Douglas Watkinson

2007
Midsomer Murders Series X – Death & Dust (Transmission date June 6th, Bentley/ITV)

2006
Publication of detective novel ‘Haggard Hawk’ - under the pen name Marcus Barr

Hawk is a recently retired copper who is just about to go mad with boredom when someone does him the courtesy of getting themselves murdered. A sequel is to be published later this year. A third book is nearing completion.

2005
Midsomer Murders Series IX – ‘Down Among the Dead Men’ (2 hrs,
Bentley/ITV)

Rosemary & Thyme (Carnival/ITV)

2004
Midsomer Murders Series VIII - Dead in the Water’ (2 hrs, Bentley/ITV)

Douglas Watkinson began his writing career with a Thirty Minute Theatre for BBC2. In the same year he contributed several scripts to The Onedin Line and Z Cars for which he eventually became script editor and occasional producer.

He has written hundreds of television scripts since then, for such programmes as Emmerdale Farm, Z Cars, Spy Trap, Owen MD, Juliet Bravo, Howards Way, Anna Lee, Kavanagh Q.C. and The Bill. His favourites, however, remain Lovejoy, Maybury, Boon, Forever Green, Poirot and Midsomer Murders.

In the late eighties he wrote the first lunchtime drama to be shown in England - For Maddie With Love - which starred Ian Hendry and Nyree Dawn Porter and ran for two years.

In the early nineties he wrote two comedy series for the BBC, Sweet Sixteen and The New Statesman.

He has written several stage plays, one of which - The Dragon's Tail, starring Penelope Keith - played in the West End for a year.

He has also written for radio, a strange but rewarding project of fifty comedy sketches which formed the basis of "Teach Yourself Italian."