Verity Ann Lambert, ( – ) was an and . She is best known as the founding producer of the , a programme which has become a part of British .
Lambert was a pioneer woman in ; when she was appointed to Doctor Who in 1963 she was the youngest producer, and only female drama producer, working at the .
Lambert began working in television in the 1950s, and continued to
work as a producer up until the year she died. After leaving the BBC in
1969, she worked for other television companies, notably and in the 1970s and 80s. She also worked in the film industry, for , and from 1985 ran her own production company, . In addition to Doctor Who, she produced , , , , , , and .
The 's
website describes Lambert as "one of those producers who can often
create a fascinating small screen universe from a slim script and
half-a-dozen congenial players." The website of the
hails her as "not only one of Britain's leading businesswomen, but
possibly the most powerful member of the nation's entertainment
industry ... Lambert has served as a symbol of the advances won by
women in the media". News of her death came on the 44th anniversary of the first showing of Doctor Who.
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[] Early career in independent television
Lambert was born in , the daughter of a accountant, and educated at . She left Roedean at sixteen and studied at the in for a year, and at a secretarial college in London for eighteen months.
She later credited her interest in the structural and
characterisational aspects of scriptwriting to an inspirational English
teacher. Lambert's first job was typing menus at the Kensington De Vere Hotel, which employed her because she had been to and could speak . In , she entered the television industry as a secretary at 's press office. She was sacked from this job after six months.
's studios at in , where Lambert worked in the late 1950s.
Following her dismissal from Granada, Lambert took a job as a typist at . She soon became the secretary to the company's Head of Drama, and then a production secretary working on a programme called State Your Case. She then moved from administration to production, working on drama programming on ABC's popular anthology series . Armchair Theatre was overseen at the time by the company's new Head of Drama, producer .
On , while Lambert was working as a production assistant on Armchair Theatre, actor died off-screen just prior to a scene in which he was to appear during a broadcast of the hour-long play "Underground". Lambert had to take control of directing the cameras from the as director hastily worked with the actors during a commercial break to accommodate the loss.
In 1961 Lambert left ABC, spending a year working as the personal assistant to television producer at the independent production company in .
Returning to England, she rejoined ABC with an ambition to direct, but
got stuck as a production assistant, and decided that if she could not
find advancement within a year she would abandon television as a career.
[] BBC career
In December 1962 Sydney Newman left ABC to take up the position of Head of Drama at , and the following year Lambert joined him at the Corporation. Newman had recruited her to produce ,
a programme he had personally initiated. Conceived by Newman as an
educational science-fiction series for children, the programme
concerned the adventures of a crotchety old man travelling through
space and time with his sometimes unwilling companions in . The show was a risk, and in some quarters not expected to last longer than thirteen weeks.
Although Lambert was not Newman's first choice to produce the series — and
had both declined the position — the Canadian was very keen to ensure
that Lambert took the job after his experience of working with her at
ABC. "I think the best thing I ever did on that was to find Verity
Lambert," he told
in 1993. "I remembered Verity as being bright and, to use the phrase,
full of piss and vinegar! She was gutsy and she used to fight and argue
with me, even though she was not at a very high level as a production
assistant."
When Lambert arrived at the BBC in June , she was initially given a more experienced associate producer, , to assist her. Doctor Who debuted on and quickly became a success for the BBC, chiefly on the popularity of the alien creatures known as . Lambert's superior, Head of Serials ,
had strongly advised against using the script in which the Daleks first
appeared, but after the serial's successful airing, he said that
Lambert clearly knew the series far better than he did, and he would no
longer interfere in her decisions. The success of Doctor Who and the Daleks also garnered press attention for Lambert herself; in 1964, the
published a feature on the series focusing on the perceived
attractiveness of its young producer: "The operation of the Daleks ...
is conducted by a remarkably attractive young woman called Verity
Lambert who, at 28, is not only the youngest but the only female drama
producer at B.B.C. TV... [T]all, dark and shapely, she became
positively forbidding when I suggested that the Daleks might one day
take over Dr. Who."
Lambert oversaw the first two seasons of the programme, eventually
leaving in 1965. "There comes a time when a series need new input," she
told Doctor Who Magazine thirty years later. "It's not that I wasn't fond of Doctor Who,
I simply felt that the time had come. It had been eighteen very
concentrated months, something like seventy shows. I know people do
soaps forever now, but I felt Doctor Who needed someone to come in with a different view."
In the 2007 Doctor Who episode "", the Doctor (as John Smith) refers to his parents as Sydney and Verity, a tribute to both Newman and Lambert.
She moved on to produce another BBC show created by Newman, the swashbuckling action-adventure series (1966–67). The long development period of Adam Adamant delayed its production, and during this delay Newman gave her the initial episodes of a new , , to produce. Further productions for the BBC included a season of the crime drama Detective (1968–69) and a twenty-six-part series of adaptations of the stories of (1969). During this period, Lambert was obscurely referenced in ’s 1969 sketch "Buying a Bed," which featured two shop assistants called Mr. Verity and Mr. Lambert, named after her.
In 1969 she left the staff of the BBC to join , where she produced (1970–72) and Between the Wars (1973). In 1974, she returned to the BBC on a freelance basis to produce Shoulder to Shoulder, a series of six 75-minute plays about the movement of the early .
[] Thames Television and Euston Films
in , where several dramas overseen by Lambert, such as , were produced in the 1970s.
