Steven Moffat

Steven Moffat (born 1961 in Paisley, Scotland) is a British comedy/drama writer who has contributed to television series since the late 1980s. He is married to Sue Vertue, a television producer.

Early life

After gaining a degree in English, he worked as a teacher. His father, Bill Moffat, was a headteacher at a Glasgow school. When the school was used for Harry Secombe's Highway, he mentioned to the producers that he had an idea for a television series about a school newspaper. The producers asked for a sample script, to which Bill Moffat agreed on condition that it was written by his son.^[1] Producer Sandra Hastie said that it was "the best ever first script" that she had read.^[2]

Writing career

At the age of 28, Steven Moffat produced his first television work. Press Gang, starring Julia Sawalha and Dexter Fletcher, was immensely successful and ran for four years on ITV, with Moffat writing all forty-three episodes. The series won a BAFTA award in its second season.^[3] Working again with Press Gang's primary director Bob Spiers, he wrote some episodes (including "Overkill") of Murder Most Horrid starring Dawn French. During production of the second series of Press Gang, he was having an unhappy personal life after the break-up of his first marriage. His wife's new lover was represented in the episode "The Big Finish?" by the character Brian Magboy (Simon Schatzberger), a name inspired by Brian: Maggie's boy. Moffat brought in the character so that all sorts of unfortunate things would happen to him, such as having a typewriter dropped on his foot.^[4]

Sitcoms and Dramas

Inspired by these events, Moffat wrote two series of Joking Apart.^[5] The sitcom was again directed by Spiers, and starred Robert Bathurst and Fiona Gillies. The show won the Bronze Rose of Montreux^[6] and was entered for the Emmys.^[7] In an interview with Richard Herring, Moffat says that "The sit-com actually lasted slightly longer than my marriage."^[1] In 1997, BBC One aired two series of his sitcom Chalk, set in a comprehensive school. Starring David Bamber as deputy head Eric Slatt, the show was received quite poorly. In an interview in the early 2000s, Moffat refuses to even name the show, joking that he might get attacked in the street.^[8] As is traditional for many of those in the British sitcom world, he has contributed to the bi-annual Comic Relief charity telethon nights, writing the script for the science-fiction parody Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death in 1999. The co-producer for that year's Red Nose Day telethon was Moffat's new wife, Sue Vertue.^[9] (Moffat, a fan of the series since childhood, had previously written a Doctor Who prose story, "Continuity Errors", published in the Virgin Books anthology Decalog 3: Consequences.) In 2000 he created and wrote the sitcom Coupling for BBC Two, with his wife producing, for Hartswood Films. The series proved to be highly successful, running until 2004 and producing four seasons and twenty-eight episodes, all written by Moffat. He also wrote the original, unbroadcast, pilot episode for the American version of the same series, in 2003, although this was less successful and was cancelled after just four episodes on the NBC network. Moffat has blamed its failure on an unprecedented level of network interference. He also wrote the Hartswood Films drama series Jekyll, a modern version of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which aired on BBC One in June and July 2007. In June 2007 he told The Stage that he is working on a new sitcom. Provisionally titled Adam and Eve, "it concerns a boss and his PA, who are long-term friends but never get together."^[10] In October 2007 it was reported that Moffat would be scripting a trilogy of Tintin films for directors Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson.^[11]

Doctor Who (2005- )

In 2005 he contributed the Hugo Award-winning^[12] two-part story "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances" to the revival of Doctor Who for BBC One. He wrote an episode for each of the two following series of Doctor Who: "The Girl in the Fireplace" in the 2006 series (which won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form,^[13] and was nominated for a 2006 Nebula Award^[14]), and "Blink" in the 2007 series. Issue 383 of Doctor Who Magazine revealed that he will write a two-part story for series four in 2008, meaning that Moffat and series executive producer Russell T. Davies will be the only writers to have contributed scripts to all four seasons of the revived series. He has also said that he has yet to use the one idea which he has wanted to, and will get the chance to do so for the fourth series. He also wrote the 2007 Children in Need "special scene" "Time Crash". In the Doctor Who Magazine reader poll for the 2007 series, Moffat was voted as best writer and his episode, "Blink", as the best story.

References

External links

• Steven Moffat at the Internet Movie Database
• Steven Moffat biography at the Hartswood Films website.