here are obits for Shaun Sutton from the Guardian, Times, Telegraph and
Liverpool Echo. When one appears in Ariel, I will post it.
Shaun Sutton

Prolific director and executive at the heart of the golden age of BBC
television drama

Philip Purser
Wednesday May 19, 2004
The Guardian

Shaun Sutton, who has died aged 84, enjoyed a career in BBC television
that might have been designed to prepare him for his 12 years as head of
its drama group (1969-81), during which he launched such classics as The
Six Wives Of Henry VIII, Colditz, War And Peace and Tinker, Tailor,
Soldier, Spy. He had started in children's television, and continued in
series, serial and single plays, as a writer, director or producer - or
sometimes as all three. When he stepped down from the top job, he took on
one more challenge: Shakespeare.
Born in Hammersmith, west London, Sutton was educated at Latymer Upper
school, where his father, Graham Sutton, was a master, with a sideline as
a novelist and theatre critic. His mother came from a theatrical family,
and was herself an actor. Inheriting their tastes, young Shaun went on to
drama school, and had made a start in the theatre when the second world
war broke out. He then had an eventful six years in the navy, mainly in
the Mediterranean.
On demobilisation as a lieutenant, he returned to the stage, but, on his
mother's advice, gradually moved from performing to production and
writing. It saved him, he would say later, from ending up as an ageing,
mediocre actor. Around this time, he met the actor Barbara Leslie. They
were married in 1948, and toured South Africa together.
Home again, Sutton joined the BBC in 1952. He had a hit with young viewers
with The Silver Sword, a serial he adapted and directed from a wartime
yarn by Ian Serrallier, and another success with his own Bonehead (1960),
about a gang of inept crooks. He also published a children's story, The
Queen's Champion (1961), which he adapted for television.
With the adult audience, Sutton made his name as the director of many
early episodes of Z Cars (1962-78), the first police series to show rank-
and-file coppers with human failings as they tried to maintain law and
order in an urban sprawl; its spin-offs, Softly, Softly (1966-70) and
Barlow (from 1971), inevitably shifted the emphasis back to the
detectives.
By this time, Sutton was head of serials, a form he preferred to American-
style series with self-contained episodes. By definition, a serial must
sooner or later come to an end; a series can be prolonged as long as it is
profitable. "The worst ones," he wrote sourly in his personal testament,
The Largest Theatre In The World (1982), "are facile, repetitious, non-
developing, cliché-ridden and predictable, with their characters frozen
into performances from which they deviate at their peril."
The serials Sutton oversaw included, in 1967, what was the longest ever
screened, The Forsyte Saga (26 episodes), as well as, in the same year,
one of the shortest, The White Rabbit, with Kenneth More as the SOE agent
Wing Commander Yeo-Thomas, which had only four episodes.
Then, in 1969, he succeeded Sydney Newman as head of drama, and what may
justly be rated as the golden age of television drama reached its zenith.
Writers in full flow included Dennis Potter, Nigel Kneale, Fay Weldon,
David Mercer, Peter Terson, William Trevor, John Osborne, Julia Jones, Tom
Clarke, Robert Holles and Alan Plater. Experiments included contributions
from the single-play division, which nevertheless turned into mini-
serials - notably Philip Mackie's An Englishman's Castle (1978), three
linked plays, again with Kenneth More, set in the BBC as it might have
become had we lost the war.
With some writers pushing the frontiers of taste, there were bound to be
rows about censorship. It fell to Sutton to halt production on a play
called Solid Geometry, which opened with shots of the male and female
sexual organs pickled in glass jars. He was also involved in bans imposed
by higher authority on, for example, Roy Minton's Scum, set in a borstal,
and Dennis Potter's Brimstone And Treacle. He fought hard for both of
these, and both were eventually transmitted, in 1991 and 1987
respectively.
The great white whale of Sutton's term of office was, perhaps, the BBC
Shakespeare, a grandiose project to perform every one of the bard's plays.
Its original enthusiast, Cedric Messina, had been responsible for the
first batch, mainly as enclosed studio productions. Then came Jonathan
Miller, who decided to dress each of his productions in the style of an
old master. Finally, with 14 plays still to be done, Sutton retired from
his executive post in 198, and returned to the work-face to handle them
himself.
A few of the standards remained, but also all the difficult, rarely seen
and disputed titles. Sutton overcame these handicaps with astonishing
success. The Winter's Tale was entrusted to Jane Howell, who came up with
a stunningly successful production starring Jeremy Kemp (late of Z Cars),
and everyone in fur hats. She also took on the grisly story of Titus
Andronicus, with Trevor Peacock, Eileen Atkins and Hugh Quarshie. The Life
And Death Of King John had John Thaw in the key role of Hubert de Burgh,
while David Jones heightened the love interest in Pericles, Prince Of
Tyre, by teaming Mike Gwilym with Juliet Stevenson.
On the final completion of the Shakespearathlon, as it was dubbed, Sutton
continued to take on individual productions, but he was now 65. He and his
family began to spend more time at the Norfolk cottage they had bought in
1970, and where - after a short illness - he died.
He is survived by his wife, three daughters and a son.
• Shaun Alfred Graham Sutton, television producer and executive, born
October 14 1919; died May 14 2004


