Michael Chaplin (writer)
Michael Chaplin is an English theatre, radio, television and non-fiction writer and former television producer and executive. He grew up in Newcastle upon Tyne where he now lives and works again.
After graduating from Cambridge University in 1973 with a degree in history he trained as a reporter on The Journal newspaper in Newcastle upon Tyne and then became the paper's Health Correspondent.
In 1977 he moved to London, becoming successively a researcher, producer, director and executive producer in London Weekend Television's current affairs and documentaries department. Among his many credits there was as editor of the cult arts/lifestyle show South of Watford which helped to establish the TV careers of its successive presenters, Ben Elton and Hugh Laurie. He then produced the ITV drama series Wish Me Luck about female secret agents in France during World War II which aired on ITV between 1988-1990.
In 1989 he became Head of Drama and Arts at Tyne Tees Television and was Executive Producer of the early Catherine Cookson adaptations, which ran on ITV with great success for a further decade or more.
In 1991 Chaplin moved to BBC Wales as Head of Programmes where he was responsible for transforming the BBC's output in English on both television and radio. By this time Chaplin had begun to write for Live Theatre the acclaimed new writing company in Newcastle upon Tyne, collaborating first with Alan Plater on “In Blackberry Time”, a play about the life and work of his late father, Sid Chaplin.
His first credit on television was the ITV mini-series “Act of Betrayal” about an IRA super-grass on the run in Australia, co-written with his friend and former LWT colleague Nicholas Evans.
His first radio writing credit was “Hair In The Gate” for BBC Radio 4, based on a play of the same name staged at Live Theatre the year before.
In 1994, having just completed the acclaimed ITV mini-series Dandelion Dead directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Kitchen, about the notorious Hay on Wye poisoner Herbert Armstrong, Chaplin became a full-time writer and since then has chalked up many credits across various genres.
In TV he has created the original series Grafters starring Robson Green and Stephen Tomkinson for ITV; and for the BBC Drovers Gold about a group of Welsh cattle drovers in the 19th century; and then Monarch of the Glen starring amongst others, Richard Briers and Susan Hampshire; the series ran for 69 episodes and has been screened in many countries around the world.
Chaplin also adapted novels by the crime writer Reginald Hill for four films in the BBC series Dalziel and Pascoe ; and also P. D. James' “Original Sin” for an ITV mini-series.
Other TV work includes the ITV drama screened in 2006 – “Pickles - The Dog Who Won The World Cup” and his TV adaption of Michelle Magorian’s novel Just Henry screened in 2011. Chaplin also worked on the BBC series Robin Hood and the ITV series Wild at Heart.
Chaplin's radio work for BBC Radio 4 encompasses single plays like “Hair In The Gate”, “One-Way Ticket to Palookaville”, and “The Song Thief”, later adapted for the People's Theatre, Newcastle, during its centenary year in 2011. There were also seven contributions to “The Stanley Baker Baxter Playhouse” : “Flying Down to Greenock”, “Fife Circle” and “A Dish of Neapolitan”, “The Pool” and “Melancholy Baby”. Chaplin created and wrote all 13 plays in the much loved series “Two Pipe Problems” about life in a retirement home for faded theatricals with a Sherlock Holmes trope, starring Richard Briers and Stanley Baxter. This came to an end in 2013 following the death of Richard Briers.
Since returning to Newcastle in 2006 with his wife Susan Chaplin, a silversmith and teacher, Chaplin has written various books of non-fiction about the unique culture of the region, including “Come and See”, an affectionate memoir of the beautiful Tyneside Cinema where Chaplin received his cinematic education in the late 60s. In 2013, “Tyne View - A Walk Around the Port of Tyne”, an exploration of the social history, culture and soul of the river, appeared with contributions from artist Birtley Aris, photographer Charles Bell, and poet Christy Ducker. Both books are published by New Writing North and in January 2014 “Tyne View” went into its 2nd edition. Chaplin has also contributed 20 story panels based on South Tyneside's maritime history to South Shields’ new library and resource centre, The Word
Since writing his first stage play “In Blackberry Time” in 1987, Chaplin has written seven other full-length plays for Live Theatre and sundry other shorter pieces. These include two plays written with his son Tom about the travails of their football club Newcastle United, “You Couldn't Make It Up” and “You Really Couldn't Make It Up” ; “A Walk-On Part”, a dramatisation of the best-selling diaries of Chris Mullin MP, which also ran at the Soho Theatre and then the Arts Theatre, London, and then the play with music “Tyne” based on Chaplin's book “Tyne View”, which enjoyed a sell-out run at Live, before proving equally popular at the Customs House, South Shields and then the Theatre Royal, Newcastle.
Chaplin also worked as a co-writer of “Tommies”, a four-year project for BBC Radio 4 telling the story of the First World War from the point of view of a group of British Army signallers. The series ran from the autumn of 2014 until November 2018, with Chaplin writing a total of eight episodes.
In January 2015 Radio 4 began broadcasting a series of plays by Chaplin with the generic title “The Ferryhill Philosophers” about the collision between moral philosophy and life in the small town in County Durham where Chaplin spent the first three years of his life. The series, starring Alun Armstrong as retired pitman Joe Snowball and Deborah Findlay as Durham University philosophy lecturer Hermione Pink, is still running, with five of a total so far of 13 plays broadcast in the spring of 2019. One of these plays, “Lies, Damn Lies and Conversational Implicature”, was performed live with the help of the Ferryhill Town Band at the Durham Book Festival in October 2016.
“For The Love of Leo”, a new Radio 4 comedy drama starring Mark Bonnar and set in Edinburgh, was broadcast early in 2019 and a second series will be going out in 2020. Also for Radio 4 in 2019 Chaplin wrote an irreverent serial about the death of Queen Victoria based on the book by Stewart Richards called “Curtain Down at Her Majesty's”.
For the Durham Book Festival 2014 Chaplin was commissioned to write “There Is A Green Hill”, an updating of his father's guide to the North-East, “The Lakes to Tyneside”, published in 1951 for the Festival of Britain. In 2016 Chaplin collaborated again with New Writing North to produce “Hame – My Durham”, a new collection of his father's early short stories, poems and essays to commemorate the centenary of Sid Chaplin's birth in 1916. The book featured photographs by Karen Atkinson, idiosyncratic maps by Birtley Aris and an extended essay by Michael Chaplin on the social history of SW Durham, his father's so-called ‘heartland’. The book is published by .
Chaplin has been a visiting professor at both Sunderland University and Newcastle University. He was a writer-in-residence for the Port of Tyne from 2010 to 2015 and has served on the boards of various cultural organisations in the North-East, currently the writers’ development agency New Writing North and the Amber/Side Trust.
Chaplin is currently writing a single play also for Radio 4 titled “Going South On The Great North Road” and a new play for Live Theatre. Over the winter of 2019-20 he and his musician cousin Gary Chaplin performed an entertainment based on the story of their family, told in readings, music, images, conversation ‘and cloth caps’. The cousins call themselves “The Bird Scarers”, after the first job of their great-great grandfather John.