Iain MacCormick Iain MacCormick i(8039192 works by) (a.k.a. Iain McCormick)
Also writes as: John Graeme
Born: Established: 1918
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Australia,
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; Died: Ceased: Oct 1965
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England,
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United Kingdom (UK),
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Western Europe, Europe,

Gender: Male
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Works By

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1 form y separately published work icon Nightfall at Kriekville Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1961 8159965 1961 single work film/TV

'For Jan Dirksen, Mayor of Kriekville, an insult offered to the Town's founder is also offered to the whole European community. Retribution is sweet, especially if the culprit is a Bantu.'

Source:

Radio Times, 21 September 1961, p.25.

1 form y separately published work icon The Hunted Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1961 8153613 1961 single work film/TV thriller

'It starts with a chance meeting in a Paris bar at three in the morning. He is an American journalist who has come back to Paris in the probably delusive hope of writing at last that great novel; she is half French, half Algerian, and on the run from someone. But from whom?'

Source:

'A Not So Simple Mystery Story', The Times, 17 October 1961, p.16.

1 form y separately published work icon The Uninvited Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1958 8153263 1958 single work film/TV

'It concerns an unfortunate Russian woman who married an American soldier, and as a penalty for this breach of Soviet etiquette, spent eight years in a forced labour camp. Prematurely aged she comes to London, where her cause us ardently espoused by a newspaper whose hard-bitten girl reporter and flinty editor (Blunt by name) track down the husband to a United States Air Force base. In vain. He has remarried and refuses point blank even to meet his first wife again; there is nothing for the unhappy woman to do but to press Blunt's hand in silent gratitude and embark for Russia.'

Source:

'The Uninvited', The Times, 24 November 1958, p.12.

1 form y separately published work icon The Money Man Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1958 8152855 1958 series - publisher film/TV crime thriller

A 'whodunit' exploring the ramifications of the European currency systems.

1 form y separately published work icon Marjolaine Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1957 8159655 1957 single work film/TV

An occupied village in Brittany must decide whether to hide a wounded British airman or hand him over to the German troops.

According to a contemporary review in The Times:

'The emphasis is placed upon the schoolchildren. It is out of them that the British officer in hiding (Mr. Terence Longdon) and the French school teacher (Miss Lisa Daniely) create the resistance movement, and it is they who at the end draw their own parents and the whole village into it.'

Source:

'Marjolaine', The Times, 8 February 1957, p.5.

1 form y separately published work icon The Quiet Ones Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1957 8153017 1957 single work film/TV

'Setting out at first to illustrate how a discontented young industrialist can be seduced by Communist trade unionists, he enlivens this austere topic by implanting Pringle, the young man, in a devout Catholic family.

'Having thus touched domestic conflict alight, Mr. MacCormick displays Pringle's loyal girlfriend waiting wanly over cups of coffee while he attends wicked meetings, and confronting him, when he arrives, with a gaze of mute accusation. Quite the strongest of the situations is the one in which Pringle's eldest brother brutally unmasks himself as the hardened party member responsible for all the previous agitation'.

Source:

'B.B.C. Television', The Times, 17 June 1957, p.3.

1 form y separately published work icon Free Passage Home Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1957 8151623 1957 single work film/TV

'Sandy Robinson, a commissioner in the district of Dalpore, has orders to maintain the peace while natives are pouring in both directions over the India-Pakistan border. Lacking men and transport of his own, he manages to secure a shaky alliance with the local leaders, and reduces the amount of bloodshed in spite of skirmishes by a Communist faction. The leaders, as Mr. MacCormick depicts them, are unprincipled politicians over whom Robinson towers, like a reproving father, sorrowfully convinced that they are not ready for self-government.

'Having the balance tilted all one way need not, of course, vitiate the play's effectiveness. But apart from the scenes of political squabbling, with the right always on one side, the play diverges into domestic and romance byways inhabited by the commissioner's humdrum wife and his ivory-skulled son who courts an Indian girl with quotations from Kipling.'

Source:

'B.B.C. Television', The Times, 18 November 1957, p.3.

1 form y separately published work icon The Third Miracle Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1957 8151409 1957 single work film/TV

According to contemporary reviews in The Times, 'It has two subjects–the fight against disease in India, and the end of individualism among the British Raj. Mr. MacCormick relates these themes by taking as his central figure a doctor who, after struggling hopelessly against epidemics, comes at length to join a Government hospital.'

Source:

'B.B.C. Television', The Times, 11 November 1957, p.3.

1 form y separately published work icon The Little World Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1957 8151249 1957 single work film/TV historical fiction

'The period is 30 years after the Mutiny, the theme of the first play, and Mr. MacCormick now turns to affairs that were then overshadowed by immediate crisis. The central figure, Jock Robinson, is the son of the military hero of the first play; and he illustrates the theme of service in the life of a district officer. Jock is a more effective hero than his predecessor because he is a greater fanatic. His one concern is to improve conditions in his district. To this end he neglects his hot-blooded wife, endangers his career by flouting regulations, and finally secures victory by blackmail.'

