--- name: "David Farr" canonical: "https://film.one/person/david-farr" fi1m_id: "david-farr" imdb_id: "nm1016333" tmdb_id: 79886 wikidata_id: "Q5233558" roles: ["Writer"] born: "29 October 1969" reviewed_on_fi1m: 2 average_fi1m_score: 79 average_as: "writer" average_over: 2 updated: "2026-09-18T08:13:16.411045+00:00" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # David Farr ## Identity David Farr - **Canonical:** https://film.one/person/david-farr - **Type:** Person - **Fi1m ID:** david-farr - **IMDb ID:** nm1016333 - **TMDB ID:** 79886 - **Wikidata ID:** Q5233558 - **Same entity:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Farr_(theatre_director), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5233558, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1016333/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/79886 Writer. Born 29 October 1969 in Guildford, Surrey, England, UK. ## Details - **Work:** Writer - **Born:** 29 October 1969, Guildford, Surrey, England, UK - **Active:** 2002–2016 - **Average Fi1m score:** 79, as writer, over 2 titles - **Fi1m score by decade:** 2000s 77 (1), 2010s 81 (1) - **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Farr_(theatre_director), https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q5233558, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1016333/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/79886 ## Streaming the US now - **Amazon Prime Video:** [*The Night Manager*](https://film.one/tv/the-night-manager.md) (81) - **Apple TV:** [*Spooks*](https://film.one/tv/spooks.md) (77) For United States; add `?region=XX` for another country. ## Fi1m on David Farr > David Farr writes spy television as a series of conversations between clever people deciding how much to tell each other. It is a pleasant thing to watch and he does it well; what he has not yet managed is to leave us unsure whom to believe. The scene David Farr writes best has two people at a table, each working out how much the other knows. In *The Night Manager* (2016) it is Tom Hiddleston's hotel manager and Hugh Laurie's arms dealer, and the pleasure of the series is almost entirely in watching them size each other up. Farr came to television from the theatre, where he was an associate director at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and it shows in how far he trusts a room and two good actors to carry an hour. When the scene is that one, he is hard to beat. He learned the trade on *Spooks*, writing for it from its fourth series to its ninth, and has said himself that it was training. His first feature credit was *Hanna* (2011), which he co-wrote and later rebuilt as a series of his own in 2019, with more room for its heroine and its politics than the film had. In between came *The Ones Below* (2016), a Hitchcock-flavoured thriller about new parents and trust that he wrote and directed, and, the same year, *The Night Manager*, which is the reason most people know his name. Since then there have been *McMafia*, *Troy: Fall of a City* and *The Midwich Cuckoos* (2022), and a second run of *The Night Manager* is under way. It is a career built almost entirely on other people's books. His method, in his own words, is to "strip the book back to find the skeleton" and then reclothe it, and the reclothing is plainly the part he enjoys. He moved le Carré's story forward to the Arab Spring, and the update was clean enough that most critics took it as the series' main achievement. We were less sure. Susanne Bier directed with confidence, but the skeleton Farr found was simpler than the one le Carré buried. The supporting characters never acquire weight of their own, and once we could see what each was for, we could see where the plot was going. Some critics have said the result is closer to Bond than to le Carré, and on that point they are right. We enjoyed it more than the writing earned, and we knew it while it was happening. Early on we had decided whom to trust, and we kept watching anyway, for Hiddleston and Laurie and for the actors around them, who kept suggesting more complicated people than the script had written. That is Farr's position on the evidence so far: a careful builder who chooses good books, works with good directors and leaves the hard part to the cast. The second series of *The Night Manager* will tell us whether he has learned to keep us guessing. We would like to be surprised. ## Biography David Farr (born 29 October 1969) is a British writer and theatrical director. He was brought up in Surrey and educated at the University of Cambridge, where he read English Literature. He began directing theatre at university and later served as Artistic Director of the Bristol Old Vic from 2002 to 2005 and the Lyric Hammersmith from 2005 to 2009. In 2009 he became Associate Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Farr has written regularly for television, including episodes of *Spooks*. His screen credits include the film *Hanna* (2011), which he co-wrote, and its television adaptation (2019), for which he also directed episodes. He adapted John le Carré’s novel for the BBC series *The Night Manager* (2016). Other work includes the feature *The Ones Below* (2015), which he wrote and directed, and the series *The Midwich Cuckoos* (2022). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2025. *Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com, telegraph.co.uk.* ## On Fi1m (2) - *The Night Manager* (2016), Fi1m 81, Creator, Writer, Executive Producer — [page](https://film.one/tv/the-night-manager.md) - *Spooks* (2002), Fi1m 77, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/spooks.md) ## Complete filmography (16) Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page. - *Trapping* (2023), Executive Producer - *The Midwich Cuckoos* (2022), series, Writer, Executive Producer, Creator - *Hanna* (2019), series, Writer, Director, Creator - *Troy: Fall of a City* (2018), series, Executive Producer, Writer, Creator - *McMafia* (2018), series, Writer - *Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams* (2017), series, Writer, Director - *The Man with the Iron Heart* (2017), Screenplay - *The Ones Below* (2016), Director, Writer - *The Night Manager* (2016), series, Writer, Executive Producer, Creator — Fi1m 81, [page](https://film.one/tv/the-night-manager.md) - *Hanna* (2011), Screenplay - *Outcasts* (2011), series, Writer - *Spooks* (2002), series, Writer — Fi1m 77, [page](https://film.one/tv/spooks.md) - *The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz* (2000), as Hyde Park Nutter - *Chicken Talk* (1996), Director - *He-Play She-Play* (1993), series, Writer, Director - *Pantera: Cowboys from Hell* (1991), Editor ## Awards ### Other awards — 1 won - Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature 2025: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (won) *From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.* --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/david-farr