Roger Tucker is a British television

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 and film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 director

Film director

A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...

. Since 1972 he has directed over 40 television series, miniseries, and television films, including many dramas, thrillers, and action series.

Biography

Roger Tucker was born in Bristol

Bristol

Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...

, England. He made his first film, Karst, at the age of 18, and it was screened at the 1965 British Film Institute

British Film Institute

The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...

's Young Film-makers' Competition and awarded the Senior Trophy. The film was also screened at the London Film Festival

London Film Festival

The BFI London Film Festival is the UK's largest public film event, screening more than 300 features, documentaries and shorts from almost 50 countries. The festival, , currently in its 54th year, is run every year in the second half of October under the umbrella of the British Film Institute...

 and at Expo 67

Expo 67

The 1967 International and Universal Exposition or Expo 67, as it was commonly known, was the general exhibition, Category One World's Fair held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, from April 27 to October 29, 1967. It is considered to be the most successful World's Fair of the 20th century, with the...

.

Tucker was president of the film society

Film society

A film society is a membership club where people can watch screenings of films which would otherwise not be shown in mainstream cinemas. In Spain they are known as "Cineclubs," and in Germany they are known as "Filmclubs"....

 at Sussex University, which he attended 1964–1967, and he received a BA in psychology and philosophy. On the strength of his film Karst, after graduation he was hired at Granada Television

Granada Television

Granada Television is the ITV contractor for North West England. Based in Manchester since its inception, it is the only surviving original ITA franchisee from 1954 and is ITV's most successful....

, and directed in current affairs, documentaries, arts features, and drama. While at Granada, Tucker directed the young Ian Charleson

Ian Charleson

Ian Charleson was a Scottish stage and film actor. He is best known internationally for his starring role as Olympic athlete and missionary Eric Liddell, in the Oscar-winning 1981 film Chariots of Fire. He is also well known for his portrayal of Rev...

 in his first starring screen role in A Private Matter (TV movie, 1974), opposite Rachel Kempson

Rachel Kempson

Rachel, Lady Redgrave , known primarily by her birth name as Rachel Kempson, was an English actress. She married Sir Michael Redgrave, and was the matriarch of the famous acting dynasty.-Career:...

 (Lady Redgrave). While living in Manchester, Tucker also did theatre work, directing actors such as Richard Wilson and Maureen Lipman

Maureen Lipman

Maureen Diane Lipman CBE is a British film, theatre and television actress, columnist and comedienne.-Early life:Lipman was born in Hull in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England, the daughter of Maurice Julius Lipman and Zelma Pearlman. Her father was a tailor; he used to have a shop between the...

, and plays such as The Wages of Thin, the first stage play by Trevor Griffiths

Trevor Griffiths

Trevor Griffiths is an English dramatist.Raised as a Roman Catholic, he attended Saint Bede's College, before being accepted into Manchester University in 1952 to read English...

.

In 1976 Tucker left Granada to be a freelance director. Work on many of the classic television action series followed, including Gangsters

Gangsters (TV series)

Gangsters is a British television series made by the BBC and shown from 1975 to 1978.Created by Philip Martin, and produced at the BBC's Pebble Mill Studios in Birmingham by David Rose, Gangsters began televisual life as an edition of Play for Today in 1975, followed by two series transmitted in...

(3 episodes), Shoestring,
The Professionals

The Professionals (TV series)

The Professionals was a British crime-action television drama series produced by Avengers Mk1 Productions and London Weekend Television that aired on the ITV network from 1977 to 1983. In all, 57 episodes were produced, filmed between 1977 and 1981. It starred Martin Shaw, Lewis Collins and Gordon...

, and Dempsey & Makepeace

Dempsey & Makepeace

Dempsey & Makepeace is a British television crime drama made by London Weekend Television for ITV, created and produced by Ranald Graham...

