Lloyd Shirley

Innovative head of television drama at ABC and Thames

Lloyd George Shirley, television producer and executive: born London, Ontario 28 December 1931; married 1953 Virginia Snyders (one son); died 5 March 2003.

Lloyd Shirley was one of Britain's most influential television executives. He was at the forefront of features and drama production for nearly three decades, and was responsible for finding and overseeing the production of many of the major dramas, particularly series and serials that are now regarded as landmarks in the brief but extraordinary history of British television. To those who worked with him and knew him well since the early 1960s, he was one of the unsung heroes of television drama.

Shirley was born in Canada, in London, Ontario, in 1931; his father was a post-office sorting clerk and his mother a nurse. He never forgot his working-class roots, and despised any sort of élitism, political or cultural. The audience was his first consideration: he regarded the viewer with genuine respect as intelligent, aware and demanding; he had no time for those who saw people merely as statistics, and scorned the ridiculous rush-for-ratings culture that seems to dominate television today.

When he was a young man, Shirley led a peripatetic life: he left school at 16, educated himself by reading the local library dry; went to art school with dreams of becoming a painter but turned to acting instead. This led him in 1952 to England, where he toured with a company that played Shakespeare in Welsh mining villages. This was where he met his wife, Virginia Snyders. They returned to Canada, Shirley to work for CFPL, his local television station in London, Ontario. In two years he worked as a lighting technician, soundman, cameraman, floor manager, writer, editor, and ultimately as a director.

This stood him in good stead when he returned to England in 1956 to work in the relatively new, exciting medium of television. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, long before Media Studies became de rigueur, all sorts of interesting people were finding their way into television, many of them quite eccentric, Lloyd Shirley among them. Shirley's eccentricity was the same as Albert Einstein's: they both held the fundamental belief that imagination is more important than knowledge. The emphasis then in television was on creativity, and Shirley was in the thick of it.

At 28 he became the youngest ever department head when he became Head of Features and Light Entertainment at ABC Television, based at Teddington. This period allowed him to experiment, and was filled with innovation. He started adult education programmes long before the Open University; he did a major series on power politics featuring three former British prime ministers and the then incumbent, Harold Wilson; and The Eamonn Andrews Show (1964-69), going out live from London, was the first real chat show on British television. But it was the arts programme Tempo (1961-67) of which he was most proud; Tempo became in many ways the prototype for the television arts programmes that were to follow.

It was in drama that Shirley made a major impact. At a time when managements were moving away from the single play to episodic drama, he came into his own. As Head of Drama, first at ABC, then at Thames Television, the series and serials that he developed with some of the major drama writers of the time have become classics, Redcap, Public Eye, Callan, Van der Valk, Special Branch, The Sweeney, Minder, The Bill. He was executive producer for John Mortimer's Paradise Postponed in 1986.

It wasn't only in programming that Shirley innovated; it was also in the technology of the medium. In the early 1970s, together with George Taylor, he dragged television drama, kicking and screaming, out of the gloom of the studio and into the light of locations, by founding Euston Films, the first ever film-for-television company. Euston Films' most prestigious (perhaps most infamous) production was The Sweeney (1975-78), which has become one of Britain's seminal television dramas. Long before VCRs, The Sweeney used to empty the boozers – it was simply adored. Twenty-odd years later it is still being shown, and books are being written about it. I wonder what recent television drama will be talked about a quarter of a century from now?

My most cherished memories of Shirley come from this period. Picasso had his rose and blue periods; this was our Red Cow period. The pub opposite Euston Film HQ was where we all went to relax. The wine flowed; the strippers peeled; we talked, we argued, we nearly physically fought at times (Lloyd always thought he could have been a great middleweight), but the one thing that bonded us together was the unerring need to make the best TV cop show ever.

The golden age of television drama? It certainly was, and Lloyd Shirley was one of the very few truly creative executives, a man of vision and passion, and great personal generosity; there are people working at the highest level in television and films today who owe their careers to him. A few weeks before he died he was still reading plays for the playwriting scheme he helped set up at Thames Television to encourage new young writers. He was that sort of man.

Trevor Preston