ALAN BLEASDALE. Born in Liverpool, Lancashire, U.K., 23 March 1946. Attended St. Aloysius Roman Catholic Infant and Junior Schools, Huyton, Lancashire, 1951-57; Wade Deacon Grammar School, Widnes, Lancashire, 1957-64; Padgate Teachers Training College (Teacher's Certificate), 1967. Married Julia Moses, 1970; two sons and one daughter. Worked as schoolteacher at St Columbus Secondary Modern School, Huyton, Lancashire, 1967-71, King George V School, Gilbert and Ellice Islands, 1971-74, and Halewood Grange Comprehensive School, Lancashire, 1974-75; resident playwright, Liverpool Playhouse, 1975-76, and Contact Theatre, Manchester, 1976-78; joint artistic director, 1981-84, and associate director, 1984-86, Liverpool Playhouse. D.Litt.: Liverpool Polytechnic, 1991. Recipient: Broadcasting Press Guild Television Award for Best Series, 1982; British Academy of Film and Television Arts Writers' Award, 1982; Royal Television Society Writer of the Year, 1982; Pye Television Award, 1983; Toronto Film Festival Critics' Award, 1984; London Standard Best Musical Award, 1985; ITV Best British TV Drama of the Decade Award, 1989; Broadcasting Press Guild Television and Radio Award, 1991. Address: Lemon Unna and Durbridge Ltd, 24 Pottery Lane, Holland Park, London W11 4LZ, U.K.

TELEVISION SERIES

1982 Boys from the Blackstuff
1984 Scully
1991 GBH
1994 Alan Bleasdale Presents (producer)

TELEVISION SPECIALS

1975 Early to Bed
1976 Dangerous Ambition
1978 Scully's New Year's Eve
1980 The Black Stuff
1981 The Muscle Market
1986 The Monocled Mutineer

FILM

No Surrender, 1986.

STAGE

Fat Harold and the Last 26, 1975; The Party's Over, 1975; Scully (with others), 1975; Franny Scully's Christmas Stories (with Kenneth Alan Taylor), 1976; Down the Dock Road, 1976; It's a Madhouse, 1976; Should Auld Acquaintance, 1976; No More Sitting on the Old School Bench, 1977; Crackers, 1978; Pimples, 1978; Having a Ball, 1981; Young People Today, 1983; Are You Lonesome Tonight?, 1985; Love Is a Many Splendoured Thing, 1986; On the Ledge, 1993.

PUBLICATIONS

Scully (novel). London: Hutchinson, 1975.
Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? (novel). London: Hutchinson, 1977.
No More Sitting on the Old School Bench (play). Todmorden, Yorkshire: Woodhouse, 1979.
Love Is a Many Splendoured Thing (play), in David Self and Ray Speakman, Act I. London: Hutchinson, 1979.
Scully (play), with others. London: Hutchinson, 1984.
Scully and Mooey (revised version of Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed?). London: Corgi, 1984.
Boys from the Blackstuff (television play). London: Hutchinson, 1985.
Are You Lonesome Tonight? (musical). London: Faber, 1985.
It's a Madhouse/Having a Ball (plays). London: Faber, 1986.
The Monocled Mutineer (television play). London: Hutchinson, 1986.
No Surrender: A Deadpan Farce (screenplay). London: Faber, 1986.

Alan Bleasdale is one of the most successful and influential writers working in British television today. Drawing on the traditions of realist television drama, he has created powerful but darkly comic television plays and miniseries set in the depressed cities of the north of England.

Bleasdale's first success as a writer came with the development of the character of Scully, a Liverpool youth whose anarchic adventures challenge the authority of those responsible for the impoverished society in which he lives. A series of stories about Scully was broadcast on BBC Radio Merseyside in 1971 while Bleasdale was still earning his living as a teacher. From 1974 to 1979 Bleasdale presented the Franny Scully Show on Radio City Liverpool, while the character also appeared in a touring theater show, a television play called Scully's New Year's Eve broadcast by the BBC in 1978, and two novels which became the basis of a Granada television series in 1984.

The ability to create characters who capture the popular imagination was also apparent in Boys From the Blackstuff, the series which firmly established Bleasdale as a key figure in British television in the 1980s. This project had its roots in a single play called The Black Stuff, broadcast by the BBC in 1980, dealing with the disastrous money-making efforts of a gang of road workers from Liverpool. With the support of producer Michael Wearing, Bleasdale was able to create a five-part series dealing with the effects of unemployment on the "boys" and their families after their return to Liverpool.

Boys From the Blackstuff was first shown in a late-night time-slot on BBC2 in 1982 but proved so popular that it was quickly repeated in prime-time on BBC1 in January 1983. Each episode centered on a different character, but their paths frequently crossed and the action built toward the final episode in which they all came together at the funeral of an old worker whose socialist ideals no longer inspire the men of Margaret Thatcher's Britain. The impact of the series grew out of its commitment to showing the experience of unemployment from the point-of-view of the unemployed. It drew on the conventions of northern working-class realism prevalent in British cinema and television since the 1960s but also included elements of black comedy, derived from Liverpool's traditional "scouse" humor, and grotesque nightmare images that expressed the psychological pressures of unemployment. This mixture of elements created an unsettling effect but, despite its bleak vision, Boys from the Blackstuff promoted a sense of solidarity in viewers who faced similar problems. Catchphrases from the series were incorporated into chants by the supporters of the Liverpool soccer team.

Bleasdale has continued to write for television, as well as for film and theater, but the closest he has come to repeating the success of Boys from the Blackstuff has been with GBH, a seven-part serial broadcast on Channel 4 in 1991. Dealing with the takeover of a northern English city by a fascist organization, GBH was related to earlier serials, such as Troy Kennedy Martin's Edge of Darkness (1985) and Alan Plater's A Very British Coup (1988), which blended science-fiction and political thriller to address growing fears that the British democratic system was threatened with collapse. Bleasdale's political message was more explicitly stated here than in Boys from the Blackstuff, but the fiction was once again enriched by grotesque comedy, largely associated with the casting of Michael Palin, a member of the Monty Python troupe, as an unassuming school teacher who inadvertently becomes a symbol of resistance to the new order.

In 1994 Bleasdale took on a new role as producer of series on Channel 4 called Alan Bleasdale Presents, using the influence made possible by the popular success of his work to give young writers a chance to demonstrate their talents. While the dramas presented in this series have adopted a variety of approaches, they owe much to Bleasdale's own achievement, grounded in the tradition of "naturalism" in British television drama but creating compelling fictions by gradually introducing disruptive elements drawn from popular genres.

-Jim Leach