Stephen Poliakoff – författare

Stephen Poliakoff 'has been one of our sharpest and least predictable writers for the past twenty years' (Daily Telegraph) Clever Soldiers: "is a thoughtful play about violence" (Times) which attacks the mythology of Oxbridge against the background of war; Hitting Town, a powerful play about incest is "a riveting piece of theatre...a stupendous achievement" (Sunday Telegraph); City Sugar: "A savage dissection of that pristine slagheap of Our Times - mass culture" (Time Out); Shout Across the River: "traces the progress of a passionate and extraordinary relationship between a young mother and her teenage daughter played against the background of a vast suburb of south London." (Guardian); American Days: "Into the escapist limbo of a top record company executive's office tumble three teenagers, spotted by an insecure talent scout and now given a hit or miss chance to impress...Poliakoff has the dramatic ability to make you care very much...a completely enjoyable play" (Financial Times); Strawberry Fields is about three young members of the 'lost generation' of the sixties: "Imaginative and controversial...a sort of Pinteresque fantasy with thriller overtones." (Plays and Players)

"Poliakoff inhabits his own world, a world that contains all the factors and influences of modern living. He always has an eye fixed on where society and fashion is going. His plays are evolutionary reflections of the social scene" (Peter Hall) Cecilia, a woman who has taken refinement in her life to its very limits, has an affair with a man who, by being uniquely himself, is able to exert control over those around him. A startling love story and a fascinating comedy of opposites. Sienna Red transforms the seemingly ordinary into the extraordinary where the mundane environment of a DIY emporium becomes a place of surprising riches and disturbing passions.

Stephen Poliakoff 'has been one of our sharpest and least predictable writers for the past twenty years' (Daily Telegraph) Breaking the Silence: "How well Poliakoff understands the indignities and absurdities of dispossession, the brazen pluck and ruthless cunning you need to survive it; and the bewilderment of the young who only want to be normal...One of the most thrillingly individual works of the last decade or two" (Sunday Times); Playing with Trains: "An epic drama involving a ruinous defence of a libel suit in the High Court, a running battle with two children in whom Galpin takes less interest than his proteges, misfired property schemes, and an attack on the reluctance of big business to support the idea wallahs...marvellous scenes." (Weekend Guardian); She's Been Away: "This poignant, funny film...was written by Stephen Poliakoff for Peggy Ashcroft. Her character is Lillian, thrust into a frightening and incomprehensible world after sixty years in a mental institution." (Weekend Guardian); Century: "If all British films are to be costume dramas then let them all be as intelligent and imaginative as Stephen Poliakoff's Century.The strength of the film lies not just in the strong performances or unusual storyline but in images that conflict with our idea of what the past looks like...Century deserves to be celebrated for its effortless integration of contemporary issues - immigration, genetic engineering - with a convincing historical story." (Independent)

Two plays by "one of our sharpest and least predictable writers" (Daily Telegraph) Blinded by the Sun revolves around a scientific fraud in an English University. Through the characters of three scientists, it explores how the pressure to succeed, and the need to create hype, can cause conflict within the modern scientific world. In Sweet Panic a child psychologist's understanding of contemporary life is brought into question when she finds herself stalked by the mother of one of her young clients. "Stephen Poliakoff's brilliant new play is a spiritual thriller for the 1990s - which certainly does not mean that once the 1990s are over it will be tired and dated...Sweet Panic will survive because of its intensity and perception." (Sunday Times)

In Sweet Panic a child psychologist's understanding of contemporary life is brought into question when she finds herself stalked by the mother of one of her young clients. 'Stephen Poliakoff's brilliant new play is a spiritual thriller for the 1990s - which certainly does not mean that once the 1990s are over it will be tired and dated...Sweet Panic will survive because of its intensity and perception' (Sunday Times)

A new collection of Stephen Poliakoff's plays and screenplays Includes the screenplays Caught on a Train (winner of BAFTA award Best Single Play, 1980), Close My Eyes (winner of the Evening Standard Best British Picture of 1991 and numerous other awards), and the play Coming in to Land"Stephen Poliakoff 'has been one of our sharpest and least predictable writers for the past twenty years" (Daily Telegraph)

Stephen Poliakoff 'has been one of our sharpest and least predictable writers for the past twenty years' (Daily Telegraph) Broadcasting House, London, in the late 1930s. With war in Europe looming on the horizon, in light entertainment radio there is the bizarre spectacle of costumed singers and dancers performing live in a medium where they can only be heard and not seen. Robbie, the mercurial Master of Ceremonies of the popular 'Friday Night at Eight', has a playful and devious imagination. Together with radio producer Clive the two hatch a dangerous and subversive new form of radio broadcast to bring home to listeners the sinister truth of the devastating storm rumbling in Europe.

