Piers Haggard

Piers Haggard (born March 18, 1939 in London, England, UK) is a British film and television director, although he has worked mostly in the latter medium. He is the grandson of H. Rider Haggard and his daughter is actress Daisy Haggard.

He began his career directing plays for the anthology drama series "Thirty-Minute Theatre" in the 1960s, later working on the more prestigious anthology shows "Armchair Theatre" (for ITV) and "Play for Today" (for the BBC). He directed for a variety of programmes throughout the 1970s, such as "The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes" and "Love for Lydia". In 1971, he directed the feature film "Satan's Skin", also known as "Blood on Satan's Claw".

Probably his best known work came later in the decade. In 1978 he was the director of Dennis Potter's landmark drama serial "Pennies From Heaven" for the BBC, and the following year he directed the expensive science-fiction serial "Quatermass", a Euston Films production for Thames Television, shown on the ITV network. Both of these productions are available on DVD, and the "Pennies From Heaven" release includes an audio commentary from Haggard.

In 1983, Haggard became one of the founder members of the Director's Guild of Great Britain, which was formed at a meeting of various film and television directors at Ronnie Scott's Club in London.

More recent work has included the Gerry Anderson science-fiction series "Space Precinct" (1994) and various one-off TV dramas such as "Cold Enough For Snow" (1997) and "The Hunt" (2001).

External links

* [http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0353592/ Internet Movie Database entry]