James Cellan Jones obituary
Leading light in the direction and production of television drama who made his name with The Forsyte Saga
He was not on the list.
James Cellan Jones, who has died aged 88, was one of the outstanding directors and producers of British television drama during the postwar era. His single plays, series and serials, from the 1960s to the late 90s, included seven of the 26 episodes of The Forsyte Saga, televised by the BBC in 1967 and watched by audiences of up to 18 million each Sunday night.
The show was also an international success, viewed by around 100 million people in 26 countries, and set the stage for a long line of period TV dramas to follow, including Jim’s own seven-hour production of Olivia Manning’s Fortunes of War (1987), which made international stars of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.
For three fruitful years in the late 70s Jim was head of the BBC’s television play output, sponsoring and commissioning various notable dramas and series, including Dennis Potter’s Pennies from Heaven, before returning to the fray to direct many more TV films, series and even a sitcom.
Born in Swansea, Jim was the son of Cecil Cellan Jones, a surgeon, and his wife, Lavinia (nee Dailey), a hospital matron. After boarding at the Dragon school in Oxford and then Charterhouse, he went to St John’s College, Cambridge, to study natural sciences, with a view to a career in medicine. There he joined the amateur dramatic club and appeared in the Footlights of 1951. It was not, as he recalled, an outstanding performance, but he caught the bug, and when it came to deciding on a career he applied to join the BBC as a call boy, lowliest of the drama department’s ranks.
After national service in Korea with the Royal Engineers,
where he enjoyed blowing things up, a skill transferable to period drama, he
returned to his call boy role, which was to prove an invaluable apprenticeship
in the drama production crafts. Having worked his way up to become an assistant
director, his first break came when, in 1963, having moved to BBC Bristol, he
was asked to help direct a serialisation of RD Blackmore’s romantic Exmoor saga
Lorna Doone.
Although the series had a lukewarm reception, the scenes for which Jim was responsible were well received, and other work was soon coming the young director’s way. These were the early years of film, videotape and studio in combination, opening up opportunities for location production, with screen versions of classic novels and plays, often with star names in the lead roles. Over several years, while doing his share of bread-and-butter shows (including 16 episodes of the BBC One soap Compact in 1963), he built his reputation by bringing such productions vividly to the screen.
The Forsyte Saga was made in black and white for the new BBC Two, with a cast that included Eric Porter, Nyree Dawn Porter, Kenneth More, Susan Hampshire and Martin Jarvis. It was adapted from John Galsworthy’s series of novels about the fortunes of three generations of an upper-class English family. Jim had at first thought the books second-rate and unworthy of a series, but afterwards acknowledged that “second-rate novels often make first-rate television”.
His name made, Jim followed up with a series based on an adaptation of a Henry James novel, The Portrait of a Lady (1968), and with Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now (1969). In 1970 he directed all 13 episodes of The Roads to Freedom, based on Jean-Paul Sartre’s trilogy of novels, which starred Michael Bryant, Daniel Massey, Rosemary Leach and Georgia Brown, and was particularly memorable for Brown’s rendition of its theme song, a haunting French chanson – words and music by Jim.
Work was going well for Jim as a freelance, with ITV as well
as BBC, but in 1976 he took up an offer to become the BBC’s head of television
plays, generating 80-plus productions a year. He oversaw a rich selection of
scripts, among them Pennies from Heaven (1978), Potter’s highly original
musical drama. However, political tensions were frequently near the surface,
notably in relation to Scum, written by Roy Minton, a film about a juvenile
prison deemed so violent, despite adjustments suggested by Jim, that Bill
Cotton, the BBC One controller, refused to show it. In the ensuing public row
(which enabled its creative team to raise the money to reshoot it for a
successful cinema run in 1979 as “the film the BBC tried to ban”), Jim went
public against the BBC’s “disgraceful” decision – and became a hero of the
left. That was the point at which, as the Guardian’s writer about television, I
first came to know him well.
The politics of Northern Ireland were at the heart of a new row when The Legion Hall Bombing (1978), a drama by Margaret Matheson based on court transcripts about a youth found guilty of planting a bomb, included an epilogue that used the term “freedom fighters” for the IRA. Jim insisted the epilogue be dropped; the production team took their names off the credits and he lost his status as a hero of free speech overnight. “I was now the voice of repression, a mindless fascist and a vicious censor,” he wrote.
Afterwards Jim went back to the freelance life, and spent two decades directing programmes and series for all of ITV’s major companies, as well as Channel 4. They ranged from Thames TV’s cop show The Bill to A Fine Romance (1981-84), the beautifully crafted sitcom he created for LWT (with Bob Larbey) and featuring the star quartet of Judi Dench, Michael Williams, Susan Penhaligon and Richard Warwick. Fortunes of War, for the BBC, was adapted by Alan Plater and shot across the Middle East.
In 1983 Jim was elected chairman of Bafta. In the next decade, as his television work declined, his energies turned to teaching and writing, notably his revelatory autobiography, Forsyte and Hindsight (2006). The British Film Institute staged a two-week season of his work at the South Bank in London in 2010, “celebrating the career of one of the UK’s finest television directors”.