A series of three-hour-long linked plays for BBC2 plus two shorter plays Oswald and Marilyn, played by Timothy Spall and Lindsay Duncan, are the custodians of the collection of 10 million black and white photographs housed in a beautiful period building on the edge of London. Their peaceful old fashioned existence is threatened when some Americans buy the property to turn it into a business school. They have to use their resources and ingenuity to fight the forces of the modern world and as they do so their battle uncovers a mystery from the past, hidden away amongst the photos which has a dramatic effect on the lives of all those involved. "A meditation on the nature of photographic images, a celebration of old-world English eccentricity at threat in a world of high-technology glossiness, and a reminder that nothing in our heritage is sacred" (Sunday Times)

Stephen Poliakoff 'has been one of our sharpest and least predictable writers for the past twenty years' (Daily Telegraph) In his new play, Remember This, Stephen Poliakoff looks at the insidious role that technology plays in all our lives. The video camera becomes an interruption in the daily existence of Rick and Victoria and their friends and relations as the couple prepare for their wedding, to such an extent that the video diary they are recording begins to take over their lives. If events have not been recorded they have not been lived. Their memory of events is only what exists on tape for an audience to see or hear. When the stress of modern living reaches a critical peak, Rick's forsakes real life for one totally imagined. Remembering becomes harder and harder."Stephen Poliakoff addresses the problem of the amnesia that threatens to overtake us all, as a hundred different developments - social, cultural, technological - conspire to cut us off from the past" (Sunday Telegraph); "His social observations often have a deadly accuracy" (Guardian)

The script of BBC's major 3-part drama for Spring 2001, starring Michael Gambon, Timothy Spall, Lyndsey Duncan and Toby Stephens If you take any family and get them together, and get them to stay up long enough, the stories will come tumbling out ...there are at least three great stories in any family...At an elaborately organised reunion, held in a grand London hotel, Raymond, his wife Esther and their son Daniel are slowly drawn into their ancestors' family tree. Meeting distant - and not so distant - relatives for the first time they begin to establish their positions within this eccentric and eclectic family. Helping them on their way, Stephen, the appointed 'pedigree-hunter' and archivist, unravels their entwined stories with the aid of his extraordinary collection of family photographs. In an attempt to pieces together and make sense of their forgotten or obscured personal histories, the past impacts on the present and they come face to face with the darkest of family secrets.

The screenplay of Poliakoff's award-winning BBC drama about the forgotten son of King George V and Queen Mary The Lost Prince follows the life and times of Prince John, the forgotten youngest son of King George V and Queen Mary, who was born in 1905. Although remembered as a charming boy, he was diagnosed as epileptic and suffering from learning difficulties similar to autism and shut away at the age of twelve at the in Wood Farm near Sandringham to prevent the family from public embarrassment. He died there when he was just thirteen. Dramatising the historical facts, Poliakoff portrays with extraordinary sensitivity, a child's experience of the Royal Family in the late Edwardian period and during the First World War. Set against a backdrop of unprecedented upheaval in Britain, The Lost Prince tells the very human story of a unique family and an extraordinary boy. Published to tie in with the BBC's production, broadcast in two feature-length instalments in January 2003, The Lost Prince stars Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson, Gina McKee, Tom Hollander, John Sessions, Billy Nighy and Bibi Andersson.

When the retiring professor in a chemistry department of a northern university chooses A1, a mediocre scientist but a brilliant administrator to succeed him as head of department, he sets in motion a chain of events that will test the department's endurance to the limit.

Two major new screenplays by the award-winning Stephen Poliakoff made for the BBC and HBO Films and due to be broadcast in November 2007. A stellar cast led by Michael Gambon and Dame Maggie Smith feature in these exquisite, major new films that are linked by a grand house and memories of the past. In Joe's Palace, the first of two screenplays, Stephen Poliakoff explores the relationship between a reclusive billionaire (played by Michael Gambon), and the teenage boy he employs to take care of a grand house. This is a lavishly shot contemporary film about loneliness and loss. In Capturing Mary, the companion film for BBC2 set in the same exquisite empty house, Poliakoff takes his characters into a dark and terrifying exploration of the past and its power to capture and destroy a person's life. Dame Maggie Smith plays the lead role. Included also is A Real Summer, a glorious companion drama to Capturing Mary charting the development of an unexpected friendship between a young aristocratic woman and Mary before she enters the dangerous world of Mr Graham's house.

