Cirrus@Austlit

Philip Dalkin is a television script writer, director, and producer, as well as the co-creator of several successful television programs.

Dalkin's first scripts were for Special Squad, a Crawford Productions' police procedural that ultimately proved less successful than previous Crawford programs. After this, Dalkin scripted the 1985 film Wills & Burke, a comedy that purported to tell the 'untold story' of the explorers (crediting them with, among other things, the creation of the idiom 'get lost'). After this and the 1988 drama Beyond My Reach (co-written with Frank Howson), Dalkin co-created (with Pino Amenta and John Powditch) the sit-com All Together Now, in which aging rock star Bobby Rivers finds himself the unexpected father of fifteen-year-old twins after their mother dies in a plane crash. All Together Now ran for four seasons and over one-hundred episodes, including episodes scripted by Shane Brennan (who would go on to create NCIS), Jan Sardi, and Steve J. Spears.

Dalkin's next two creations were The Bob Morrison Show (also created with Pino Amenta, as well as Alan Hardy and Jon Stephens) and Us and Them (created with previous collaborators Pino Amenta, Alan Hardy, and John Powditch).

In the mid to late 1990s, Dalkin wrote for programs produced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation (ACTF), including Crash Zone, Legacy of the Silver Shadow, and The Genie from Down Under. Patricia Edgar recalls Dalkin as 'a scriptwriter who was willing to write tirelessly', though she also notes disputes with director Esben Storm over script alterations for Crash Zone (Bloodbath: A Memoir of Australian Television, Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 2006, p.328).

Dalkin has written for a number of animated children's television programs, the most notable of which is perhaps the multi-award-winning Dogstar, which (with the exception of a single episode) is written exclusively by Dalkin and co-writer Doug MacLeod. His first novel, Dogstar, is adapted from the screenplay of the television series and co-written with MacLeod. His scripts for live-action children's programs, other than those for the ACTF, include work on Heartbreak High and a number of programs from Jonathan M. Shiff Productions.

Dalkin's script-writing is not focused exclusively on television for children and young adults: he has also contributed scripts to Water Rats, Always Greener, All Saints, and Stingers, among other programs.

Dalkin has lived in Melbourne.