Shaun Sutton
From Times - 18/05/2004 (1286 words)

Shaun Sutton, OBE, television drama producer and writer, was born on
October 14, 1919. He died on May 14, 2004. aged 84.
Actor and director who became head of BBC Television drama during the
golden age of Z Cars and the Shakespeare cycle
Shaun Sutton was one of the leading figures in BBC Television drama during
perhaps its most distinguished period. From 1969 to 1981 he was
responsible for the entire drama output of the corporation. He oversaw the
final productions in the BBC Shakespeare series and brought to the screen
the work of some of the best theatre playwrights, including Joe Orton,
Alan Ayckbourn and David Storey.
When he became head of the BBC drama group in 1969 he had the difficult
task of following Sydney Newman, the effervescent and spiky Canadian who
had stamped his personality on the job and been a champion of new writers
and hard-hitting contemporary plays. Sutton, a more emollient figure, saw
it as his role to create an atmosphere in which acting, writing and
directing talent would flourish, while interfering as little as possible.
In retrospect, the Newman-Sutton era has been seen as a "golden age" of
television drama, not least in promoting the single play, a species now
virtually extinct.
But Sutton -who started in television producing children's drama, went on
to direct early episodes of Z Cars and oversaw one of the BBC's biggest
successes of the 1960s, the 26-part Forsyte Saga -was prepared to
encourage drama in all its forms, as long as it was striving to be the
best of its kind.
Shaun Alfred Graham Sutton was born in Hammersmith, West London, and
destined from his early years to have a career in the theatre. His parents
were both actors, and Sutton was disappointed that while his three
siblings had theatrical godparents, Sybil Thorndyke, Sara Allgood, from
the Abbey Theatre, and Frank Benson, the impresario, he was not similarly
favoured. His father acted with Benson's company and Sutton made his first
stage appearance at the age of 6 when he was allowed to walk on in Julius
Caesar during a Benson season in Hammersmith.
Sutton's father later changed careers and became a master at Latymer
School, where he taught his stagestruck son Latin. On leaving Latymer,
Sutton joined the acting school of the Embassy Theatre in Swiss Cottage,
North London, which was run by Sybil Thorndyke's sister, Eileen. After a
year he was taken on by the Embassy itself, becoming a stage manager there
and at another London theatre, the Q. He also acted, playing every sort of
part, and worked in the West End, until his career was interrupted by the
Second World War.
He joined the Royal Navy in 1940 and rose to lieutenant. He described his
service as "cruisers and destroyers, sunk once, but so was everyone". He
was on the convoys to the Soviet Union, and was stationed for a while in
Egypt, but was demobbed in 1946 from less exotic Ramsgate. The Embassy
took him back at once and he also worked in regional theatres before in
1950 taking a company round South Africa. One of its local young actors
was Nigel Hawthorne, and Sutton helped to launch his acting career in
England by smoothing the way for a job at the Embassy.
Such activities, however, were not well paid and by 1952 Sutton was
virtually broke. Then a friend rang, saying he was double-booked on a
children's drama for BBC Television and asking if Sutton would be
interested. Sutton jumped at the chance and made his television bow as
assistant director and small-part actor on a production of Huckleberry
Finn.
For the next decade he honed his skills, mainly in children's drama. He
decided to drop acting, signing off in a production opposite Peggy Mount
and Patrick Troughton. But he became a director, doing a dozen episodes of
the Billy Bunter series, and a writer, of serials, single plays and even a
situation comedy called Bonehead.
On the strength of his directing he was asked by the producer David Rose
to be one of the original directors on Z Cars, which began in January 1962
and brought a new toughness and realism to the genre of the police series.
Although older and of a less radical outlook than John McGrath and Troy
Kennedy Martin, who set the tone, Sutton happily embraced the Z Cars
style, with its fast cutting, use of big close-ups and insistence on
dispensing with background music and using only natural sound.
He directed 24 episodes of Z Cars, and worked on its spin-off, Softly
Softly. He also directed Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes and a series of
Rudyard Kipling stories. In 1966 he landed his first executive job when
Sydney Newman appointed him head of serials. His remit embraced Francis
Durbridge thrillers, soap operas and The Forsyte Saga, but also the
classic serial. Sutton thought it had become too stuck in Jane Austen and
the Brontes, and brought in the work of more recent writers, such as
Aldous Huxley and Jean-Paul Sartre.
In 1969, after an 18-month interregnum following Newman's departure, he
was promoted to head of the drama group, which was then putting out some
750 units of drama a year. These included all the episodes of serials and
series, but also some 100 single plays. With such a large output, Sutton
felt able to try out new actors, writers and directors rather than just
play safe. He declared that he would be "tough on unnecessary violence and
swearing", but as these became commonplace in Hollywood films he found it
an increasingly difficult line to hold.
The most controversial production of his time was Dennis Potter's
Brimstone and Treacle, in which a young woman, severely brain-damaged
after a road accident, is "cured" by being raped by a young man in the
guise of the Devil. Despite strong misgivings in the BBC, Sutton thought
the play should be shown and managed to persuade the reluctant Bryan
Cowgill, the BBC1 Controller. At that very moment, as Sutton recalled it,
Potter's producer Kenith Trodd burst into Cowgill's office and, unaware
that Cowgill had been talked round, delivered a furious tirade against
censorship. The play was banned.
In 1981 Sutton was appointed executive producer of the BBC Shakespeare
series, an ambitious project to adapt all 37 plays for television. It had
got off to an undistinguished start before being invigorated by Jonathan
Miller. Sutton, with a dozen plays left to film, was charged with
continuing that process. He tried to keep Miller's creative team together,
using Miller himself as a director and also bringing in younger directors
such as Elijah Moshinsky.
With the Shakespeare cycle completed in 1984, Sutton turned to Theatre
Night, a BBC2 season of six plays a year adapted from the stage. While not
neglecting the classics, from Moliere to Ibsen and Shaw, he was determined
to bring in contemporary writers as well. He managed to persuade a dubious
Alan Ayckbourn that his plays should be adapted for television, and his
seasons also included works by Joe Orton, Michael Frayn and David Storey.
When, at approaching 70, his contract was not renewed (he had never been
on the BBC staff), he joined an independent production company and oversaw
Re-Joyce, a television version of Maureen Lipman's one-woman tribute to
Joyce Grenfell. He reflected on his craft in a book in 1982, The Largest
Theatre in the World: Thirty Years of Television Drama. He was appointed
OBE in 1979.
He married Barbara Leslie, an actress, in 1948. She survives him, along
with their son and three daughters.
Copyright 2004 Times Newspapers Limited
Date: 18/05/2004