Later in 1974 Lambert became Head of Drama at ,
a successor company of her former employers ABC. During her time in
this position she oversaw several high-profile and successful
contributions to the network, including (1975), (1976–77), (1978–92) and (1978). In 1976 she was also made responsible for overseeing the work of , Thames' subsidiary film production company, at the time best known as the producers of . In 1979 she transferred to Euston full-time as the company's Chief Executive, overseeing productions such as (1979), (1979–94) and (1983).
At Thames and Euston, Lambert enjoyed the most sustained period of critical and popular success of her career. The Naked Civil Servant won a (BAFTA) for its star as well as a Award and a prize at the ; Rock Follies won a BAFTA and a Award, while Widows
also gained BAFTA nominations and ratings of over 12 million —
unusually for a drama serial, it picked up viewers over the course of
its six-week run. Minder
went on to become the longest-running series produced by Euston Films,
surviving for over a decade following Lambert's departure from the
company.
Television historian Lez Cooke described Lambert's time in control
of the drama department at Thames as "an adventurous period for the
company, demonstrating that it was not only the BBC that was capable of
producing progressive television drama during the 1970s. Lambert wanted
Thames to produce drama series 'which were attempting in one way or
another to tackle modern problems and life,' an ambition which echoed
the philosophy of her mentor Sydney Newman." , the writer of Rock Follies,
also later praised the bravery of Lambert's commissioning. "Verity
Lambert had just arrived as head of drama at Thames TV and she went for
broke," he told newspaper in 2002. "She commissioned a serial, Jennie: Lady Randolph Churchill, for safety, but also Bill Brand,
one of the edgiest political dramas ever, and us... Before we had even
finished making the first series, Verity commissioned the second."
Lambert's association with Thames and Euston Films continued into
the 1980s. In 1982, she rejoined the staff of parent company Thames
Television as Director of Drama, and was given a seat on the company's .
In November 1982 she left Thames, but remained as Chief Executive at
Euston until November of the following year, to take up her first post
in the industry, as Director of Production for .
Her job here was somewhat frustrating as the British film industry was
in one of its periodic states of flux, but she did manage to produce
some noteworthy features, including the 1986 film .
Lambert later expressed some regret on her time in the film industry in a feature for
newspaper. "Unfortunately, the person who hired me left, and the person
who came in didn't want to produce films and didn't want me. While I
managed to make some films I was proud of — 's , and Clockwise with John Cleese — it was terribly tough and not a very happy experience."
[] Cinema Verity
In late 1985 Lambert left Thorn EMI, frustrated at the lack of
success and at restructuring measures being undertaken by the company.
She established her own independent production company, . The company's first production was the 1988 feature film , starring and and based on the "" case in . Cinema Verity's first television series, the BBC1 , debuted in 1989 and ran until 1994. The company also produced another successful BBC1 sitcom, , which ran from 1992 to 1994.
Lambert executive produced 's hard-hitting drama serial for in 1991, winning critical acclaim and several awards.
Lambert's relationship with Bleasdale was not entirely smooth, however
— the writer has admitted in subsequent interviews that he "wanted to
kill Verity Lambert"
after she insisted on the cutting of large portions of his first draft
script before production began. However, Bleasdale subsequently
admitted that she was right about the majority of the cut material, and
when the production was finished he only missed one small scene from
those she had demanded be excised.
A less successful Cinema Verity production, and the most noted mis-step of Lambert's career, was the soap opera , a co-production with the BBC set in a British community in . At the time it was the most expensive commission the BBC had given out to an independent production company.
Launched with a major publicity campaign and running in a high-profile
slot three nights a week on BBC1, the series was critically mauled and
lasted only a year, from 1992 to 1993. Lambert's biography at Screenonline
suggests some reasons for this failure: "With on-location production
facilities and an evident striving for a genuinely contemporary
flavour, Lambert's costly Euro soap Eldorado suggested a degree
of ambition ... which it seemed in the event ill-equipped to realise,
and a potentially interesting subject tailed off into implausible
melodrama. Eldorado's plotting ... was disappointingly
ponderous. As a result, the expatriate community in southern Spain
theme and milieu was exploited rather than explored."
Other reviewers, even the best part of a decade after the programme's
cancellation, were much harsher, with Rupert Smith's comments in in 2002 being a typical example. "A £10 million farce that left the BBC with egg all over its entire body and put an awful lot members back on the dole... it will always be remembered as the most expensive flop of all time."
In the early 1990s, Lambert attempted to win the rights to produce Doctor Who
independently for the BBC; however, this effort was unsuccessful
because the Corporation was already in negotiations with producer in the . Cinema Verity projects that did reach production included (BBC1, 1991) and (BBC One, 2001), the latter co-produced by actress , whose idea it was to adapt the novels by .
Lambert continued to work as a freelance producer outside of her own
company. She produced the popular BBC One comedy-drama series , by writer ,
ever since taking over the role for its second series in 1998. From
then until 2004 she produced eighteen episodes of the programme across
four short seasons, plus two Christmas Specials. She and Renwick also
collaborated on another comedy-drama, , starring and transmitted on BBC One in the autumn of 2005.
In 1973, Lambert married television director Colin Bucksey (a man
ten years her junior), but the marriage collapsed in 1984, and they
divorced in 1987.
She had no children, once telling an interviewer, "I can't stand babies
— no, I love babies as long as their parents take them away." In 2000 two of her productions, Doctor Who and The Naked Civil Servant, finished third and fourth respectively in a poll of the of the .
In the 2002 Lambert was appointed an (OBE) for her services to film and television production, and the same year she received BAFTA's Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television. She died of cancer five days before her 72nd birthday.
She was due to have been presented with a lifetime achievement award at
the Women in Film and Television Awards the following month.
