Monday, 1 July 2013

Articles Lucy Gannon


Lucy Gannon has written many popular dramas over the years.  Soldier Soldier, Peak Practice, Best of Men and Bramwell to name but a few, but it’s the series Frankie that has piqued our interest over the past few weeks, as it welcomes a return to our screens of Eve Myles aka Gwen Cooper, this time in a different role as District Nurse Frankie Maddox.  Frankie lives and works in Bristol, with a team of district nurses who call in at the homes of patients in and around the city and she cares more for them than she does about anything else, even more than her relationship with Ian played by Dean Lennox Kelly. 


The story touches upon many subjects, such as assisted suicide, dementia and the usual trials of life that pass in and out of the surgery.  There are some familiar faces amongst the cast, having spotted another Torchwood face – Christine Bottomley (Maggie – Torchwood, A Day in the Death), Noma Dumezweni (Capt. Magambo – Doctor Who, Planet of the Dead)  and Jemma Redgrave (Bramwell).    

Each episode revolves around a member of the team.  The story is a breath of fresh air for a Tuesday evening and six episodes are just not enough and we really hope there will be a second and third season of Frankie to enjoy. 

Lucy Gannon’s career started in 1987 when she wrote a play about a disabled boy whose father had committed suicide, called ‘Keeping Tom Nice.’ It earned her a six month writer-in-residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company.  The play was shown at the Ameida Theatre in London and later in 1989 was shown as a BBC TV screenplay starring Linus Roache.

Lucy received the MBE for services to Drama in 1996. Among her other awards are The Eileen Anderson Award, The Richard Burton Drama Award, The Susan Smith Blackburn Award, The BAFTA Cymru and the Contribution To The Media Award (Women in Film and Television) and the RTS Award (South West England) for Best Writer for her film The Best of Men, written about the pioneering work of Dr. Ludwig Guttmann and the start of the Paralympic games at the Stoke Mandeville Hospital.  It starred Eddie Marsan as Guttmann and Rob Brydon as Cpl Wynne Bowen a patient at the hospital.

Lucy’s prior career as a military policewoman, residential social worker and a nurse may be the reason why her characters and her creations work so well on screen.  You develop a real empathy for the characters that Lucy writes about, from the army barracks of Soldier Soldier, to the surgery at Peak Practice, and now for Frankie, her programmes always have you begging for more, and we certainly want MORE Frankie!

For more of Lucy’s credits please visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Gannon 

Project: Torchwood caught up with Lucy during a break in her busy schedule and talked with her about Frankie, her career as a playwright, television writer and producer and general chat.


You can find Lucy on:



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