Troy Kennedy Martin

Scriptwriters, by nature, are an anonymous group. Television writers even more so. Very rarely does a writer survive long enough and produce a good enough calibre of work to be recognised. Troy Kennedy Martin has been one of the few to gain such respect and acknowledgement. Yet this only occurred in 1985 with the transmission of his opus, Edge of Darkness, a full 27 years after he became a television screenwriter.

Francis (Troy) Kennedy Martin was born in 1932 in Scotland. He did his national service with the Gordon Highlanders in Cyprus reportedly “as part of an intelligence gathering service”.1 After his national service he worked as a teacher. As he was waiting for his first novel to be published, Kennedy Martin wrote a television script about his experiences in Cyprus. The BBC produced Kennedy Martin’s first foray into television, Incident at Echo Six, in 1958. 2 He was then asked to join the BBC script unit where he and a dozen other writers helped edit incoming scripts, but more importantly were allowed to experiment with the form.

It was 1962, however, that finally brought some attention to his writing with the creation of Z Cars, a breakthrough in television crime drama that has reverberated through almost every British crime drama ever since. It “focused squarely on the professional activities of the policemen of a new north of England overspill estate called Newtown”.3 Kennedy Martin got the idea for the series when he began to listen to police messages on his radio when he was confined to bed with mumps: “I got a vastly different impression of the police than that given by Dixon of Dock Green”.4 The main ideas for the series “grew up from... [the]...basis of young policemen, their inadequacy and their inability to cope with the realities of everyday life”.5 Unlike the paternalistic conservative Dixon, the new policemen on Z Cars lived in a more cynically realistic world where they dealt with grim and gritty crimes and “portray[ed] a world of poverty and dog eat dog that was familiar to most television owners”.6 Z Cars premiered in1962 and became an instant success. The BBC extended the series to 31 episodes which angered Kennedy Martin who saw the extension as turning the show into a “meat factory”.7 He and director John McGrath left the series at the end of the first season. Kennedy Martin and McGrath returned to Z Cars in 1978 for the final episode which was “a mixture of parody and black comedy”8 with cameo appearances from the earlier cast.

The gritty realism of Z Cars was seen by the BBC as left wing. Kennedy Martin’s acquired reputation as a radical voice in British television was enhanced when he wrote an article in early 1964 which attacked naturalism and urged a more direct style of storytelling on television.9 He argued that naturalism gave dialogue priority over action. He also saw the observance of natural time diluting the possibility for cinematic montage. Later that year he wrote, along with John McGrath, the six part series Diary Of A Young Man, which dealt with two young Northerners and their experiences in “Swinging London”. The series tried to put some of Kennedy Martin’s manifesto into practice by using such techniques as voiceover and montage. His problems with the BBC conservative hierarchy continued and his output for the station declined. He began to do some writing for the commercial stations.

A more major move occurred in the late 1960s and early 1970s as Kennedy Martin moved into feature films. He wrote The Italian Job (1969) for British filmmakers and then worked in Hollywood scripting Kelly’s Heroes (1970) and the disappointing The Jerusalem File (1972). During his stay in the US he also wrote two unproduced scripts concerning the Black Panthers.10 His produced scripts were also watered down to the point where he hated them, but his skill as a good writer of action and humour still stood out. A case in point concerned his initial script for Kelly’s Heroes which was good enough to entice Clint Eastwood to the film, but he hated the rewrites to Kennedy Martin’s script. As Kennedy Martin says of the experience: “All writers get fucked over really”.11

Kennedy Martin returned to England and wrote for a number of shows especially The Sweeney (5 episodes) including the film Sweeney 2 (1978). It was the early 1980s that brought attention once again to his writing with three successful shows. Firstly, in 1983, was the costume adventure series Reilly: Ace of Spies, a series which he had been involved in writing since 1974 but finally found a backer in Verity Lambert at Euston Films and which ended up becoming “Euston’s most ambitious and expensive project”.12 Kennedy Martin faced problems with the producer Chris Burt who cut out scenes in the scripts before the strong minded directors read them, to save on costs.13 Broadcast at the same time was his adaptation of Angus Wilson’s The Old Men At The Zoo for the BBC, which he had to radically update it to the 1980s (the book was written in the late 1940s) and add a nuclear war theme.14

