Douglas Mackinnon is a Scottish film and television director from

Portree Portree (; gd, Port Rìgh, ) is the largest town on, and capital of, the Isle of Skye in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. Murray, W.H. (1966) ''The Hebrides''. London. Heinemann. Pages 154-155. It is the location for the only secondary school o ...

Isle of Skye The Isle of Skye, or simply Skye (; gd, An t-Eilean Sgitheanach or ; sco, Isle o Skye), is the largest and northernmost of the major islands in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. The island's peninsulas radiate from a mountainous hub dominated ...

. He has directed many episodes of television drama and at least three television films. His work includes ''

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'', ''Gentlemen's Relish'', ''Robin Hood'', ''

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'' and numerous episodes of ''

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''. He also directed all six episodes of Terry Pratchett and

Neil Gaiman Neil Richard MacKinnon GaimanBorn as Neil Richard Gaiman, with "MacKinnon" added on the occasion of his marriage to Amanda Palmer. ; ( Neil Richard Gaiman; born 10 November 1960) is an English author of short fiction, novels, comic books, gr ...

's '' Good Omens''.

Early life

Mackinnon attended Portree High School on the Isle of Skye between 1967 and 1980. He then attended the

National Film and Television School The National Film and Television School (NFTS) is a film, television and games school established in 1971 and based at Beaconsfield Studios in Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, England. It is featured in the 2021 ranking by ''The Hollywood Repor ...

between 1985 - 1990.

Career

Film and television director

Mackinnon directed the

music video A music video is a video of variable duration, that integrates a music song or a music album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a m ...

for The Proclaimers' song "

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" in 1987. He then created the documentary series ''Home'' about the

. This series captured

Skye Camanachd Skye Camanachd is a shinty team from the Isle of Skye, Highland, Scotland. It plays in the Premier Division and has a reserve team in North Division One, as well as a Ladies team in the WCA National Division One and a Ladies reserve team in the ...

winning the

Camanachd Cup The Camanachd Association Challenge Cup known as the Camanachd Cup (or less commonly the Scottish Cup) is the premier competition in the sport of shinty. It is one of the five trophies considered to be part of the Grand Slam in the sport of shin ...

in 1990. In the 1990s, he directed episodes of several television drama series, including ''

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'', '' Soldier Soldier'' and '' London's Burning''. He made his feature film directorial debut with '' The Flying Scotsman'' (2006), which was the gala premiere at the Edinburgh Festival in 2006 and was consequently picked up for worldwide distribution by MGM. He then went on to direct the first three episodes of ''

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'' (2007) starring James Nesbitt,

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and Gina Bellman. The show had nominations in the Emmy's and the Rose D'or for James Nesbitt. He worked on eight episodes of the BBC's long-running sci-fi series ''

'' between 2008 and 2015. He returned to work for the BBC to direct five episodes of the award-winning television series ''

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'' between 2012 and 2014. He then went on to direct a one-off episode of Sherlock, "

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", which won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Television Movie, for the BBC in 2016. Mackinnon was the lead Director and Executive Producer on Knightfall, a major new drama series for the History Channel/

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, between 2016 and 2017. He also worked as a director on two episodes of the TV series '' Outlander'' in 2016. In 2017 Douglas was a director and executive producer of an adaption of Good Omens by

and Terry Pratchett. It starred Michael Sheen and David Tennant and was created for

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and the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

. All episodes were released on

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on May 31, 2019, and aired weekly on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream an ...

in the UK between January 15 and February 19, 2020. Among other accolades, the television series won the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation at the Nebula Awards.

Other Occupations

Douglas worked as a report author for the Scottish Government between July 2009 and September 2009 and reported on the state of the Scottish television production sector for the

Culture minister A culture minister or a heritage minister is a common cabinet position in governments. The culture minister is typically responsible for cultural policy, which often includes arts policy (direct and indirect support to artists and arts organizati ...

. Douglas was a committee member of BAFTA in Scotland between August 2010 and August 2011 and a committee member of the Scottish Screen Academy between June 2009 and June 2012

Selected television directing credits

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Mackinnon, Douglas Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British film directors British television directors Hugo Award winners People from the Isle of Skye People educated at Portree High School