
Birthday:
02-15-1932
Deathday:
09-15-2009 (77 years)
Birthplace:
Rothesay, Isle of Bute, Scotland, UK
Biography
Troy Kennedy Martin (15 February 1932 – 15 September 2009) was a Scottish-born film and television screenwriter best known for creating the long running BBC TV police series Z-Cars, and for the award-winning 1985 anti-nuclear drama Edge of Darkness. Kennedy Martin's best-known work for the cinema was the screenplay for the original version of The Italian Job.
Read morearrow_drop_down
Their works
- Release swap_vert
- Title swap_vert
- Ratings swap_vert
close
Hostile Waters
Screenplay
event1997 star_border 5.8
top_panel_open
Based on true events, an American submarine collides into a Soviet sub of the coast of America and an ensuing standoff occurs that could lead to total annihilation.
Kelly's Heroes
Screenplay
event1970 star_border 7.3
top_panel_open
A misfit group of World War II American soldiers goes AWOL to rob a bank behind German lines.
Red Heat
Screenplay
event1988 star_border 6.2
top_panel_open
A tough Russian policeman is forced to partner up with a cocky Chicago police detective when he is sent to Chicago to apprehend a Georgian drug lord who killed his partner and fled the country.
Sweeney 2
Writer
event1978 star_border 6.6
top_panel_open
The plot is set on a group of bank robbers, who are both violent and successful, strangely getting away each time with an amount around the £60,000 mark, and often leaving behind cash in excess of this sum. The robbers are willing to kill their own team, to get away. As Jack Regan himself puts it after the first raid in the film: "I've never seen so many dead people". Armed with gold-plated Purdey shotguns, they evaded Regan and the Flying Squad for quite some time, before Regan finds encouragement from his Detective Chief Superintendent who was sent down for corruption because Jack wouldn't testify in court for him.
Bravo Two Zero
Screenplay
event1999 star_border 5.8
top_panel_open
When an elite eight-man British SAS team is dropped behind enemy lines, their mission is clear: take out Saddam Hussein's SCUD missile systems. But when communications are cut and the team finds themselves surrounded by Saddam's army, their only hope is to risk capture and torture in a desperate 185-kilometer run to the Syrian border. Based on the true story of a British Special Forces unit behind enemy lines during the Gulf War, Bravo Two Zero explores the tragedies and triumphs of men taken to the edge of survival in the Persian Gulf War.
Ferrari
Writer
event2023 star_border 6.4
top_panel_open
Set during the summer of 1957. Ex-racecar driver, Enzo Ferrari, is in crisis. Bankruptcy stalks the company he and his wife, Laura, built from nothing ten years earlier. Their tempestuous marriage struggles with the mourning for one son and the acknowledgement of another.
The Italian Job
Writer
event1969 star_border 7
top_panel_open
Charlie's got a 'job' to do. Having just left prison he finds one of his friends has attempted a high-risk job in Torino, Italy, right under the nose of the mafia. Charlie's friend doesn't get very far, so Charlie takes over the 'job'. Using three Mini Coopers, a couple of Jaguars, and a bus, he hopes to bring Torino to a standstill, steal a fortune in gold and escape in the chaos.
Red Dust
Writer
event2004 star_border 5.8
top_panel_open
Sarah Barcant, a lawyer in New York City who grew up in South Africa, returns to her childhood dwelling place to intercede for Alex Mpondo, a Black South African politician who was tortured during apartheid.
Fear of God
Writer
event1980
top_panel_open
A journalist finds his life is in danger when he investigates the death of a woman who was involved with a religious cult.
The Italian Job
Original Film Writer
event2003 star_border 6.8
top_panel_open
Charlie Croker pulled off the crime of a lifetime. The one thing that he didn't plan on was being double-crossed. Along with a drop-dead gorgeous safecracker, Croker and his team take off to re-steal the loot and end up in a pulse-pounding, pedal-to-the-metal chase that careens up, down, above and below the streets of Los Angeles.
The Midas Plague
Adaptation
event1965
top_panel_open
The Future. Robot labour and free energy make the creation of goods easy and automatic. Now people are continually supplied with more things than they can possibly consume.
The Man Without Papers
Writer
event1965
top_panel_open
Years ago, it was Roscoe who kept his friends alive in a Korean prison camp. Now, he's penniless and without papers in London - will his now-prosperous former friends help him?
The Traitor
Adaptation
event1959
top_panel_open
In wartime, an English spy must go into neutral territory to murder a fellow-Englishman who has been working for the enemy.
The Pistol
Adaptation
event1965
top_panel_open
A young private with a pistol deals with the aftershock of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The Jerusalem File
Writer
event1972 star_border 5
top_panel_open
An American student starts working with his Arab colleague while putting all politics aside. However, is his colleague just a regular Joe? Set around the time of Arab-Israeli Six Day War.
Edge of Darkness
Writer (6 ep.)
event1985 star_border 8.2
top_panel_open
Yorkshire detective Ronald Craven is haunted by the murder of his daughter and begins his own investigation into her death.
