In the Doctor Who episode Human Nature, John Smith (who we, the audience, know to be the Doctor) tells his sweetheart that his parents were named Sydney and Verity. It was a gentle wink to the fans of the series, who knew that the driving forces behind the series coming to air in 1963 were Canadian Sydney Newman, who had joined the BBC as Head of Drama a year earlier, and Verity Lambert, who died yesterday.
A production assistant at independent broadcaster ABC, Lambert accepted her boss Newman’s offer to join him at the BBC, in the process becoming the Corporation’s first woman producer. Newman recounted to Doctor Who Magazine in 1993:
I remembered Verity as being bright and, to use the phrase, full of piss and vinegar! She was gutsy and she used to fight and argue with me, even though she was not at a very high level as a production assistant.
Although it was her first series as producer, Lambert was not afraid to butt heads with her superiors. It was against their advice that the series’ second major storyline introduced a range of single-minded pepperpots, the Daleks, which would transform the fortunes of the series and help it remain in the public consciousness to this day.
After eighteen months in charge of Doctor Who, Lambert moved on to other projects at the BBC, including another cult classic, Adam Adamant Lives! and soap The Newcomers. Returning to the independent sector in 1969, she produced Budgie, The Naked Civil Servant, Rock Follies, Rumpole of the Bailey and Edward and Mrs Simpson. Talking charge of Thames subsidiary Euston Films, she oversaw such greats as Minder and Widows.
Her own indie, Cinema Verity, created the cinema hit A Cry in the Dark, starring Meryl Streep, as well as the BBC sitcom From May to December and Channel 4’s Alan Bleasdale epic G.B.H.. In light of such successes, it seems unfit to dwell on the case of Eldorado, the BBC’s doomed Eurosoap.
In two weeks’ time, she was due to receive a lifetime achievement award from Women in Film and Television. Unfortunately, we heard that yesterday, on the eve of her most famous show’s anniversary, she passed away.
Jane Tranter, Controller, BBC Fiction, said:
Verity was a total one-off. She was a magnificently, madly, inspirationally talented drama producer.
During her long and brilliant career there was no form of drama that was beyond her reach and that she didn’t excel at. From the early episodes of Doctor Who to the still to be transmitted comedy drama Love Soup, via Widows, Minder, gbh, Eldorado and Jonathan Creek (to name but the tiniest handful of credits) – Verity was a phenomenon.
She made the television drama genre utterly her own. She was deaf to the notion of compromise and there wasn’t an actor, writer, director or television executive she worked with who didn’t regard her with admiration, respect and awe.
She will be hugely missed but her legacy lives on in the dramas she made, and in the generations of eager young programme-makers she has inspired.
In Cardiff, one hundred people are working on a show which was born 44 years ago today. And while fans may be celebrating the birthday, we’ll be raising a glass to one of the series’ true parents, too.
Lovely eulogy, Scott. She will be sorely missed.
I'm sorry to hear this news. She was an example to women in the media. For many years I noted her name on the credits of my favourite programmes.
Verity Lambert had vision, guts and the ability to see the potential hard-to-define 'magic' in scripts and story treatments. Without her tenacity and enthusiasm British television would have been so much poorer. She made such unforgettable characters as Jonathan Creek, Arthur Daley, Adam Adamant, the Naked Civil Servant, Rumpole and of course Doctor Who possible. Verity's legacy is on tv every day, somewhere in the world, inspiring future generations. Let's be grateful that we had her with us for this long.