. Directing an episode of Bergerac

Bergerac (TV series)

Bergerac was a British television show set on Jersey. Produced by the BBC in association with the Seven Network, and screened on BBC1, it starred John Nettles as the title character Detective Sergeant Jim Bergerac, a detective in "Le Bureau des Étrangers" Bergerac was a British television show...

in 1981, he gave Greta Scacchi

Greta Scacchi

Greta Scacchi is an Italian-Australian actor.-Early life:Scacchi was born Greta Gracco in Milan, Italy, on 18 February 1960, the daughter of Luca Scacchi Gracco, an Italian art dealer and painter, and Pamela Carsaniga, an English dancer and antiques dealer...

 her first screen role and her first nude scene. He also directed the 1986 TV spy movie Deadly Recruits, starring Terence Stamp

Terence Stamp

Terence Henry Stamp is an English actor. Since starting his career in 1962 he has appeared in over 60 films. His title role as Billy Budd in his film debut earned Stamp an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and a BAFTA nomination for Best Newcomer.His other major roles include...

.

Other TV series directed by Tucker include, among many others, Chessgame

Chessgame

Chessgame is a British television series produced by Granada Television for the ITV network in 1983.Based on a series of novels by Anthony Price, the series dealt with the activities of a quartet of counter-intelligence agents: David Audley , Faith Steerforth , Nick Hannah and Hugh Roskill .One...

(all), The Bill

The Bill

The Bill is a police procedural television series that ran from October 1984 to August 2010. It focused on the lives and work of one shift of police officers, rather than on any particular aspect of police work...

(6 episodes), Crown Court

Crown Court (TV series)

Crown Court was an afternoon television courtroom drama produced by Granada Television for the ITV network that ran from 1972, when the Crown Court system replaced Assize courts and Quarter sessions in the legal system of England and Wales, to 1984....

(7 episodes), Lovejoy

Lovejoy

Lovejoy is a TV series about the adventures of Lovejoy, a British antiques dealer and faker based in East Anglia, a less than scrupulous yet likeable rogue. The episodes were based on a series of picaresque novels by John Grant...

(2 episodes), Sexton Blake and the Demon God

Sexton Blake

Sexton Blake is a fictional detective who appeared in many British comic strips and novels throughout the 20th century. He was described by Professor Jeffrey Richards on the BBC in The Radio Detectives in 2003 as "the poor man's Sherlock Holmes"...

(all), Hollyoaks

Hollyoaks

Hollyoaks is a long-running British television soap opera, first broadcast on Channel 4 on 23 October 1995. It was originally devised by Phil Redmond, who has also devised shows including Brookside and Grange Hill...

(4 episodes), The Enigma Files

The Enigma Files

The Enigma Files is a British television detective drama that ran for one series of fifteen episodes in 1980.-Plot summary:The series was a police procedural drama, written by Derek Ingrey, about a Police Officer who has been sidelined from regular duties and, having been placed in charge of a...

(2 episodes), Moody and Pegg

Moody and Pegg

Moody and Pegg was a bittersweet British sitcom, produced by Thames Television for ITV between 1974 and 1975. Derek Waring and Judy Cornwell starred in this series that accented comedy but also had moments of drama. Waring played Roland Moody, a newly divorced 42-year-old junk/antique dealer...

, Bulman

Bulman

Bulman was a Granada TV series which ran from 1985-1987 and followed the fortunes of the major character from the earlier XYY Man and Strangers series....

, Saracen

Saracen (TV series)

Saracen was a 1989 ITV action drama about a private security firm of that name.They operated both in the UK and abroad, usually Africa, but could only carry firearms when on foreign missions....

, The New Adventures of Robin Hood

The New Adventures of Robin Hood

The New Adventures of Robin Hood is a 1997-1998 live action TV series on Turner Network Television. It was filmed in Vilnius, Lithuania and produced and distributed by Dune Productions, M6, and Warner Bros. International. The tone of the series resembled its contemporaries Hercules: The Legendary...

, 1990

1990 (TV series)

1990 is a British then-futuristic political drama television series produced by the BBC and shown in 1977 and 1978.- Plot :The series is set in a dystopian future in which Britain is under the grip of the Home Office's Department of Public Control , a tyrannically oppressive bureaucracy riding...

