Alan Sharp

Writer

January 12, 1934 (79 years)

† February 8, 2013

Alyth, Perth and Kinross, Scotland

Biography

Alan Sharp (12 January 1934 – 8 February 2013) was a Scottish novelist and screenwriter. He published two novels in the 1960s, and wrote the first ever Play for Today, The Long Distance Piano Player, starring The Kinks frontman Ray Davies. He subsequently wrote the screenplays for about twenty Hollywood films, including The Hired Hand, Ulzana's Raid, Night Moves, and Rob Roy. His daughter is the actor Rudi Davies, from a relationship with the novelist Beryl Bainbridge.

Filmography

6.6

Play for Today

Play for Today is a British television anthology drama series, produced by the BBC and transmitted on BBC1 from 1970 to 1984. During the run, more than three hundred programmes, featuring original television plays, and adaptations of stage plays and novels, were transmitted. The individual episodes were between fifty and a hundred minutes in duration.

7.0

ITV Playhouse

ITV Playhouse is a British comedy-drama TV series that ran from 1967 to 1983, which featured contributions from playwrights such as Dennis Potter, Rhys Adrian and Alan Sharp. The series began in black and white, but was later shot in colour and was produced by various companies for the ITV network, a format that would inspire Dramarama. Actors appearing in the series included Leslie Anderson, Gwen Nelson, Ricky Alleyne, Pat Heywood, Michael Elphick, Ian Hendry, Edward Woodward, Margaret Lockwood, Jessie Matthews and Lloyd Peters.

5.2

The Wednesday Play

An anthology series of television plays which aired on BBC1 from October 1964 to May 1970. The plays were usually written for television, although adaptations from other sources also featured.

7.0

Nightmares & Dreamscapes: From the Stories of Stephen King

An anthology based on eight short stories by Stephen King in his 1993 collection of the same name.

6.7

Rob Roy

In the highlands of Scotland in the 1700s, Rob Roy tries to lead his small town to a better future, by borrowing money from the local nobility to buy cattle to herd to market. When the money is stolen, Rob is forced into a Robin Hood lifestyle to defend his family and honour.

6.3

Ben Hur

The struggle between the Roman Empire and its rebellious conquest Judaea, and two best friends caught in a terrible moment in history.

6.7

Night Moves

Private detective and former football player Harry Moseby gets hired on to what seems a standard missing person case - a former Hollywood actress wants Moseby to find and return her daughter. Harry travels to Florida to find her, but he begins to see a connection between the runaway girl, the world of Hollywood stuntmen, and a suspicious mechanic when an unsolved murder comes to light.

6.9

Ulzana's Raid

After fierce war chief Ulzana and a small war party jump the reservation bent on murder and terror, an inexperienced young lieutenant is assigned to track him down.

4.7

The Edge

A three-part anthology suspense program in which men and women face life's ultimate danger zone. Each episode is introduced by a mysterious figure known as The Watcher (Barry Sattels), who arrives on the scene just as strange things being to happen - pushing men and women in crisis over the edge and into bizarre, unexpected actions.

5.8

Billy Two Hats

After a bank robbery, runaway Scottish outlaw Arch Deans and his young half-breed Kiowa partner Billy Two Hats develop a father-son relationship, but Sheriff Henry Gifford is determined to capture or kill them.

5.6

The Osterman Weekend

The host of an investigative news show is convinced by the CIA that the friends he has invited to a weekend in the country are engaged in a conspiracy that threatens national security.

5.1

Damnation Alley

Following World War III, four survivors at a desert military installation attempt to drive across the desolate wasteland of America to Albany, where they hope more survivors are living, using a specially built vehicles to protect themselves against the freakish weather, mutated plant and animal life, and other dangers encountered along the way.

7.4

Dean Spanley

Set in Edwardian England where upper lips are always stiff and men from the Colonies are not entirely to be trusted, Fisk Senior has little time or affection for his son, but when the pair visit an eccentric Indian, they start a strange journey that eventually allows the old man to find his heart.

6.6

The Last Run

A former mob getaway driver from Chicago has retired to a peaceful life in a Portuguese fishing village. He is asked to pull off one last job - to drive a dangerous crook and his girlfriend to France.

6.0

Avenger

After his own daughter was killed in Panama in 1994, former CIA agent Calvin Dexter became a private 'specialist' in cases which wouldn't reach justice trough the regular legal channels. Two years later he accepts to find Richard 'Ricky' Edmunds for his pa, influential rich businessman Stephen Edmonds. Ricky for a private Canadian war victims charity in Bosnia and went missing. Dexter discovers Ricky was beaten to pulp and drowned for no other crime then helping street boys from the other side by Zoran Zilic and his Serbian paramilitary 'order'. He offers Steven to 'finish the job' as such war criminals don't go to trial. But deputy CIA director Paul Devereaux cares only for a nuclear arms project he wants to use Zilic for. So CIA troubleshooter Frank McBride is ordered to protect him and handle Dexter.

4.4

Little Treasure

Margo is an ex-stripper who meets her long, lost father in Mexico. She looks after him in the waning days of his life, with the help of a traveling projectionist. The father passes away, telling of the loot from a botched bank robbery that he buried years earlier. The two get jobs in town as their relationship grows and they search for the treasure on the weekends. But while the treasure seems to bring them together, it also seems to be tearing them apart.

6.4

Mission of the Shark: The Saga of the U.S.S. Indianapolis

True story of the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, its crew's struggle to survive the sharks and exposure, and the captain's scape-goat court-martial.

5.5

Descending Angel

A recently engaged man getting to know his future father-in-law better unearths clues that the man may have been a Nazi collaborator and a mass murderer.

6.5

Little Girl Fly Away

Fact-based story about a woman whose life is shattered by a poetry-spouting stalker who manages to evade her police protectors.

5.8

While I Was Gone

Jo Beckett leads a comfortable life with a successful veterinary practice, a devoted husband, and a beautiful home in a lovely small town outside of Boston. Still, she is strangely dissatisfied with her life. One afternoon, a man brings his dog into her veterinary practice to be treated, and Jo recognizes him as Eli, a former housemate from her bohemian days more than 20 years ago. When he invites her to lunch at a fancy hotel in Boston, she goes with the intention of sleeping with him. Instead, Eli reveals a secret to Jo that returns her to the darkest moments of her past and threatens to destroy life as she knows it.