
Brian Parker
Directing
Biography
Brian Parker was born in 1929 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England. He was a director and actor, known for several Play For Today's, The Beiderbecke Tapes, The Guardians, Big Brother and Inspector Morse. He passed away in 2020 at the age of 91.
Known For

Crown Court is an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984.
Crown Court

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.
The Wednesday Play

Inspector Morse is a detective drama based on Colin Dexter's series of Chief Inspector Morse novels. The series starred John Thaw as Chief Inspector Morse and Kevin Whately as Sergeant Lewis, as well as a large cast of notable actors and actresses.
Inspector Morse

A one-hour anthology television series of one-off contemporary and classic dramas produced by the BBC.
Playhouse

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

Upstairs: the wealthy, aristocratic Bellamys. Downstairs: their loyal and lively servants. For nearly 30 years, they share a fashionable townhouse at 165 Eaton Place in London’s posh Belgravia neighborhood, surviving social change, political upheaval, scandals, and the horrors of the First World War.
Upstairs, Downstairs

Anthology series of dramatic works.
ITV Saturday Night Theatre

Screenplay was a drama anthology television series, broadcast on BBC between 1986 and 1993. Numerous episodes were produced including one named "Boswell and Johnson's Tour of the Western Islands" starring Robbie Coltrane as English writer Samuel Johnson who in the autumn of 1773, visits the Hebrides off the north-west coast of Scotland. That episode was directed by John Byrne and co-starred John Sessions and Celia Imrie.
ScreenPlay

Anthology series of half hour plays produced in BBC's Television Centre's studios.
Centre Play

Six Days of Justice is a British television drama anthology series of single plays created by Thames Television and shown on ITV from 1972 to 1975, over four seasons of six episodes apiece.
Six Days of Justice

The Scales of Justice is a series of thirteen British cinema featurettes produced from 1962 to 1967 for Anglo-Amalgamated at Merton Park Studios in London. The first nine were made in black and white, and the last four in colour. The finale, Payment in Kind, was Merton Park's final production. Episodes were based on criminal cases, and each film was introduced by criminologist Edgar Lustgarten. The series derives its title from the symbolic scales held by the statue of Justice, situated above the dome of London's Central Criminal Court, The Old Bailey. The opening narration describes her as having "in her right hand, the Sword of Power and Retribution, and in her left – The Scales of Justice".
The Scales of Justice

London itself takes the starring role in this series of plays from the BBC – a role which varies between hero and villain, enchantress and harpy. The series features extensive location filming, ranging from Soho to the Law Courts, Wembley to the docks. Of the twelve episodes, eleven are believed to be lost.
Londoners

In a near-future 1980s, England is under autocratic rule by a government that uses a paramilitary force known as The Guardians to maintain control, while a fragmented resistance group tries to provoke the state into revealing its true brutality.
The Guardians

Black Watch Sergeant Alec Ritchie and his new wife Jennifer move to a rundown sheep farm in the Scottish countryside.
Strathblair
A completely lost BBC1 drama series centred on the King family, who love, live, fight and work around a harbour in the Thames estuary.
King of the River

An anthology series of BBC television dramas on sexual themes. The same cast are featured in each production.
The Sextet

Time for Murder is a 1985 British anthology crime series produced by Granada Television, featuring six standalone, hour-long mystery episodes with twists, dark humour, and macabre elements, starring popular actors like Charles Dance and Claire Bloom. Each episode presents a different story, such as a tutor becoming a murder suspect or a writer's spa vacation turning sinister, all united by the theme that 'there is always a time for murder'.
Time for Murder

With Norma West, Annette Wilkie-Miller, Francesca Annis, Eileen Atkins. An anthology of short mysterious dramas, each with a supernatural twist.
Shades of Darkness

The Beiderbecke Tapes is a two-part 1987 British television comedy-drama serial written by Alan Plater. The second installment in The Beiderbecke Trilogy, it stars James Bolam and Barbara Flynn as schoolteachers Trevor Chaplin and Jill Swinburne. When a tape recording of a conversation about nuclear waste inadvertently falls into Chaplin's hands, he and Swinburne find themselves being pursued by national security agents.
The Beiderbecke Tapes
An anthology of six standalone plays presented relationships either beginning or ending in love – but the outcome was not always marriage (or happiness). A second series of five episodes aired in 1986.