Irene Shubik

Irene Shubik
Born	1929 (age 87–88) Hampstead, London, UK
Occupation	Director, screenwriter, producer

Irene Shubik (born 1929) is a British television producer, notable for her contribution to the development of the single play in British television drama. Beginning her television career at ABC Television, she worked on Armchair Theatre as a story editor where she devised the science fiction anthology series Out of this World.

Moving to the BBC, she briefly worked as a story editor before being promoted to producer, creating the science fiction anthology television series Out of the Unknown. Leaving Out of the Unknown after two seasons, Shubik co-produced The Wednesday Play, overseeing its transition into Play for Today in 1970. She left the BBC in 1976, and subsequently produced the first season of Rumpole of the Bailey for Thames Television before joining Granada Television where she produced Staying On and devised The Jewel in the Crown. She has also written film scripts and a novel, The War Guest.

Irene Shubik was born in 1929 in Hampstead, London to a Russian Jewish father and a French Jewish mother. When World War II broke out in 1939, she was evacuated to Canada. She read English literature at University College London, obtaining an MA in “The Use of English History in Drama from 1599-1642”. Uninterested in a career in academia, she applied to join the BBC but was turned down. Unable to obtain work, she moved to the United States, visiting her brother, the economist Martin Shubik, who was teaching at Princeton University. Meeting with little success in building a career in Princeton, when her brother was called before the Dean of the University for keeping a woman in his quarters, she moved to Wilmette, Chicago where her other brother, cancer surgeon Philippe Shubik, was based. Wilmette was the home of Encyclopædia Britannica Films and, impressed by her MA thesis, they hired Shubik as a scriptwriter. Shubik was subsequently offered a twelve-month contract with the National Film Board of Canada but was unable to take up the position as both of her parents had become seriously ill.

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