David Peter Renwick (REN-wick;[1] born 4 September 1951) is an English author, television writer, actor, director and executive producer.
In 1982 Renwick and Marshall penned the comedy drama serial Whoops Apocalypse for LWT, based on the insanity of international politics in the age of nuclear weapons, and four years later they adapted the screenplay (changing most of the characters and situations completely) into a feature film version.
In 1983 they wrote The Steam Video Company for Thames Television, a short comedy series consisting of absurd parodies of famous novels.
This was followed in 1986 by Hot Metal for LWT, a six-part satire of the tabloid newspaper industry starring Robert Hardy, Geoffrey Palmer and John Gordon Sinclair.
The show was a critical success and returned for a further six episodes in 1988 with a revised cast of Robert Hardy, Richard Wilson and Caroline Milmoe.
Renwick switched to writing drama in 1990 and 1991 to indulge his love of detective stories and dramatise four episodes (one being co-written) for the series Agatha Christie's Poirot (ITV, 1989–2002), featuring David Suchet as the Belgian sleuth.
[4] In 1993, he wrote, back with Marshall again, the four-part comedy miniseries If You See God, Tell Him which starred Imelda Staunton, Adrian Edmondson and Richard Briers, with a brief appearance from Angus Deayton.
In 1997, Renwick devised the comedy-drama and mystery series, Jonathan Creek, based around the crime-solving abilities of the eponymous designer of magic tricks, played by comedian Alan Davies.
The slow rate of production is partly due to Renwick's writing of the episodes, which he describes as being a painstaking process in which the intricacies of the plots take several months to work out.
The show, starring David Jason, John Bird, Jan Ravens and Rory Bremner, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from 13 December 2016 until 3 January 2017.
[14] Tamsin Greig, Georgie Glen, Sheridan Smith and Sara Markland all worked with Renwick on his sitcom Love Soup as well as making appearances in Jonathan Creek.
Joanna Bacon, Enn Reitel, Owen Brenman, Damaris Hayman, Angus Deayton, Paul Merton, Katharine Page, Tony Millan and Bill Gavin all appeared in both One Foot in the Grave and If You See God, Tell Him.