The Old Men at the Zoo
Writer (5 ep.)
event1983 star_border 5
top_panel_open
An incompetently managed zoo becomes a metaphor for the state of Britain as a nuclear crisis looms over Europe.
The Sweeney
Writer (6 ep.)
event1975 star_border 7.7
top_panel_open
Jack Regan, an unethical officer of the Flying Squad, uses unorthodox methods to pursue criminals with the help of his partner, George Carter.
Fall of Eagles
Writer (1 ep.)
event1974 star_border 6.8
top_panel_open
"Fall of Eagles" is a 13-part British television drama aired by the BBC in 1974. The series portrays historical events from 1848 to 1918, dealing with the collapse of the ruling dynasties of Austria-Hungary (the Habsburgs), Germany (the Hohenzollerns) and Russia (the Romanovs).
Reilly: Ace of Spies
Writer (12 ep.)
event1983 star_border 7
top_panel_open
Reilly, Ace of Spies is a 1983 television miniseries dramatizing the life of Sidney Reilly, a Russian Jew who became one of the greatest spies ever to work for the British. Among his exploits, in the early 20th century, were the infiltration of the German General Staff in 1917 and a near-overthrow of the Bolsheviks in 1918. His reputation with women was as legendary as his genius for espionage.
ITV Play of the Week
Adaptation (1 ep.)
event1955 star_border 4
top_panel_open
A UK anthology series of single plays from major playwrights old and new. It ran from 1955 to 1974, producing about five hundred ninety-minute episodes from Granada Television.
Season 1 also incorporates the Plays from the 'H.M. Tennant Globe Theatre' series, some of which were incorporated and labelled in listings as official Play of the Week episodes and some of which were played in place of Play of the Week episodes in alternative ITV regions. All 8 plays have been incorporated into this entry for convenience.
Z-Cars
Writer (2 ep.)
event1962 star_border 7
top_panel_open
Z-Cars or Z Cars is a British television drama series centred on the work of mobile uniformed police in the fictional town of Newtown, based on Kirkby, Merseyside. Produced by the BBC, it debuted in January 1962 and ran until September 1978.
Softly, Softly
Creator (2 ep.)
event1966 star_border 5
top_panel_open
Softly, Softly is a British television drama series, produced by the BBC and screened on BBC 1 from January 1966. It centred around the work of regional crime squads, plain-clothes CID officers based in the fictional region of Wyvern, supposedly in the Bristol area of England.
Second Verdict
Creator (2 ep.)
top_panel_open
Second Verdict is a six-part BBC television series from 1976, of dramatised documentaries in which classic criminal cases and unsolved crimes from history were re-appraised by fictional police officers. In Second Verdict, Stratford Johns and Frank Windsor reprised for a final time their double-act as Detective Chief Superintendents Barlow and Watt, hugely popular with TV audiences from the long-running series Z-Cars, Softly, Softly and Barlow at Large. Second Verdict built on the formula of their 1973 series Jack the Ripper in which dramatised documentary was drawn together with a discussion between the two police officers which formed the narrative. Second Verdict also allowed for some location filming and, when the case being re-appraised was within living memory, interviews with real witnesses.
The episodes were:
⁕"The Lindbergh Kidnapping"
⁕"Who Killed the Princes in the Tower?"
⁕"The French Bluebeard"
⁕"Murder on the 10.27"
⁕"Lizzie Borden"
⁕"Who Burned the Reichstag?".
Although this was the last time Barlow and Watt would be seen together on British TV, the Watt character would make one final appearance, in the last episode of Z-Cars in September 1978.
Jack the Ripper
Creator (2 ep.)
event1973 star_border 7.2
top_panel_open
The highly popular detective pair from the series Softly, Softly, Barlow and Watt, try to solve the old mystery of Jack The Ripper in this documentary series.
Barlow
Creator (2 ep.)
event1971 star_border 6
top_panel_open
Barlow at Large is a British television programme broadcast in the 1970s, starring Stratford Johns in the title role.
Johns had previously played Barlow in the Z-Cars, Softly, Softly and Softly, Softly: Taskforce series on BBC television during the 1960s and early 1970s. Barlow at Large began as a three-part self-contained spin-off from Softly, Softly: Taskforce in 1971 with Barlow co-opted by the home office to investigate police corruption in Wales. Johns left Softly, Softly for good in 1972, but returned for a further series of Barlow at Large in the following year, Barlow having gone on full-time secondment to the Home Office. This second series, rather than telling one story in serial form, as the 1971 series had, was instead ten 50-minute episodes, each with a self-contained story. In this series, Barlow was supported by Norman Comer as Detective Sergeant Rees, who had been helpful to him during the first series. He also had to deal with the political machinations of the senior civil servant Fenton.
In 1974 the series was renamed Barlow and a further two series of eight episodes each followed, introducing the character of Detective Inspector Tucker, played by Derek Newark. The final episode was transmitted in February 1975. The Barlow character was seen again in the series Second Verdict in which he, along with his former colleague John Watt, looked into unsolved cases and unsafe convictions from history.
Show more expand_more
keyboard_double_arrow_down