Jill Hyem was born in 1937 in Putney, London, England, to Hilda (née Gladwell) and Rex, a solicitor, and was raised in Devon and East Sheen.
When that series was coming to an end, she was asked to devise a more contemporary replacement with Alan Downer, and the BBC commissioned Waggoner's Walk.
She also wrote 30 radio plays, including the lesbian love story Now She Laughs, Now She Cries, A Shape Like Piccadilly—which is about adult illiteracy—and the thriller Remember Me with Jill Balcon and Julian Glover, which won the annual Giles Cooper award.
Several of Hyem's radio plays including Equal Terms, Life Sentence and Thank You—which was renamed Post Mortems for the stage—became theatrical productions.
[2] Her other work includes episodes of the nurses drama Angels, Wendy Craig's Nanny, the anthology series Sharing Time (1984), the first series of sex-and-sailing soap opera Howards' Way (1985), a mini-series adaptation of Barbara Taylor Bradford's Act of Will (1989), period costume drama The House of Eliott (1991), the Campion episodes "The Case of the Late Pig" (1989) and "Sweet Danger" (1990), the Miss Marple mystery At Bertram's Hotel (1987), and Body and Soul (1993), with Kristin Scott Thomas, for which Hyem was nominated for a BAFTA.
[4] Hyem became an active member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain (WGGB), and had an interest in promoting women's talents and issues within the profession.