Glenn Wilhide
Glenn Wilhide is an American screenwriter and television producer.
Early life and family
Wilhide was born in Maryland, USA, to American parents. His family moved to the UK when he was a child and he was educated at Leighton Park School in Reading, Berkshire, and the University of York where he read English and History of Art. He is married to Jennifer Caron Hall.His paternal grandfather, also called Glenn Calvin Wilhide, was the inventor of the first hand power drill, for the Black and Decker company in Towson, Maryland.
Producer
Glenn Wilhide was co-founder of the independent production company called ZED Ltd in 1985, and he and partner Sophie Belhetchet went on to produce documentaries, talk shows, and dramas including The Camomile Lawn, The Manageress and The Peacock Spring, the latter starring Naveen Andrews, Wilhide's wife Jennifer Hall, and Hattie Morahan in her first role.Wilhide's first full producer credit was a feature film at Zed titled The Road Home, directed by Jerzy Kaszubowski and shot in Poland for Channel 4 in 1985, when Wilhide was 27 years old. It was released as ‘’Cienie’’ in Polish one year later.
Wilhide disbanded ZED Ltd in 1996, and began working as a freelance producer at Granada TV, developing projects primarily with Gub Neal in the drama department.
The Royle Family Series 1
In 1997 Wilhide produced the first series of the award-winning comedy The Royle Family starring Caroline Aherne and Craig Cash, which they co-wrote with Henry Normal. It was first broadcast on BBC2 on 14 September 1998. Reviews for The Royle Family immediately recognised the ground-breaking nature of the comedy and its production quality.. Tim Hulse in the Express, wrote on October 31: "It's as if Samuel Beckett had been commissioned to write a sitcom." "Banal, repetitive, vulgar...and very funny" said the Time Out critic on October 10. The Guardian reviewer imagined the distinguished playwright Samuel Beckett endorsing the first series above all subsequent series of the show. Of the second episode, the Guardian critic Nancy Banks-Smith wrote: "This is a rivetingly original slice of life, like a bomb-damaged house displaying its vacancy to the world...The comedy is in the beautiful truth of observation, which hits the nail on the thumb." The second series was commissioned after just three weeks on air, according to The Daily Star. The Daily Mail's Jaci Smith, after the last episode on Friday October 23, wrote: "It was a masterpiece. And you know something? I'd have paid my licence fee three times over just for it." By late December The Royle Family had won Best New Television Comedy at The British Comedy Awards, and it ranks 31 in the BFI TV 100.
Other work
The following year Glenn Wilhide produced Mrs Merton and Malcolm with the Royle Family team; both shows were made by Granada TV for the BBC.The drama Metropolis , about a group of recent graduate friends finding their feet in London, was both produced and directed by Glenn Wilhide, with addition direction by Tim Whitby
and it was written by Peter Morgan.
Wilhide produced The Camomile Lawn, directed by his father-in-law Peter Hall and starring Felicity Kendal, Jennifer Ehle, Toby Stevens, Tara Fitzgerald and a young Rebecca Hall. It was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Drama Series and won the BAFTA for Best Costume. In 2018 it was named No 4 in The 60 Best British TV Shows of All Time by The Daily Telegraph.
Also at Zed and with Sophie Belhetchet, Wilhide produced The Manageress about a female manager of a football club. Cherie Lunghi starred as boss Gabriella Benson, co-stars included Tom Georgeson and Warren Clarke, and it was commissioned for a second series.
The Manageress was said to be ahead of its time and to influence how women viewed football. A year after the second series finished, Karren Brady became the first female managing director of a club -. A BBC documentary made about her was titled The Real Life Manageress.
TV and film producer
| Year | Title | Director | Studio | Notes |
| 1984 | A TV Dante | Peter Greenaway/Tom Phillips | Artifax for Channel 4 | Associate Producer |
| 1984 | 26 Bathrooms | Peter Greenaway | Artifax for Channel 4 | Associate Producer |
| 1985 | The Possessed | Yuri Lyubimov/Jolyon Wimhurst | Zed Ltd for Channel 4 | Associate Producer |
| 1986 | Le Tango Stupéfiant | Anne Foreman | Zed Ltd for Channel 4/La Sept | Producer |
| 1987 | The Road Home | Jerzy Kaszubowski | Zed for Film 4/ Film Poski | Producer |
| 1988 | HOPPLA | Anne Teresa de Keersmaker | Zed Ltd for C4/ La Sept | Producer |
| 1988 | The Manageress I | Chris King | Zed Ltd for C4/ECA | Producer |
| 1989 | The Manageress II | Chris King | Zed Ltd for C4/ECA | Producer |
| 1989 | The Missing Reel | Charles Rawlence | Zed Ltd for C4/La Sept/Bravo | Producer |
| 1992 | The Camomile Lawn | Peter Hall | Zed Ltd for C4/ABC | Producer, BAFTA Best Costume |
| 1994 | Why East Grinstead? | Ian Sellar | Zed Ltd for Channel 4 | Producer |
| 1994 | Loach on Location - the making of Ken Loach's Land and Freedom | Larry Boulting | Zed Ltd for BBC2 | Producer |
| 1995 | The Peacock Spring | Christopher Morahan | Zed Ltd for BBC1 | Producer |
| 1998 | The Royle Family s1 | Mark Mylod | Granada for BBC2 | Producer |
| 1995 | Mrs Merton and Malcolm | John Birkin | Granada TV for BBC1 | Producer |
| 1999 | Metropolis | Glenn Wilhide and Tim Whitby | Granada TV for ITV | Producer and Director |