
David Graham
Acting
Biography
David Michael Graham (born July 11, 1925) was an English actor. He voiced the Daleks in Doctor Who, Gordon Tracy, Brains, Aloysius Parker and Kyrano in Thunderbirds, and Grandpa Pig in Peppa Pig. Born in London on 11 July 1925. His sister had married a G.I. and had moved to the United States, and his uncle had run away there, so he became an actor after leaving his Orthodox Jewish household. He trained in New York City at the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of the Theatre with Sanford Meisner, following service in the Royal Air Force as a radar mechanic. Graham's first breakout role before returning to England was Givola in The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, alongside Leonard Rossiter. While playing characters in the TV series Private Investigator in 1958, Graham met writer and producer Gerry Anderson, who was planning his first puppet productions. Graham mentioned to him that he could pull off accents well. His second voiceover role in Four Feather Falls was Grandpa Twink, whom he based on Walter Brennan. He subsequently voiced Dr. Beaker, Zarin and Mitch the Monkey in Supercar, Mat Matic and Lieutenant Ninety in Fireball XL5 and various guest characters in Stingray. Graham also played Johnny in Crossroads to Crime, a live-action film Anderson directed. In 1963, he became the voice of the Daleks in Doctor Who, he voiced the Daleks in all four of their major First Doctor era appearances, as well as two 1960s feature films: Dr. Who and the Daleks and Daleks' Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. Graham also voiced the Mechonoids and played the onscreen role of Charlie in The Gunfighters. He returned to his role as the voice of the Daleks in 2023, when he recorded new lines for that year's official colourised recut of the 1963 serial The Daleks for the show's 60th anniversary. In 1965, Graham became the voice of Gordon Tracy, Brains, Aloysius Parker and Kyrano in Thunderbirds, as well as its film sequels: Thunderbirds Are Go and Thunderbird 6. He did not believe Brains had a stutter, claiming that he was instead excitedly trying to find the words to explain his latest ideas. He based the voice of Parker on a waiter at the King's Arms pub in Cookham, and he and Ray Barrett shared roles as many of the guest villains. Although he was not highly paid for production, the many repeats earned him a lot more. Parker became Anderson's favourite voice. Between 1975 and 1977, Graham was part of the Radio Drama Company. In 1979, he played Professor Kerensky in the Doctor Who story City of Death. From 2015 to 2020, he reprised his role as Parker in Thunderbirds Are Go, a reboot of the original series.
Known For

The residents of Coronation Street are ordinary, working-class people, and the show follows them through regular social and family interactions at home, in the workplace, and in their local pub, the Rovers Return Inn. Britain's longest-running soap.
Coronation Street

The adventures of The Doctor, a time-traveling humanoid alien known as a Time Lord. He explores the universe in his TARDIS, a sentient time-traveling spaceship. Its exterior appears as a blue British police box, which was a common sight in Britain in 1963 when the series first aired. Along with a succession of companions, The Doctor faces a variety of foes while working to save civilizations, help ordinary people, and right many wrongs.
Doctor Who

Peppa Pig is an energetic piggy who lives with Mummy, Daddy, and little brother George. She loves to jump in mud puddles and make loud snorting noises.
Peppa Pig

A quirky spy show of the adventures of eccentrically suave British Agent John Steed and his predominantly female partners. Jonathan Steed - an urbane, proper gentleman spy - teams with various assistants throughout the series' run, including Dr. David Keel, Cathy Gale, Emma Peel and Tara King, to repeatedly save the world from diabolical schemes plotted by equally diabolical evil-doers (among them robots and man-eating monsters).
The Avengers

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

Simon Templar is The Saint, a handsome, sophisticated, debonair, modern-day Robin Hood who recovers ill-gotten wealth and redistributes it to those in need.
The Saint

A BBC television anthology series featuring productions of classic and contemporary stage plays usually broadcast on BBC1. Each production featured a different work, often using prominent British stage actors in the leading roles. The series was transmitted from October 1965 to September 1983.
BBC Play of the Month

