Stephen Poliakoff
Stephen Poliakoff, CBE, FRSL (born 1 December 1952) is an acclaimed British playwright, director and scriptwriter, widely judged amongst Britain's foremost television dramatists.
Works
Remembers…
What are the secrets of our favourite TV shows? Famous names from both sides of the camera reflect on making some of the most popular and influential programmes of all time.
Release Date2022-06-29
Charactersd Self
Episode Count2
Mel Smith: I've Done Some Things
A tribute to British comedian Mel Smith, who died in July 2013, aged 60, featuring home video footage, rare archive material and many classic sketches. Far more than a comic actor, Smith also wrote and edited a host of celebrated TV comedies in the 1980s and 90s. He was a theatre and film director, and as a TV producer he was responsible for several innovative comedy series. Friends and colleagues, including Griff Rhys Jones, John Lloyd and Richard Curtis, talk about Smith's talents, both in front of- and behind the camera. The programme also traces his time at Oxford and, before that, Latymer Upper School, where Smith's talents were first spotted.
Release Date2013-12-24
Charactersd Self
Vote Count2
Play for Today
Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.
Release Date1970-10-15
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count2
Vote Count10
Screen Two
Series of single made-for-television dramas.
Release Date1985-01-06
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count7
Playhouse
A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.
Release Date1974-03-13
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
Dancing on the Edge
An explosive 1930s drama following a jazz band in London at a time of huge change.
Release Date2013-02-04
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Episode Count5
Vote Count26
Close to the Enemy
A British intelligence officer has to ensure that a captured German scientist helps the British develop jet aircraft.
Release Date2016-11-10
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count7
Vote Count18
Summer of Rockets
Samuel, a Russian-born Jewish inventor who specialises in the development of hearing aids, is tasked with a secret mission by MI5 to use his technological expertise to contribute to western Cold War efforts. Following the tensions of the space race and the first hydrogen bomb test, Samuel's efforts factor in to the emergence of the modern world.
Release Date2019-05-22
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count6
Vote Count26
The Sunday Drama
Anthology of self-contained dramas that aired from 1977 to 1978.
Release Date1977-05-29
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
Close My Eyes
After some years of tension, Richard begins a sexual relationship with his sister Natalie. Now married, the relationship proves dangerously obsessional.
Release Date1991-11-22
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count74
Plays for Britain
An anthology series of six contemporary plays from writers at relatively early stages in their careers.
Release Date1976-04-06
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count1
Vote Count1
The Lost Prince
The life of Prince John, youngest child of Britain's King George V and Queen Mary, who died at the age of 13 in 1919.
Release Date2003-01-19
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count2
Vote Count13
Perfect Strangers
Daniel Symon comes face to face with his extended family – a cadre of eccentrics, all of whom hiding their own secrets. At a reunion, patriarch Raymond is presented with a copy of the family tree and is enthralled by the complexity of his family ties.
Release Date2001-05-10
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count3
Vote Count14
Soft Targets
Stephen Poliakoff's parody of the spy-thriller genre. A Russian diplomat becomes convinced that he is at the centre of a Foreign Office plot.
Release Date1982-10-19
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count1
Glorious 39
A mysterious tale set around a traditional British family on the eve of World War Two. Oblivious to the looming shadow of World War II, the wealthy Keyes maintain a confident façade in the British countryside until daughter Anne becomes an unexpected pawn. Her accidental discovery of secret recordings creates a rift in the family.
Release Date2009-11-20
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count93
Shooting the Past
A US property developer realises that he has a battle on his hands when he tries to renovate a London building containing a vast photographic collection and discovers that the library employees will resort to anything to thwart him.
Release Date1999-01-10
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Episode Count3
Vote Count9
Hidden City
Cassies Stuart leads the uncooperative Charles Dance into a world of misplaces government secrets, capalistic artists and bungling secret agents. Will the truth be out, or will the attempts of agents suppress the truth hidden within government propaganda films, classified as top secret by complete mistake, be successful. Or is it the mysterious medical records that are the true catch of the spies.
Release Date1987-06-24
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count8
Gideon's Daughter
Bill Nighy and Miranda Richardson star in a story of grief and celebrity, set in the intense spring and summer of New Labour's election victory and Diana's death. Nighy is a PR guru who has to stop and re-evaluate his world when his daughter threatens to leave his life, perhaps as revenge for his serial infidelities. Richardson plays a mother trying to bury her grief in an unconventional way after the loss of her young son.
