Dennis Spooner
Dennis Spooner (1 December 1932 – 20 September 1986) was an English television writer and script editor, known primarily for his programmes about fictional spies and his work in children's television in the 1960s. He had long-lasting professional working relationships with a number of other British screenwriters and producers, notably Brian Clemens, Terry Nation, Monty Berman and Richard Harris, with whom he developed several programmes. Though he was a contributor to BBC programmes, his work made him one of the most prolific writers of televised output from ITC Entertainment. Early life Dennis was born in Tottenham, Middlesex. Following a brief spell as a professional footballer with Leyton Orient, Dennis completed his National Service with the Royal Air Force where he met Tony Williamson, with whom he formed an amateur writing partnership. During the 1950s Dennis returned to office work, and met and married Pauline. Dennis did not desire a career in business and tried to b ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tottenham
Tottenham () is a town in North London, England, within the London Borough of Haringey. It is located in the ceremonial county of Greater London. Tottenham is centred north-northeast of Charing Cross, bordering Edmonton to the north, Walthamstow, across the River Lea, to the east, and Stamford Hill to the south, with Wood Green and Harringay to the west. The area rapidly expanded in the late-19th century, becoming a working-class suburb of London following the advent of the railway and mass development of housing for the lower-middle and working classes. It is the location of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, founded in 1882. The parish of Tottenham was granted urban district status in 1894 and municipal borough status in 1934. Following the Second World War, the area saw large-scale development of council housing, including tower blocks. Until 1965 Tottenham was in the historic county of Middlesex. In 1965, the borough of Tottenham merged with the municipal boroughs of Ho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jason King (TV Series)
''Jason King'' is a British television series starring Peter Wyngarde as the eponymous character. It was produced by ITC Entertainment and had a single season of 26 one-hour episodes that aired from 1971 to 1972. It was shown internationally as well, and has been released on DVD in the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Germany. Overview The series featured the further adventures of the title character who had first appeared in '' Department S'' (1969). In that series he was a dilettante dandy and author of a series of adventure novels, working as part of a team of investigators. In ''Jason King'' he had left that service to concentrate on writing the adventures of Mark Caine, who closely resembled Jason King in looks, manner, style, and personality. None of the other regular characters from ''Department S'' appeared in this series, although Department S itself is occasionally referred to in dialogue. In the course of visiting international locations as part of hi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leyton Orient
Leyton Orient Football Club is a professional football club based in Leyton, East London, England, who compete in , the fourth tier of the English football league system. They are the second oldest football club in London to play at a professional level, and are known to their fans by their nickname "the O's". The club's home colours are all red. They have played home matches at Brisbane Road since 1937, having previously played at Millfields and Lea Bridge Road. Founded in 1881 as the Glyn Cricket Club, they began playing football as Orient in 1888 and joined the London League in 1896 after success in the Clapton & District League. The club adopted the name Clapton Orient two years later and were elected into the Football League in 1905. Relegated out of the Second Division in 1929, the club finally settled on the name Leyton Orient after World War II. They won the Third Division South title in 1955–56 and secured promotion out of the Second Division in 1961–62, though w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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ITC Entertainment
The Incorporated Television Company (ITC), or ITC Entertainment as it was referred to in the United States, was a British company involved in production and distribution of television programmes. History Incorporated Television Programme Company Television mogul Lew Grade set up the Incorporated Television Programme Company (ITP) with Prince Littler and Val Parnell in 1954. Originally designed to be a contractor for the UK's new ITV network, the company failed to win a contract when the Independent Television Authority felt that doing so would give too much control in the entertainment business to the Grade family's companies (which included large talent agencies and theatre interests) although the ITA said that ITP were free to make their own programmes which they could sell to the new network companies. ITP put most of the production budget into producing one show, ''The Adventures of Robin Hood'' (ITV, 1955–59). However, the winner of one of the contracts, the Associated Br ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Harris (television Writer)
Richard Harris (born 1934) is a British television writer, most active from the early 1960s to the mid-1990s. He writes primarily for the crime and detective genres, having contributed episodes of series such as '' The Avengers'', ''The Saint'', ''The Sweeney'', '' Armchair Mystery Theatre'', and ''Target''. He has helped to create several programmes of the genre, including ''Adam Adamant Lives!'', ''Man in a Suitcase'', and '' Shoestring''. Despite a career that has been largely spent writing for the crime and detective genre, in 1994 he won the prize for best situation comedy from the Writers' Guild of Great Britain for ''Outside Edge'', a programme he had originated as a stage play. Though the majority of his work has been for television, a substantial amount of his output has been for the stage. Career Harris began writing freelance episodes for British television in his mid-twenties. His first sale was to Sydney Newman's 1960 ITV series, '' Police Surgeon'', for wh ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Monty Berman
