Writing

John McGrath

Born July 1, 1935 · Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, UK

Died January 22, 2002 · aged 66

Born in Birkenhead from Irish Catholic stock, John McGrath was a British playwright, screenwriter. producer, director and socialist who took up the cause of Scottish independence and the principles of a radical, popular theatre with the creation of the 7:84 theatre company alongside his wife, Elizabeth MacLennan, and brother-in-law, David MacLennan. His most famous plays are arguably The Cheviot, …

Known For

My Life in Pink

My Life in Pink · 1997

My Life in Pink

MovieDramaComedy

Ludovic is waiting for a miracle. With six-year-old certainty, she believes she was meant to be a little girl -- and that the mistake will soon be corrected. But where she expects the miraculous, Ludo finds only rejection, isolation, and guilt -- as the intense reactions of family, friends, and neighbors strip away every innocent lace and bauble.

Robin Hood

Robin Hood · 1991

MovieAdventureDrama

The Swashbuckling legend of Robin Hood unfolds in the 12th century when the mighty Normans ruled England with an iron fist.

Carrington

Carrington · 1995

MovieHistoryDrama

Painter Dora Carrington develops an intimate but extremely complex bond with writer Lytton Strachey. Though Lytton is a homosexual, he is enchanted by the mysterious Dora and they begin a lifelong friendship that has strangely romantic undertones. Eventually, Lytton and Dora decide to live together, despite the fact that the latter has fallen in love with military man Ralph Partridge, whom she plans to marry.

Billion Dollar Brain

Billion Dollar Brain · 1967

Billion Dollar Brain

A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?

Double Bill

Double Bill · 1969

MovieDramaTV Movie

In the first part, The Compartment, an insane man boards a quiet railway coach and starts to annoy a patient man trying to read a paper with incessant small talk in an increasingly menacing manner until he finally pulls out a gun and screaming class hatred bile, humiliates the man until his stop is reached. In part two, Playmates, he breaks into a lonely house and proceeds to terrorise a spinster woman who lives there.

Aberdeen

Aberdeen · 2000

MovieDramaComedy

Kaisa is a Scot, a successful London lawyer, who snorts coke and has one-night stands with strangers. Her mother calls from Aberdeen with some story begging her to fly to Norway and collect her alcoholic dad whom she hasn't seen in years.

The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something

The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something · 1980

The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something

MovieDramaMusic

Frank, a young lad from Sheffield, leaves home to seek his fortune in London; he finds the big city not all what he had expected

The Reckoning

The Reckoning · 1970

Michael Marler, a successful businessman in London, is about to make his way to the top. After 37 years, the death of his father brings him back to his hometown of Liverpool, where he’s confronted with his lost Irish roots. He finds out that his father died in a fight with some Anglo-Saxon teddy boys. It becomes a matter of honour for him to take his revenge without involving the police.

Filmography

Sort

My Life in Pink

My Life in Pink · 1997

My Life in Pink

MovieDramaComedy

Ludovic is waiting for a miracle. With six-year-old certainty, she believes she was meant to be a little girl -- and that the mistake will soon be corrected. But where she expects the miraculous, Ludo finds only rejection, isolation, and guilt -- as the intense reactions of family, friends, and neighbors strip away every innocent lace and bauble.

Co-Producer

Robin Hood

Robin Hood · 1991

MovieAdventureDrama

The Swashbuckling legend of Robin Hood unfolds in the 12th century when the mighty Normans ruled England with an iron fist.

Writer

Carrington

Carrington · 1995

MovieHistoryDrama

Painter Dora Carrington develops an intimate but extremely complex bond with writer Lytton Strachey. Though Lytton is a homosexual, he is enchanted by the mysterious Dora and they begin a lifelong friendship that has strangely romantic undertones. Eventually, Lytton and Dora decide to live together, despite the fact that the latter has fallen in love with military man Ralph Partridge, whom she plans to marry.

Producer

Billion Dollar Brain

Billion Dollar Brain · 1967

Billion Dollar Brain

A former British spy stumbles into in a plot to overthrow Communism with the help of a supercomputer. But who is working for whom?

Screenplay

Double Bill

Double Bill · 1969

MovieDramaTV Movie

In the first part, The Compartment, an insane man boards a quiet railway coach and starts to annoy a patient man trying to read a paper with incessant small talk in an increasingly menacing manner until he finally pulls out a gun and screaming class hatred bile, humiliates the man until his stop is reached. In part two, Playmates, he breaks into a lonely house and proceeds to terrorise a spinster woman who lives there.

