Nigel Stafford-Clark

Nigel Stafford-Clark
Born	12 June 1948 (1948-06-12) (age 63) Bromley, Kent, England
Occupation	Film and television producer
Years active	1982–present

Nigel Stafford-Clark (born 12 June 1948) is a British film and television producer, and the brother of the theatre director Max Stafford-Clark. He was educated at Felsted and Trinity College, Cambridge, and worked in advertising and in sponsored documentaries before becoming a commercials producer at Moving Picture Company (MPC).

In the build up to the launch of Channel 4 in November 1982, he formed MPC’s programme department, executive producing a number of documentary series for the new channel, including one of its earliest hits Tom Keating on Painters. He also produced several television films for the Film on Four strand, including Last Day of Summer, written by Ian McEwan from his own short story, and The House, the debut drama from writer-director and People Show alumnus Mike Figgis. He moved on to feature films in the mid-80s, including The Assam Garden, in which Deborah Kerr gave a highly-acclaimed performance in what would be her last feature, and Stormy Monday, in which Mike Figgis made an immediate impact as writer and director of his first.

In 1988, Stafford-Clark moved to Zenith Productions, the independent drama production company whose feature film credits included Prick Up Your Ears, Wish You Were Here and The Hit, and whose television productions included Inspector Morse and Hamish Macbeth. During his time there he produced a number of television and feature films, amongst them the highly controversial and award-winning Shoot to Kill (1990), the drama debut of documentary film-maker Peter Kosminsky, which told the story of the Stalker Inquiry in Northern Ireland.

In 1998 Stafford-Clark left Zenith to form his own production company, Deep Indigo, winning the British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Serial three times between 1999 and 2005 with productions for the BBC. Warriors (1999), written by Leigh Jackson, reunited him with director Peter Kosminsky and dealt with the brutal realities facing young British soldiers on peacekeeping duties in Bosnia. The Way We Live Now (2001), the first of three projects with writer Andrew Davies, was directed by David Yates and starred David Suchet as Anthony Trollope’s rogue Augustus Melmotte. This was followed by a second Trollope adaptation He Knew He Was Right (2003) directed by Tom Vaughan, and then by Bleak House (2005). This eight-hour adaptation of the novel by Charles Dickens was shown in the UK twice weekly in half-hour episodes (after an initial hour), inspired by the episodic publication of the original novel. It was directed by Justin Chadwick and Susanna White, with Gillian Anderson and Charles Dance leading a cast of over 65.

In March 2008 Stafford-Clark’s most recent production, The Passion, was broadcast on BBC One. It tells the story of Jesus from his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday to his Crucifixion and the events which followed. Written by Frank Deasy and directed by Michael Offer, it was stripped across Holy Week in four peak-time episodes.

Stafford-Clark has developed a four-hour serial for ITV in the UK, written by Julian Fellowes, that takes a fresh look at the sinking of the Titanic for the one hundredth anniversary in April 2012 - a UK/Hungary/Canada co-production that has been pre-sold to a range of broadcasters, including the ABC Network in the USA. Filming was completed in mid-July 2011 at the Stern Studios in Budapest. He is also developing an original conspiracy thriller written by British Academy Television Awards winner Neil McKay for Channel 4.

He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts

External links

• Nigel Stafford-Clark at Internet Movie Database

Persondata
Name	Stafford-Clark, Nigel
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	12 June 1948
Place of birth	Bromley, Kent, England
Date of death
Place of death