Allan Prior: 1922 - 2006

Long-time Guild member, Allan Prior has died at the age of 84.

Prior was one of the original writers of Z-Cars on BBC One (a series based on a single play by Troy Kennedy Martin) and wrote five of the first ten scripts.

He also created other series, including Stookie, The Charmer (based on a novel by Patrick Hamilton) and Howard's Way (co-created with Gerard Glaister).

There are obituaries in The Times and The Guardian.

Allan Prior, who has died at the age of 84, claimed his place in the pantheon of popular television as one of the founding writers of the BBC-TV police series, Z Cars, a distinction roughly on a par with membership of the 1966 England World Cup team. Developed from a single play by Troy Kennedy Martin, Z Cars was the first cops-and-robbers series to treat policemen as fallible human beings, to get away from the Scotland Yard scene in favour of a raw, sprawling, new-town landscape, and to anticipate the policing by motor car that would soon be general.