This week: the producer of All Creatures Great and Small and the composer of Hair
THE television director and producer Bill Sellars, who has died aged 93, worked on some of the best loved and remembered shows of the last 50 years. He produced All Creatures Great and Small, the long-running adaptation of the James Herriot novels about the life of a Yorkshire vet, and directed some early episodes of Doctor Who starring William Hartnell. He was also a producer on some of the biggest soap operas of the 1960s and 70s, including Compact and The Brothers. However, he also produced a show that is less well-remembered - Triangle, which was set on a freezing car ferry crossing the North Sea and was beset with production problems.
Sellars joined the BBC in the 1960s working on the drama A for Andromeda as a production assistant and began working as a television director on the soap opera Compact, which was created by Hazel Adair and Peter Ling, who subsequently devised Crossroads; the show was set in the world of magazine publishing and ran from 1962 to 1965.
Sellars's work on Doctor Who was for the 1966 William Hartnell story The Celestial Toymaker, which was set in a world controlled by a megalomaniac who forces the Doctor and his companions to play a series of deadly games.
Sellars moved into producing with the soap opera The Newcomers, about a family moving from the city to a small town, and also worked on the BBC series Owen MD about a country doctor. In the 1970s, he produced The Brothers, a popular Sunday night drama about a road haulage firm that starred future Doctor Who Colin Baker.
In the 1980s, Sellars had considerable success with All Creatures Great and Small, producing the show throughout the decade. From 1984 to 1987, Sellars also produced another veterinary-themed drama One by One about a vet caring for animals in zoos. All Creatures Great and Small won Sellars two awards nominations, a BAFTA nomination for Best Drama Series in 1979, and a Primetime Emmy nomination in 1990.
On retirement from television, Sellars managed The Georgian Theatre Royal in Richmond, Yorkshire, the oldest and most complete Georgian theatre in the world.
His daughter Lindy Carr said Sellars died peacefully in his sleep. "He was just a kind man who came from humble beginnings, and he worked his way up and became a success," said Carr.
THE composer Galt MacDermot, who has died aged 89, was best known for the hit Broadway musicals Hair and Two Gentlemen of Verona. Hair became one of the most influential musicals of the 1960s with several of its songs becoming anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement. It earned two Tony nominations, won the Grammy for Best Score From an Original Cast Show Album, and has been revived several times
MacDermot then scored another hit with the 1970s rock musical Two Gentlemen of Verona, which was based on the Shakespeare comedy. It won two Tonys in 1972, beating Grease and Follies for Best Musical.
He was born in Montreal and studied music at South Africa’s Cape Town University. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2009 and received the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
MacDermot’s work later became an early staple of hip-hop sampling, with musicians such as Gang Starr, Madlib, MF DOOM, Busta Rhymes, Run-D.M.C., J Dilla, all repurposing his work.
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