Steven Moffat

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Steven Moffat
Steven Moffat records the DVD audio commentary for Joking Apart in January 2006
Born	1961 Paisley, Scotland
Occupation	Writer
Writing period	1988 - present
Genres	Comedy/drama
Spouse(s)	Sue Vertue

Steven Moffat (born 1961 in Paisley, Scotland) is a British comedy/drama writer who has contributed to television series since the late 1980s.

His first television work was the teen drama series Press Gang. He then used his own divorce as inspiration for Joking Apart and then his subsequent relationship with television producer Sue Vertue for Coupling. A former English teacher, he also wrote Chalk, a sitcom set in a school.

He has won numerous awards, including BAFTA and Hugo Awards for some of his episodes of the Doctor Who revival. He is currently scripting a trilogy of Tintin films for directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. He will take over from Russell T. Davies as lead writer and executive producer of Doctor Who for the fifth series in 2010.^[1]

Contents 1 Press Gang 2 1990s and 2000s 3 Doctor Who (2005- ) 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Press Gang

After gaining a degree in English, he worked as a teacher. His father, Bill Moffat, was a headteacher at a Glasgow school. When the school was used for Harry Secombe's Highway, he mentioned to the producers that he had an idea for a television series about a school newspaper. The producers asked for a sample script, to which Bill Moffat agreed on condition that it was written by his son.^[2] Producer Sandra Hastie said that it was "the best ever first script" that she had read.^[3]

The resulting series was titled Press Gang, and starred Julia Sawalha, Dexter Fletcher, Paul Reynolds, Lucy Benjamin and Lee Ross, was immensely successful and ran for four years on ITV, with Moffat writing all forty-three episodes. The series won a BAFTA award in its second series.^[4]

During production of the second series of Press Gang, he was having an unhappy personal life after the break-up of his first marriage. Producer Sandra C. Hastie was secretly phoning his friends at home to check if he was alright.^[5] His wife's new lover was represented in the episode "The Big Finish?" by the character Brian Magboy (Simon Schatzberger), a name inspired by Brian: Maggie's boy. Moffat brought in the character so that all sorts of unfortunate things would happen to him, such as having a typewriter dropped on his foot.^[6]

[edit] 1990s and 2000s

Inspired by these events, Moffat wrote two series of Joking Apart.^[7] The sitcom was directed by Bob Spiers, and starred Robert Bathurst and Fiona Gillies. The show won the Bronze Rose of Montreux^[8] and was entered for the Emmys.^[9] In an interview with Richard Herring, Moffat says that "The sit-com actually lasted slightly longer than my marriage."^[2]

He wrote three episodes of Murder Most Horrid, an anthology series of comedic tales starring Dawn French. The first ("Overkill", directed by Bob Spiers) was identified by the BBC as a "highlight" of the series.^[10] His other two episodes were "Dying Live" (dir. Dewi Humphreys) and "Elvis, Jesus and Jack" (dir. Tony Dow).

In 1997, BBC One aired two series of his sitcom Chalk, set in a comprehensive school. Starring David Bamber as deputy head Eric Slatt, the show received quite a poor critical reception. In an interview in the early 2000s, Moffat refuses to even name the show, joking that he might get attacked in the street.^[11]

He met Sue Vertue, a television producer who had worked on Mr. Bean, at the Edinburgh Television Festival in 1996.^[12] When she eventually asked him for a sitcom, he decided to base it around the evolution of their own relationship. Coupling was first broadcast on BBC2 in 2000, with his wife producing for Hartswood Films. The series proved to be highly successful, running until 2004 and producing four series and twenty-eight episodes, all written by Moffat. He also wrote the original, unbroadcast, pilot episode for the American version of the same series, in 2003, although this was less successful and was cancelled after just four episodes on the NBC network. Moffat has blamed its failure on an unprecedented level of network interference.

As is traditional for many of those in the British sitcom world, he has contributed to the bi-annual Comic Relief charity telethon nights, writing the script for the science-fiction parody Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death in 1999. The co-producer for that year's Red Nose Day telethon was Moffat's new wife, Sue Vertue.^[13] Moffat, a fan of the series since childhood, had previously written a Doctor Who prose story, "Continuity Errors", published in the Virgin Books anthology Decalog 3: Consequences.

He also wrote the Hartswood Films drama series Jekyll, a modern version of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which aired on BBC One in June and July 2007.

In June 2007 he told The Stage that he is working on a new sitcom. Provisionally titled Adam and Eve, "it concerns a boss and his PA, who are long-term friends but never get together."^[14] In October 2007 it was reported that Moffat would be scripting a trilogy of Tintin films for directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.^[15]

[edit] Doctor Who (2005- )

Moffat has been a lifelong Doctor Who fan and, in 2004, was signed to write for the revival. His contribution for the first series, transmitted in 2005, was the Hugo Award-winning^[16] two-part story "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances". In the DVD audio commentary he says that he waited forty years to see his name appear on top of that theme music.^[17] He wrote an episode for each of the two following series of Doctor Who: "The Girl in the Fireplace" in the 2006 series (which won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form,^[18] and was nominated for a 2006 Nebula Award,^[19]) and "Blink" in the 2007 series. In the Doctor Who Magazine reader poll for the 2007 series, Moffat was voted as best writer and "Blink" as the best story. The episode was also nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Script.^[20] In 2008 it secured him his third Hugo nomination, again for Best Dramatic Presentation,^[21] the BAFTA Craft Award for Best Writer,^[22] and a BAFTA Cymru Award for Best Screenwriter.^[23] He also wrote the 2007 Children in Need "special scene" "Time Crash".

He has written a two-part story for series four in 2008, entitled "Silence in the Library"/"Forest of the Dead". This makes Moffat and series executive producer Russell T Davies the only writers to have contributed scripts to all four series of the revived show. In February 2008, The Sun claimed that these scripts had been leaked to its TV Biz column.^[24] In March 2008, Davies said that he often rewrites scripts from other writers, but "with Steven Moffat's scripts, I don't touch a word".^[25]

The BBC announced in May 2008 that Moffat would be taking over from Russell T Davies as head writer and executive producer for the revived show's fifth series, to be broadcast in 2010.^[1]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Steven Moffat at the Internet Movie Database
• Steven Moffat biography at the Hartswood Films website.
• Steven Moffat fansite
• Interview with James Nesbitt, with many comments about Moffat's writing
• Audio interview with Steven Moffat at the Doctor Who series two press launch. Source:BBC Wiltshire