Shaun Sutton; BBC TV Drama head
Hyfler/Rosner
Shaun Sutton
(Filed: 17/05/2004) Telegraph
Shaun Sutton, who died on Friday aged 84, was a tireless
champion of quality television whose good fortune was to
preside over what is regarded as the golden age of
television drama.
As Head of BBC Television's Drama Group from 1969 to 1981,
Sutton was the executive ultimately responsible for an era
which produced Pennies From Heaven; Play for Today; Softly
Softly; I Claudius; The Pallisers and Tinker Tailor Soldier
Spy. He loosed a huge outpouring of BBC 2 "classic" serials,
ranging from The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elizabeth R to
Testament of Youth.
He also launched the BBC's unique six-year Shakespeare
marathon, and after he had retired as Head of Drama, was
particularly pleased, though he had not worked in a studio
for 15 years, to be asked to produce the last l2 of the 37
plays himself.
The son of Graham Sutton, a schoolmaster and writer, Shaun
Alfred Graham Sutton was born on October 14 1919. He was
educated at Latymer Upper before going to the Embassy
theatre school, then working as a stage manager and actor in
the West End.
Following the outbreak of war, Sutton served in the Navy for
six years, during which he was sunk in a destroyer by a
German aircraft in the Mediterranean. He spent some time in
a leaky Greek submarine, where he had to speak French but
learned to swear and say "Here comes the torpedo" in Greek.
On coming out of the Navy in the rank of lieutenant, Sutton
returned to acting. But although he had a tall figure which
looked good in German or police uniforms, he decided to
concentrate on production after his mother had gently
suggested that his talents did not match his ambitions. It
was good advice, he remarked years later, since there is
"nothing more pathetic than a mediocre, middle-aged actor".
He worked at the Embassy in London and at Buxton, where he
met his wife, the actress Barbara Leslie, whom he married in
1948. They went on a tour of South Africa during which they
met and befriended Nigel Hawthorne, then returned home
where, in 1952, Sutton joined the BBC's television service.
He started writing and directing children's serials, most
notably Bonehead, about a gang of incompetent thieves. This
gave him invaluable experience, instilling a natural
aptitude for fast story telling, since every reference to a
new character had immediately to be followed by a camera
shot. But it was his success in directing 24 of the early
episodes in the highly successful Z Cars which led him to be
recruited to the executive floor as Head of Serials by the
Canadian Head of Drama Sydney Newman, who asked him how many
books he had read.
Sutton, a voracious reader, modestly replied that he had
consumed a few, to be told: "I have only read four. Keep
ahead of me." Such was Sutton's success, particularly with
The Forsyte Saga, that he eventually succeeded Newman.
Endowed with an inexhaustible fund of diplomatic charm,
Sutton saw his role as that of a buffer between the often
rebellious writers and producers who provided his raw
material and the BBC Establishment which funded it.
Conservative by instinct, he frequently found himself in the
position of defending abrasive Left-wing dramas such as Jim
Allen's Days of Hope, a bitter attack on Britain's ruling
classes in the First World War. He disliked excessive
violence and swearing on screen, but stood up for the BBC's
right to transmit controversial productions, like the
long-banned Scum and Brimstone and Treacle, provided they
were dramatically honest.
Sutton's natural stance was that of a conciliator (one
television columnist described his office as "the terminus
for tantrums"). His job, he said, was to make actors, who
were "anxious and insecure people", happy. He liked to put
flowers in their dressing rooms on the first day in studio.
"It only costs a few quid, and it makes them feel wanted,"
he would say. "And when you ask for just one more take at
11pm you get it." But if occasion demanded he could wield
the big stick as effectively as any other executive. When
Richard Burton, playing Churchill in a BBC production, wrote
an article branding the wartime leader "a power-corrupted
warmonger", Sutton promptly declared that Burton would never
work for his section of the BBC again.
At the height of his career, Sutton exercised benevolent
control over a national theatre of the air which each year
produced 120 single plays and hundreds of hours of series
and serials (none of which could be labelled "soap"). He
deeply regretted the financial and other constraints which
caused the gradual contraction of this cornucopia. Shortly
before his official retirement in 1981 he told a Royal
Television Society audience: "I have always worked for a
large drama output because I am convinced that a wide output
is a healthy one, allowing producers to be bold and to
experiment . . . A small output can only encourage caution
and blandness."
Sutton was extremely proud of the fact that in more than 30
years with the BBC, half of them as an executive, he never
joined the staff. This meant that he could continue working
long after the BBC's official retirement age of 60. Well
into his seventies he was still producing the classic drama
of Theatre Night, dubbed by one regular participant, Timothy
West, "the Sutton Repertory Company". His last work was a
revision of a pantomime for the Perth Theatre in 2002.
Shaun Sutton, who was appointed OBE in 1979, wrote a
children's novel, Queen's Champion (1949), and a brisk guide
to television drama, The Largest Theatre in the World
(1982).
He is survived by his wife, a son and three daughters.