In 1959 he married Maggie Eavis, a fellow TV technician. When their children were young, he liked to give them cameo appearances in his productions, as he also did for some of the boxer dogs he nurtured. One of his sons, Deiniol, died in 2013, and Maggie died in 2016. Jim is survived by his other children, Rory (the BBC journalist, from a previous relationship), Simon and Lavinia, nine grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.
Alan James Gwynne
Cellan Jones, television director, born 13 July 1931; died 30 August 2019.
Director
Holby City (1999)
Holby City
5.8
TV Series
Director (as James Cellan-Jones)
2001
2 episodes
Mark Addy in Married 2 Malcolm (2000)
Married 2 Malcolm
4.2
Director
2000
Colin Blumenau, Nula Conwell, Peter Ellis, Trudie Goodwin,
Jon Iles, Gary Olsen, Eric Richard, John Salthouse, Tony Scannell, Jeff
Stewart, and Mark Wingett in The Bill (1984)
The Bill
6.7
TV Series
Director
1989–1999
10 episodes
McLibel! (1997)
McLibel!
8.2
TV Mini Series
Director
1997
2 episodes
George Baker, Keith Barron, John Castle, and Amanda Redman
in Ruth Rendell Mysteries (1987)
Ruth Rendell Mysteries
6.9
TV Series
Director
1997
2 episodes
The Music of Love: Claude Debussy's Passions (1995)
The Music of Love: Claude Debussy's Passions
7.2
TV Movie
Director
1995
The Vacillations of Poppy Carew (1995)
The Vacillations of Poppy Carew
6.7
TV Movie
Director
1995
Joanna Lumley in Class Act (1994)
Class Act
7.8
TV Series
Director
1994
2 episodes
Harnessing Peacocks (1993)
Harnessing Peacocks
6.4
TV Movie
Director
1993
Brighton Belles (1993)
Brighton Belles
4.6
TV Series
Director
1993
1 episode
Comedy Playhouse (1993)
Comedy Playhouse
4.0
TV Series
Director
1993
1 episode
Rumpole of the Bailey (1978)
Rumpole of the Bailey
8.4
TV Series
Director
1992
1 episode
Michael Gambon in Maigret (1992)
Maigret
7.8
TV Series
Director
1992
3 episodes
Francesca Annis, Ian Richardson, and Christoph Waltz in The
Gravy Train Goes East (1991)
The Gravy Train Goes East
7.2
TV Mini Series
Director
1991
4 episodes
A Perfect Hero (1991)
A Perfect Hero
7.7
TV Mini Series
Director
1991
6 episodes
Lauren Bacall in A Little Piece of Sunshine (1990)
A Little Piece of Sunshine
5.8
TV Movie
Director
1990
Theatre Night (1985)
Theatre Night
6.6
TV Series
Director
1989
1 episode
Fortunes of War (1987)
Fortunes of War
7.7
TV Mini Series
Director
1987
7 episodes
Jeremy Kemp in Slip-Up (1986)
Slip-Up
TV Movie
Director
1986
Oxbridge Blues (1984)
Oxbridge Blues
7.9
TV Series
Director
1984
4 episodes
The BBC Television Shakespeare (1978)
The BBC Television Shakespeare
8.1
TV Series
directed by
1983
1 episode
The Comedy of Errors (1983)
The Comedy of Errors
6.9
TV Movie
Director
1983
Jean Simmons and Ian Carmichael in All for Love (1982)
All for Love
6.5
TV Series
Director
1983
1 episode
Live from Pebble Mill
TV Series
Director
1983
1 episode
Rex Harrison and Wendy Hiller in The Kingfisher (1982)
The Kingfisher
6.9
TV Movie
Director
1982
Barry Jackson in Horace (1982)
Horace
8.6
TV Series
Director
1982
6 episodes
A Fine Romance (1981)
A Fine Romance
7.1
TV Series
Director
1981–1982
13 episodes
Mr & Mrs Edgehill (1985)
BBC2 Playhouse
6.8
TV Series
Director
1979–1981
2 episodes
Play for Today (1970)
Play for Today
7.8
TV Series
Director
1971–1980
3 episodes
Chris Sarandon in The Day Christ Died (1980)
The Day Christ Died
5.9
TV Movie
Director
1980
BBC Play of the Month (1965)
BBC Play of the Month
7.1
TV Series
Director
1971–1978
5 episodes
The Four of Us
TV Movie
Director
1977
Centre Play (1973)
Centre Play
6.7
TV Series
Director
1976
1 episode
The Madness
8.2
TV Movie
Director
1976
The Adams Chronicles (1976)
The Adams Chronicles
8.2
TV Mini Series
Director
1976
3 episodes
Caesar and Cleopatra (1976)
Caesar and Cleopatra
6.9
TV Movie
Director
1976
Dr. Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery (1974)
Dr. Watson and the Darkwater Hall Mystery
6.7
TV Movie
Director
1974
Lee Remick and Warren Clarke in Jennie: Lady Randolph
Churchill (1974)
Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill
