Ground-breaking producer David Rose, made both BAFTA and BFI Fellow in recognition of his outstanding contribution to film and television culture, talks about his career, with film extracts and specially shot contributions from writers and colleagues. 

Having begun his career as a stage manager and director in theatre rep, in 1954 David joined the drama department at the BBC and by the late 1950s was part of Elwyn Jones’s celebrated Dramatised Documentary unit, where his work led to the opportunity to produce a ‘realistic’ police series. Between 1962 and 1965, David produced 176 episodes of Z Cars, part of a new era of progressive contemporary drama under the BBC’s new Director General Hugh Carlton Greene. Conceived by Troy Kennedy Martin, the series was propelled to success by David’s formidable assembly of talent, including writers Alan Plater and Allan Prior, and directors John McGrath and Ken Loach. 

Alan Bleasdale

Respected for his production and management skills, and deeply committed to the primacy of the writer in the creative process, David was ideally positioned to take on the role as Head of English Regions Drama, based at Pebble Mill Studios. He commissioned established writers (such as David Rudkin and Peter Terson) and new talents, including Alan Bleasdale, Ian McEwan and Willy Russell, to write dramas that would speak of life and culture outside the mainly southern, metropolitan-centred drama being produced at BBC Television Centre. Terson’s The Fishing Party (1972), Plater’s Land of Green Ginger (1973), Mike Leigh’s Nuts in May (1976), Philip Martin’s Gangsters (1976-78), Michael Abbensetts’s Empire Road (1978-79) and Bleasdale’s The Black Stuff (1980) came out of this period. 

In 1981 David joined the new Channel 4 as Senior Commissioning Editor for Fiction, responsible for both the channel’s drama output, including television (such as Brookside), short films, including the Short and Curlies series, and feature films for Film on Four. He is credited as helping to revitalise the British film industry with productions that include Neil Jordan’s Angel (1982), Peter Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract  (1982), Stephen Frears’s My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Jordan’s Mona Lisa (1986) and Terence Davies’s Distant Voices, Still Lives (1988).

Tickets & Pricing

Spring Season 2011 ticketing applies.

This event is expected to end around 22.00.