Tony Grounds (born in East London) is a British playwright and screenwriter, who has worked extensively in television.[1][2][3] Grounds was described by The Independent (11 October 2002) as "the best TV writer of his generation".[citation needed]
Career
He started writing for the theatre, winning the Verity Bargate Award for Made in Spain, which was subsequently performed in London and published by Methuen. It was then filmed for ITV and transmitted in their Screenplay slot. There then followed stints on EastEnders and The Bill before he penned episodes of 'Chancer', which starred Clive Owen.
Mel Gibson's Icon Films then commissioned him to write and direct The Martins starring Lee Evans and Kathy Burke, which was nominated for a Golden Hitchcock at the Dinard Film Festival.
Grounds teamed up with director Joe Wright, writing Bodily Harm for Channel Four, where Tim Spall, George Cole, Leslie Manville and Annette Crosby garnered acting nominations. It was described by The Daily Telegraph as "an outstanding work of art depicting a nightmarishly apocalyptic vision of suburbia..."
Grounds wrote single films for BBC1, A Class Apart and The Dinner Party which became the two most watched single films of the year.[citation needed] Grounds wrote one-off episode for BBC Drama, Our Girl that was broadcast 24 March 2013 on BBC One. Following the success of it, BBC commissioned 5 further episodes that were broadcast in 2014.[5] The series began airing on 21 September 2014. Apart from writing the series, Grounds was also executive producer of the series together with Caroline Skinner. The series got to the semi-finals of the Radio Times TV Champion in 2014 where it was against Sherlock. The series returned in September 2016 for a series two starring Michelle Keegan and has aired a further 3 series since then.
↑Lynn Barber (7 May 2006). "'I had to keep kissing Angelina Jolie'". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 December 2010. Ray Winstone rolls into his agent's office in Soho to meet me midafternoon, with his friend the writer Tony Grounds.
↑KathrynFlett (25 March 2007). "But what of plot and plausibility?". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 December 2010. For about 88 of its 90 minutes, Tony Grounds's A Class Apart (BBC1) looked like the sort of fairy tale in which extremely unlikely people fall in love against the odds by way of heartfelt if overlong soliloquies, and you suddenly feel as though, hey, maybe it is a wonderful life after all.
↑Jed Mercurio (17 March 2007). "Classic twists". The Guardian. Retrieved 26 December 2010. Tony Grounds, writer of Birth, Marriages and Deaths, comments: "There's obviously a place for all these adaptations and historical dramas that are rife at the moment. To me, great writing is when dramatists stick their pens in their hearts and give us something magical."
