Roger Murray-Leach
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Roger Murray-Leach | |
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| Born | 25 June 1943 |
| Occupation | Film & Television production designer |
Roger Murray-Leach (born 25 June 1943) is a British Production Designer, who is probably best known for his work on British television series' Doctor Who and Blake's 7 in the 1970s, although he went on later to work on major feature films.
He trained as an architect and joined the BBC design department in the 1970s, quickly gaining a reputation for great imagination and flair. He began working on Doctor Who when Philip Hinchcliffe took over as producer in late 1974. Hinchcliffe's vision for the series included giving a high priority to set design and he quickly realised that Murray-Leach was one of the most, if not the most, imaginative and resourceful designers on the BBC staff. Murray-Leach designed several Doctor Who serials under Hinchcliffe's reign, many of which remain amongst the most popular serials in the show's history. For the serial Planet of Evil, Murray-Leach designed an alien jungle at Ealing studios that so impressed Hinchcliffe that he wrote to the Head of the BBC design department, suggesting that Murray-Leach should be nominated for a BAFTA or a Royal Television Society Award.
David Maloney, a director who had worked on a number of the Doctor Who serials designed by Murray-Leach, went on to produce Blake's 7 for the BBC and immediately secured the services of Murray-Leach to design the interior of the Liberator spacecraft.
Murray-Leach was eventually nominated for a BAFTA award for his design work on the 1981 series Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years. His talent was finally being recognised and he broke into feature films, working as production designer on Local Hero, Defence of the Realm, Clockwise and A Fish Called Wanda. His movie career extended into the 1990s with The Mighty Quinn, Twenty-One and Fierce Creatures.
In recent years he has appeared in a number of television and DVD documentaries discussing his work on Doctor Who, including A Darker Side, a retrospective feature included in the 2|entertain/BBC DVD release of Planet of Evil, in which he and Hinchcliffe returned to Ealing studios to discuss the story's design and production.
He lives in Henley-on-Thames, England.