Close to the Enemy is a seven-part television series, mostly set in a bomb-damaged London hotel in the aftermath of the Second World War.The drama follows intelligence officer Captain Callum Ferguson whose last task for the Army is to ensure that a captured German scientist, Dieter, starts working for the British RAF on urgently developing the jet engine. With the background of the emerging Cold War, it is clear to all that it's crucial for British national security that cutting-edge technology is made available to the armed forces as quickly as possible. Callum uses unorthodox methods in his attempt to convince Dieter to work with the British and eventually a friendship develops between the two men, but soon tensions arise as all is not as it seems.Over the course of the series, Callum encounters a number of other characters whose stories all intertwine. These characters include Victor, Callum’s younger brother, struggling to deal with psychological trauma caused by his experience in the fighting; Harold, a Foreign Office official who reveals some startling truths about the outbreak of the war; Rachel, an enchanting Anglophile American engaged to his best friend; and Kathy, a tough young woman working for the War Crimes Unit, fighting to bring war criminals who escaped prosecution to justice. All these characters are trying to rebuild and move their lives forward in the aftermath of the war, a war that scarred them all so deeply.Close to the Enemy was first screened on BBC2 in November 2016 in a production by Little Island Productions. It starred Jim Sturgess, Freddie Highmore, Charlotte Riley, Phoebe Fox, August Diehl, Robert Glenister, Alfie Allen, Charity Wakefield, Angela Bassett, Lindsay Duncan and Alfred Molina.

Close to the Enemy is a seven-part television series, mostly set in a bomb-damaged London hotel in the aftermath of the Second World War.The drama follows intelligence officer Captain Callum Ferguson whose last task for the Army is to ensure that a captured German scientist, Dieter, starts working for the British RAF on urgently developing the jet engine. With the background of the emerging Cold War, it is clear to all that it's crucial for British national security that cutting-edge technology is made available to the armed forces as quickly as possible. Callum uses unorthodox methods in his attempt to convince Dieter to work with the British and eventually a friendship develops between the two men, but soon tensions arise as all is not as it seems.Over the course of the series, Callum encounters a number of other characters whose stories all intertwine. These characters include Victor, Callum’s younger brother, struggling to deal with psychological trauma caused by his experience in the fighting; Harold, a Foreign Office official who reveals some startling truths about the outbreak of the war; Rachel, an enchanting Anglophile American engaged to his best friend; and Kathy, a tough young woman working for the War Crimes Unit, fighting to bring war criminals who escaped prosecution to justice. All these characters are trying to rebuild and move their lives forward in the aftermath of the war, a war that scarred them all so deeply.Close to the Enemy was first screened on BBC2 in November 2016 in a production by Little Island Productions. It starred Jim Sturgess, Freddie Highmore, Charlotte Riley, Phoebe Fox, August Diehl, Robert Glenister, Alfie Allen, Charity Wakefield, Angela Bassett, Lindsay Duncan and Alfred Molina.

Glorious 39 is the screenplay of the new blockbuster film by award-winning writer/director Stephen Poliakoff released in cinemas in November 2009. In this tense psychological thriller set on the eve of WWII, a young woman stumbles across evidence of a sinister Nazi appeasement plot that will stop at nothing to achieve its aims. As close friends die in suspicious circumstances, she finds herself in extreme danger from an increasingly menacing and powerful enemy. Besides the screenplay the book features an exclusive Q&A with writer/director Stephen Polikoff, a colour photo section and full cast and production credits. The film features a stellar cast of leading British actors: award-winning British actress Romola Garai (Atonement), alongside BAFTA-winning actor Bill Nighy (Love Actually). They are joined by Oscar-winning actress Julie Christie (Finding Neverland), Eddie Redmayne (The Other Boleyn Girl), David Tennant, Charlie Cox (Stardust), Jeremy Northam (Gosford Park) and the legendary Christopher Lee (Lord of The Rings) as Walter.Glorious 39 is writer/director Stephen Poliakoff's return to the cinema after an absence of a decade since his previous feature films which include the multi-award winning Close My Eyes.

Heralding a return to the stage for renowned dramatist Stephen Poliakoff, My City is a lyrical exploration of storytelling, interwoven personal and political histories, memory and the ties of the past.Beautifully atmospheric and infused with a sense of yearning nostalgia, the play presents a series of strange, seemingly coincidental encounters with others which evoke momentous trends in the city they live in and the shifts of society throughout history.Two former school friends are reunited with their erstwhile teacher, the glamorous, gracious Miss Lambert who is now engaged in nightly pilgrimages on foot across London as an antidote to her chronic insomnia. In the course of these nocturnal journeys, she witnesses a paradigmatic range of incidents reflecting today's society: the kindness and the violence, the glut of discarded rubbish and the sanctity of that which is carefully preserved, as well as the ghostly vestiges of the past.My City contains all the hallmarks of Poliakoff's best writing: high in style and sustained mood, the play tells stories of the past with melodic descriptions, cinematic scope and aesthetic preciseness.