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Troy Kennedy Martin

Troy Kennedy Martin

Writing

Biography

Troy Kennedy Martin (15 February 1932 – 15 September 2009) was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter best known for creating the long running BBC TV police series Z-Cars, and for the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear drama Edge of Darkness. Kennedy Martin's best-known work for the cinema was the screenplay for the original version of The Italian Job.

Known For

The Wednesday Play
5.2

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

1964
Z-Cars
7.3

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.

Z-Cars

1962
The Sweeney
8.0

Jack Regan, an unethical officer of the Flying Squad, uses unorthodox methods to pursue criminals with the help of his partner, George Carter.

The Sweeney

1975
Softly, Softly
7.5

Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.

Softly, Softly

1966
The Italian Job
6.8

Charlie Croker pulled off the crime of a lifetime. The one thing that he didn't plan on was being double-crossed. Along with a drop-dead gorgeous safecracker, Croker and his team take off to re-steal the loot and end up in a pulse-pounding, pedal-to-the-metal chase that careens up, down, above and below the streets of Los Angeles.

The Italian Job

2003
Out of the Unknown
7.1

Out of the Unknown is a British television science fiction anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC2 in four series between 1965 and 1971. Each episode was a dramatisation of a science fiction short story; some were created for the series, but most were adaptations of already published stories. The first three years were exclusively science fiction, but that genre was abandoned in the final year in favour of horror and fantasy. A number of episodes were wiped during the early 1970s, as was standard procedure at the time.

Out of the Unknown

1965
ITV Play of the Week
4.0

A UK anthology series of single plays from major playwrights old and new. It ran from 1955 to 1974, producing about five hundred ninety-minute episodes from Granada Television. Season 1 also incorporates the Plays from the 'H.M. Tennant Globe Theatre' series, some of which were incorporated and labelled in listings as official Play of the Week episodes and some of which were played in place of Play of the Week episodes in alternative ITV regions. All 8 plays have been incorporated into this entry for convenience.

ITV Play of the Week

1955
Ferrari
6.4

Set during the summer of 1957. Ex-racecar driver, Enzo Ferrari, is in crisis. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for one son and the acknowledgement of another.

Ferrari

2023
Reilly: Ace of Spies
7.0

Reilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatising the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th-century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage.

Reilly: Ace of Spies

1983
Fall of Eagles
7.0

"Fall of Eagles" is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series portrays historical events from 1848 to 1918, dealing with the collapse of the ruling dynasties of Austria-Hungary (the Habsburgs), Germany (the Hohenzollerns) and Russia (the Romanovs).

Fall of Eagles

1974
Kelly's Heroes
7.4

A misfit group of World War II American soldiers goes AWOL to rob a bank behind German lines.

Kelly's Heroes

1970
Red Heat
6.2

A tough Russian policeman is forced to partner up with a cocky Chicago police detective when he is sent to Chicago to apprehend a Georgian drug lord who killed his partner and fled the country.

Red Heat

1988
Redcap
8.0

Redcap is a British television series produced by ABC Weekend Television for ITV. John Thaw stars as Sergeant John Mann, a member of the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police. It ran for 26 episodes over two series between 1964 and 1966, being about 50 minutes in a 60 minute time slot. Surprisingly for a 1960s ABC Weekend Television programme, 23 of the 26 episodes still exist.

Redcap

1964
The Italian Job
6.9

Charlie's got a 'job' to do. Having just left prison he finds one of his friends has attempted a high-risk job in Torino, Italy, right under the nose of the mafia. Charlie's friend doesn't get very far, so Charlie takes over the 'job'. Using three Mini Coopers, a couple of Jaguars, and a bus, he hopes to bring Torino to a standstill, steal a fortune in gold and escape in the chaos.

The Italian Job

1969
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7.3

Barlow at Large is a British television programme created by Troy Kennedy Martin and Elwyn Jones. It broadcast from September 1971 to February 1975, with a total of 29 episodes across four series. Stratford Johns reprises his role of DCI Charles Barlow from Z-Cars, Softly, Softly, and Softly, Softly: Taskforce. Barlow at Large originated as a three-part self-contained spin-off from Softly, Softly in 1971 with Barlow co-opted by the home office to investigate police corruption in Wales. Johns departed in 1972, but returned for a further series of Barlow at Large in the following year, Barlow having gone on full-time secondment to the Home Office. In 1974, the series was rebranded Barlow and two further series of eight episodes each followed, introducing DI Tucker. After the finale's transmission in February 1975, Barlow was next seen in the programme Second Verdict in which he, alongside a former colleague, investigates unsolved cases and unsafe historical convictions.

Barlow

1971
Edge of Darkness
8.1

Environmental activist Emma Craven is murdered in front of her father, local police inspector Ronald Craven. Investigating the death leads him through a haunting revelation of the murkiness of British nuclear policy of the 1980s.

Edge of Darkness

1985
No image
6.5

An incompetently managed zoo becomes a metaphor for the state of Britain as a nuclear crisis looms over Europe.

The Old Men at the Zoo

1983
Hostile Waters
6.1

Based on true events, an American submarine collides into a Soviet sub of the coast of America and an ensuing standoff occurs that could lead to total annihilation.

Hostile Waters

1997
No image
7.0

Second Verdict is a six-part 1976 BBC television series, a dramatised documentaries of classic criminal cases and unsolved crimes from history re-appraised by fictional police officers. Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor reprised for a final time their double-act as Detective Chief Superintendents Barlow and Watt, hugely popular with TV audiences from the long-running series Z-Cars; Softly, Softly; and Barlow at Large.

Second Verdict

1976
Red Dust
5.9

Sarah Barcant, a lawyer in New York City who grew up in South Africa, returns to her childhood dwelling place to intercede for Alex Mpondo, a Black South African politician who was tortured during apartheid.

Red Dust

2004