Born in Liverpool in 1940, Neville Smith, a one time collaborator of director Ken Loach, is one of a number of working-class actors and writers to have transformed the subject-matter and tone of television drama in the 1960s and 1970s. He was responsible for two of Loach’s finest television films – ‘The Golden Vision’ (The Wednesday Play, BBC, tx. 17/4/1968) and After a Lifetime (ITV, tx. 18/7/1971) – but also developed a partnership with the director Stephen Frears, for whom he wrote the cult British detective film, Gumshoe (UK/US, 1971).