Arthur Hopcraft
Writing
Biography
Arthur Hopcraft (30 November 1932 – 22 November 2004) was a British screenwriter, well known for his TV plays such as The Nearly Man, and for his small-screen adaptations such as Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy; Hard Times, Bleak House, and Rebecca. Before taking up writing for TV, he was a sports journalist for The Guardian and The Observer, writing The Football Man: People and Passions in Soccer. He also had four other books published, including an autobiographical account of his childhood, and wrote the screenplay for the film Hostage. Hopcraft won the BAFTA Writers Award in 1986. Hopcraft was born in Shoeburyness, Essex. He soon moved to Cannock, Staffordshire, and as a teen, he started working at local newspapers. By the age of 17, he was reporting on the Stafford Rangers' semi-professional football games using the pseudonym "Linesman." After his service in the military, he worked at the Daily Mirror in Manchester and then The Guardian. He had assignments in west Africa, India and Brazil. In the mid-1960s, he began doing football writing at The Observer as well. From January 1968 he was a regular contributor to the IPC monthly Nova, his articles were mostly stories from his own life. He was a "self-described loner whose claustrophobia extended to refusing to use the London Underground." He never married, noting that "I tried both sexes, but ended up wishing they would all just go away".
Known For
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.
Play for Today
ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.
ITV Playhouse
Anthology series of dramatic works.
ITV Saturday Night Theatre
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a seven-part BBC2 spy drama written by Arthur Hopcraft, adapted from John le Carré's eponymous 1974 novel. The serial, which stars Alec Guinness, Alexander Knox, Ian Richardson, Michael Jayston, Bernard Hepton, Anthony Bate, Ian Bannen, George Sewell and Michael Aldridge, was broadcast from 10 September to 22 October 1979. George Smiley, the ageing master spy of the Cold War and once heir-apparent to Control, is brought back out of retirement to flush out a top level mole within the Circus. Smiley must travel back through his life and murky workings of the Circus to unravel the net spun by his nemesis Karla 'The Sandman' of the KGB and reveal the identity of the mole before he disappears.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Bleak House is BBC television drama first broadcast in 1985. The serial was adapted by Arthur Hopcraft from Charles Dickens' novel Bleak House and it was the second adaptation by the BBC.
Bleak House
Featuring dramatised versions of true stories that shocked mainstream Victorian society.
Victorian Scandals
Based on the Gothic romance novel by Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca is a classic tale of love and hate. Maxim De Winter marries a woman half his age only a year after his first wife, the beautiful and accomplished Rebecca, dies. She finds herself in an aristocratic social world her middle class upbringing did not prepare her for, and housekeeper Mrs Danvers despises her for taking her darling Rebecca's place. But these are not the only problems to face...
Rebecca
The life of British MI6 spy Magnus Pym, from his school days to his mysterious disappearance.
A Perfect Spy
A pair of lookalikes, one a former French aristocrat and the other an alcoholic English lawyer, fall in love with the same woman amongst the turmoil of the French Revolution.
A Tale of Two Cities
Hard Times is a four-part British television drama miniseries based on Charles Dickens' 1854 novel of the same name, a survey of English society and a satirisation of 19th century social and economic conditions. Wealthy, retired Coketown merchant Thomas Gradgrind devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his eldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits.
Hard Times
England, 1926. An American journalist looks for mystery writer Agatha Christie when she suddenly disappears without explanation, leaving no trace.
Agatha
A weary British spy retreats to a Buenos Aires hotel and recalls his last dirty job, complete with lover.
Hostage
Two women, looking for amusement on their afternoons off, visit a drinking club.
Wednesday Love
Two provincial newspaper reporters - one a young idealist starting out on his career, the other an embittered man who previously wrote for a failed national daily - swap views.
The Reporters
A middle class man finds life as a Labour MP challenging.
The Nearly Man
The story of four Lakeland walkers who attempt to climb a fell. The fells represent the highlight of their year. They all have dull and uninteresting jobs and their only chance of relieving the boredom is in the fells After five years of weekends together they had never managed to reach the top of the Horseshoe, but were always defeated by something trivial. By the sixth year their combined failure to get to the summit took on the proportions of a tragedy especially they all saw it matching the situation in their everyday lives. Filmed on location
The Mosedale Horseshoe
Play by Arthur Hopcraft about Christmas in a Northern town, and the relationship within a family.
Jingle Bells
"I like preaching... Only two things in my life have ever excited me as much: playing football and making love." But his congregation feel he's gone too far this time...