It was late 1985, with the screening of Edge of Darkness, that Kennedy Martin gained the critical acclaim he deserved. It was a gripping piece of television writing that was mesmerising in its fulsome plot and ideas, with strong and fascinating characters. The six episode series was a tribute to television noir that used the crime thriller to espouse a number of themes and ideas that turned the series into a “definitive text of 80s television”.15 Edge of Darkness came out of moments of despair in Kennedy Martin’s own life. The strong intense grief that police detective Ronald Craven (played impeccably by Bob Peck) experienced at the loss of his daughter stemmed from Kennedy Martin’s past.16 The series dealt not only with the close relationship between Craven and his daughter and his search to find out who murdered her and why (which gave us the great narrative vehicle of Emma as a ghost that Craven only saw), but also union corruption, the tyranny of a nuclear state in destroying civil liberties and the battle between different “factions” in British and US intelligence Services. It also juxtaposed the dangers of a growing nuclear industry against Doctor James Lovelock’s theory of ecology.17

Kennedy Martin started writing Edge of Darkness in the late 1970s, mainly for himself. By 1981 he had completed the first draft. After several refusals by numerous producers he took it to the BBC who accepted it. The intricate plotting and gallery of characters was compared to a nineteenth century novel.18 From 1982 to 1985 there were major rewrites to accommodate new developments and the battles that went on with the director Martin Campbell.
Edge of Darkness was critically acclaimed and won six BAFTA awards (including best drama). However, after the six month shoot Kennedy Martin was broke, so it was off to Hollywood again to work with Walter Hill with Kennedy Martin doing some writing on Hill’s Red Heat (1988). Kennedy Martin has had a long and distinguished career and will always be remembered as an important writer in British television. Yet even with his reputation, Kennedy Martin has had over the decades, difficulty in maintaining the integrity of his scripts as producers and directors, both in film and television, have mishandled his work. For instance, he thought Z Cars was being compromised by the producers at the BBC so he left his own series. In the 1980s he faced a cost cutting producer on Reilly: Ace of Spies and a hard nosed director on Edge of Darkness. In the end even his own reputation couldn’t save his work which clearly indicates the minor standing writers have in the industry as a whole.


ENDNOTES

1 Cornell, Paul, “Bob Peck Interview”, in Time Screen, Number 19, 1992, p. 7.

2 Halliwell, Leslie with Philip Purser, Halliwell’s Television Companion, 2nd. edition, London: Granada Publishing, 1982.
The 50 minute piece dealt with the British army’s anti-EOKA operations, where military messages mixed with music and mackintoshed policemen strolled into the front line. It was described as a “picture of a unique, joyless campaign”.

3 Vahimagi, Tise, British Television, London: University Press, 1994, p.113.

4 Cornell, Paul, Martin Day and Keith Topping, Classic British TV, 2nd. edition, London: Guiness Publishing, 1996, p.222.

5 Lawrance, Peter, “The Time of the Preacher: An Interview with Troy Kennedy Martin”, Filmviews, No.132, Winter 1987, p.13.

6 Cornell, Paul, et. al., op. cit., p. 210.

7 Lang, Stuart, “Banging in Some Reality: The Original Z Cars”, in John Corner (ed.), Popular Television in Britain: Studies in Cultural History, London: British Film Institute, 1991, p.132.

8 Ibid., p. 139.

9 Caughie, John, “Progressive Television and Documentary Drama”, in Tony Bennett, Susan Boyd-Bowman, Colin Mercer and Janet Woollacott, Popular Television and Film, London: British Film Institute, 1981, p.338.

10 Cooke, Lez, “Interview with Troy Kennedy Martin”, in Movies, No.33, 1989, p.37.

11 Ibid., p. 38.

12 Alvarado, Manuel and John Stewart, Made For Television: Euston Films Limited, London: British Film Institute, 1985, p.111


13 Lawrance, Peter, op. cit., p. 15.

14 Schembri, Jim, “Britain’s Kennedy Martin Brothers: Video has Made some of their Best Work Suffer”, in Green Guide- The Age, 5/1/89, p.14.

15 Cornell, Paul, et. al., op. cit., p.268.

16 Cornell, Paul, op. cit., p.4
Bob Peck: “ He has suffered a divorce and his relationship with his daughter, was severed in a similar way, it felt like a bereavement to him. She used to write to him and she used to think of him and actually refer to him in her letters as a tree”.
These letters are actually shown in Edge of Darkness. Craven’s bereavement also stemmed from Kennedy Martin’s despairing bereavement when he lost his mother at a young age.

