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Grant Cathro is one of the most prolific and successful writers working in teenage and children's television in the United Kingdom.
With an astounding 500+ produced television scripts to his credit, Grant's work has been nominated for (and has won) Bafta, Royal Television Society, Writers' Guild of Great Britain and Prix Jeunesse awards.
Grant's earliest achievement came at the age of 18 when he co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed an epic-scale fantasy film, Jack Snell. Hailed by the Glasgow Evening Times as "a triumph" it received screenings at the Glasgow Film Theatre.
Originally intending to pursue a career as a director, Grant gained a place on the three-year Actors' Course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, graduating with a Diploma in Dramatic Art, an Award for Special Merit in Acting, and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama Best Student prize.
It was here that Grant formed a writer/performer double-act with Alex Bartlette. Together they won the BBC Muriel Finlayson Award for Scriptwriting, as well as taking the Edinburgh International Festival by storm with their acclaimed production of Shakespeare's comedy, Two Gentlemen of Verona.
For the following six or seven years, Grant Cathro balanced his career as a busy actor with occasional writing commissions. He starred in the BBC TV 13-part prime time drama, Jury - a performance which won him much praise. Grant also landed the title role in Mick Gold's film biopic of Egon Schiele, co-starring David Suchet as Gustav Klimt.
There followed seasons at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre, the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, Leicester Haymarket Theatre and Northcott Theatre, Exeter - where as well as appearing in Hamlet and Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, Grant also composed and performed the music.
A production of Grant's musical-comedy A Buckskin Bag of Gold was mounted at the Exeter Northcott Theatre. He played opposite Kenneth Branagh in Julian Mitchell's play Francis at Greenwich Theatre, then joined The Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London, appearing in Terry Hands' production of Troilus and Cressida and Solzhenitsyn's The Love Girl and the Innocent.
Grant's acting work on the London Fringe won him rave reviews in a sequence of Shakespeare comedy roles - as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Biondello in Taming Of The Shrew and Launcelot Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice.
He went on to appear in a succession of mainstream television dramas including Taggart and Love Hurts, starring Zoe Wannamaker and Adam Faith.
As a writer, Grant's earliest success (aged just 22) was a one-hour play produced by Tom Kinninmont for BBC Radio 4 - a comedy called Moonlight and Aspirins, it starred Miriam Margolyes, Rupert Frazer and David Hayman.
Grant then joined forces with children's television writer Lee Pressman. Together they created and wrote all 94 episodes of the cult kids' comedy T-Bag, starring Georgina Hale, Glenda Jackson, Gemma Craven, Murray Melvin, Roy Barraclough, Peggy Mount, and Victor Spinetti. One of ITV's most popular family shows, T-BAG ran for nearly a decade.
Pressman and Cathro went on to create a run of original and hugely successful children's TV series - a diverse body of work, including sitcoms (Spatz, Cone Zone and Mike & Angelo - at 123 episodes one of the United Kingdom's longest-running comedies) sci-fi action/adventure (The Tomorrow People, starring Christopher Lee, Jean Marsh, Connie Booth, Denise Coffey and Elizabeth Spriggs, Delta Wave, starring Graham Crowden and Una Stubbs) as well as numerous family-dramas.
Their 100-minute comedy film B&B, starring Kevin Whately, Katy Murphy, Joanna Kanska and Ian McNeice, was met with great critical acclaim and won them a Writers' Guild Award for "Best Children's Television".
After that, Grant wrote a screenplay adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet for Channel 4, starring Jonathan Firth, John Nettles, Geraldine Somerville and Jenny Agutter, then wrote, co-produced and starred in a 60-minute sci-fi comedy The Light Fantastic, alongside Phillida Law and Oscar-winner Peter Capaldi.
There followed episodes of the multi award-winning Disney/BBC hit Microsoap, ITV's popular family-drama series Snap, and the surreal sitcom Star Street, a vehicle for the chart-topping allStars.
Then, as a writer/performer, Grant co-created, co-wrote and co- starred in his own late-night comedy series Something Or Other, which aired on BBC Radio 4.
In 2006-08 Grant was Head Writer of Genie in the House, a 78-episode fantasy sitcom commission from Nickelodeon UK. One of the channel's top-rated shows, it now plays successfully in 110 regions around the world. Most recently Grant has written two live-action teen comedies for The Walt Disney Company in Poland, Do Dzwonka and Do Dzwonka Cafe, for which he was Head Writer on all 55 episodes.
Grant is also co-creator and Head Writer of a new 26-part 3D musical comedy series, Which is Witch? This show is being aired by RTBF in Belgium and in France by Canal-J/Lagardere.
21st February 2014
