David Cunliffe (producer and director)

David Cunliffe (born 18 April 1935) is an English television director and producer whose long career, starting in 1961, encompasses numerous television movies as well as hundreds of episodes of some of Britain's most well remembered TV series and miniseries.

David Cunliffe
Born (1935-04-18) 18 April 1935
Cheam, Surrey, United Kingdom
OccupationTelevision producer and director
Years active1961 – present

Born in the outer London village of Cheam, David Cunliffe became interested in drama while attending Tiffins High School in Kingston upon Thames. This interest led to his winning, at age 16, a Queen's Scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) after which he worked for several years in repertory theatre around England until he became, in his mid-twenties, one Granada Television's directors during Coronation Street's earliest years. Over the succeeding decades he accumulated a very large body of work as a director, producer-director or executive producer, much at Yorkshire Television,[1] in such programmes as 1962's Before My Time, 1965's The Man in Room 17, the 1969 and 1970 programmes, Great Performances, Ryan International and Dr. Finlay's Casebook, 1971's Kate, 1972's The Onedin Line, 1973's Warship, 1974's Fall of Eagles and Good Girl, 1975's The Main Chance, 1976's Hadleigh, Forget Me Not and Dickens of London, 1977's Raffles and Beryl's Lot, 1979's Flambards and The Sandbaggers, 1981's The Good Companions and Get Lost!, 1982's Airline and ITV Playhouse, 1984's Sorrell and Son, 1985's The Beiderbecke Affair, 1986's Love and Marriage, 1989's A Bit of a Do,[2] 1995's Oliver's Travels, 2001's Victoria & Albert, 2006's The Shell Seekers and many others.[3]

Several of the TV series and other productions which David Cunliffe directed or produced were also broadcast in the United States. The Onedin Line achieved considerable popularity when it was broadcast by stations of the non-commercial PBS network. Two years after its original showing, Fall of Eagles was transmitted on cable/satellite station TBS and, in 1990, was shown on another cable/satellite station, Bravo which, at the time, was operating as a high-quality, non-commercial outlet devoted to the arts. One of the productions on which he worked, The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank, a 1988 Telecom Entertainment/Yorkshire Television film, shown by CBS, won a Primetime Emmy Award for its writer, William Hanley, as well as a number of nominations for other achievements, including acting, directing and producing, with David Cunliffe receiving a nomination as co-executive producer...one of the nine executives who were nominated for overseeing the production.

References
  1. In a 1998 interview, Carol Williams who, from 1977 to 1998, served as Yorkshire Television's head of scripts, recalls working with the head of drama, David Cunliffe
  2. "About 'A Bit of a Do'" (article mentions David Cunliffe's role as Head of Drama at Yorkshire Television and his engagement of David Nobbs "to write six hours of television about any subject that he chose" (The British Comedy Guide)
  3. David Cunliffe filmography at Fandango
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