7.7
TV Mini Series
Director
1974
7 episodes
Black and Blue (1973)
Black and Blue
6.6
TV Series
Director
1973
1 episode
Gayle Hunnicutt in Away from It All (1973)
Away from It All
TV Series
Director
1973
1 episode
The Nelson Affair (1973)
The Nelson Affair
6.4
Director
1973
Anthony Hopkins and Timothy West in The Edwardians (1972)
The Edwardians
6.8
TV Mini Series
Director
1972–1973
2 episodes
Gayle Hunnicutt, Daniel Massey, Barry Morse, and Jill
Townsend in The Golden Bowl (1972)
The Golden Bowl
7.9
TV Mini Series
Director
1972
6 episodes
Eyeless in Gaza (1971)
Eyeless in Gaza
7.6
TV Series
Director (as James Cellan-Jones)
1971
5 episodes
Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Paul Scofield, and Anna
Calder-Marshall in ITV Saturday Night Theatre (1969)
ITV Saturday Night Theatre
5.9
TV Series
Director
1971
1 episode
Michael Bryant in The Roads to Freedom (1970)
The Roads to Freedom
8.3
TV Mini Series
Director
1970
13 episodes
W. Somerset Maugham (1969)
W. Somerset Maugham
7.4
TV Series
Director
1969–1970
2 episodes
Alec Guinness in Solo (1970)
Solo
5.9
TV Series
Director
1970
2 episodes
Colin Blakely in The Way We Live Now (1969)
The Way We Live Now
TV Series
Director
1969
5 episodes
Out of the Unknown (1965)
Out of the Unknown
7.6
TV Series
Director
1969
1 episode
Detective (1964)
Detective
6.9
TV Series
Director
1968
2 episodes
Thirty-Minute Theatre (1965)
Thirty-Minute Theatre
6.9
TV Series
Director
1968
1 episode
Suzanne Neve in The Portrait of a Lady (1968)
The Portrait of a Lady
6.8
TV Series
Director
1968
6 episodes
Theatre 625 (1964)
Theatre 625
7.1
TV Series
Director
1968
1 episode
The First Freedom
TV Movie
Director
1967
Z Cars (1962)
Z Cars
7.1
TV Series
Director
1967
2 episodes
The Forsyte Saga (1967)
The Forsyte Saga
8.5
TV Series
Director
1967
7 episodes
Pamela Franklin in Quick Before They Catch Us (1966)
Quick Before They Catch Us
6.4
TV Series
Director
1966
4 episodes
John Cairney in This Man Craig (1966)
This Man Craig
7.3
TV Series
Director
1966
1 episode
The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1966)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
TV Series
Director
1966
7 episodes
An Enemy of the State
4.3
TV Series
Director
1965
6 episodes
Jury Room (1965)
Jury Room
TV Series
Director
1965
1 episode
Derek Lamden and Ann Lancaster in The Scarlet and the Black
(1965)
The Scarlet and the Black
TV Series
Director
1965
5 episodes
The Ambassadors
TV Movie
Director
1965
Meg Wynn Owen in Esther Waters (1964)
Esther Waters
TV Series
Director
1964
4 episodes
Compact (1962)
Compact
6.8
TV Series
Director
1963–1964
16 episodes
Jane Merrow and Bill Travers in Lorna Doone (1963)
Lorna Doone
8.2
TV Mini Series
film sequences
1963
1 episode
Producer
A Perfect Hero (1991)
A Perfect Hero
7.7
TV Mini Series
producer
1991
6 episodes
Oxbridge Blues (1984)
Oxbridge Blues
7.9
TV Series
producer
1984
7 episodes
A Fine Romance (1981)
A Fine Romance
7.1
TV Series
producer
1981–1982
13 episodes
BBC2 Play of the Week (1977)
BBC2 Play of the Week
6.9
TV Series
producer
1978
1 episode
BBC Play of the Month (1965)
BBC Play of the Month
7.1
TV Series
producer
1978
1 episode
The Adams Chronicles (1976)
The Adams Chronicles
8.2
TV Mini Series
producer
1976
1 episode
Production Department
New
Jane Merrow and Bill Travers in Lorna Doone (1963)
Lorna Doone
8.2
TV Mini Series
production assistant
1963
11 episodes
Writer
The December Rose (1986)
The December Rose
8.1
TV Mini Series
idea
1986
6 episodes
Actor
Forum (1969)
Forum
6.6
1969
Second Unit or Assistant Director
Medico
TV Movie
assistant director
1959
Additional Crew
1st Annual Directors Guild of Great Britain DGGB Awards
(2004)
1st Annual Directors Guild of Great Britain DGGB Awards
7.2
Video
awards committee
2004
Self
The Annual British Academy Film and Television Awards
TV Special
Self - Presenter
1985
The Annual British Academy Film and Television Awards
TV Special
Self - Presenter: Cinema Fellowship
1984
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