Nestor Montague "Monty" Berman (16 August 1913 in Whitechapel, London, England – 14 June 2006 in London, England) was a British cinematographer and film and television producer. Early career Berman began his film career as a camera assistant at Twickenham Film Studios when he was 17. He became a camera operator in 1934, working for the Associated British Picture Corporation at Teddington Studios, and later for the comedy producers Ealing Studios. When World War II came, Berman was allowed to continue his craft in an army film unit. There, he met and befriended Robert S. Baker, with whom he would go on to form a lifelong business partnership. In 1948, they founded Tempean Films, which produced more than 30 B-movies in the 1950s. In 1962, Berman and Baker obtained the television rights to Leslie Charteris's ''The Saint''. Unable to sell the rights to Associated-Rediffusion, then Britain's largest commercial television company, Berman turned to Lew Grade's ITC. This company ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Terry Nation
Terence Joseph Nation (8 August 19309 March 1997) was a British screenwriter and novelist. Especially known for his work in British television science fiction, he created the Daleks and Davros for ''Doctor Who'', as well as the series '' Survivors'' and ''Blake's 7''. Nation first made his name as a comedy writer before becoming a prolific writer for drama, working on many of the most popular British series of the 1960s and 1970s such as '' The Avengers'', '' The Baron'', ''The Champions'', '' Department S'', ''The Persuaders!'' and ''The Saint''. When Nation was commissioned to write ''The Daleks'' (1963) for ''Doctor Who'', the villainous eponymous creatures established the series' early popularity. He later devised the recurring character of Davros in ''Genesis of the Daleks'' (1975). His series ''Survivors'' and ''Blake's 7'' have been described as "much-loved cult TV classics". Life and career Early years Born in Llandaff, Cardiff, Wales, Nation initially worked in comedy ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Brian Clemens
Brian Horace Clemens (30 July 1931 – 10 January 2015) was an English screenwriter and television producer, possibly best known for his work on '' The Avengers'' and '' The Professionals''. Clemens claimed to be related to Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens), a fact reflected in the naming of his two sons, Samuel Joshua Twain Clemens and George Langhorne Clemens. Early life Clemens was born in Croydon, Surrey, to Suzanna (née O'Grady) and Albert, an engineer, who also worked in music halls. He left school aged 14. Following national service in the British Army at Aldershot, where he was a weapons training instructor in the Royal Army Ordnance Corps, Clemens wanted to be a journalist but decided he did not have any qualifications. He was offered a job with a private detective agency, but this involved taking a training course in the city of Leeds and, as he had been away from home in London for two years, he decided he did not want to go away again. Instead, he worked his ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Children's Television
Children's television series (or children's television shows) are television show, television programs designed for children, normally scheduled for broadcast during the morning and afternoon when children are awake. They can sometimes run during the early evening, allowing younger children to watch them after school. The purpose of these shows is mainly to entertain or educate. The children's series are in four categories: those aimed at infants and toddlers, those aimed at those aged 6 to 11 years old, those for adolescents and those aimed at all children. History Children's television is nearly as old as television itself. The BBC's ''Children's Hour'', broadcast in the UK in 1946, is generally credited with being the first TV programme specifically for children. Television for children tended to originate from similar programs on radio; the BBC's ''Children's Hour'' was launched in 1922, and BBC School Radio began broadcasting in 1924. In the US in the early 1930s, adventure ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Spy Fiction
Spy fiction is a genre of literature involving espionage as an important context or plot device. It emerged in the early twentieth century, inspired by rivalries and intrigues between the major powers, and the establishment of modern intelligence agencies. It was given new impetus by the development of fascism and communism in the lead-up to World War II, continued to develop during the Cold War, and received a fresh impetus from the emergence of rogue states, international criminal organizations, global terrorist networks, maritime piracy and technological sabotage and espionage as potent threats to Western societies. As a genre, spy fiction is thematically related to the novel of adventure (''The Prisoner of Zenda'', 1894, ''The Scarlet Pimpernel'', 1905), the thriller (such as the works of Edgar Wallace) and the politico-military thriller (''The Schirmer Inheritance'', 1953, ''The Quiet American'', 1955). History Commentator William Bendler noted that "Chapter 2 of the He ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bergerac (TV Series)
''Bergerac'' is a British crime drama television series. Set in Jersey, it ran from 18 October 1981 to 26 December 1991. Produced by the BBC in association with the Australian Seven Network, and first screened on BBC1, it stars John Nettles as the title character Jim Bergerac, who is initially a detective sergeant in Le Bureau des Étrangers ("The Foreigners' Office", a fictional department dealing with non-Jersey residents), within the States of Jersey Police, but later leaves the force and becomes a private investigator. Westward Studios executive producer Brian Constantine said the Bergerac reboot was in the final stages of development, possibly airing 2024. Background The series ran from 1981 to 1991. It was created by producer Robert Banks Stewart after an earlier detective series, '' Shoestring,'' starring Trevor Eve, came to an abrupt end. Like ''Shoestring'', the series begins with a man returning to work after a particularly bad period in his life: Eddie Shoestring fro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Professionals (TV Series)
''The Professionals'' is a British crime-action television drama series produced by Avengers Mark1 Productions for London Weekend Television (LWT) that aired on the ITV network from 1977 to 1983. In all, 57 episodes were produced, filmed between 1977 and 1981. It starred Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins and Gordon Jackson as agents of the fictional "CI5" (Criminal Intelligence 5, alluding to the real-life MI5 and CID). ''The Professionals'' was created by Brian Clemens, who had been one of the driving forces behind '' The Avengers''. The show was originally to have been called ''The A-Squad''. Clemens and Albert Fennell were executive producers, with business partner Laurie Johnson providing the theme music. Sidney Hayers produced the first series in 1977, and Raymond Menmuir the remainder. Outline CI5 - or Criminal Intelligence 5, is a British law enforcement department, instructed by the Home Secretary to use any means to deal with crimes of a serious nature that go beyond the cap ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |