Remembered Pioneering playwright kept it real
Tony Garnett Film and TV producer BORN APRIL 3, 1936 – DIED JANUARY 12, 2020, AGED 83
TONY Garnett ushered in a new era of drama by exposing the realities of the marginalised in a gritty documentary style aimed at subverting the status quo. In his 13-year partnership with director Ken Loach, he tackled issues including backstreet abortion, poverty and corruption.
Cathy Come Home, his 1966 documentary-style drama which highlighted the realities of homelessness, had such an impact it prompted a Parliamentary debate, resulted in a barrage of calls to the BBC and led to the formation of charity Crisis.
He and Loach also teamed up on the big screen for Kes, a film about a bullied working-class boy whose life is transformed when he trains a kestrel he finds on a farm.
Garnett rarely cushioned his viewers with a happy ending, preferring not to sugarcoat the plight of communities left behind.
He was born in Birmingham, subjected to tragic circumstances that would not be revealed for decades, despite them shaping his life’s work. His mother died when he was five as the result of a backstreet abortion and his father took his own life three weeks later.
The experience resulted in his first collaboration with Loach, Up The Junction, in which a factory worker suffers a traumatic illegal abortion. Garnett later referenced his own situation, saying: “If abortions had been legal I wouldn’t have lost my parents.”
Raised by his uncle and aunt, he attended the Central Grammar School before studying psychology at University College, London.
But he wanted to be an actor and, having spent a great portion of his university life on stage, secured early roles with the BBC. That helped him seal an assistant story editor position on The Wednesday Play, before he began his partnership with Loach.
His solo work in later years remained just as unflinching, whether about police corruption in
Between The Lines or the bed-hopping, drug-taking antics of lawyers in This Life.
In later years he steered away from depictions of “poor people” after accusing the BBC of having a sneering attitude towards them. After his death, following a short illness, his friend paid tribute to Garnett as a “great comrade and loyal friend”. Loach said: “He recognised the conflict at the heart of society, the struggle between the exploiters and the exploited.”
He is survived by his partner Victoria and sons Will and Michael.