Who is Michael E. Briant?: a memoir by the Doctor Who director [Kindle Edition]

Although primarily known as a television director, Michael E. Briant has had quite the varied life. In this memoir, he recounts this life - his early days as a child actor and seller of soap, his time spent at the BBC as an Assistant Floor Manager on shows such as Compact and Moonfleet, then as the director of Doctor Who, Blake's Seven, the Secret Army spin-off Kessler, Warship and Blood Money amongst many others, his time as an independent producer, and finally a slightly surreal sojourn in Dutch television - where every other comedy show appears to be a rebrand of a British original. Along the way, we find out about his love of sailing (which indirectly gave rise to Howard's Way,) and the ups and downs of life as a HGV driver...

As might be expected from the book's title, the primary focus is on Doctor Who. Briant is a colourful and often amusing raconteur, and his behind-the-scenes knowledge of the shows that he has directed is both entertaining and insightful - especially when discussing the classic The Robots of Death and The Green Death, from which the review quote is taken. In summary, this is an interesting book with many insights into the production and direction of television shows; I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone with an interest in classic Doctor Who and Blake's Seven.

Michael E Briant takes us on an engaging journey behind the scenes as Director of some of the finest Dr Who Stories ever made. His style is informal and entertaining and full of new information that only a director could know. This book is an easy read and accessible to all not just committed Who fans, the information about other series he has directed was equally fsacinating and personally revealing. I could easily have read this book in one sitting! A great read and one I'm happy to recommend - thankyou Michael!

Who is Michael E Briant? To me one of the best Doctor Who directors we had. Some people question how important a director is. Well you only have to look at a badly directed story (The Horns of Nimon) to realise that poor direction can ruin the product.

The fact that this book exists is almost an automatic ticket to five stars. The reason why The Robots of Death is one of the top ten stories is because of the top notch talents of a man who is able to project manage and execute his vision. The Sea Devils too has many noteworthy scenes realised by Briant.

I have read some chapters with great enjoyment not only because of the very honest stories given, but because it is more confirmation of facts from my favourite eras of Doctor Who Pertwee-Baker. I look forward to dipping into the rest, which from a non-reader of books is quite an accolade.

Michael E Briant helped make the golden era of television golden. There are far less capable directors out there that are bigger names.

A personal thank you Michael, for directing many of my favourite stories. As one can infer from what you write, it must have been an absolute nightmare, and you did it with professionalism and determination.

I sense this book could have been published before, but is so much better for having the lovely cover of all those Character Option figures from his stories.

The book itself is a small neat paperback. Ideal size for the modern collector who surely cannot have the space for these huge hardbacks that the more mainstream publishers yield.

A very welcome product indeed. There are just too many Doctor Who books now, that I have lost the will to read any, and this is the first factual one in many years that I have progressed beyond one chapter.

I read this book with a view to learning about Michael E Bryant, as a fan of the work he has been involved with, I wanted to know more about him. What I didn't expect was to find the book so enjoyable. I find a lot of autobiographies quite dry, or a tad self indulgent. Mr Bryant has managed to make the reader feel welcome and involved. I had no idea he was involved in so many Doctor Who stories. And the insight into his life is at times touching and very funny. I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in Doctor Who, Blakes Seven, Secret Army - any classic British TV series from the Sixties or Seventies or to anyone who has an interest in the behind the scenes world of television. A surprising and unexpected little gem of a book!

It's not a bad book, could have gone into more depth but it's okay. Some new facts but not sufficiently so to attain full marks.

Classic TV Press have convinced Michael E. Briant, a television director who has amassed some significant credits ( Z Cars, Blake's 7, Secret Army, Warship, The Onedin Line, Howard's Way among others) during what was regarded as 'the golden age' of television drama and beyond, that his personal and professional exploits would be of interest to those asking the question, Who is Michael E. Briant? Apparently, he's been asking that question too and this book would seem to be a rather good place to start.

It's written in a very accessible style, is bright, breezy and often witty, and yet still contains a great understanding of television production spanning several decades and his career progression through the BBC as floor manager, production assistant and director. As well as hair-raising tales about the dramas he worked on, he often reflects on production techniques and methodology that made these programmes so successful, elements of which he feels are sadly absent in today's hectic world of television production.

Naturally, we start with Michael's childhood and his budding child-actor career as a alumnus of the Italia Conti school as one Michael Tennant. It was a career which he saw through rose tinted spectacles as a life that demanded "no educational requirements, very long holidays between jobs, and the possibility of foreign travel." After elocution and deportment classes, Michael found work in plenty of stage and television productions, discovered a brief passion for racing pigeons and then was bitten by the 'messing about in boats' bug after starring in a John Gregson film vehicle, True as a Turtle....

As the acting work dried up, Michael became a rep for Procter and Gamble, flogging Daz and Fairy Snow to the shopkeepers of post-austerity Britain in a Burtons suit and trilby. There's a very nice story about his job with Revlon that I think illustrates Michael's quick thinking and insight, something that would later hold him in good stead during the making of Death to the Daleks.

