He was born in Rothesay, Isle of Bute, and educated at Finchley Catholic Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin.
He wrote an important manifesto about new television drama in 1964, calling for a more mobile style of camera work and less emphasis on dialogue.
Over the following decade he contributed to various television programmes, and made his first foray into feature films when he wrote The Italian Job,[5] which was released in 1969 and starred Noël Coward and Michael Caine.
The Old Men at the Zoo was an adaptation of the novel by Angus Wilson and screened on BBC One; the second was the hugely popular Reilly, Ace of Spies on ITV, based on the book by Robin Bruce Lockhart and starring Sam Neill.
[6][7] He was interviewed about the genesis of the series for Magnox: The Secrets of Edge of Darkness documentary, an extra on the show's 2003 DVD release: We had the Cold War.
I didn't really think that it stood much of a chance of being produced.The concept attracted little interest from television executives until incoming BBC Head of Drama Series & Serials Jonathan Powell picked it up in 1983, assigning experienced producer Michael Wearing to the project.
[8] Following Edge of Darkness he wrote another feature film screenplay, Red Heat (1988, co-written with director Walter Hill), which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Belushi.