MICHAEL TUCHNER

(24 June 1932 - 17 February 2017)

The Berlin-born film and television director lived in Britain from the age of seven. He made most of his cinema films between 1970 and 1990, beginning with Villain in 1971, from a screenplay by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, with Richard Burton as an East End gangster. The following year he directed Fear Is the Key, an Alistair MacLean actioner, with Barry Newman. Mr Quilp (1975) was a musical version of Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop with Anthony Newley. The Likely Lads (1975) had another script from Clement and La Frenais, based on their TV show, a film that holds up well today. Trenchcoat (1983) was a Disney mystery with Margot Kidder and Robert Hays; Wilt (1990) was a Tom Sharpe story with Griff Rhys Jones as a would-be wife murderer. Tuchner’s last film for the cinema was Back to the Secret Garden (2001), a sequel with Joan Plowright.

The rest of his busy career was taken up with television series, films and documentaries, including episodes of Follyfoot, Play for Today, Whicker’s World, The One and Only Phyllis Dixey, Tales of the Unexpected, Hart to Hart, etc. His last TV movie was A Place Called Home in 2004, with Ann-Margret. Tuchner was nominated four times for a Bafta, winning for the BBC’s Bar Mitzvah Boy in 1977.

MICHAEL DARVELL