Obituary of Shaun Sutton Producer who was responsible for such dramas of
the BBC's golden age as Softly Softly and The Forsyte Saga
From Daily Telegraph - 17/05/2004 (944 words)

SHAUN SUTTON, who died on Friday aged 84, was a tireless champion of
quality television whose good fortune was to preside over what is regarded
as the golden age of television drama.
As Head of BBC Television's Drama Group from 1969 to 1981, Sutton was the
executive ultimately responsible for an era which produced Pennies From
Heaven; Play for Today; Softly Softly; I Claudius; The Pallisers and
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. He loosed a huge outpouring of BBC 2 "classic"
serials, ranging from The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R to
Testament of Youth.
He also launched the BBC's unique six-year Shakespeare marathon, and after
he had retired as Head of Drama, was particularly pleased, though he had
not worked in a studio for 15 years, to be asked to produce the last l2 of
the 37 plays himself.
The son of Graham Sutton, a schoolmaster and writer, Shaun Alfred Graham
Sutton was born on October 14 1919. He was educated at Latymer Upper
before going to the Embassy theatre school, then working as a stage
manager and actor in the West End.
Following the outbreak of war, Sutton served in the Navy for six years,
during which he was sunk in a destroyer by a German aircraft in the
Mediterranean. He spent some time in a leaky Greek submarine, where he had
to speak French but learned to swear and say "Here comes the torpedo" in
Greek.
On coming out of the Navy in the rank of lieutenant, Sutton returned to
acting. But although he had a tall figure which looked good in German or
police uniforms, he decided to concentrate on production after his mother
had gently suggested that his talents did not match his ambitions. It was
good advice, he remarked years later, since there is "nothing more
pathetic than a mediocre, middle-aged actor".
He worked at the Embassy in London and at Buxton, where he met his wife,
the actress Barbara Leslie, whom he married in 1948. They went on a tour
of South Africa during which they met and befriended Nigel Hawthorne, then
returned home where, in 1952, Sutton joined the BBC's television service.
He started writing and directing children's serials, most notably
Bonehead, about a gang of incompetent thieves. This gave him invaluable
experience, instilling a natural aptitude for fast story telling, since
every reference to a new character had immediately to be followed by a
camera shot. But it was his success in directing 24 of the early episodes
in the highly successful Z Cars which led him to be recruited to the
executive floor as Head of Serials by the Canadian Head of Drama Sydney
Newman, who asked him how many books he had read. Sutton, a voracious
reader, modestly replied that he had consumed a few, to be told: "I have
only read four. Keep ahead of me." Such was Sutton's success, particularly
with The Forsyte Saga, that he eventually succeeded Newman.
Endowed with an inexhaustible fund of diplomatic charm, Sutton saw his
role as that of a buffer between the often rebellious writers and
producers who provided his raw material and the BBC Establishment which
funded it. Conservative by instinct, he frequently found himself in the
position of defending abrasive Left-wing dramas such as Jim Allen's Days
of Hope, a bitter attack on Britain's ruling classes in the First World
War. He disliked excessive violence and swearing on screen, but stood up
for the BBC's right to transmit controversial productions, like the long-
banned Scum and Brimstone and Treacle, provided they were dramatically
honest.
Sutton's natural stance was that of a conciliator (one television
columnist described his office as "the terminus for tantrums"). His job,
he said, was to make actors, who were "anxious and insecure people",
happy. He liked to put flowers in their dressing rooms on the first day in
studio. "It only costs a few quid, and it makes them feel wanted," he
