-85676-146-1.
- Tender Loving Care
- Dancing Attendance, 1990
- A Dog Barking, 1988
- Janet And John, 1988
- Raping The Gold, 1988
- Wicked Old Nellie, 1987
Teleplays
- The Best of Men (2012) TV Film
- The Children (2008) TV mini-series (writer)
- Wild at Heart (1 episode, 2007) (writer)
- Dad (2005) (TV) (writer)[4]
- "Blue Dove" (2003) TV mini-series (creator) (writer)
- "Servants" (2003) TV series (writer)
- Plain Jane (2002) (TV) (writer)
- "Hope & Glory (creator and writer, 1999-2000)
- Pure Wickedness (1999) (TV) (writer)
- Big Cat (1998) (TV) (writer)
- The Gift (1998) (TV) (writer)
- "Bramwell" (17 episodes, 1995–1998)
- Trip Trap (1996) (TV) (writer)
- "Peak Practice" (15 episodes, 1993–1994)
- "Screen One" (1 episode, 1993)
- "Soldier Soldier" TV series 1991-1997 (creator) (writer 11 episodes, 1991–1992)
- A Small Dance (1991) (writer)
- Testimony of a Child (1989) (TV) (screenplay)
References
- ^ James Rampton (19 June 1999). "Television: A class act - Lucy Gannon". The Independent.
- ^ Matthew Hemley (6 August 2008). "Gannon accuses BBC's commissioning process of ruining writers and production companies". The Stage News.
- ^ "Eve Myles to star in new BBC One drama series, Frankie". bbc.co.uk. BBC. 6 September 2012. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
- ^ "BBC - Press Office - Dad". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 11 April 2015.