Early life
Martin was born in Glasgow and educated at Finchley Catholic Grammar School and Trinity College, Dublin.
1960s
He began writing for BBC Television in 1958, beginning with the play
Incident at Echo Six, and he wrote four further plays for the Corporation over the following three years, before in 1961 creating his first series,
Storyboard, a six-part anthology series which consisted both of original Kennedy Martin scripts and adaptations. The same year, he wrote the police drama
The Interrogator.
It was the genre of crime and policing which gave rise to his next and probably most famous television work, the drama series
Z-Cars, which he co-created in 1962. Set in "Newtown", based on the town of Kirkby near Liverpool,
Z-Cars was revolutionary in that it depicted a hard-edged, grittier and much more realistic vision of the police force than had ever been seen on British television before - as a result, it was initially very unpopular with the real police. Although Kennedy Martin left the programme after the two series, the series ran until 1978. Kennedy Martin returned to write the final episode.
1970s
Over the following decade he contributed to various television programmes, and also made his first foray into the world of feature films when he wrote
The Italian Job, which was released in 1969 and starred Noël Coward and Michael Caine. The following year he wrote another film,
Kelly's Heroes, and he scripted two more films during the 1970s -
The Jerusalem File (1971) and
Sweeney 2 (1978).
Sweeney 2 was the second cinematic spin-off from the television series
The Sweeney, which had been created by Kennedy Martin's brother Ian Kennedy Martin, and for which he had written several episodes. This was a return to his police drama roots, albeit in a more action/adventure vein rather than the attempted social realism of early
Z-Cars.
He is perhaps less well-known for writing a little-seen television sitcom based in the British Civil Service,
If It Moves, File It (1970), featuring amongst others John Bird, who now stars alongside in the satirical
Bremner, Bird and Fortune.
1980s
In the early 1980s Troy Kennedy Martin was no less successful, with two highly popular series on different networks in the same year, 1983. One,
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.
Greatly influenced by the political landscape of the early 1980s, Kennedy Martin had drafted a script for a political thriller-cum-science fiction drama serial entitled
Magnox. This would become
Edge of Darkness. Kennedy Martin 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. The Falklands. The Nuclear State. The prospect of a miners' strike. Greenham Common. It was Thatcher's Britain. At the BBC, there was no political dimension in their popular drama whatsoever. And I was really depressed about it, as indeed were other writers that I knew. And so, I said to my closest colleagues: 'The only thing one can do is actually write stuff that one knows is not going to get made, but at least we'll get it out of our system.' And that's how I started to write Edge Of Darkness. 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.
Edge of Darkness, was eventually screened on BBC Two in late 1985. Although Kennedy Martin experienced many creative differences with director Martin Campbell and star Bob Peck (who is reported to have vetoed the scripted ending with the remark "I'm not turning into a fucking tree!"), the drama was a resounding success, picking up several awards and being remembered as one of the best British television drama productions of the 1980s. 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.
1990s
Kennedy Martin did not return to television scriptwriting until the one-off BBC Two drama
Hostile Waters in 1997. Other later work included the adaptation of
Bravo Two Zero for BBC One in 1999, co-written with the book's author Andy McNab and starring Sean Bean.
Death
Martin died of liver cancer on 15 September 2009, aged 77, at Ditchling, East Sussex.
