Lucy Gannon has written
many popular dramas over the years.
Soldier Soldier, Peak Practice, Best of Men and Bramwell to name but a
few, but it’s the series Frankie that has piqued our interest over the past few
weeks, as it welcomes a return to our screens of Eve Myles aka Gwen Cooper,
this time in a different role as District Nurse Frankie Maddox. Frankie lives and works in Bristol, with a
team of district nurses who call in at the homes of patients in and around the
city and she cares more for them than she does about anything else, even more
than her relationship with Ian played by Dean Lennox Kelly.
The story touches upon
many subjects, such as assisted suicide, dementia and the usual trials of life
that pass in and out of the surgery.
There are some familiar faces amongst the cast, having spotted another
Torchwood face – Christine Bottomley (Maggie – Torchwood, A Day in the Death), Noma
Dumezweni (Capt. Magambo – Doctor Who, Planet of the Dead) and Jemma Redgrave (Bramwell).
Each episode revolves
around a member of the team. The story
is a breath of fresh air for a Tuesday evening and six episodes are just not enough
and we really hope there will be a second and third season of Frankie to
enjoy.
Lucy Gannon’s career
started in 1987 when she wrote a play about a disabled boy whose father had
committed suicide, called ‘Keeping Tom Nice.’ It earned her a six month
writer-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company. The play was shown at the Ameida Theatre in
London and later in 1989 was shown as a BBC TV screenplay starring Linus
Roache.
Lucy received the MBE
for services to Drama in 1996. Among her other awards are The Eileen Anderson
Award, The Richard Burton Drama Award, The Susan Smith Blackburn Award, The
BAFTA Cymru and the Contribution To The Media Award (Women in Film and
Television) and the RTS Award (South West England) for Best Writer for her film
The Best of Men, written about the pioneering work of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann and
the start of the Paralympic games at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital. It starred Eddie Marsan as Guttmann and Rob
Brydon as Cpl Wynne Bowen a patient at the hospital.
Lucy’s prior career as a
military policewoman, residential social worker and a nurse may be the reason
why her characters and her creations work so well on screen. You develop a real empathy for the characters
that Lucy writes about, from the army barracks of Soldier Soldier, to the
surgery at Peak Practice, and now for Frankie, her programmes always have you
begging for more, and we certainly want MORE Frankie!
Project: Torchwood
caught up with Lucy during a break in her busy schedule and talked with her
about Frankie, her career as a playwright, television writer and producer and
general chat.
You can find Lucy on:
Research source
Wikipedia
No comments:
Post a Comment