, Soldier Soldier

Soldier Soldier

Soldier Soldier is a British television drama series. The title comes from a traditional song of the same name.Produced by Central Television and broadcast on the ITV network, it ran for a total of seven series and 82 episodes from 1991 to 1997...

, Strangers

Strangers (TV series)

Strangers was a UK police drama that appeared on ITV between 1978 and 1982.After the success of the TV series The XYY Man, adapted from books by Kenneth Royce, Granada TV devised a new series to feature the regular characters of Detective Sergeant George Bulman and his assistant Detective...

, Angels

Angels (TV series)

Angels was originally a British television seasonal drama series dealing with the subject of student nurses and was broadcast by the BBC between 1975 and 1978. The show's format then switched to a twice weekly soap opera format from 1979 to 1983. The show's title derived from the name of the...

, and Sutherland's Law

Sutherland's Law

Sutherland's Law is a television series made by BBC Scotland between 1973 and 1976.The series had originated as a stand alone edition of the portmanteau programme Drama Playhouse in 1972 in which Derek Francis played Sutherland and was then commissioned as an ongoing series.Sutherland's Law dealt...

. In Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, Tucker directed two miniseries

Miniseries

A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...

: Bookie, and Winners and Losers, the latter of which he also wrote the script for.

Working internationally, Tucker has directed series in Dutch (Villa Borghese, a 12-part 1991 series) and German (Die Wache, 1994). He also directed a Bollywood co-production series (Bombay Blue, 1997).

Tucker's feature film Waiting for Dublin (2007) won the Seahorse Award (Best Feature Film by male filmmakers) and the Audience Award at the Moondance International Film Festival

Moondance International Film Festival

The Moondance International Film Festival is an independent annual film festival and awards competition that takes place in the fall in Boulder, Colorado...

, and was also screened at the Shanghai International Film Festival

Shanghai International Film Festival

The Shanghai International Film Festival , abbreviated SIFF, is one of the largest film festivals in East Asia.Along with Tokyo International Film Festival, the SIFF is one of the biggest film festivals in Asia. The first festival was held from October 7 to 14, 1993, and was held biennially until...

. His work has also been screened at the San Francisco Film Festival (And On The Eighth Day, 1968 documentary), and the Banff World Television Festival (Lovejoy

Lovejoy

Lovejoy is a TV series about the adventures of Lovejoy, a British antiques dealer and faker based in East Anglia, a less than scrupulous yet likeable rogue. The episodes were based on a series of picaresque novels by John Grant...

, "The Axeman Cometh", 1986).

Tucker has written several film screenplays and television scripts. He has also directed more than two dozen commercials and longer promotions for various international brands, including Panasonic, Vidal Sassoon, Fiat, and Nissan. His advertising work has been screened at the IVCA Awards, and in 1967 he won an Advertising Creative Circle Award and subsequently gave an illustrated talk at the Royal Society of Arts

Royal Society of Arts

The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce is a British multi-disciplinary institution, based in London. The name Royal Society of Arts is frequently used for brevity...

.

Tucker was married in 1968 to television producer Susi Hush (1945–1995), and has a son, Simon, who runs the Young Foundation

Young Foundation

The Young Foundation was launched in the spring of 2006 following the merger of the Institute of Community Studies and the Mutual Aid Centre. It is named after Michael Young, the British sociologist and social activist who created over 60 organisations including the Open University, Which? and...

's Launchpad. Tucker lived in London for many years. In 2011, he moved to Brighton

Brighton

Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

.

External links

• Roger Tucker at the Internet Movie Database
  Internet Movie Database
  Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
  
  
• Roger Tucker at the British Film Institute
  British Film Institute
  The British Film Institute is a charitable organisation established by Royal Charter to:-Cinemas:The BFI runs the BFI Southbank and IMAX theatre, both located on the south bank of the River Thames in London...
  
  
• Official Site
• Roger Tucker – CV
• On Directing Actors – article by Roger Tucker