Troy Kennedy Martin

Troy Kennedy Martin (born in Scotland in 1932, and educated at Finchley Grammar School (now known as Finchley Catholic High School) and Trinity College, Dublin; sometimes credited as Troy Kennedy-Martin, died 15 September 2009 at Ditchling, East Sussex) is a British film and television scriptwriter. His best known work in the cinema is the screenplay for the original version of The Italian Job, and in television he was responsible for co-creating the long-running BBC police series Z-Cars and writing the highly-regarded 1985 drama serial Edge of Darkness. He is the brother of Ian Kennedy Martin.

1960s

He began writing for BBC Television in 1958, penning the play Incident at Echo Six, and he wrote four further plays for the Corporation over the following three years, before in 1961 creating his first series, Storyboard. Storyboard was a six-part anthology series which consisted both of original Kennedy Martin scripts and adaptations. The same year, he wrote the police drama The Interrogator.

It was the genre of crime and policing which gave rise to his next and probably most famous television work, the drama series Z-Cars, which he co-created in 1962. Set in the town of Kirkby (pronounced 'Ker-bee') near Liverpool, Z-Cars was revolutionary in that it depicted a hard-edged, grittier and much more realistic vision of the police force than had ever been seen on British television before - as a result, it was initially very unpopular with the real police. Although Kennedy Martin left the programme after the two series, the series ran until 1978.

1970s

Over the following decade he contributed to various television programmes, and also made his first foray into the world of feature films when he wrote The Italian Job, which was released in 1969 and starred Noël Coward and Michael Caine. The following year he wrote another film, Kelly's Heroes, and he scripted two more films during the 1970s - The Jerusalem File (1971) and Sweeney 2 (1978).

Sweeney 2 was the second cinematic spin-off from the television series The Sweeney, which had been created by Kennedy Martin's brother Ian Kennedy Martin, and for which he had written several episodes. This was a return to his police drama roots, albeit in a more action/adventure vein rather than the attempted social realism of early Z-Cars.

He is perhaps less well-known for writing a little-seen television sitcom based in the British Civil Service, It It Moves, File It (1970), featuring amongst others John Bird, who now stars alongside Rory Bremner and John Fortune in the satirical Bremner, Bird and Fortune.

1980s

In the early 1980s Kennedy Martin was no less successful, with two highly popular series on different networks in the same year, 1983. One, The Old Men at the Zoo, was an adaptation of the novel by Angus Wilson and screened on BBC One. The second was the hugely popular Reilly, Ace of Spies on ITV, based on the book by Robin Bruce Lockhart and starring Sam Neill.

Greatly influenced by the political landscape of the early 1980s, Kennedy Martin had drafted a script for a political thriller-cum-science fiction drama serial called Magnox. This would become Edge of Darkness. Kennedy Martin was interviewed about the genesis of the series for Magnox: The Secrets Of Edge Of Darkness documentary, an extra on the show's 2003 DVD release:

"We had the Cold War. The Falklands. The Nuclear State. The prospect of a miners' strike. Greenham Common. It was Thatcher's Britain. At the BBC, there was no political dimension in their popular drama whatsoever. And I was really depressed about it, as indeed were other writers that I knew. And so, I said to my closest colleagues: 'The only thing one can do is actually write stuff that one knows is not going to get made, but at least we'll get it out of our system.' And that's how I started to write Edge Of Darkness. I didn't really think that it stood much of a chance of being produced."

The concept attracted little interest from television executives until incoming BBC Head of Drama Series & Serials Jonathan Powell picked it up in 1983, assigning experienced producer Michael Wearing to the project.

Edge of Darkness, was eventually screened on BBC Two in late 1985. Although Kennedy Martin experienced many creative differences with director Martin Campbell and star Bob Peck (who is reported to have vetoed the scripted ending with the remark "I'm not turning into a fucking tree!"), the drama was a resounding success, picking up several awards and being remembered as one of the best British television drama productions of the 1980s.[1]

After Edge of Darkness, he wrote another feature film screenplay, Red Heat (1988, co-written with director Walter Hill), which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi.

1990s

He did not return to television scriptwriting until he penned the one-off BBC Two drama Hostile Waters in 1997. Other recent work has included the adaptation of Bravo Two Zero for BBC One in 1999, co-written with the book's author Andy McNab and starring Sean Bean.

Filmography

Film

• The Italian Job (1969)
• Kelly's Heroes (1970)
• The Jerusalem File (1972)
• Sweeney II (1978)
• Red Heat (1988)
• Red Dust (2004)

Television

• Storyboard (1961)
• Z Cars (1962-78)
• Redcap (1965-66)
• The Sweeney (1975-78)
• Reilly: Ace of Spies (1983)
• Edge of Darkness (1985)

External links

• Troy Kennedy Martin at IMDb
• Troy Kennedy Martin at the BFI's Screenonline
• The BFI Screenonline entry contradicts Troy Kennedy Martin's own assertion, made during the Magnox: The Secrets Of Edge Of Darkness documentary (part of the 2003 Edge Of Darkness DVD release), that the idea for the series came about during the Thatcher/Reagan years of the early 1980s. The BFI reviewer claims that work began on the serial earlier. This not only contradicts Troy Kennedy Martin, but seems to imply that the work was in progress some years before the events which inspired it.