would say. "And when you ask for just one more take at 11pm you get it."
But if occasion demanded he could wield the big stick as effectively as
any other executive. When Richard Burton, playing Churchill in a BBC
production, wrote an article branding the wartime leader "a power-
corrupted warmonger", Sutton promptly declared that Burton would never
work for his section of the BBC again.
At the height of his career, Sutton exercised benevolent control over a
national theatre of the air which each year produced 120 single plays and
hundreds of hours of series and serials (none of which could be
labelled "soap"). He deeply regretted the financial and other constraints
which caused the gradual contraction of this cornucopia. Shortly before
his official retirement in 1981 he told a Royal Television Society
audience: "I have always worked for a large drama output because I am
convinced that a wide output is a healthy one, allowing producers to be
bold and to experiment . . . A small output can only encourage caution and
blandness."
Sutton was extremely proud of the fact that in more than 30 years with the
BBC, half of them as an executive, he never joined the staff. This meant
that he could continue working long after the BBC's official retirement
age of 60. Well into his seventies he was still producing the classic
drama of Theatre Night, dubbed by one regular participant, Timothy
West, "the Sutton Repertory Company". His last work was a revision of a
pantomime for the Perth Theatre in 2002.
Shaun Sutton, who was appointed OBE in 1979, wrote a children's novel,
Queen's Champion (1949), and a brisk guide to television drama, The
Largest Theatre in the World (1982).
He is survived by his wife, a son and three daughters.
Copyright 2004 Telegraph Group Limited
Date: 17/05/2004
Publication: Daily Telegraph


3:  OBITUARY: SHAUN SUTTON
From Liverpool Post - 18/05/2004 (347 words)

WHEN the experts gather to speak of why British television was so strong
in the 1960s and'70s, the conversation is sure to embrace the name of
Shaun Sutton, the director who switched almost seamlessly from children's
classics such as Bonehead, about bungling burglars, to Billy Bunter of
Greyfriars, with the incomparable Gerald Campion, toZ Cars.
Although nominally set in New Town, the stories closely followed the
development and social problems of post-war overspill estates like Kirkby,
outside Liverpool.
This was a master stroke which enabled the scripts to examine crime and
the causes of crime,as well as the lives of the police officers, who were
presented as ordinary men often placed in extraordinary circumstances.
The popularity of the series told TVmakers that the provinces bristled
with a potential for drama,and Merseyside has since frequently been used
as the setting for TV shows,for good and bad.
Sutton directed the first 24 episodes of the series which began its run in
1962. His style won the approval of contemporaries and he was appointed
the BBC's head of serials, then becoming the head of their TV's drama
group from 1969 to1981.
As a voracious reader, Sutton was able to bring work of real quality to
the small screen. He was responsible for Pennies From Heaven,Play for
Today,Softy Softly,I Claudius,The Pallisers,Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,The
Six Wives of Henry VIII,Elizabeth R and Testament of Youth.
Generally,Sutton was a man of sympathetic manner, who would leave flowers
in the dressing-rooms of actors to make them feel wanted,but he could
display a harder side.
For example,he warned Richard Burton that he would not work in his area of
the BBC again after the Welsh actor, who was playing Churchill in a
production, suggested that the wartime leader was a power-corrupted
warmonger.
In 1949,Sutton wrote the children's novelQueen's Champion and his guide to
TV,The Largest Theatre in the World, was published in 1982.
He is survived by his wife, a son and three daughters.
Shaun Sutton,TV director. Born October 14,1919; died May 15, 2004.
Copyright 2004 The Liverpool Daily Post & Echo Ltd