17 Martin, Troy Kennedy, Edge of Darkness, London: Faber and Faber, 1990, p. ix.
Kennedy Martin explains: “The ‘Gaia hypothesis’ was formulated by the British earth scientist Doctor James Lovelock and his American colleague Lyn Margulies. Lovelock believed that the planet and its surrounding atmosphere was a single living system- a self-regulating mechanism built to maintain the optimum conditions of life. ... He placed the earth at the centre of events, and put the human race on the periphery, where it might even be expendable in certain circumstances”.

18 Ibid., p. vii.
Edge of Darkness “derived much of its strength from a British literary tradition which goes back many years. While the modern novel had developed on mainly personal lines, the television mini-series has inherited many of the characteristics of the nineteenth-century public novel, particularly its strong narrative and characters; Edge of Darkness was consciously written to reflect this.”



CREDITS

(This is as comprehensive as possible. Unfortunately, there are omissions.)


Incident At Echo Six, BBC, 1958.

The Interrogator, BBC, 1961.

Storyboard, BBC, 1961. Six episodes (30 mins.). Dramatisations. With Michael Imison on episodes 1 and 4.
1. “The Gentleman From Paris” by John Dickson Carr.
2. “The Magic Barrel” by Bernard Malamud.
3. “The Long Spoon” by John Wyndham.
4. “I’ll Be Waiting” by Raymond Chandler.
5. “The Middle Men” - original script.
6. “Tickets To Trieste” by Ken Wlaschen.

Z Cars, BBC, 1962-78. A total of nine episodes for the first season including:
1. “Four Of A Kind”.
2. “Limping Rabbit”.
6. “Friday Night”.
8. “Family Feud”.
11. “Jailbreak”.
13. “Sudden Death”.
31. “Teamwork”.

1978. “Pressure”.

Diary Of A Young Man, BBC, 1964. Six 45 min. episodes. With John McGrath.
1. “Survival”.
2. “Money”.
3. “Marriage”.
4. “Power”.
5. “Life”.
6. “Relationships”.

Six, BBC, 1964. Episode 2 “The Chase”. With Michael Elster.

The Man Without Papers, BBC, 1965. In Wednesday Play Series.


Out Of The Unknown, BBC, 1965-1971. One episode in Season One. Dramatisation.
12. “The Midas Plague” by Frederick Pohl.

Redcap, ABC, 1965-66. Three Episodes. Script edited by Ian Kennedy Martin.

The Italian Job. (UK, 1969)

If It Moves, File It, LWT, 1970. Six episodes.

Kelly’s Heroes. (US/ Yugoslavia, 1970)

The Jerusalem File. (US/ Israel, 1972)

Colditz, BBC, 1972-74. One episode for Season Two.
4. “The Guests”.

The Fall Of Eagles, BBC, 1974. One episode.
8. “The Appointment”.

The Sweeney, Euston Films for Thames Television, 1975-78.
Season One -1975
3. “Thin Ice”.
6. “Night Out”.

Season Three - 1976
1. “Selected Target”.
3. “Visiting Fireman”.

Season Four - 1978
2. “Hard Men”.

Sweeney 2. (UK, 1978)

Reilly: Ace Of Spies, Euston Film for Thames Television, 1983.
1. “An Affair With A Married Woman”. 75 mins.
2. “Prelude To War”.
3. “The Visiting Fireman”.
4. “Anna”.
5. “Dreadnoughts And Crosses”.
6. “Dreadnoughts And Double Crosses”.
7. “Gambit”.
8. “Endgame”.
9. “After Moscow”.
10. “The Trust”.
11. “The Last Journey”.
12. “Shut Down”.

Armchair Thriller : Fear of God 1980

The Old Men At The Zoo, BBC, 1983. Dramatised from Angus Wilson’s novel.
1. “A Tall Story...”
2. “Godmanchester’s Plan”.
3. “Exodus”.
4. “Armageddon”.
5. “The Year Of The Yeti”.

Edge Of Darkness, BBC, 1985.
1. “Compassionate Leave”.
2. “Into The Shadows”.
3. “Burden Of Proof”.
4. “Breakthrough”.
5. “Northmoor”.
6. “Fusion”.

Red Heat. (US, 1988)

Hostile Waters 1997

Bravo Two Zero (UK, 1999)

The Italian Job (US, 2003)

Red Dust (UK 2004)