My husband, Roderick Graham, who has died aged 81, was an award-winning television drama producer and director.
Among Roderick’s credits was the popular police series Z-Cars, first aired in the early 1960s, and Elizabeth R (1971), starring Glenda Jackson, which he produced and part-directed. It won four Primetime Emmys in Hollywood, the first British television series to win such an accolade. He also developed The Sextet (1972) – a series of six plays starring, among others, Denholm Elliott, Billie Whitelaw and Dennis Waterman.
In 1977 he became the first head of drama at BBC Scotland, where output included Boswell for the Defence, Sutherland’s Law, Lewis Grassic Gibbon’s A Scots Quair and original works by Jack Ronder, Tom Wright and Eddie Boyd. His production of George Mackay Brown’s Andrina, directed by Bill Forsyth, won the Grand Prix at the Celtic Film and Television festival (now the Celtic Media festival).
Roderick was born in Edinburgh to Alec, a photographer, and May (nee McCormack). He was educated at the Royal high school in Edinburgh and then the University of Edinburgh, where he studied Commonwealth and American history. After national service with the Royal Army Education Corps, he joined the BBC external services and then entered TV drama, working on the televised version of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Wars of the Roses, followed by a directing role on the Canterbury Tales and a drama documentary on Thomas Becket.
After his stint as head of drama at BBC Scotland, in 1986 he returned south as a freelance, his work including several episodes of Juliet Bravo and All Creatures Great and Small. He also wrote several radio plays, including Melford’s Axe (1988), about the man who beheaded Charles I, Trumpets and Foie Gras (1993), about the famous cleric Sydney Smith, and Good Morning Midnight (1995), an adaptation of the Jean Rhys book. All of these were produced by his first wife, Jane Morgan, with whom he remained friendly after their divorce.
Roderick also wrote biographies of famous Scots, including John Knox, Democrat (2001); The Great Infidel: A Life of David Hume (2004); An Accidental Tragedy: the Life of Mary Queen of Scots (2009), and Arbiter of Elegance: A Biography of Robert Adam (2009).
After we married in 1996 we moved back to Scotland, where we lived until his death.