Successfully applying for a job at the BBC, his first day was clearly a portent of the future. He was instructed to assist the AFM on Doctor Who and learned to leave Bill Hartnell's favourite armchair well alone and trust to the vagaries of the Visual Effects Department and to avoid Hartnell's ire if you dared to muck about with the TARDIS controls. He worked with Douglas Camfield on The Crusade, having the unenviable task of wrangling ants, procured from London Zoo, to eat the honey smeared on the arm of one Viktors Ritelis standing in for William Russell who clearly did not fancy an encounter with killer ants.

He describes BBC office etiquette and the roles of Production Assistants, Floor Managers and Directors and how he got into the habit of keeping a little black book of actors he worked with that would function as his own version of Spotlight. His experience was also shaped by the likes of fellow directors Christopher Barry, Hugh David, Michael Barry, Joan Craft, Rex Tucker and Peter Hammond and he is clearly very grateful for such invaluable training on the job, taking to heart Hammond's advice "the camera should be the third person in the room". As PA, he was lucky to work with Barry on The Power of the Daleks, on which the AFM was the irrepressible, and future Who director, Graeme Harper, and was present at the arrival of Patrick Troughton. He, Patrick and producer Innes Lloyd were certainly confounded by Sydney Newman's interpretation of the Second Doctor as a 'cosmic hobo' to such an extent that it required a drink in the BBC club and Patrick coming to the rescue.

A superb chapter about the making of Fury from the Deep follows with plenty of anecdotes about hiring helicopters, getting foam machines to an anti-aircraft platform in the Thames Estuary, seasick BBC crews (a recurring motif) and a tricky moment, filming the landing of the TARDIS on the sea, that saw Michael clinging to the side of helicopter skid a hundred feet above the sea. His graduation to director is accompanied by a fascinating account of the short film he made at the BBC training school, The Kiss, and through the good auspices of Ronnie Marsh, who had become Head of Serials, his proper go at making an episode of Z Cars. He sadly found it a disappointing experience in comparison to directing four episodes of what he believed to be the better scripted The Newcomers. However, there are some great perceptions into the processes of making programmes and how they were assessed inside the BBC itself.

His reflections on Colony in Space raise a chuckle over the pitfalls of using the Portaloo in the Carclaze quarry location and I rather sympathised with Michael as he felt somewhat out of his depth, encouraging his own death wish by thinking of crashing his car to get out of directing Colony in Space. The design and function of the IMC robot is a particular target of his disappointment, believing "an eighteen-month-old-baby crawling could have escaped from it and, if angered, finished it off." Considering it's a serial not held with much regard by Who fans and was something of a baptism of fire for him, I understand his frustrations.

At 28, Michael decided to go freelance as a director and, despite fearing the worst, found himself in gainful employment courtesy of Ronnie Marsh and the BBC and back working on Z Cars. Here, he again details some of the innovations of the time when he uses OB equipment, crews used to covering sports events and new lightweight cameras to record the episodes.

Working on The Sea Devils kept his seafaring ambitions afloat, despite his concerns about costuming the eponymous creatures and building sets that conveyed their underwater habitat, and increasingly as his career progresses you can tell he gets a kick out of working on dramas that feature the sea or boats of any kind. It reflects his increasing ambitions to become a professional sailor that are encouraged by his work on Gerald Glaister's series Warship after further dealings with Doctor Who in the shape of giant maggots, Daleks and Cybermen and the perils of dropping ballcocks out of helicopters, watching John Scott Martin lose control of his Dalek and confronting the curse of Wookey Hole. An interesting aside in the chapter on Death to the Daleks is how he persuaded Barry Letts to allow him to record the episodes set by set rather than in story order. It inaugurated a rehearse record system that eventually became standard across the BBC.

Beyond Doctor Who, and a chapter about his sterling work on Robots of Death, there are some entertaining and informative sections about the filming of Warship, Treasure Island and The Onedin Line and several examples of Michael's very quick thinking when things didn't always go to plan. While making the first episode of Blake's 7, he also shows how he recognised the talent of others and in this instance when designer Martin Collins enabled him to record everything in studio using one modular set. He also clearly enjoyed working on Secret Army and with the series's producer Gerry Glaister "who had a brilliant feel for good actors" and to whom he would later pitch the idea for Howard's Way.

After working on an adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities, a Francis Durbridge thriller Breakaway and the very intriguing Blood Money, which ran into problems with the Royal Household and the BBC, Michael found himself directing episodes of Secret Army spin-off, Kessler. From here on in the book becomes a love letter to his growing passion for sailing around the world and his directing career diverges to covering episodes of Emmerdale and EastEnders, a disastrous attempt to set up a production company, a brief spell as a reluctant HGV driver, and the vagaries of trying to teach the Dutch how to direct drama and sit-com and helming their versions of The Two of Us and After Henry. The final chapter culminates with a nail biting run in with Yemeni pirates as he sailed across the Red Sea.

Who Is Michael E. Briant? comes recommended. It's a highly entertaining book about Michael's growing confidence directing and working behind the scenes on prestigious (and not so prestigious) television drama and his derring-do on the high seas. It offers observations into how television was made in the 1960s and 1970s, is a story of personal achievement told with gentle and good humour and has a foreword from fellow Who director Christopher Barry. Read more ›