Stephen Poliakoff

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Stephen Poliakoff

Stephen Poliakoff (born December 1, 1952,in London, England) is an acclaimed British playwright, director and scriptwriter, widely judged amongst Britain's foremost television dramatists.

In 1969, while still a pupil at the capital's Westminster School, he attracted sufficient attention for a play written and directed him there to be reviewed in the national press. Following truncated studies at King's College, Cambridge he continued to write stageplays, becoming writer-in-residence for the National Theatre at the age of 24, but became increasingly interested in the medium of television, with Stronger Than the Sun (1977 - BBC1 Play for Today), Bloody Kids (1980 - ATV), Caught on a Train (1980 - BBC2 Playhouse) starring Peggy Ashcroft, and Soft Targets (1982 - Play for Today). There were also TV adaptations of his stageplays Hitting Town (1976 - Thames Television/ITV Play for Britain) and City Sugar (1978 - Scottish Television/ITV The Sunday Drama).

Poliakoff's first feature film was Runners, directed by Charles Sturridge, starring James Fox, Jane Asher, and Kate Hardie. It received a limited theatrical release in 1983, before being shown in Channel 4's legendary Film on Four strand. His directorial debut was the much-lauded and now rare Hidden City (1988), premiered at the Venice Film Festival and starring Charles Dance, Richard E Grant and Cassie Stuart. His televisual career continued with She's Been Away (1989) starring Peggy Ashcroft and also winning awards at Venice, before a return to film with Close My Eyes (1991), starring Clive Owen, Saskia Reeves and Alan Rickman in an elaborate reworking of the incest theme that had been central to Hitting Town, followed by Century (1993), with Owen, Dance and Miranda Richardson. Less successful were Food of Love (1997) with Grant, Nathalie Baye and Joe McGann and The Tribe (1998) starring Joely Richardson and Jeremy Northam, the latter eventually screened on BBC2 due to lack of a cinema distribution deal.

He subsequently decided to return to his favoured form of television, this time choosing a flexible serial format resulting in the acclaimed and Prix Italia [1]-winning Shooting the Past (1999), the fresh critical and audience success of Perfect Strangers (2001) and The Lost Prince (2003); the latter recognised with an Emmy award rare for a non-American production. Late-2005 saw the one-off drama Friends and Crocodiles, with its overlapping companion-piece Gideon's Daughter appearing early the following year.

In 2005, he renewed recent criticisms of BBC scheduling and commissioning policy, arguing that the reintroduction of a regular evening slot for one-off plays on BBC1 would provide the reinvigoration of drama output that has become a priority for the corporation.

His two latest dramas are scheduled to be broadcast in 2007: Poliakoff 2006 (working title) on BBC One, and Capturing Mary on BBC Two [2].

1 Personal life
2 Other Poliakoff films
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Personal life

He is married to fellow scriptwriter Sandy Welch, with whom he has two children. He is also - via his mother - a cousin of Ivor Montagu, who co-wrote the screenplay for Scott of the Antarctic (1948). His brother, Martyn Poliakoff, is a Fellow of the Royal Society and Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. He lives in London.