Glenn Chandler

Glenn Chandler
Born (1949-03-12) 12 March 1949
Edinburgh, Scotland
Occupation Playwright, screenwriter, novelist
Nationality Scottish
Period modern
Genre crime fiction
Subject murder
Notable works Taggart
Notable awards BAFTA
1991 best drama series award – Taggart

Writers' Guild Award
1993 best original drama series – Taggart

Glenn Chandler (born 12 March 1949) is an award-winning[1] Scottish playwright and novelist. He has written plays for theatre and radio, original screenplays for television and films, television series, and novels.[2] His best-known work is the Scottish television detective series Taggart, which is broadcast around the world.[3]

Biography


Boys of the Empire Poster for the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe production directed by Patrick Wilde


Glenn Chandler was born in Edinburgh in 1949, and educated at the Royal High School in the city. He moved from Scotland to London and began writing for the Soho Poly, where his early plays were produced.[4] He went on to write for BBC Television and Radio, and for Granada Television (including its series Crown Court) before creating and writing his own series Taggart for STV Productions (ITV Network).

Chandler created Taggart for STV's Controller of Drama, Robert Love, who wanted to set a police series in Glasgow. Chandler was inspired by true crime and real life, and even lifted the names of characters for the series from gravestones in Maryhill Cemetery in Glasgow.[3] The series continued even after the death of the actor Mark McManus, who played the lead role of Jim Taggart, and became the longest-running police drama on British television.[3]

Chandler has continued to write for his first love, theatre, and has also begun a series of books featuring a Brighton detective, DI Madden.[2] In 2008 Chandler took two plays to the Edinburgh Fringe as a producer: Boys of the Empire, a satirical play written by Chandler himself, and What's Wrong With Angry?, a drama set in 1992, when the age of consent for homosexuals was 21.[5] Both shows were directed by Patrick Wilde, with whom Chandler shares a literary agency, MBA.[2]

Since then, Chandler has worked almost exclusively in theatre. After transferring Boys of the Empire to the Kings Head in Islington, he wrote and produced Scouts in Bondage for the same theatre (2009). His next production was the sell-out Cleveland Street: The Musical (2010), which he wrote and produced for the Above The Stag Theatre in Victoria. He made his directing debut with the award-winning The Custard Boys which he adapted from the novel by John Rae, and this was produced at the Tabard Theatre (2011). He followed that up at the same theatre with The Lamplighters (2012), a murder thriller with a supernatural edge, which he wrote, produced and directed. In 2013 he took two productions to the Edinburgh Fringe, Sandel and Killers. Sandel, which he directed, was his controversial adaptation of Angus Stewart's novel of the same name, about a love affair between a student and a choirboy. Killers was a study of the correspondence of serial killers Dennis Nilsen, Peter Sutcliffe and Ian Brady, and was directed by Liam Rudden. In 2014, he transferred Sandel to the Above The Stag Theatre at its new premises in Vauxhall with a largely new cast.

His latest play is Fanny and Stella The Shocking True Story, based on the true tale of two Victorian transvestites, which is being produced by the Above the Stag Theatre and directed by Steven Dexter in May 2015.

Television Writing

Films


Theatre Writing[6]

BBC Radio

Schools Radio

Radio Drama

Books

DI Madden series

Horror fiction

Non fiction

Awards

References

  1. 1 2 3 "IMDB Award page for Glenn Chandler". Retrieved 9 June 2008.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "MBA official bibliography and full list of writing credits for Glenn Chandler". Retrieved 9 June 2008.
  3. 1 2 3 "SMG productions official history of Taggart". Retrieved 9 June 2008.
  4. ↑ "Soho Poly info about writers". Retrieved 9 June 2008.
  5. ↑ ""There's been a murder, Well, quite a few.." Edinburgh Evening News". Retrieved 26 June 2008.
  6. ↑ http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsC/chandler-glenn.html

External links

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