He was educated at Bedford School, and read Archaeology and Anthropology at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge.
Percival was one of the first reporter-producers of the BBC's Man Alive programme in 1965 - the first documentary series to report on social issues by interviewing "real people" rather than experts.
In 1978, he produced Living in the Past, a BBC fly on the wall documentary programme which followed a group of fifteen young volunteers, six couples and three children, where they sustained themselves for a year, equipped only with the tools, crops and livestock that would have been available in Britain in the 2nd Century BC.
In 1980, Percival made the acclaimed series Africa, with the historian Basil Davidson, for Channel 4.
Percival and his first wife, the TV presenter and author Jacky Gillott, had two sons; she killed herself in 1980.