Andrew Davies

Andrew Wynford Davies (born 20 September 1936 in Rhiwbina, Cardiff, Wales) is a British author and screenwriter. He was made a Fellow of BAFTA in 2002.

Education and early career

Davies ( /ˈdeɪvɪs/) attended Whitchurch Grammar School in Cardiff and then University College, London, where he received a BA in English in 1957. He took a teaching position at St. Clement Danes Grammar School in London, where he was on the teaching staff from 1958–61. He held a similar post at Woodberry Down Comprehensive School in Hackney, London from 1961–63. Following that, he was a lecturer in English at Coventry College of Education (which merged with the University of Warwick in 1971 to become the Faculty of Educational Studies and later the Warwick Institute of Education) from 1963–71, and then at the University of Warwick in Coventry from 1971–87.

In 1960, Davies contributed material to the BBC Home Service's Monday Night at Home strand, alongside Harold Pinter and Ivor Cutler. He wrote his first play for radio in 1964. In 1960, he married Diana Huntley; the couple have a son and daughter. He is resident in Kenilworth, a town of Warwickshire.

Writer for television

Davies' first television play, Who's Going to Take Me On?, was broadcast in 1965 as part of BBC1's The Wednesday Play strand. His early plays were written as a sideline to his work in education, many of them appearing in anthology series such as Thirty Minute Theatre, Play for Today and Centre Stage.

Davies is the creator of the children's Marmalade Atkins television series and A Very Peculiar Practice, and is also well known for his adaptations of classic works of literature, including the 1995 television adaptation of Pride and Prejudice starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle, the 1998 adaptation of Vanity Fair, and the 2008 BBC adaption of Sense and Sensibility. He is the writer of the screenplays both for the 1994 BBC production Middlemarch and a planned 2011 film of the same name.^[1][2]

Davies also co-devised with Bernadette Davis the laddish sitcom Game On for BBC2 and co-wrote the first two series in 1995 and 1996.

The popularity of his adaptation of Michael Dobbs's political thriller House of Cards was a significant influence in Dobbs's decision to write two sequels, which Davies also adapted for television.

In film, he has collaborated on the screenplays for both of the Bridget Jones films, based on Helen Fielding's successful novels.

His previous career in education he drew upon in writing the campus-based comedy-drama series A Very Peculiar Practice (1986–88).

He is also a prolific writer for children. His works in this field include the Guardian Award-winning Conrad's War, Alfonso Bonzo (book and television series), and the adventures of Marmalade Atkins (television series and numerous books). He also wrote the stories Dark Towers and Badger Girl for BBC TV's Look and Read series of programmes for schools audiences.

2008 saw the release of his adaptations of the 1999 novel Affinity by Sarah Waters, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited (a film), Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit (a BBC series). Little Dorrit won 7 out of its 11 Emmy nominations and earned Davies an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Miniseries.

Planned adaptations of Dombey and Son, one of Dickens' lesser-read works, and Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels were both scrapped by the BBC in late 2009, following a previously announced move away from "bonnet dramas".^[3]

Filmography

Television series and serials

• To Serve Them All My Days (1980)
• Dark Towers (Look And Read: 1981)
• Diana (1984)
• Badger Girl (Look And Read: 1984)
• A Very Peculiar Practice (1986–88)
• Mother Love (1989)
• House of Cards (1990)
• Anglo-Saxon Attitudes (1992)
• The Old Devils (1992)
• To Play the King (1993)
• Middlemarch (1994)
• Game On (1995, with Bernadette Davis)
• Pride and Prejudice (1995)
• The Final Cut (1995)
• Emma (1996)
• Wilderness (1996)
• Moll Flanders (1996)
• Bill's New Frock (1997)
• Vanity Fair (1998)
• Wives and Daughters (1999)
• Take a Girl Like You (2000)
• The Way We Live Now (2001)
• Daniel Deronda (2002)
• Dr Zhivago (2002)
• Tipping the Velvet (2002)
• He Knew He Was Right (2004)
• Bleak House (2005)
• The Line of Beauty (2006)
• Northanger Abbey (2007), part of ITV's Jane Austen Season
• A Room with a View (2007)
• Fanny Hill (2007)
• Sense and Sensibility (2008)
• Little Dorrit (2008)
• South Riding (2011)
• The Spoils of Poynton (TBA)
• Who Speaks For England (TBA)

Television plays

• Who's Going to Take Me On? (1965)
• Is That Your Body, Boy? (1970)
• No Good Unless It Hurts (1973)
• The Water Maiden (1974)
• Grace (1975)
• The Imp of the Perverse (1975)
• The Signalman (1976)
• A Martyr to the System (1976)
• Eleanor Marx (1977)
• Velvet Glove (1977)
• Fearless Frank (1978)
• Renoir My Father (1978)
• Bavarian Night (1981)
• Heartattack Hotel (1983)
• Baby I Love You (1985)
• Pythons on the Mountain (1985)
• Inappropriate Behaviour (1987)
• Lucky Sunil (1988)
• Ball Trap on the Cote Sauvage (1989)
• Filipina Dreamgirls (1991)
• A Very Polish Practice (1992)
• Anna Lee (1993)
• Harnessing Peacocks (1993)
• A Few Short Journeys of the Heart (1994)
• Getting Hurt (1998)
• A Rather English Marriage (1998)
• Othello (2001)
• Boudica (2003)
• Falling (2005)
• The Chatterley Affair (2006)
• Diary of a Nobody (2007)

Cinema

• Circle of Friends (1995)
• The Tailor of Panama (2001)
• Bridget Jones's Diary (2001, with Helen Fielding and Richard Curtis)
• Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (2004, with Helen Fielding)
• Brideshead Revisited (2008)
• The Three Musketeers (2011)
• Middlemarch (2011)

Novels

• Getting Hurt (1989)
• Dirty Faxes (1990, short stories)
• B. Monkey (1992)
• Conrad's War

Based on the TV series of the same title

• A Very Peculiar Practice (1986, Coronet)
• A Very Peculiar Practice: The New Frontier (1988, Methuen)

Stage Plays

• Rose (1980)
• Prin (1990)

Notes

1. ^ Middlemarch (2011)
2. ^ Sam Mendes shifts to comedy – Entertainment News, Film News, Media – Variety
3. ^ BBC period drama has gone downmarket, says Andrew Davies

External links

• Andrew Davies at the Internet Movie Database

Notes