Chandler created Taggart for STV's Controller of Drama, Robert Love, who wanted to set a police series in Glasgow.
Chandler was inspired by true crime and real life, and even lifted the names of characters for the series from gravestones in Maryhill Cemetery in Glasgow.
[2] The series continued even after the death of the actor Mark McManus, who played the lead role of Jim Taggart, and became the longest-running police drama on British television.
[2] Glenn Chandler has continued to write for his first love, theatre, and has also written a series of books featuring a Brighton detective, DI Madden.
These were Boys of the Empire, a satirical play written by Chandler himself, and What's Wrong With Angry?, a drama set in 1992, when the age of consent for homosexuals was 21.
He made his directing debut with the award-winning The Custard Boys which he adapted from the novel by John Rae, and this was produced at the Tabard Theatre in 2011.
In 2017, Chandler adapted the 1967 novel Lord Dismiss Us into a play for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, in order to mark the 50th Anniversary of the partial legalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales.
[16] As was the case with Lord Dismiss Us, Chandler's latest production was well received by critics,[17][18] and was also the recipient of the Broadway Baby Bobby Award for the "Best show of the Fringe".