Source:

'B.B.C. Television', The Times, 4 November 1957, p.3.

1 form y separately published work icon Night of the Tigers Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1957 8150887 1957 single work film/TV historical fiction

'There are no crowds, no violence, and action is confined to a single set–the house of a commander of native infantry. Although some disturbance has taken place in the district before the play opens, it is not in the thick of the uprising, and the house serves as an outpost where there is still leisure for discussion. But discussion is made urgent by the knowledge that attack may at any time be renewed: there is no division between plot and comment on India at large.

'Three groups are represented–Indian troops, British officers and British civilians. Of these, the civilians are the least convincing. One is a fledgling memsahib whose part is limited to voicing obtuse snobbery; the other, an altogether too enlightened Scots girl, acts almost as Mr. MacCormick's raisonneur by stepping outside the action and speaking in glowing terms of Britain's role in India.'

Source:

'B.B.C. Television', The Times, 28 October 1957, p.5.

1 form y separately published work icon The English Family Robinson Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1957 8149608 1957 series - author film/TV

A television-play cycle, following the rise and fall of English colonial rule in India from 1857 to 1947.

The Times called it the 'most ambitious serial produced in the past year', noting that

Technically, the cycle is compact, calling for only one set–a colonial official's house occupied successively by members of the Robinson family whose contribution to Indian development conveys Mr. MacCormick's message on the theme of service.

Towards the end of the cycle this theme gains the upper hand in a distastefully didactic fashion; Indian leaders are presented as squabbling power-seekers foolishly disregarding the advice of the district commissioner, who towers over them with the oppressive goodness of a reproving father. But in the earlier plays Mr. MacCormick does not proclaim his partisanship so openly, and they display his masterly facility in taking political history as a springboard for dramatic invention.

Source:

'Family Gathering Round the Television Set', The Times, 1 January 1958, p.10.

1 form y separately published work icon On Any One Day Iain MacCormick , ( dir. Quentin Lawrence ) United Kingdom (UK) : Towers of London Productions , 1956 8159902 1956 single work film/TV

Little is known about the plot of this television play.

1 form y separately published work icon The Mother Iain MacCormick , ( dir. John Knight ) United Kingdom (UK) : ITV , 1956 8156940 1956 single work film/TV

The sacrifices made by a mother allow her family, Polish refugees, to reach Canada.

1 form y separately published work icon The Weeping Madonna Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1956 8145990 1956 single work film/TV

In an Italian village, two woodcarvers plot to create a wooden Madonna who weeps tears of camphor, ether, and water. But when a lonely child (their daughter / niece) confides in the Madonna, she begins to weep real tears, setting off recriminations and misunderstandings with the local policemen, representative of the church, and a chemical analyst.

For a review of the play, see 'A Religious Comedy on B.B.C. Television', The Times, 9 January 1956, p.5.

1 form y separately published work icon One Morning Near Troodos Iain MacCormick , London : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1956 8046120 1956 single work film/TV
1 form y separately published work icon Act of Violence Iain MacCormick , London : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1956 8044555 1956 single work film/TV
1 form y separately published work icon The Safe Haven Iain MacCormick , United Kingdom (UK) : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1955 8158245 1955 single work film/TV

'Mr. Iain MacCormick [...] tried in The Safe Haven to marry a skeleton out of the cupboard of Victorian melodrama with the nonchalance and colloquialism and intimacy of modern domestic comedy. Into a Scottish country house of the present day, ruled by a very career-minded young businesswoman, there saunters from nowhere an old man (Mr. Finlay Currie), who turns out to be none other than the profligate father of her Canadian husband and his wastrel brother. Ignobly, they contrive to keep the dreadful fact a secret, but–thanks to an affectionate child (Miss Carole Lorimer)–paternity must out, and the wife (Miss Pamela Alan) is distressingly confronted by her father-in-law.'

Source:

'Creative Material for Television', The Times, 26 April 1955, p.16.

1 form y separately published work icon The Rescue Iain MacCormick , ( dir. Leonard Brett ) United Kingdom (UK) : ITV , 1955 8157828 1955 single work film/TV

Little is known about the plot of this television play.

1 form y separately published work icon Return to the River Iain MacCormick , London : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1954 8041099 1954 single work film/TV

In 1964, one of the soldiers from The Liberators returns to the farmhouse in Italy that he occupied in 1945.

2 2 form y separately published work icon The Small Victory Iain MacCormick , London : British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) , 1954 8040684 1954 single work film/TV

Set in a Catholic mission that has been overtaken by Chinese forces.

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