Irene Shubik

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Irene Shubik
Born(1929-12-26)26 December 1929
Hampstead, London, UK
Died26 September 2019(2019-09-26) (aged 89)
Northwood, London, UK
Alma materUniversity College London
Occupation(s)Television producer and story editor

Irene Shubik (26 December 1929 – 26 September 2019)

Out of this World
.

Moving to the

anthology television series Out of the Unknown. Leaving Out of the Unknown after two seasons, Shubik co-produced The Wednesday Play, overseeing its transition into Play for Today in 1970. She left the BBC in 1976, and subsequently produced the first season of Rumpole of the Bailey for Thames Television before joining Granada Television where she produced Staying On and devised The Jewel in the Crown
. She also wrote film scripts and a novel, The War Guest.

Early life and career

Irene Shubik was born in 1929 in

BBC but was turned down.[3] Unable to obtain work, she moved to the United States, visiting her brother, the economist Martin Shubik, who was teaching at Princeton University.[2] Meeting with little success in building a career in Princeton, when her brother was called before the Dean of the University for keeping a woman in his quarters, she moved to Wilmette, Chicago where her other brother, cancer researcher Philippe Shubik, was based.[3] She joined the film department of the Encyclopædia Britannica, who were impressed by her MA thesis, where Shubik worked as a scriptwriter.[4] Shubik was subsequently offered a twelve-month contract with the National Film Board of Canada but was unable to take up the position as both of her parents had become seriously ill.[5]

Television career

With ABC Weekend TV

By 1960, now back in England, Shubik's career was back at square one. She contributed occasional scripts to documentary series such as

Out of This World, a thirteen part anthology series, hosted by Boris Karloff, that aired between 30 June 1962 and 22 September 1962. Many of the stories featured in Out of this World were adaptations of stories by science fiction authors including Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick and Clifford D. Simak
.

At the BBC

When Sydney Newman was poached by the BBC to head up their drama department in late 1962, he invited Shubik to join him. Accepting the offer, on the condition that she be promoted to producer within a year, Shubik joined the BBC in 1963 and became the story editor for Story Parade, an anthology series of adaptations of modern novels that was intended to be the main drama strand for the new channel

Level 7. The adaptation of The Machine Stops won the first prize at the Fifth Festival Internazionale del Film di Fantascienza (International Science Fiction Film Festival) in Trieste on 17 July 1967.[8]

In parallel with producing the second season of

Maigret creator Georges Simenon
broadcast between 19 June 1966 and 11 September 1966.

In 1967, as she began work assembling scripts for the third season of Out of the Unknown, Shubik accepted the chance to take over as co-producer (with

100 Greatest British Television Programmes published in 2000.[9] However, Edna's writer Jeremy Sandford later wrote that Shubik seemed to "sabotage" the effectiveness of the play influencing policy makers in her 1975 book on television drama by questioning the veracity of its content.[8]

Moving on from Play for Today she oversaw an adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales in 1973 before taking on the role of producer on another anthology series called The Mind Beyond, a spin-off from the Playhouse series of single plays.

Return to Independent Television

One of the plays Shubik produced for Play for Today was

Raj Quartet
.

When Granada got cold feet about the scale of the project and the cost of filming in

Raj Quartet, which was filmed as The Jewel in the Crown and became one of Granada's most celebrated productions, placed twenty-second in the British Film Institute's 100 Greatest British Television Programmes.[9] Shubik did not produce The Jewel in the Crown, having moved on to write the screenplay for the film Girl on a Swing for Columbia Pictures
, but, having worked extensively on the fourteen scripts, was given a “devised by” credit at the start of each episode.

Other work

Shubik was the author of Play for Today: The evolution of television drama, an autobiographical account of the development of the single play in British television which has become a standard reference work on the subject. The first edition appeared in 1975 and a revised second edition, incorporating new material on Rumpole of the Bailey, Staying On and The Jewel in the Crown, appeared in 2001. She also wrote the novel The War Guest (W.H. Allen, 1986).

In 1992, Shubik was chairman of the judges for the Best Drama Serial category for that year's

Prime Suspect, but following the ceremony four of the other seven members of the jury signed a public statement declaring that they had voted for G.B.H. to win.[12] Shubik, who as chairman did not cast a vote, refused to publicly comment on the affair, but BAFTA Chairman Richard Price stated that the ballot papers passed on to him by Shubik had shown four votes for Prime Suspect and three for G.B.H..[12] Price claimed that the ballot papers could not be recounted as they had subsequently been destroyed. No blame was ever attached to Shubik by the four judges, and it was to her that they had initially turned to raise the apparent discrepancy with BAFTA.[13] Jeremy Sandford pointed to Shubik's feud with Verity Lambert (who was the executive producer of G.B.H.) as an explanation for the incident.[1]

Production credits

Year Title Writer Producer
1962
Out of This World
 		No No 13 episodes as story editor
1962–1963 Armchair Theatre No No 3 episodes as story editor
1964 Story Parade No No 2 episodes as script editor
1965 Theatre 625 No No 1 episode as script editor
1966 Thirteen Against Fate No Yes 13 episodes
1966 The Lodger No Yes Television film
1966 Trapped No Yes Television film
1966 The Traveller No Yes Television film
1966 The Schoolmaster No Yes Television film
1966 The Witness No Yes Television film
1966 The Friends No Yes Television film
1966 The Survivors No Yes Television film
1966 The Son No Yes Television film
1966 The Counsel No Yes Television film
1965–1967 Out of the Unknown No Yes 22 episodes
11 episode as script editor
1969 The Vortex No Yes Television film
1967–1970 The Wednesday Play No Yes 21 episodes
1970–1975 Play for Today No Yes 26 episodes
1973 Wessex Tales No Yes Television miniseries
1973–1976 BBC2 Playhouse No Yes 9 episodes
1976
Chronicle
 		Yes No "The Scrolls from the Son of a Star"
1 episode as director
1978 Rumpole of the Bailey No Yes 6 episodes
1980 Staying On No Yes Television film
1984 The Jewel in the Crown Yes Yes Television miniseries

Notes

  1. ^ a b c d e "Irene Shubik obituary". The Times. 9 October 2019. Retrieved 9 October 2019. (subscription required)
  2. ^ a b c Ward, Out of the Unknown, p. 9.
  3. ^ a b c Shubik, Play for Today, p. ix.
  4. ^ Shubik, Play for Today, p. x.
  5. ^ Shubik, Play for Today, p. xii
  6. ^ Vahimage, Irene Shubik (1935 - ).
  7. ^ Cutler, Colin (1999). "Story Parade: The Caves of Steel". 625.org. Archived from the original on 2 October 2006. Retrieved 16 January 2007.
  8. ^ a b Hayward, Anthony (24 October 2019). "Irene Shubik obituary". The Guardian. Retrieved 25 October 2019.
  9. ^ a b "The BFI TV 100: 1-100". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 30 November 2005. Retrieved 24 January 2007.
  10. ^ Shubik, Play for Today, p. 195
  11. ^ Shubik, Play for Today, pp. 198–203.
  12. ^ a b c Wittstock, Melinda (8 April 1992). "Confusion becomes the Bafta prime suspect". The Times. p. 1.
  13. ^ Wittstock, Melinda (2 May 1992). "'Fibs' slur incenses Bafta award judges". The Times. p. 18.

References

External links
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