David Sullivan Proudfoot (Director)

Softly, Softly

Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.

Release Date1966-01-05

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count16

Vote Count1

The Onedin Line

The Onedin Line is a BBC television drama series which ran from 1971 to 1980. The series was created by Cyril Abraham. The series is set in Liverpool from 1860 to 1886 and deals with the rise of a shipping line, the Onedin Line, named after its owner James Onedin. Around this central theme are the lives of his family, most notably his brother and partner, shop owner Robert, and his sister Elizabeth, giving insight into the lifestyle and customs at the time, not only at sea, but also ashore. The series also illustrates some of the changes in business and shipping, such as from wooden to steel ships and from sailing ships to steam ships. It shows the role that ships played in affairs like international politics, uprisings and the slave trade.

Release Date1971-10-15

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count1

Vote Count6

Blake's 7

A group of convicts and outcasts fight a guerrilla war against the totalitarian Terran Federation from a highly advanced alien spaceship.

Release Date1978-01-02

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count3

Vote Count46

The Expert

The Expert is a British television series produced by the BBC between 1968 and 1976. The series starred Marius Goring as Dr. John Hardy, a pathologist working for the Home Office and was essentially a police procedural drama, with Hardy bringing his forensic knowledge to solve various cases. The Expert was created and produced by Gerard Glaister. The series was also one of the first BBC dramas to be made in colour, and throughout its four series had numerous high quality guest appearances by actors such as John Carson, Peter Copley, Rachel Kempson, Peter Vaughan, Clive Swift, Geoffrey Palmer, Peter Barkworth, Jean Marsh, Ray Brooks, George Sewell, Anthony Valentine, Bernard Lee, Lee Montague, Geoffrey Bayldon, Mike Pratt, Edward Fox, André Morell, Brian Blessed, Nigel Stock, Philip Madoc and Warren Clarke.

Release Date1968-07-05

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count2

Vote Count1

The Mask of Janus

In the fictional European country of Amalia, the political interests of the British, American and Communist espionage communities are explored. Eschewing the action formula of its ITV contemporaries, the series dealt more politically oriented plots such as defections to the west, awakening "sleeper" agents and the leaking of official secrets.

Release Date1965-10-08

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count3

Vote Count1

Doomwatch

Doomwatch is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC, which ran on BBC 1 between 1970 and 1972. The series was set in the then present-day, and dealt with a scientific government agency led by Doctor Spencer Quist, responsible for investigating and combating various ecological and technological dangers. The series was followed by a film adaptation produced by Tigon British Film Productions and released in 1972, and a revival TV film was broadcast on Channel 5 in 1999.

Release Date1970-02-09

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count3

Vote Count5

Warship

Written and filmed to reflect the reality of life in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines in the 1970s, most stories focus on the Captain and his fellow officers, with subplots dealing with life on the lower decks. Episodes typically featured a variety of events at sea (the Cold War, smuggling, the evacuation of civilians from crisis-hit places, etc.), as well as the personal lives of officers and ratings and the impact their personal lives had on their professional lives and duties.

Release Date1973-06-07

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count3

Vote Count2

Fall of Eagles

"Fall of Eagles" is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series portrays historical events from 1848 to 1918, dealing with the collapse of the ruling dynasties of Austria-Hungary (the Habsburgs), Germany (the Hohenzollerns) and Russia (the Romanovs).

Release Date1974-03-15

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count1

Vote Count9

Detective

A BBC anthology series featuring adaptations of detective stories over 45 episodes in three seasons that ran from 1964 to 1969. As with many BBC programmes made before the early 1970s, many of its episodes no longer exist. Of the eighteen episodes from the first season only twelve are currently known to exist; likewise six of the sixteen editions from the second run are considered lost, and just one of the final ten survives in the archives.

Release Date1964-03-30

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count1

Codename

Codename, which premiered in April 1970, was about the secretive MI17 Spy Organisation of the same name based in the residential hall of a Cambridge College. Eventually the series attained a more international flavour, although its base was always in Great Britain. Primarily Codename dealt with the themes of espionage and counter-espionage at the time of the Cold War of the sixties. Its cast contained many of Great Britain's most versatile and talented actors.

Release Date1970-04-07

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count1

Quiller

Quiller is a British drama television . Quiller is the alias of a fictional spy created by English novelist Elleston Trevor who featured in a series of Cold War thrillers written under the pseudonym "Adam Hall".

Release Date1975-08-29

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count2

Oil Strike North

Oil Strike North is a BBC television drama series produced in 1975. The series was created and produced by Gerard Glaister and dealt with life on Nelson One, a North Sea oil rig owned by the fictional company Triumph Oil. Eschewing the corporate power struggles of Mogul / The Troubleshooters and concentrating on more personal storylines, Oil Strike North was essentially a character study of how workers faced life on the rig and the impact it had on the lives of their families and loved ones. The scenario was later revived by the BBC for the mid-1990s drama Roughnecks. Oil Strike North lasted for one series of thirteen episodes. The leading cast members included Nigel Davenport, Glyn Owen, Barbara Shelley, Angela Douglas, Andrew Robertson, Richard Hurndall, Sean Caffrey and Maurice Roëves. Gerard Glaister later moved onto to produce the Second World War resistance drama Secret Army, the air freight series Buccaneer and then onto the boating soap serial Howards' Way. Two of the leading actors in Oil Strike North, Nigel Davenport and Glyn Owen, also later appeared in Howards' Way.

Release Date1975-08-26

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count2

Vote Count1

The First Lady

The First Lady is a British television drama produced for BBC One, starring Thora Hird as crusading local councillor Sarah Danby, set around the fictional Lancashire borough of Furness. Capitalising on the popularity of its lead actress, The First Lady was a down-to-earth series exploring the inner workings of local government.

Release Date1968-04-07

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count5

The Spies

A spin-off/rebranding of the previous 1965 series The Mask of Janus, The Spies is a more conventional espionage thriller than its predecessor, being explicitly concerned with the actual operations of British secret service agents stationed in the fictional European country of Amalia.

Release Date1966-01-01

DepartmentProduction

JobProducer

Episode Count15

The Venturers

The Venturers is a British television series produced by the BBC in 1975. The series, created by Donald Bull, had started out as an edition of Drama Playhouse in 1972 before being commissioned as an ongoing series. The Venturers took place in the high pressure world of Prince's Merchant Bank and dealt with the intricacies of high finance amongst its millionaire clients. Geoffrey Keen starred as director Gerald Lang, in a virtual reprise of his role as oil executive Brian Stead in Mogul / The Troubleshooters. Other major cast members included James Kerry, David Buck, Cyril Luckham and William Squire. The Venturers lasted for a single series of ten episodes.

Release Date1975-01-07

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count2

Tycoon

Tycoon is a British television drama created by John Sichel, broadcast from 18 September to 11 December 1978. Instead of taking on her late husband Sydney's job, Diana Clark loyally turns her talents to writing his biography, dredging up plenty of twists and turns along the way.

Release Date1978-09-18

DepartmentDirecting

JobDirector

Episode Count1