Shaun Sutton

Shaun Alfred Graham Sutton OBE (14 October 1919 in Hammersmith, London – 14 May 2004 in Norfolk) was an English television writer, director, producer and executive, who worked in the medium for nearly forty years from the 1950s to the 1990s. His most important role was as the Head of Drama at BBC Television from the late 1960s until 1981, a role he occupied for longer than anyone else.

Sutton's father, Graham Sutton, was a theatre critic and novelist as well as being a teacher at Latymer Upper School, where Sutton himself was educated. His mother was an actress, and Sutton followed in her footsteps by enrolling in drama school after leaving Latymer. However, the coming of the Second World War interrupted his career and he joined the Royal Navy, seeing action in the Mediterranean and attaining the rank of Lieutenant.

Following the end of the war, Sutton returned to the theatre, but increasingly moved toward writing and producing rather than acting, apparently on the advice of his mother. Later in life, he would claim that this advice had saved him from becoming "an ageing, mediocre actor". In the late 1940s he met the actress Barbara Leslie, to whom he was married until his death.

Sutton moved into television, the medium with which he was to become most closely associated, in 1952, joining the staff of the BBC's drama department. He found particular success in children's serials, writing and directing the likes of Queen's Champion (1958) and Bonehead (1960). In 1963, the new Head of Drama at the BBC, Sydney Newman, offered Sutton the job of being the first producer for the new science-fiction series Doctor Who, but Sutton declined.

One of his reasons for declining the role was that by this stage Sutton was beginning to make a name for himself in more adult drama series, directing several early episodes of the highly acclaimed police drama Z-Cars from 1962. He worked as a director on other drama series such as The Last Man Out, The Troubleshooters and the Z-Cars spin-off Softly, Softly until 1966, when he moved into the upper echelons of the drama department by succeeding Gerald Savory as Head of Serials.

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