Laurence Bowen

Laurence J. Bowen (born 17 August 1964) is a British television and film producer.[1]

Career

After graduating from Oxford University in the 1980s, Bowen began his television career working for Bill Bryden at BBC Scotland as a researcher and trainee script editor before moving on to run the development arm of non-profit organisation First Film Foundation. In 1993 he left to work for Simon Curtis in the BBC where he produced Paradise (with Penny Downie and Dave Hill) for BBC2.

Soon after he was appointed Head of Drama at Diverse Productions where he went on to produce The Hello Girls, Stone, Scissors, Paper (with Juliet Stevenson and Ken Stott, winner of the inaugural Dennis Potter Award) and Dual Balls (nominated for Bafta Film Award). Bowen and Philip Clarke then founded production company Feelgood Fiction in 1997. Bowen won a BAFTA for My Life as a Popat and a BAFTA nomination for Suburban Shootout together with RTS, Broadcast and Chicago Film Festival awards, Prix Jeunesse, Rose D'or, Emmy and BANFF nominations and most recently the Monte Carlo Golden Nymph for Best International Producer of the Year.

Bowen's Producer and Executive Producer credits at Feelgood also include The Hello Girls (Series 2), Badger, Miranda, one-off TV films Double Bill, The English Harem by Anthony McCarten, George and Bernard Shaw and comedy series Gates for Sky UK.

Gates was acquired by Warner Brothers and NBC and a US pilot commissioned written by Cathy Yuspa and Josh Goldstein and directed by Mark Buckland.[2] A US version of Suburban Shootout was developed by HBO and a pilot commissioned written by Michelle Ashford and directed by Barry Sonnenfeld.[3] My Life as a Popat was acquired by Nickelodeon. All three series were co-created and executive produced by Bowen.

Bowen recently produced the BAFTA nominated BBC drama "Found" and executive produced the BAFTA-winning BBC "Lizard Girl".

In 2016 he produced feature film "The Eichmann Show" starring Martin Freeman and Anthony LaPaglia with Paul Andrew Williams directing, financed by the BBC and distributed by The Weinstein Company in the US.[4]

His "Unmade Movies" season of world premiere productions of lost screenplays by the greatest writers of the Twentieth Century is commissioned by BBC Radio 4. James McAvoy, Mark Strong, Hugh Laurie, David Suchet, Glenda Jackson, Anne-Marie Duff, Ellie Bamber, Rose Leslie, Michael Sheen, Nikesh Patel, Meera Syal and Rebecca Front have starred in dramas by Orson Welles, Alfred Hitchcock, Harold Pinter, Ernest Lehman, Dennis Potter, Alexander Mackendrick, Jay Presson Allen and Arthur Miller. Directed by Richard Eyre, Jamie Lloyd, Mark Gatiss, Joanna Hogg, Hope Dickson Leach and Adrian Noble.[5]

Bowen launched new production company Dancing Ledge Productions with backing from FremantleMedia in June 2016 and a development deal with Martin Freeman.[6]

Dancing Ledge Productions is currently in production with "Porters" for UKTV / Dave starring Rutger Hauer, Susan Wokoma, Edward Easton, Claudia Jessie, Daniel Mays and Sanjeev Bhaskar and written by Dan Sefton.[7] The series has just been recommissioned for a second series with Camilla Whitehill and Lee Coan joining as writers to TX in 2019.[8]

Dancing Ledge is also co-producing the UK shoot of The New Pope for Wildside directed by Paolo Sorrentino starring Jude Law and John Malkovich for HBO and Sky Italia.[9]

It is the first UK TV company to introduce a Writer In Residence programme and has just set up a mentoring scheme for new writing talent with The ScreenSkills High-end TV Skills Fund and mentors Jed Mercurio, Paul Abbott, Jimmy McGovern, Sally Wainwright, Levi David Addai, Jack Thorne and Kay Mellor.[10]

Dancing Ledge most recently developed Netflix's Delhi Crime with Golden Karavan and Ivanhoe Pictures, premiering at Sundance in January 2019, written and directed by Richie Mehta.

It is currently in production with event drama The Salisbury Poisonings for the BBC following the true life story of the Novichok chemical attack in 2018.[11]


Suburban Shootout

In the US, HBO and now ABC are developing a US version of Suburban Shootout[12] and NBC a US version of Gates.[13] Bowen co-created and is executive producing both shows.

References
  1. Laurence Bowen at IMDb
  2. "Article in Deadline"
  3. "Article in Variety"
  4. "Article in Deadline.com"
  5. "Article in Deadline.com"
  6. "Article in Variety"
  7. "Article in Digital Spy"
  8. "Article in comedy.co.uk"
  9. "Feature in Den of Geek"
  10. "Article in Broadcast Magazine"
  11. "Article in Deadline"
  12. Andreeva, Nellie (7 October 2011). "ABC Developing U.S. Version Of British Crime Comedy 'Suburban Shootout'". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
  13. Andreeva, Nellie (21 September 2012). "Fox Buys LIVE Family Sitcom From Cathy Yuspa And Josh Goldsmith With Penalty". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 16 October 2012.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.