- Born
- Birth namePhilip Michael Hinchcliffe
- After graduating in English Literature, Philip Hinchcliffe worked for a travel company and as a teacher before becoming a script editor for the television company Associated Television. After extensive experience of working with writers and scripts for a number of shows, he began to set his sights on moving into the production side and gained experience as an associate producer.
In the spring of 1974 he joined the BBC to take his first full production job after the corporation's head of serials, William Slater, offered him the role of producer of the popular science-fiction series Doctor Who (1963). He teamed up with script editor Robert Holmes, an experienced television drama writer, and produced three seasons of the programme which were broadcast between January 1975 and April 1977. He led the show into darker, more dramatic storylines, which resulted in unprecedented levels of both popularity and controversy for the series. Television watchdog Mary Whitehouse became a frequent critic of the series during this period, considering it too violent and horrific to be shown at a time when children would be watching. The frequency of her complaints caused growing concern amongst Hinchcliffe's superiors at the BBC, although they publicly backed the producer as he was delivering consistently high viewing figures. After Whitehouse wrote a particularly strong letter to the BBC in November 1976 about the serial The Deadly Assassin, in which she accused the BBC of ignoring its own guidance on the portrayal of violence on television, an apology from BBC Director-General Charles Curran marked a change in the BBC's policy. Hinchcliffe and the BBC agreed that he should be moved on to producing other programmes at the end of that season and his successor, Graham Williams, was ordered to lighten the tone of Doctor Who (1963).
Hinchcliffe's next series was Target (1977), a police series that was intended as the BBC's answer to ITV's popular The Sweeney (1975), although it failed to capture the same degree of popularity and only lasted for two series. Nevertheless, Hinchcliffe would spend the next two decades as one of British television drama's most successful producers, working on series such as Private Schulz (1981) and the long-running Taggart (1983).
Although he has worked on numerous productions, Hinchcliffe is still most famous for his time on the legendary television series Doctor Who (1963), which is still considered the strongest period of the show by many fans. He also wrote novelisations of The Keys of Marinus, The Seeds of Doom and The Masque of Mandragora. Since retiring from television, Hinchcliffe has recorded numerous interviews and commentaries on DVD releases remembering his time on the show. With the death of Derrick Sherwin in 2018, Hinchcliffe became the last surviving producer of the original series of Doctor Who (1963).- IMDb Mini Biography By: Anonymous
- SpouseDeirdre Hanefey(1970 - present) (2 children)
- He was heavily criticised as producer of Doctor Who (1963), especially by Mary Whitehouse and her National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, for introducing more horror elements into the series and sanctioning more graphic depictions of violence and gore. Despite this criticism, the series enjoyed many of its highest viewing figures during this period, with 44 episodes winning more than 10 million viewers, making him by some measure the most successful producer of the series.
- His run as producer on Doctor Who (1963) is considered by many to be the high point of the entire series. In a poll for Doctor Who (1963) Magazine in 1998, four of the stories voted into the top five were from his time as producer. In fan site Outpost Gallifrey's 40th Anniversary Poll, five of the serials from his time were voted by fans into the top ten.
- He lays claim to creating the film series drama strand at the BBC with Target (1977), which he persuaded the BBC to make entirely on film.
- He was the winner of the 1990 Prix Europa Fiction Prize for And a Nightingale Sang (1989).
- He has a degree in English Literature.
- [regarding his time on Doctor Who (1963)] Some of the stories of my era were latched onto as being more frightening but I don't think we ever overstepped the mark in my view and people seemed to like it because the ratings were very high.
- I believe that the stories should be very well plotted and should have a lot of jeopardy and genuine excitement in them.
- Bob Holmes (Robert Holmes) and myself, over the three seasons that I produced and he story edited, we ran into trouble with Mary Whitehouse a little bit because we were doing stories that the premises of which were quite disturbing. People seem to be very happy if you've got pepper pot Daleks coming round the corner and croaking, or Cybermen walking around and everybody knows it's an actor behind a mask, but where you get really good actors showing anguish and real emotional pain and what have you, that seemed to be something that the guardians of taste of teatime viewing didn't want the drama to go into that area. And I was pushing for it to go into that area because I felt that that's where we could not just make it a children's show. Not to be sensational for the sake of just getting viewing figures but in a way to make the programme more imaginative, because it's interesting to write about that and to make it happen, and something for the actors to get their teeth into.
- [on David Maloney] David did some very good shows for me and we were a good working partnership. He was very skilful in his craft as a director but he had very good people skills, David, and there was always a sense of fun on his productions. If things really got down to the wire and you were very, very tight for time, he could actually go up another two gears and actually deliver the show and get stuff in. He was very experienced and very competent. I think that he saw that he could do something really good with the show and he was being asked to do something.
- I always had the theory that the Who (Doctor Who (1963)) audiences were indulgent. They loved the programme and they knew they'd be thrilled, but the scenery might wobble a bit and they would sort of let that go. We tried to take the scenery wobbling out of Who during my period and try to tighten the whole storytelling up a bit and pay more attention to the design. I think we improved it in some stories more than others.
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