Kay Mellor

Kay Mellor, OBE (born 11 May 1951 as Kay Daniel[1])[2] is an English actress, scriptwriter, and director best known for her work on several successful television drama series.

Early life

Kay Daniel was born in Leeds to a Catholic father, George, and a Jewish mother, Dinah.[3] She has one older brother, Robert. Her parents divorced when she was young and she was brought by her mother.[4]

She attended Bretton Hall College (now part of the University of Leeds) and graduated in 1983. She still resides in Leeds with her husband Anthony Mellor, who she married in 1967. The couple has two daughters: actress Gaynor Faye and television producer Yvonne Francas.

Career

As a writer, she began working for Granada Television in the 1980s, writing for their hugely popular soap opera Coronation Street, the most watched programme on the ITV network. In 1989 Mellor also wrote seven episodes for the popular Channel 4 soap Brookside.

She also wrote for the anthology drama series Dramarama, before in 1988 co-creating the long-running children's drama Children's Ward with her Coronation Street colleague Paul Abbott. She also created the soap opera Families, which aired from 1990 until 1993. Since then she has written a host of highly acclaimed and popular television drama serials, including Band of Gold (1995), Playing the Field (1998) for BBC One, Fat Friends (2000), Between the Sheets (2003) and Strictly Confidential (2006) for ITV.

In 1999 she both wrote and directed the feature film Fanny and Elvis, starring Ray Winstone. In her parallel career as a television actress, Mellor has appeared in her own adaptation of Jane Eyre (1997) and in other series such as the comedy drama Stan the Man (2002) and in Gifted (2003). In July 2006 another of her dramas aired on BBC One, called The Chase. She both wrote and directed the two-part drama A Passionate Woman, which was based on her 1992 stage play, on BBC One in April 2010. In 2012 she wrote another BBC drama, The Syndicate. This returned for a second series in 2013 and a third series is due to air in 2015.

Mellor was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2009 Birthday Honours.[5] In 2013, she wrote In the Club.

She was the subject of This Is Your Life in 2000 when she was surprised by Michael Aspel.

Solo writing

Year Title Channel Notes
1986 Albion Market ITV Writer and Story Editor
1987–1988 Dramarama Writer
1990-1993 Families Daytime soap opera
1992-1994 Just Us
1995-1997 Band of Gold
1998-2002 Playing the Field BBC One
1999 Fanny & Elvis ITV
2000-2005 Fat Friends
2003 Between the Sheets
2006 Strictly Confidential
2006-2007 The Chase BBC One
2010 A Passionate Woman Also directed with Antonia Bird
2012-present The Syndicate Also directed
2013 Lucky 7 ABC US Version of The Syndicate
2014-present In the Club BBC One Also directed
2017-present Love Lies & Records
2017-present Girlfriends ITV

References

Sources

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/12/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.