He was still at Westminister when Michael Rudman commissioned Poliakoff's first professionally produced play, "A Day With my Sister," which premiered at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh directed by David Halliwell in 1971.

His directorial debut was the much-lauded and now rare Hidden City (1988),[19] premiered at the Venice Film Festival and starring Charles Dance, Richard E. Grant and Cassie Stuart.

Less successful were Food of Love (1997) with Grant, Nathalie Baye and Joe McGann and The Tribe (1998)[23] starring Joely Richardson and Jeremy Northam, the latter eventually screened on BBC Two in the absence of a cinema distribution deal where it achieved extremely high viewing figures and was immediately repeated.

He subsequently returned to his favoured form, television, this time choosing a flexible serial format resulting in the acclaimed and Prix Italia-winning[24] Shooting the Past (1999),[25] the fresh critical and audience success of Perfect Strangers (2001),[26] a family drama starring Matthew Macfadyen, Michael Gambon and Lindsay Duncan and The Lost Prince (2003),[27] a single drama recognised with an Emmy award rare for a non-American production.

In 2005, he renewed recent criticisms of BBC scheduling and commissioning policy, arguing that the reintroduction of a regular evening slot for one-off plays on BBC1 would provide the re-invigoration of drama output that has become a priority for the corporation.

[33] Glorious 39,[34] starring Romola Garai, Bill Nighy and Julie Christie, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2009 and was released in the UK that November.

Starring Bill Nighy and Gemma Arterton, the film was shown in Odeon Cinemas in August 2011 and made available on the WWF website and YouTube.

[35] In February and March 2013, Dancing on the Edge,[36] a five-part series which followed the fortunes of a black jazz band in 1930s London, was broadcast by the BBC, and also later won a Golden Globe.

It is set in 1958, just as the UK is testing its first hydrogen bomb, and focuses on a Russian Jewish hearing aid inventor (Toby Stephens) who goes to work for MI5.

[43] His brother, Sir Martyn Poliakoff, a research chemist and lecturer, is a Fellow of the Royal Society,[44] being, until November 2016, its Foreign Secretary and vice-president.

[46] Poliakoff's paternal grandfather, Joseph, was a Russian Jew who experienced first-hand the effects of the communist revolution in Russia from the family's Moscow flat across from the Kremlin.