Oxley began working in set design in 1948, as an art decorator in the film London Belongs to Me.
[1] Oxley had been working for some years as set decorator for BBC when he was chosen, as an in-house joke, to model for the character of "Big Brother" in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
[2][3][4] "Big Brother" was not actually a participating character in the programme; his face was only shown on various posters and billboards seen during the adaptation.
Oxley worked at several other productions as a production designer with the BBC, including seven episodes of the Douglas Wilmer version of Sherlock Holmes, various episodes of Z-Cars[citation needed] and an adaptation for television of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood.
[5] In 1969, he won a BAFTA Award for Production Design for his work of the BBC play The Portrait of a Lady.