Lucy Gannon

British playwright, television writer and producer

Lucy Gannon
Born	1948 UK
Occupation	Playwright, television writer, and producer
Nationality	British
Period	1987–
Genre	Drama
Notable awards	The Eileen Anderson Award, The Richard Burton Drama Award, the 1989-90 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize., The BAFTA Cymru

Lucy Gannon, MBE (born 1948) is a British playwright, television writer, and producer. She is best known for creating series such as Soldier Soldier and Bramwell.

Early life

Gannon was born to a military father. Gannon once worked as a military policewoman, a residential social worker, and a nurse, and lived in a concrete council house with no central heating. Her late husband George worked as an engineer. She later moved to a converted barn in Derbyshire and now lives near Cardigan, in Wales.

Career

Gannon's career started, in 1987, when she entered the Richard Burton Award for New Playwrights. Her play, Keeping Tom Nice, about a disabled boy whose father commits suicide, earned her the award and a six-month writer-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. In 1988 Keeping Tom Nice was shown at the Almeida Theatre in London, and in 1989 shown as a BBC TV Screenplay starring Linus Roache.^[1]

As well as creating longer series, including Peak Practice, Gannon has written several single or short run dramas for television, including Dad, Tender Loving Care, Trip Trap, The Gift, Big Cat, Pure Wickedness and The Children. In 2012 Gannon wrote the one-off BBC2 drama The Best of Men which told the story of the first Paralympic Games and starred Eddie Marsan and Rob Brydon. She was the lead writer and creator of the 2013 BBC One drama series Frankie.^[2]

In 2008 Gannon criticized the BBC, saying that delays in commissioning programmes threaten writers and producers.^[3]

In 2020, Gannon published her memoir, The Amazingly Astonishing Story. It was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2021.^[4]^[5] In 2022, Gannon published a writing guide, Do Drama: How to stop watching TV drama. And start writing it..^[6]

Awards

In 1996, Gannon was awarded the MBE for services to Drama, and among her awards are The Eileen Anderson Award, The Richard Burton Drama Award, the 1989-90 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize., The BAFTA Cymru, the Contribution To The Media Award (Women in Film and Television) and, most recently, the RTS Award (South West England) for Best Writer for The Best Of Men.

Works

Plays

Broken Hearted, 2010
Keeping Tom Nice. Josef Weinberger Plays. 15 Jun 1990. ISBN 978-0-85676-146-1.
Tender Loving Care
Dancing Attendance, 1990
A Dog Barking, 1988
Janet And John, 1988
Raping The Gold, 1988
Wicked Old Nellie, 1987

Television

Frankie (2013) (creator, writer)
The Best of Men (2012) TV Film
The Children (2008) TV mini-series (writer)
Wild at Heart (1 episode, 2007) (writer)
Dad (2005) (TV) (writer)^[7]
Blue Dove (2003) TV mini-series (creator, writer)
Servants (2003) (writer)
Plain Jane (2002) (writer)
Hope & Glory (creator, writer, 1999-2000)
Pure Wickedness (1999) (writer)
Big Cat (1998) (writer)
The Gift (1998) (writer)
Bramwell (creator, 17 episodes, 1995–1998)
Trip Trap (1996) (writer)
Peak Practice (creator, 15 episodes, 1993–1994)
Screen One (1 episode, 1993)
Soldier Soldier (creator, writer - 11 episodes, 1991-1997)
A Small Dance (1991) (writer)
Testimony of a Child (1989)

References

^ James Rampton (19 June 1999). "Television: A class act - Lucy Gannon". The Independent.
^ "Eve Myles to star in new BBC One drama series, Frankie". bbc.co.uk. BBC. 6 September 2012. Retrieved 22 November 2012.
^ Matthew Hemley (6 August 2008). "Gannon accuses BBC's commissioning process of ruining writers and production companies". The Stage News.
^ "The Amazingly Astonishing Story".
^ "Wales Book of the Year 2021 Shortlist".
^ "Do Drama - How to stop watching TV. And start writing it".
^ "BBC - Press Office - Dad". bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 11 April 2015.

External links

Official Website
Lucy Gannon at IMDb
Lucy Gannon, doollee

John Whiting Award

1967–1969

Tom Stoppard for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Wole Soyinka for The Interpreters (shared) (1967)
Peter Nichols for A Day in the Death of Joe Egg (1967)
Peter Barnes for The Ruling Class and Edward Bond for Narrow Road to the Deep North (shared) (1968)
Howard Brenton for Christie in Love (1969)

1970–1979

Freehold Company and Peter Hulton (joint) for Freehold on Antigone (1970)
Mustapha Matura for As Time Goes By (1971)
Heathcote Williams for AC/DC (1972)
John Arden (1973)
David Rudkin (1974)
David Edgar for Destiny (1975)
David Lan for The Winter Dancers (1976)
David Halliwell and Snoo Wilson for The Glad Hand (shared) (1978)
Stephen Bill (1979)

1980–1989

David Pownall for Beef (1981)
Karim Alrawi for Migrations (1982)
Peter Flannery for Our Friends in the North (1983)
Ron Hutchinson for The Rat in the Skull (1984)
Guy Hibbert for On the Edge and Heidi Thomas for Shamrocks & Crocodiles (shared) (1985)
Nick Dear for The Art of Success (1986)
Iain Heggie for American Bagpipes (1988)
Billy Roche for A Handful of Stars (1989)

1990–1999

Lucy Gannon for Keeping Tom Nice (1990)
Terry Johnson for Imagine Drowning (1991)
Rod Wooden for Your Home in the West (1992)
Martin Crimp for The Treatment and Helen Edmundson for The Clearing (shared) (1993)
Jonathan Harvey for Beautiful Thing (1994)
Joe Penhall for Some Voices (1995)
Ayub Khan-Din for East is East (1996)
Ann Coburn for Get Up and Tie Your Fingers (1997)
Roy Williams for Starstruck (1998/9)

2000–2009

David Greig for The Cosmonaut's Last Message ... and Tanika Gupta for The Waiting Room (shared) (2000)
Zinnie Harris for Further than the Furthest Thing (2001)
Peter Rumney for Jumping on my Shadow (2002)
Rona Munro for Iron (2003)
Owen McCafferty for Scenes from the Big Picture (2004)
Fin Kennedy for How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found (2005)
James Philips for The Rubenstein Kiss and Fraser Grace for Breakfast with Mugabe (shared) (2006)
Dennis Kelly for Taking Care of Baby (2007)
Bryony Lavery for Stockholm (2008)
Alexi Kaye Campbell for The Pride (2009)