Release Date2005-10-21
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count37
Joe's Palace
A drama centered on the relationship between Elliot, a strange and wealthy Londoner, and Joe, a teenager who takes care of an empty house Elliot owns.
Release Date2007-11-04
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count17
Bloody Kids
Two boys pull a Saturday night prank on the police in a seaside British town.
Release Date1980-03-22
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count12
Century
Turn-of-the-century love story centered around a young doctor and the emergence of modern science.
Release Date1993-12-31
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count8
The Tribe
Property developer Jamie has to evict some weird, post-modern hippies from a building. But they slowly drag him into their dark underworld of bizarre rituals and dangerous liaisons.
Release Date1998-06-21
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count12
Runners
When his young daughter disappears, her father refuses to accept that she is dead and sets out on a journey to find her.
Release Date1983-08-18
DepartmentWriting
JobOriginal Story
Vote Count5
Friends & Crocodiles
Paul Reynolds is a Gatsby-like figure: owner of a magnificent house, the host of great parties, and a collector of interesting people. He persuades Lizzie Thomas, a secretary at a local estate agent's, to come and work for him as his assistant, to bring some order to his chaos. He inspires her with his enthusiasm and imagination, and frustrates her with his apparent carelessness and destructiveness, which culminates in her calling the police as one of his parties is attacked by local troublemakers, seemingly with his tacit approval. But their paths are destined to cross again and again as Lizzie, with the help of some of the people that she met at Paul's house, rises through the changing landscape of corporate Britain. This is the tale of a meaningful and powerful relationship that isn't a love story; it's about those rare people who profoundly influence and shape our lives.
Release Date2005-08-28
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count10
Capturing Mary
A young man ushers an older woman into a dark exploration of her past - back to the time when, as a young girl, she met a stranger who affected her life forever.
Release Date2007-11-12
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count31
Food of Love
A group of ex-university students reunite to perform a Shakespeare play in a quaint English village.
Release Date1997-10-19
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count4
Astonish Me
When a young boy gets locked in the Natural History Museum after closing, a mysterious guard gives him a magical ticket that allows him to visit a restricted area of the museum, where a professor and a guide show him examples of the wondrous new species of animals being discovered every day on Earth.
Release Date2011-07-26
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count3
Caught on a Train
British playwright Stephen Poliakoff's comical teleplay investigates Europe's changing social landscape via three strangers who meet on a train. Peter, an English businessman on an overnight trip through Europe, shares a compartment with a beautiful American woman, Lorraine. But Peter's hope for romance is soon dampened by Lorraine's xenophobia and the arrival of a haughty Viennese aristocrat.
Release Date1980-10-31
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count3
Stronger Than the Sun
Kate works in the nuclear industry. She is concerned about the way things are being run. So she smuggles out some Plutonium to prove how easy it is. She tries to pass it on to protest groups, but nobody is interested as they have their own agendas.
Release Date1978-03-11
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count1
She's Been Away
A woman who has been institutionalized for 60 years for the "crime" of not conforming to the 1920s image of what a proper young woman should be (in other words, she did what she wanted and didn't care what anyone else thought about it) is finally released to the custody of her family, consisting of her grand-nephew and his family. At first she keeps a self-imposed distance from the relatives, but she soon finds herself coming around to her nephew's wife, a free spirit who is under the thumb of her cold and controlling husband.
Release Date1989-07-09
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count9
Hitting Town
Ralph decides to give his sister Clare a night on the town to cheer her up. They visit a burger bar and a disco in a modern precinct, and Clare gets slightly drunk. At the end of the evening, they both end up at Clare's flat.
Release Date1976-04-26
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
City Sugar
During the course of a live radio broadcast, a disc-jockey is made forcibly aware that he's getting old.
Release Date1978-11-01
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Strawberry Fields
An old man and a teenage boy, both neo-Nazis, are travelling across Germany to take funds to the party headquarters. On the way they encounter a young woman and things become difficult.
Release Date1985-01-09
DepartmentWriting
JobWriter
Vote Count1
A Real Summer
It is 1958, and the final debutante 'season'. Mary, a brilliant young writer and critic is befriended by Geraldine, a seemingly friendly young debutante of a similar age but a very different background. What starts as a friendship becomes something altogether more unsettling. This companion drama to Capturing Mary, charts Mary’s progress before she enters the dangerous world of Mr. Graham’s house and Greville White’s sphere of influence.
Release Date2007-11-10
DepartmentDirecting
JobDirector
Vote Count2