Graham Linehan

 

 

Graham Linehan is an Irish comedy writer and director, the cre­ator of highly popular series’ ‘Father Ted’, ‘The IT Crowd’ and ‘Black Books’.

After an early career as a journalist for the Irish music magazine ‘Hot Press’, Graham began collaborating with writer Arthur Math­­ews on many high profile comedy sketch shows including ‘Alas Smith and Jones’ and the Ted and Ralph characters in ‘The Fast Show’.

 

It was Linehan and Matthews' creation of ‘Father Ted’ in 1995 that brought their greatest success of their early years. The pro­gramme won countless awards, including two BAFTAs for best comedy, and is today regarded as one of the greatest British sit­coms ever produced.

 

Linehan and Matthews then wrote the first series of the sketch show ‘Big Train’, which Graham also directed. Linehan has since written for other shows, including ‘Brass Eye’. 2000 saw his next success with his co-creation of ‘Black Books’ with Dylan Moran. Graham also co-directed many episodes with Nick Wood. 

 

In 2003 Graham directed the pilot episode of ‘Little Britain’. Li­ne­­han went on to create, write and direct the 2006 Channel 4 sitcom ‘The IT Crowd’, starring Chris O’Dowd and Richard Ayoade, which went on to win multiple awards including the BAFTA TV Award for ‘Best Situation Comedy’ in 2009, ‘Best TV Sitcom’ at the British Comedy Awards in 2009, and ‘Best Script for Television’ at the Irish Film and Television Awards.

 

Over the last ten years Graham has also directed numerous ad campaigns with Sneezing Tree Films, including campaigns for ITV Sports Channel, which were awarded the Silver Arrow at the 2003 BTAA Awards, and four commercials from the award win­ning QTV series starring Martin Freeman. He directed the IKEA 'Van de Poop' campaign and in 2011 he did the Direct Line campaign starring Chris Addison, Alexander Armstrong and Amelia Bulmore.

 

In November 2011, Graham's stage adaptation of the Ea­ling Studio classic ‘The Ladykillers’ debuted at The Liverpool Playhouse before moving to The Gielgud Theatre in London starring Peter Capaldi and Ben Miller, where it received rave reviews and was a sell out show. 

 

In 2014 Graham directed a new series for the BBC called ‘The Walshes’, which he co- wrote with A Diet of Worms. Graham created, co-wrote and directed the much loved series ‘Count Ar­thur Strong’, series 1 for BBC2 in 2013 and series 2 for BBC1 in 2015. The series is co-written with its star Steve Delaney, and co-starring Rory Kinnear.  He has just finished shooting the third series.

 

He is currently writing a new series ‘The Cloud’ for Channel 4, amongst other things and co-wrote and directed pilot ‘Mother­land’ in early 2016.