Director

Aberdeen

Aberdeen · 2000

MovieDramaComedy

Kaisa is a Scot, a successful London lawyer, who snorts coke and has one-night stands with strangers. Her mother calls from Aberdeen with some story begging her to fly to Norway and collect her alcoholic dad whom she hasn't seen in years.

Co-Producer

The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something

The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something · 1980

The Adventures of Frank: Everybody's Fiddling Something

MovieDramaMusic

Frank, a young lad from Sheffield, leaves home to seek his fortune in London; he finds the big city not all what he had expected

Director

The Reckoning

The Reckoning · 1970

Michael Marler, a successful businessman in London, is about to make his way to the top. After 37 years, the death of his father brings him back to his hometown of Liverpool, where he’s confronted with his lost Irish roots. He finds out that his father died in a fight with some Anglo-Saxon teddy boys. It becomes a matter of honour for him to take his revenge without involving the police.

Screenplay

The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil · 1974

The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

MovieDramaMusic

In their songs, comedy and exuberant music, a travelling theatre company give a fiercely polemic account of Scottish history, from the aftermath of Culloden to the oil boom. Their production before a live audience is intercut with filmed reconstructions of the Highland Clearances and the Victorian obsession with hunting stags.

Writer

The Adventures of Frank: Seeds of Ice

The Adventures of Frank: Seeds of Ice · 1980

The Adventures of Frank: Seeds of Ice

MovieDramaMusic

In his further adventures Frank finds success and unhappiness.

Director

The Dressmaker

The Dressmaker · 1988

MovieDramaRomance

In England during World War II, a repressed dressmaker and her sister struggle looking after their 17-year-old niece, who is having a delusional affair with an American soldier.

Writer

The Day of Ragnarok

The Day of Ragnarok · 1965

The Day of Ragnarok

“Fantasy of the end of civilization. Lesbians commit mayhem during a nuclear war in a wood.” - BFI.

Director

The Diary of a Nobody

The Diary of a Nobody · 1964

The Diary of a Nobody

MovieComedyTV Movie

Ken Russell's silent film treatment of the 19th century comic novel by the Brothers Grossmith - George and Weedon. Starring Bryan Pringle, Avril Elgar and Murray Melvin. Adapted by Ken Russell and John McGrath. First shown on BBC2 at 10.10pm on Saturday 12th December 1964 - as part of the 'Six' strand.

Writer

Half the Picture

Half the Picture · 1996

Half the Picture

MovieDramaTV Movie

A dramatized account of the Scott Inquiry about the sales of arms to Iraq.

Writer

The Bouncing Boy

The Bouncing Boy · 1972

The Bouncing Boy

MovieDramaTV Movie

A young couple have a baby boy. However, the new father doesn't take to his new position quite as well as expected.

Writer

The Virgin Soldiers

The Virgin Soldiers · 1969

The Virgin Soldiers

The core of the plot is the romantic triangle formed by the protagonist, a conscripted soldier named Private Brigg, a worldly professional soldier named Sergeant Driscoll, and Phillipa Raskin, the daughter of the Regimental Sergeant Major. The location is a British army base in Singapore during the Malayan Emergency.

Writer

The Bofors Gun

The Bofors Gun · 1968

A national service NCO (David Warner) comes face to face with an embittered Irish Gunner (Nicol Williamson) who is determined to humiliate him.

Writer

Blood Red Roses

Blood Red Roses · 1986

Blood Red Roses

A woman looks back on her life as a political activist in Scotland from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Director

Orkney

MovieDramaTV Movie

Three stories reflecting life in the Orkney Islands, two set in the past, and one in the present.

Writer

The Long Roads

The Long Roads · 1993

MovieDramaRomance

An elderly woman learns that she is dying of cancer. She and her husband leave their small farm on the Isle of Skye to visit their children to inform them of the news. During the journey, the couple rediscover their love for each other.

Writer

Exit 19

Exit 19 · 1966

A frank dialogue on sexual likes and dislikes that place between a man and his mistress in bed together.

Producer

Play for Today

Play for Today · 1970

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.

Director

The Wednesday Play

The Wednesday Play · 1964

The Wednesday Play

An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.

Director

Z-Cars

Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.

Director

Screen Two

Screen Two · 1985

Series of single made-for-television dramas.

Writer

Diary of a Young Man

Diary of a Young Man · 1964

Diary of a Young Man

A six-part BBC drama series following two young men from northern England as they move to London in search of work and opportunity, encountering relationships, social challenges, and the realities of urban life in 1960s Britain.

Writer

Border Warfare

Border Warfare · 1990

SeriesDramaWar & Politics

A three-episode mini-series chronicling the history of Scotland from ancient times through the union with England and culminating with the rise of Thatcherism and the introduction of the Poll Tax.

Director