Biography
Alan Plater was an English playwright and screenwriter who worked extensively in British television from the 1960s onwards. He contributed scripts to the police series Z-Cars (1962) and its spin-offs, and wrote episodes for Play for Today (1970). He created and wrote the 1988 Channel 4 miniseries A Very British Coup, an adaptation of Chris Mullin's novel that won BAFTA and Emmy awards.
Plater wrote for Midsomer Murders (1997) and contributed to series including Dalziel and Pascoe and Lewis. He trained as an architect at Newcastle University before becoming a full-time writer in 1961. He received a CBE in 2005 and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