Danger Man is a British television series which was broadcast between 1960 and 1962, and again between 1964 and 1968. The series featured Patrick McGoohan as secret agent John Drake. Ralph Smart created the programme and wrote many of the scripts. Danger Man was financed by Lew Grade's ITC Entertainment.
Danger Man

The BBC's answer to Dynasty, Howards' Way was launched in 1985 with an enormous 1 million pound budget. The main characters in the show were 'best boat designer in the world' Tom Howard, his boutique running wife Jan Howard, 'I'll have a drink' Jack Rolfe and a nasty man called Ken Masters. It starred Maurice Colbourne.
Howards' Way

Sunday Night Theatre was a long-running series of televised live television plays screened by BBC Television from early 1950 until 1959. The productions for the first five years or so of the run were re-staged live the following Thursday, partly because of technical limitations in this era, and the theatrical basis of early television drama. Some of the earliest collaborations between Rudolph Cartier and Nigel Neale were produced for this series, including Arrow to the Heart and Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Sunday night drama slot was subsequently renamed The Sunday-Night Play which ran for four seasons between 1960 and 1963. ITV transmitted its own unrelated run of Sunday Night Theatre between 1971 and 1974.
Sunday 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

World in Action was Granada Television’s flagship ITV current affairs series, running from 7 Jan 1963 to 7 Dec 1998, and built a reputation for film-led investigative reporting and a forceful editorial stance. Its journalism produced major public and political repercussions—including investigations associated with miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six—and it also served as a platform for landmark documentary projects, including the first broadcast of “Seven Up!” as part of the strand in 1964.
World in Action

An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.
Thirty-Minute Theatre

Justice is a British drama television series which originally aired on ITV in 39 hour-long episodes between 8 August 1971 and 16 October 1974. Margaret Lockwood stars as Harriet Peterson a female barrister in the North of England. It was made by Yorkshire Television and was based loosely on Justice Is a Woman, an episode of ITV Playhouse broadcast in 1969 in which Lockwood had previously also played a barrister. The theme music was Crown Imperial by William Walton.
Justice

Thunderbirds is a 1960s British science-fiction television series which was produced using a mixed method of marionette puppetry and scale-model special effects termed "Supermarionation". The series is set in the 21st century and follows the exploits of International Rescue, a secret organization formed to save people in mortal danger with the help of technologically advanced land, sea, air and space vehicles and equipment, launched from a hidden base on Tracy Island in the South Pacific Ocean.
Thunderbirds

Remake of the hit 1960s television show. In the 21st century, Jeff Tracy, a former astronaut, amasses a colossal fortune and decides that he must use it to benefit others. His answer to this desire is to create International Rescue, a unique private emergency response service equipped with customized designed vehicles and equipment that enable the organization to react to any crisis whether it be in sea, air, land, or space. Jeff's five sons volunteer to operate as the pilots and field agents, as well "Brain" who acts as the teams engineer. In addition, Jeff's friend, Kyrano and his daughter Tanusha aka Kayo (based on the original series Tin-Tin character) agree to be the support staff. In addition to the field team, IR also maintains an intelligence network with Lady Penelope and her ex-con chauffeur, Parker as the chief agents in this arm.
Thunderbirds Are Go!

The friendship between fairy princess Holly and Ben Elf in an enchanted magical kingdom of elves and fairies.
Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom
BBC anthology drama series that ran over four seasons and replaced the previous BBC Sunday Night Theatre series.
Sunday-Night Play

Softly, Softly: Task Force is a police based drama series which ran on BBC 1 from 1969 to 1976. It was a revamp of Softly, Softly, itself a spin-off from Z-Cars. The change was made partly to coincide with the coming of colour broadcasting to the BBC's main channel BBC1. The programme was due to be called simply Task Force, but reluctant to sacrifice a much-loved brand the BBC compromised this so it became Softly, Softly: Task Force.
Softly Softly: Task Force
The global adventures of Ken Franklin, ace operative of the William J. Burns Detective Agency, qualify as a pop-culture curio if only for star Arthur---later Art---Fleming, who hosted the original `Jeopardy!'